Colleague who tries to tell me what work to do

[Dragonflamingo]

I am younger than this person, but I am more senior than her. Her job is partly to assist me in my job and to do work from others.

There is one specific type of work that she organises and I do. My own manager has said that this work comes last as it’s never urgent.

I have been busy with my own work and work for my manager. The less senior colleague has been chasing me for the very non urgent work. They have now started coming to my office and demanding I do their work now. It does not need to be done now and my manager agrees. Yet she comes whenever my manager is away to try and bully me into doing it when I am already stressed and busy.

Today I lost my cool and sternly told her that there is an order of priority for work and hers comes last.

Has she had the message that this work is deprioritsed before? If not, how would she know? She likely just sees that's she has been tasked with making sure it's done and is doing her best to fulfil that. What else should she do?

If she has had the message, you perhaps should have discussed with her again before losing your cool.

She has been told. She has an issue with deference and with a younger woman being more senior than her. She applied for my role several times but has been turned down.

Could the fact that you're not doing this work til last be holding up her other work?

Even if it is low priority, she presumably needs it completing in a reasonable timescale? You need to manage her expectations, say you are busy with xyz but her work will be completed by end of next week, or whenever is reasonable

Does anything she has to do rely on you completing your part first?

How many times has she asked you?

If it's not importanf in the grand scheme of things why is she constantly chasing it?

Are you ever going to complete it or is it going to sit on the bottom of your pile forever more?

I suspect she is actually on top of her work and you not getting this thing done is sending the message to her that you're not doing your job properly hence the reason she keeps kicking your butt. But that's just my guess.