Hi, just wondering if I can pick your brains on a situation at my office and what I can do (if anything) to improve things.
For context, the structure is:
Manager (M) who sits in a different office and is a bit of a pushover.
Me. I’m the most senior in our office, although I’m not a manager. I’m 20+ years younger than the rest.
5 others who are equal.
One of the five (S) is a difficult character to work with. She’s loud, a slacker, doesn’t really care about the quality of her work, although she’s very funny and entertaining with it.
She’s also M’s favourite and is always running in to her with her work, getting her to basically do it for her. She’s always in M’s ear if she’s not happy about anything and feeds her information about anything that’s been said in our office. M will come into our office for chats and have lunch in our office if S is in, but we won’t see her at all if S is off.
Part of my job is checking the work of the others and I’m finding that the quality of S’s work could be better. I try to tell her but she’s not interested. Because her and M are so close I feel like I can’t pass it to M to deal with as they would be laughing at me behind my back.
The other four and myself are getting sick of the way S is using M as a puppet and is basically running the show through her. I can feel that something or someone is going to snap and the situation is going to get worse.
Has anyone else successfully dealt with favouritism in the office that’s causing a bad atmosphere? Help!