Please let me have a rant about my colleague as I feel like I am going to explode!

[IdreamofClooney]

I am struggling to remain calm.

I line manage a woman who had been in this job for 35 years.

She is a "senior secretary" and yet cannot open a spreadsheet. I am going to have to leave the room as I cannot cope with the huffing and puffing caused by a simple thing like the time table being in a spreadsheet and not in word

Arrgggh

send her on a course

Yep - definitely send her on a course.

Poor woman probably still uses an abacus.

she needs training. be a good manager and send her away for a day

I've tried that believe me. I've suggested courses and even emailed links but she won;t be trained in anything. We have a new system coming in for the new academic year and she won;t even attend sessions about that. She has less than two years to retirement and is counting (so am I!)

Some days she is lovely and charming and other days I have to leave the room to stop myself from shouting at her.

I've definitely showed her how to open an excel document before and yet she makes such a huge fuss about it.

Grrrrrr

Can employees decide that they will NOT be trained in something that they require for their job? Tell her training is not optional!

Is it any different opening an excel document as compared to a word document?

Do you do appraisals and set objectives? I'd put one in about using spreadsheet to do the timetable. A long process but one that's tricky to avoid perhaps?

Oh and she's clearly being very annoying.

It sounds like she can't do the job. Surely this needs to be addressed. We ALL have to move witht he times. I appreciate it is more tricky if you come from the pre-computer generation. But we must ALL move on.

IT seems that she opens documents from word - in that she is already in word then opens the document she needs.

I have tried to get some support from my manager (who is ultimately responsbile for all admin) but it seems that her behaviour is just accpeted as she has been there so long. He suggested that everytime she has a problem with something that is clearly in her job description to tell her to go and speak to him - can you imagine the atmosphere in this office if I did that?

She completely ignored me for four days after I had to take a few days off when ds had chicken pox

Oh am so fed up

I was just thinking the same as bozza- you just double click surely, whether it's Word or Excel? She does sound rather hopeless.

Blimey. Well, if she can't stop herself from opening things in Word then it doesn't sound as though there's much hope, does it?

I could not undersrtand how she couldnt do it as all my documents are in shared folders but when I tried to explain I just got blank stares and huffs so I went to her desk and she was already in word.

I do honestly have an element of sympathy for some one who started out as a secretary in the days of typewriters and carbon paper but really - its 2007 people come on

You'd be surprised how many people do this. Drives me round the bend! You have to try and persuade them to use Explorer, but I think sometimes people actively don't want to make any changes.

I had a secretary just like this.....2 years and counting every minute to retirement,wouldn't do anything new,wouldn't be interrupted if doing crossword...ad infinitum...
I outsourced,( to all the other admin staff...tbh they were in on it),all her work virtually....she didn't have a thing to do...Then I put her in charge of running a crossword group for the patients in the day hospital...she was very happy.So was everyone else......I wasn't annoyed by her anymore
All this accomplished on NHS !! Play to her strenghts...you know it makes sense.

I think she has "must resist all change" embroidered on her knickers/tattooed on her bum etc etc

If I hear "that's not in my remit" or "that's not how used to do it", or "Oh I don;t know I have never done that before" I will in fact cry

Sigh

No. no , no......don't fight it...go ' with it' creatively...

Oh Mozhe if only I could do somehting like that. It is just the two of us doing all of the admin and there are certain tasks that she will do - applications, photocopying, etc but the vast majority of stuff I have to do as it is just more hassle than it is worth trying to explain to her how to do things.

Basically my delegation skills are lacking as I never manage to get her to do much....

I have been told that it is not worth doing an appraisal for her at this stage as she is not likely to change so I am stuck with this for another two years.

On bad days I feel like I have to stay in this post for one year minimum then I am out of here as is living hell!

Sounds shit.....try being extremely,extremely nice to her...and I mean really ladle it on....a very waxy indian psychiatrist once put me up to this strategy...I immediately thought,' how rubbish is that...'....but being me was intrigued and tried it...it's never failed to give spectacular results
You will feel specially good about yourself too...a bonus !

Oh I am incredibly nice (apart from when I walk out of the room but even then I mutter "off to the loo")

I praise her for the things she does well as she is VERY effiecent at things like organising paper work (although she will restack any documents I work with as I do not have them neatly lined up in a sleeping with the enemy style) and I end up apologising for things that are not even remotely out of line.

Oh I feel much better just having got the excel thing off my chest.

Mumsnet is a wonderful thing indeed

...or do her a little laminated efficient looking booklet thingy on excel documents....with loads of flow diagrams etc....and give it to her for her birthday with a large box of chocs and gushing flowery card...?
I may have been working in the NHS for too long....( am on sabbatical for 18 months now though...).

Mozhe

IDC...does she have interesting views on multiculturalism and diversity...I seem to recall a thread about someone in HE grappling with an inherited racist colleague and often wondered how it all panned out.
Make her do the ECDL for her own good

Indeed that was me Marina...... she has not made any racist comments lately as I nipped those in the bud (I hope) but she is still somewhat "challenging"

I went on a course called "supervisory and communication skills" on which I was told there was no such thing as a difficult person to work with and was shown lots of techniques to modify my behaviour to ensure good communicaiton in the work place so apparently I can;t just shout "for F88Ks sake get a clue" when asked how to open an excel document by a senior secretary....

Great news about the racist comments and wishing you similar luck with the spreadsheets
I went on an excellent course myself this week, "Managing Expectations in the workplace". Shame it bore little resemblance to life at the chalk face