Dear Evil HR Lady,
I started working on a project with one woman, we’ll call her Heidi, over a year ago. I was the first person she started managing (she had been kept at an entry level position for three years and then promoted twice in 6 months). She was managing me and things went badly. I was doing my best, but she was setting unrealistic expectations and sending very abusive emails (all caps, lots of !!!!!, ‘you never do anything right’, etc.). She complained to my real manager, we talked, but because she’d been there longer, they believed her stories. I wanted to quit, but luckily, I was able to transfer to a different department. Since then, I’ve loved my job, the other people I work with like my work, and I’ve been promoted. She’s the only person to have such a problem with me.
Then they hired someone new to work for Heidi. Things went the same way. She complained, he complained about her, and he switched projects. This also happened with another new hire who then was let go. I talked with our Managing Director at dinner one night and it came out that Heidi has been taking management classes for months. Now one other newer coworker (working here for almost two years) has been assigned to work with Heidi. Things are following the same pattern. She’s shared some of the stories and emails and they’re still abusive and Heidi is setting her up to fail. Then Heidi complained to the manager and the manager talked to the newer person and says she needs to cover herself and try really hard to fix things. This person says she’s miserable and isn’t enjoying her job any more.
Heidi is really fake and always panders to anyone above her, but I can’t believe management isn’t resolving this serious issue. Heidi hasn’t worked well with anyone she’s managed, she constantly complains about the person she’s managing, and four out of five people have stopped working on her projects because of all these issues. Heidi has had these issues for more than a year (including formal negative reviews) and yet she’s still working with the company and has been promoted again. What do we do in this situation? How can we make management realize that these management classes aren’t working and that Heidi needs to be given an ultimatum of change or get fired? She makes people miserable and is not an asset to the company.
To read the answer, click here: Why won’t my boss fire my terrible coworker?
Sad simple answer: Life is not fair. Work is even less so. Bad managers are rarely fired. Your situation is all too common.
Go back to the beginning of the above and read it again.
If she is taking management courses of some sort, she has probably been spoken to already and that is possibly a condition of a performance improvement plan, perhaps. It is not your business to know, and not the ‘higher-ups’ to tell. You’ve done your part. The more you focus on her, however, the less you are doing your job. She may be being dealt with right now and you don’t even know it. Don’t stir the pot and give the ‘higher-ups’ a reason to deal with you. Just focus on your job and do the best you can. Good luck!