Someone I thought disliked me has just defended me!

user1474645485 · 2016-09-23 17:20:15

im confused and need Internet opinions for the first time in my life! I became the Manager of a small team of solicitors two years ago. I get on well with the group and have greatly enjoyed managing the team; with the exception of one work colleague. She's very elegant in her mannerisms in an Audrey Hepburn type way. She is well educated and well spoken; but my goodness she is irritating. She has an opinion on absolutely everything and will express it regularly! She's very assertive and will challenge everything. She joins others conversation when it's not necessarily appropriate. Her work is of a very high standard but unfortunely sometimes she spends too much time talking and not enough time working! She is 28 but acts more like a rebellious teenager. I find her rather attention seeking but she is energetic and loves her work. She is physically attractive and can flirt a bit! She seems to exagerate stories. She sometimes makes up a mild story for attention. Essentially everything she does is for attention. I wasn't going to miss her if she decided to leave the company .She's certainly not all bad. She is genuine, honest and has a naturally warm personality. But at the same time she causes conflict by gossiping at times and seems immature. She often answers back to me and seems to lack respect for authority. She is far too over familiar. For example today our gay locality manager came in and she asked him if he wanted the 7 inch or 13 inch ruler in a suggestive manner. If she came across working class she would never keep a job. She did however impress by staying calm when others were angry with her. I recently was investigated because someone reported a joke I made in passing. I'm not going to lie, it was in poor taste and a rare moment of bad judgement in the years I've been a manager. It was reported by a senior member of staff. An investigator spoke to the team members and they said it was out of character for me and didn't say anything else. But no one was more persistent in support of me than the woman I find annoying. She rang professionals in support of me, refused to bad mouth me, suggested what I should say In my defence, challenged the need for a hearing in the first place and single handedly saved my job through persistent support of me and my work. She joked that it's a good job no one reports what she says. She then took on work without anyone asking so that I would not return to an impossibly big mountain of work. She definetly doesn't 'suck up' to anyone so it wasn't that. She has a permanent job so isn't after anything and she has several years of training before she could ever be promoted. There's no further investigion and she's back to being her 'bubbly' (attention seeking) self. I'm confused. She's annoying as hell, why do all that? How can someone so immature and seemingly self absorbed do that? Support me? Was I being unreasonable to have written her off in such a way? What would you think of a young woman described in my post? Maybe I've been too harsh. I make sure I treat all my team equally and I am friendly to everyone so she isn't aware I find her annoying. She has improved since I had a discussion with her about certain aspects of her behaviour but I think some of it is her personality.

Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Saved Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

This thread has been deleted

Thanks for the reports, everyone. We're not sure about the OP here, we're going to remove while we take a closer look.