To be fed up of emails from the office jobsworth?

[Ribrabrob]

I have a colleague who recently got a kind of promotion. When I say kind of, I mean she made up a job and the managers like her so that’s her new job now fair enough!

She used to be likeable but the new role seems to have gone to her head, she Is such a jobsworth. That’s fine, take your role seriously but... the emails! She’s literally sending 100 a day (no joke). Some are important (maybe less than 10) whereas others she’s very clearly sending them just for the sake of it. Many of them don’t require a response but she’ll get moody and passive aggressive if she doesn’t get a response in a timely manner.

She’s not my manger and we are equal levels.

Aibu to say something? It’s clogging up my inbox and they are just pointless. Or should I just suck it up and start a special folder for her pointless drivel?!

Whilst we are here - does anyone else have any tails of the office jobs worth? I’ve recently got back into office life and now remember my love hate relationship with it!

@GalleryGirl

Alternatively

"Hi Jobsworth,

I'm finding the number of emails you're sending in a day overwhelming; it's likely I'm going to miss an important message within the pile.
Could you limit them to a handful in the day please? It'll save us both a lot of time."

Don't do this - she will take it that you can't cope with your workload.

Mention to your manager that she's being rather enthusiastic, is emailing you 100 times a day (check this is fact first and not exaggeration) and that you plan to respond once a week to all her emails in one go, unless they are urgent, so they don't disrupt your daily workload.

This makes your manager aware that:

1. you are handling it
2. they need not intervene
3. you are keeping them in the loop on a potential issue emerging

while also telling them that:
4) your colleague is a bit of an oddball
5) you are not planning to stop what you are doing to respond immediately through the day unless urgent
6) you will not dance to your colleagues tune on things that are not urgent

If your manager raises no concerns about that approach, inform your weird colleague that

• because she requires a lot of input from you in order to do her work, you are happy to support her, but will reply to her emails on Tuesday mornings (or whenever works)
• that if any emails require a more immediate response she should mark them as urgent.

That way you only look at the urgent ones daily. Your colleague looks like a weirdo to your manager. You look like you are efficiently dealing with a problem, while still recognising some of her queries might be legitimate and urgent - but by putting the onus on her to decide which, you need not even read the rest in the intervening time and you can get a coffee once a week and wade through the crazy.

Turn it around.

I check my work email once or twice a month and when I do I just do a mass delete. I also delete emails about training courses I'm meant to do online, been deleting them for a good three years and nobody has ever said anything

And in your weekly response session, reply to each email one by one but with the responses @BluebellsGreenbells suggested - wherever possible, one-line or even one word responses.

Crazy colleague is playing a power game. She will want to make out she's terribly busy chasing you on endless things and will be implying she's effectively managing you. Important you don't send anything about finding it difficult or overwhelming or that you might miss something important or she will use it to convince her manager that she's more competent than you are.

I'd drop into a conversation with her manager, "Is x ok? She seems very highly strung and sends me a hundred emails a day. Do you think she's coping?"

I'd actually put a daily catch up in the calendar...it'll annoy her as she will need to be more organised and she will have half an hour to say whatever she needs to!

I like the idea of one reply per day. I would also tell her on the email how much time it has taken out of your work day to deal with them and how much wasn’t relevant to you

Just set an autorule forwarding her emails back to her.