To resent colleague

[mrsbeeton999]

Colleague has 12 week old baby plus other children. We are now working from home for at least next 18 months. When work announced this she immediately requested returning from maternity leave ASAP and only took the absolute minimum legal time off. Obviously she has other children at home like a lot of is do but now her husband is back at work and she hasn’t got baby in nursery. I can see she is under pressure and exhausted but feel she should still be on maternity leave. She hadn’t been here long so was only on minimum maternity pay hence coming back. She is on 2 projects with me but appears to be doing no work. Always late for meetings and when she’s on video calls she’s constantly ducking off screen and not joining in. I’m really resenting my work allowing her back.

Resenting her will do nothing but make you feel rubbish yourself, so yes, I think YABU to yourself to simply resent her, AKA sit and seethe.

If something needs to be said, say it. Otherwise let it go. There's lots of unfair situations arising during all the changes recently. Probably at some point in the future, you'll get lucky in some way that others aren't.

TBH I'd just do my bits of the projects and let her fail hers. I spent many years covering for colleagues who, for whatever reason, didn't do the work they were supposed to (male and female) and it got me nowhere so fuck it. Protect yourself and your career and let the pisstakers take the hit.

Thanks everyone that’s helped me clarify what points I’m reasonable to be irritated by and which aspects to stay away from. With regards to being late for calls we have weekly project update calls with all external Stakeholders and she is not engaging in these , joining late and just being a listener. We don’t both need to be on these calls but agreed to for a few weeks when she was first back but I think I probably need to hand her one of the calls so she knows she must dial in. However I would worry she’d be late and make us look unprofessional when we are delivering the project and giving 90% of updates. I’ve got it clearer now what to say to my line manager and Might try and suggest doing one of these projects each and handing her the smaller one that is further along and she can technically do without me.

Don’t you think she is just being a listener as you are still in handover? It takes many mums a few weeks to get back into things after coming off maternity leave, I don’t think this is unusual!

Still not clear were there examples of work she wasn’t doing or was it just her conduct on calls.

If just the above then really you guys just need to agree how to manage your handover and your line manager will not expect or particularly want to be involved in that process. What she does on calls that you are not on or a project you are not managing will be for her to manage and will no longer be your issue.

Those here saying "let her off, she may need the money" are ridiculous, OP has said the womans husband is at work, and if they couldn't afford another baby they shouldn't have had one, obviously having had other kids this woman should know by now they cost money. OP YANBU

I think it's a great idea for her to have her own project. Even if everything was running smoothly it sounds like there is a bit of unnecessary duplication of personnel, so that's the angle I'd be taking with the boss.

Oh and yes you can phrase it as "easier for everyone if we have our own responsibilities " "Other person has been very quiet on the calls - probably doesn't want to tread on my toes" ". You can totally drop her in it without using any incriminating language. But then I'm horrible.

Didn’t you manage to speak to your manager OP?