Name change for this one but need a hand hold.
I started my job just under a year ago and love it. Lovely boss, lovely people. My team all work from home and half are outside the UK. Breath of fresh air after my last job!
Within our team we all have different specialisms and including myself there are two of us who do what I do. I was hired by my boss, the other lady already worked here but under a different team and was moved up to us.
We get on really well, we have weekly meetings and she often sings my praises to my boss. It’s a very technical role so we often ask for each other’s opinions or suggestions and it works well. I help her A LOT but don’t mind.
I don’t know if this is relevant but for context she’s from a country known for being a bit abrupt and she will say herself that she can be a bit abrupt. This rarely happens but usually takes me by surprise as it often seems out of context.
Anyway, she’s on leave and I was contacted about a project last week. Some projects are assigned to us and some are ad hoc. I hadn’t worked on it before so assumed it was ad hoc (we’re not supposed to cover each others work whilst they’re on leave) as my boss was copied in and didn’t say otherwise, I did the work and sent my responses.
The project manager then responded and copied this woman in and I’ve opened my email this morning to a shitty email she’s sent to us all from her holiday. She appreciates me covering whilst she’s away but this is officially hers, and she would highly appreciate being kept in the loop and for me to store everything correctly for her return in the respective folder.
She’s a bit messy with her folders and has project folders in different places. I didn’t know this was her project but also couldn’t find a folder so had everything stored under mine.
Anyway, after being pissed off for a few minutes I calmly responded that I hope she was having a lovely holiday. I didn’t know who this was assigned to but I was happy to help. Having not being able to locate a folder in her SharePoint I’ve set one up for her (including the link) alongside her other projects and I’m happy to got through it with her when she’s back.
I then went on to thank the other lady for her updates.
Was that OK? I wanted to go for pleasantly reasonable (but also pointing out she didn’t have a folder) in contrast to her being effing rude.
I think she’s going through some stress at home (husband worried about losing his job) but I find this a bit unnecessary. She did something similar the other week that also pissed me off. We’d been discussing something that we’d been told in a meeting and were both equally baffled by as we couldn’t find it online. I was then sent some documents about it so sent it to the related team making it clear it was a bit uncertain but probably useful for them to have it. Instead of coming back to me to discuss it she emailed us all, including my boss, correcting me. Apparently she’d made some calls and got the clarification we needed. She did it in a very condescending way.
There is a lot of uncertainty at work and my boss has told me that if we need to let anyone go it won’t be me. Her recent attitude makes me wonder if the uncertainty is making her trying to make me look bad.