Warning, this may be long.
I recently took a job working on a website for a charity/campaigning organisation, and at first it was great. But recently, more and more, a particular member of staff seems to be undermining me constantly.
He is a technical person, a very good one and my job cannot be done without him. But I thought I had some say on what happened on this website. I may have misunderstood what I was employed to do, but it seems at the moment that I say, let's do it like that on the website, and then he comes along and says, no, let's do it like this, every single time. Many of these issues are bigger strategic ones, not technical ones, but the organisational culture seems to be that everyone gets a say on everything. (Means things move very slowly, as you might expect).
He's now basically said that a whole section of the website isn't going to happen, because he doesn't believe that it's a good idea. Instead, an idea he had is being taken up, out of the blue. This means a lot of what I've told people in the past about what we will be doing is untrue, amongst other things.
There have been other examples of the same sort of thing, and it's incredibly undermining. What really upsets me is that no one seems to notice! The guy says what he wants, we discuss it and discuss it with him being passive aggressive, until he gets his way. If he doesn't get his way, he simply sabotages whatever was decided until we go back into discussion, rinse and repeat.
Plus he changes his mind all the bloody time and will simply, overtly not cooperate with any attempt at getting deadlines from him. I wonder if it is just that he wants his own way, or is he trying to get rid of me?
What's driving me mad and making me wonder if I am paranoid is that no one seems to see that he's doing this, and that major decisions are being taken by him. Am I actually really shit and touchy? I'm totally doubting my abilities now, and it's making me absolutely hate this job.
Thanks to anyone who made it through this rant, and any advice from people who've been in a similar situation, or who haven't but just want to share shit work stories really really appreciated.