Today was very tiring for me mentally. I have been working on applying the skills my son showed me with my coworker, and it is hard. I talk about her so much that I should give her a name. How about Jane?
Jane is still scheduling customer meetings, talking about topics that are not her expertise (they are actually mine), and then complicating my work. I have aggressive goals that I need to achieve, and it’s difficult to do this when I have someone meddling with how I do my work. Her actions directly affect my job performance.
I have lost count of how often I have to escalate to a manager, but for once, I didn’t hesitate to do so this time. I escalated. Or rather, I wrote an email and included her manager in it.
I am beyond frustrated. I keep hearing how she has surpassed her sales targets, and I want to scream ‘of course!’. All of the sellers supporting this territory have goals to meet, and we are all working overtime to compensate for her lack of skills and competence in her role. But go ahead, praise her and reward her.
It makes me wonder why I bother to work so hard. I blame my parents. I wish I could be lazy and say ‘I don’t care’. But that’s not me. I only know how to work hard and challenge myself and it is intolerable that I have to work twice as hard to fix the ‘work’ (if you can call it that), and then align the deals so that we can meet the targets. It would be one thing if I just had to do my job, but it’s another when I have to cover for her.
I have enough to deal with at home, taking care of my family. I don’t have the stamina to constantly adjust the deals that Jane has messed up. Working with her makes me so anxious. I have been trying to avoid a panic attack all evening. My management keeps turning a blind eye to the problems my colleagues and I face with Jane, and I know that tomorrow will be just more of the same crap!
My husband tells me not to worry because I can’t control what’s happening, I can only control myself – he can see the stress and anxiety on my face. He says ‘you talk about Jane every night’, and its true, I do. My coworker says ‘don’t let her ruin your spirit’, but I can’t help it. It has been years of this nonsense. Years of escalating to management and nothing changes. It’s sad to say it, but I feel like Jane has crushed my soul. And yes I know someone can only crush you if you let them. But years of dealing with this has worn me out. I don’t know how much more I can handle. When we were assigned to the same territory at the start of the year, I told my manager that I feared this would end up with HR. I think we are at that point. I can’t continue to work in this toxic work setting.
I am not the only one who feels this way, I have shed tears, real tears, with some of my coworkers a few times because we are constantly having to make up for Jane’s shortcomings. I am just so exhausted and I feel powerless to change anything.
— xoxo Sandy
The Inner Workings of My Thoughts 