To avoid working with a colleague

[Copewitcolleague]

I have a colleague, we'll call her Sarah who is an extrovert. Although she is in a different department I have been working fairly closely with her on a few projects recently. At first I was a bit thrown by how loud and informal she was - lots of jokes and extremely loud laughing - but I got to know her and we worked well together.

Recently, she has become increasingly unprofessional, asking for one-to-one meetings to discuss work then spending them offloading her personal issues on to me. She also comments on people's appearance during team meetings and calls everyone who is female "darling" or other terms of endearment (doesn't appear to do this to the men!!). I know I'm not the only person who is irritated by this but everyone seems to go "oh well that's just Sarah".

What has really pushed this is that as well as the personal discussions dominating at work, she keeps trying to invite me to her house to hold work meetings there (we are hybrid) or asking to socialise outside of work. Of what I can gather she is very lonely, but I have a busy workload as well as a busy social life. When I spend time with her I come away irritated and overwhelmed and feel like I need to lie down in a dark room!.

So AIBU to avoid working with her in future by wrapping up our current project then avoiding any in future? Or should I just tell her/her manager outright? I don't want to hurt her feelings and she seems very sensitive but I can't cope with this any more.

I don't think you can throw a strop and say to her manager you won't work with her if that's what a project needs. You can, however, refuse to meet outside of work and reduce the 121 meetings in work.

She’s too much. You need to shut down any personal discussion during the work meetings and that will remove a lot of their charm for her.
I don’t see how you are being unreasonable in the slightest to avoid working with her as much as is practicable in the future. Presumably her issues are what’s leading to her loneliness but it’s hardly your job to fix and it doesn’t sound like she’s asked your advice either.

I think you are right that her issues are leading to her loneliness. She comes on too strong which makes people shy away!!

To clarify, I fully intend to finish up the work necessary with her. Ongoing it will be a bit of a "who volunteers to work on this area" and I won't be putting my hand up if she is involved.

Can you have your 121 meetings on TEAMS? You could then say you will be recording so you can refer back to points discussed as needed. That may be enough to dissuade her from roaming off topic then if she does you can share with line managers.

Most of our meetings are on teams but I don't think she would respond well to the suggestion of recording. She has reacted badly to anything she views as "monitoring" in the past, including cc'ing in line managers in emails. In that case they were cc'd for info but she made it clear she thought it was essentially "telling on her". She is either all laughs and everything is sunshine and roses or incredibly argumentative and outspoken!

Reply to meeting requests asking for an agenda. If she doesn’t have one decline or say you’ve got 10 minutes at x time only and stick to it.

If she does have an agenda ask to shorten meeting if appropriate, invite others, or if she goes off agenda say let’s gets to the agenda as we don’t have much time, if agenda is completed end call saying you’ve got a lot to catch up on.

Just mention repeatedly how busy you are.

When you’re on a call start with « I’m swamped today I can really only give you ten mins »

Or deliberately call her ten mins before a team call. Eg you both have a team call at 11, you call her at 7 mins to, so you both have to leave.

Or say « Apols I’ve got my head in something else- could you send some bullet points in an email and I’ll review later »

She won’t like these boundaries and will push them. Her type always do. So every single time redirect. « I’m sorry to hear that. Sadly I’m short on time today so let’s get back to [project]. » Every. Single. Time.

Shell find another victim to unload her trauma onto.

This is great advice, thank you. You are also right when you say she will find another victim to offload her trauma onto as I know others have experienced this too. Which brings me to my next question of what can be done if management keep turning a blind eye to it?

What would you want management to do about it?

At this stage I'd say you just need to politely decline any unnecessary meetings and do not speak to her at all outside of working hours. If she tries to talk about personal stuff just apologise and say I'm sorry I've got to finish off this work. And turn back to your screen.

I wouldn't think it's necessarily worth raising it with management unless she just totally disregards you keeping it polite but distant.