AIBU or is she a CF?

[Iamnotacerealkiller]

OK fully expect to get flamed here.

There is a woman that i 'work' with she is in an important role however she keep vanishing for months at a time supposedly on sick leave, now fair enough, people get ill and sometime it is stress and mental heath issues that aren't very apparently when you look at people however... I have worked at this place for 4/5 years and for this entire time this woman has been on a cycle of being off for long periods then just as her pay is about to get dropped to half pay she returns. She then has to go off again to spend all the holiday she has accrued so that's another few weeks for a total of about 6-8 months at a time. While she is in we perhaps see her for half a day a week (this is when she is on full time) the role she does involves a lot of meeting and site visits but certainly not enough to fill even half a week. she will frequently saunter in at 10-10:30. She will then go off on sick leave a month or three later.

When she is 'in' she will make all kinds of excuses about why she isn't in that day or is late i.e. family member has gone to hospital (this one happen once a month or so) she has been in a car crash (again) literally it got to the point where i stopped asking her how she was because the response would be ALWAYS be 'oh not good x has happened and now i have to deal with it' i was only making small talk as i hadn't seen her in a while!!

When she is in all she talks about is...

a) How desperately she wants to go to the pub 'can we hold that meeting at our local teehee' 'oh i've had enough already (at 1pm) shall we do for a drink?

b) Whatever disaster has befallen her or someone close to her that day (this is usually a massive as occasionally she will contradict herself about details or who has e.g. broken their wrist, at one point she told me her father, and then a moment later a colleague said oh x won't be in because her son has broken his wrist, huh!!)

c) all the lovely trips away she has booked and what a lovely time she has had at x festival/cruise etc

The only 'work' i have ever seen her do is to complain about the work people have done for her in her absence, i hear a lot of one sided phone calls where she is saying what shit decisions people have made and 'if i was there that wouldn't have happened' etc etc undermining other peoples work often in the middle of them doing it.

We have all had to pick up stuff in her absence and there is frequently stuff that crosses over with her work i have ended up in ridiculous discussions where she has criticized my work (different field to her, and 10 years of experience) and that i don''t know what i'm talking about simply because it is 'interfering' with her part of the project. (her field is creative where as mine is more technical so i'm usually abiding by planning/safety rules or whatever whereas she is just flouncing because pesky rules don't fit with her 'vision') she is generally very difficult to deal with, plays the victim a lot, lots of emotional blackmail.

The managers are all very aware of what is going on, they have even hired permanent contractors people to cover for her because they know how unreliable she is. I think they are afraid of firing her in case she makes a claim of unfair dismissive or claims we are discriminating against someone with MH issues or something as she knows the system so well.

It is also absolutely shit for office moral, she will have these tantrums in the office/ on the phone and then she will say she is stressed and then leave for the rest of day and the rest of us are left in the rubble discussing wtf happened!? I usually end the resulting conversation with 'but maybe we are being unfair, stress is a terrible thing etc etc' but what do you think, is this taking the piss?

Of course it is possible that she has mental health problems AND is a CF at the same time...

I have worked in several high pressure environments over 20 years or so and without a doubt my current place is the most chilled out cushy job i have ever had, basically no hard deadline, lovely staff and atmosphere etc if i had gone off on long term sick i would be back and getting stuck in and being pathetically grateful to those who had covered for me not complaining and make drama!

I am ranting i know but i don't feel like i can properly discuss it at work with anyone without being the office gossip and being potentially harsh so needed a forum to get it all off my chest and ask if i am over-reacting??

Most definitely a CF! Some people really know how to work the system. I can see why bosses might be wary of firing her. But by the sound of it her work is not up to scratch anyway. Maybe you should make a formal complaint. Not about all the sick leave - you don't know the details and that isn't anything to do with you. But on work related issues where she is undermining you/not completing her work.

I have once worked with someone similar (not the sick leave part) where everything was a drama, everything was someone elses fault, never took any responsibility for anything. She used to blame someone in another department for stuff all the time, making out she was useless, slagging her off no end.....then I found out that person was going to be her bridesmaid and was one of her best friends!! If she was confronted over anything she would cry. So I think people avoided confronting her.

When I was a fairly new trainee several times she delegated something to me in the afternoon, then said 'oh by the way that needs to go out today' then left at 5 leaving me working late to finish something she had been sitting on all week and just couldn't be arsed to do!

Now I am ranting!!

I think you should concentrate on actually doing your work and not on idle tittle tattle with a colleague you clearly don't like.

It sounds like she has a combination of alcohol and MH issues.

If senior management are aware and don't wish to address it, your choices are to put up with it or change jobs.

My old manager was like this, every year (around Christmas time) he would go off for at least six weeks. This continued for years (public bloody sector) until occupational health got involved so he calmed down for a year but is up to his old tricks again.

It used to drive me nuts as I would have to pick up the work in his absence and of course get no thanks. Would leave work in tears some times where I was so stressed.

meganorks

Yes that is spot on when she is actually in.

It doesn't bother me much as she is i so infrequently in, but when she does come in she disrupts things!!

Not sure what you mean by idle tittle tattle Alonso. We were talking about our work and she was questioning my experience and expertise on something she knew nothing about. I was helping HER with a project. However because it contradicted her 'feelings' on something (she had literally nothing rational to support her opinion on factual evidence other then saying 'i know what i'm doing everyone should listen to me')

Does your company not have any form of HR support or absence management policy?

I know a couple of people like this and my mum's department was full of them. They have a mysterious recovery once their pay drops and the cycle starts again. Meanwhile everyone else is made to feel like a CF for taking a couple of genuine sick days when they are ill.

Our sickness and absence policy has been changed recently but I'm not sure if will do much good. People who are genuinely ill feel like they will have to go in to work and people with chronic conditions will be unfairly took through stages of the sickness policy.

Public sector job? The world is full of people who know how to play the game.

We have someone like this at my work, so much so people will comment "oh X has been in for a few weeks now.. surely she's due to go off sick again soon" it's ridiculous. (To be fair my view is clouded because I actually don't like her anyway) but I can't understand how it is allowed to happen. The management in my place is a shambles anyway to be fair. Another colleague is doing a phased return because his dad died... last May. I would be absolutely mortified to be doing this, however I can only assume these people genuinely believe they need the time off & don't feel bad for taking it. Meanwhile they complain about everything that's happened while they've been off & tell u all their sob stories..

I also work with someone like this - seems there are a lot of them around. What's really weird though, is our office has a very strict sick absence policy which is policed with military precision. Have now decided she must have something really big on senior management team.
Have no idea how she gets away with it and although it's extremely unfair on others, I am coming round to a grudging admiration of the way she has them leaping through hoops.( And I say this as some one who was threatened with dismissal myself)

I was the treasurer of a voluntary (non profit) preschool ( years ago, no external funding ) where a previously fantastic member of staff started a cycle of taking perfectly timed time off like this. We were so sympathetic at first but then, when everything she said came out in legalese and we realised it coincided with a new partner whose job enabled him to travel to interesting places and take her, we felt a bit more sceptical. Stayed exactly within the terms of the law so we had to be so careful. It was run on shoestring, and it nearly broke us financially, until even she had had enough and left. Made me quite cynical about those who abuse employment rights whilst those who have genuine recurrent problems may get unfairly side eyed.

This lady sounds like she may have alcohol abuse problems.

It is your business as it does affect your work. Not sure what to advise though. She sounds extremely annoying.

It's really unfair to everyone else to keep people like that on.

I also worked with someone like this. He was off for great chunks of time, and co-workers sometimes saw him out and about in the evenings when he was supposed to be incapacitated etc. He was an unpleasant individual and definitely played the system for years but management couldn't seem to get rid of him (and I know they tried).

Yes, some people definitely know how to play the system. I always wonder how they have the barefaced cheek to behave in that way. Do you think it's a mental health thing?

By the way, the person I am talking about was reported by co workers a number of times, and nothing seemed to change.

It is public sector yes

HR?
Absence management policy?

Public sector generally has both of these things.

Surely the management can pin her down to absence and lack of work quality and give her warnings. MH or not, companies cannot afford to keep people like these whom in my opinion is clearly taking the piss.

My management are trying to do something about this i think but as PP have said they have to be so careful!

I love all these stories, there are so many of them (or maybe its the same person and we know each other .

RE alcohol abuse, you may well be right. i would't be surprised. it would explain the many 'accidents' split knee, car crash etc. Hmmm it actually would explain a lot. and if she has some genuine stress that would make it much worst too.

Bizarrly we had facilities organise a whole load of specialist office equipment for her. Adjustable desk and chair for her back, specialist phone for her eyes etc etc all these accommodations and she never uses them! the desk has never been adjusted the posture chair, she move to one side, she uses her mobile instead the special phone which she cannot work out how to use. Everytime she comes in she has forgotten her login details so spends 30mins faffing with IT.

Yanbu
I'm a department manager and have a few of these. They are the most frustrating people in the work place and they know the system so well and know exactly how far they can take it without putting their job at risk.
We have a 3 stage process for dismissal on ill health. They get to stage 2, then recover for 13 months when the same old cycle starts over again. You can predict it!
Their ailments are backed up by GP / specialist reports at a huge expense to the company.
They post pictures on social media of their holidays whilst off sick and when they return again they take the 6 weeks leave they accrued.
Then there is a phased return for 12 weeks with light duties
It's a fucking joke and it rages me out every time
My employer has a superb sickness policy in terms of support and these fuckers just abuse it year in year out.

I used to manage the sick abscences of NHS staff for a county. The terminal absentee's knew full well how to play the system to stay of pay. This was from various pay grades, cleaners to doctors. Amazing how the system let them so obviously abuse it. I had to leave in the end as it was mind blowingly frustrating

Nope. She's a dick and needs to be sacked.

Years ago when I worked in an office there was a girl who came in for a few weeks then would go off sick for another few weeks.

Turned out she had 2 full time jobs..

She would go off sick when the other job started asking when she was coming back and vice versa.

This woman though, it does sound like alcohol might play a larger role in her life than is healthy.

Thing is yes the quality of her work (what work?) is really bad but if she is brought up on that i can only imagine she will say, it is bad because she hasn't been around or others have messed things up in her absence. then those meetings will be stressful so she will have to go off!

then if they complain about her absence she will say she is genuinely ill or being harrassed at work (she tends to overblow other people's reactions to her and take things very personally) so a normal discussion where someone disagrees she takes very personally and it becomes a big argument where her only reply is 'ive been doing this for years so you should listen, im the expert!!' never actually addressing the real concern. she will take this as a massive confrontation (i know because this was me a couple of times!!) and can only imagine she takes this as everyone else being unreasonable and unsupportive.

Oliversmum

thats amazing!!!