How do I stay civil with a colleague after she caused extra work on purpose?

[Travel11]

About 2 weeks ago a colleague I sometimes sit by kept asking me questions about a task the manager does. I told her I don’t know as I am not involved. For some reason she kept pushing the issue as though I needed to be involved. I changed the subject. Next thing I know she sends an email to me and the manager about this task as it’s a reoccurring one, my manager has now delegated the task to me. I am furious she has dragged me into this. I had already been give more work and now I have this to do.

Today I sat elsewhere at work and avoided her. The manager has said recently he doesn’t want me sitting with her and that it’s best to sit with everyone else in the office. I know it’s best to mix with others. The rest of the team don’t like her as she is obstructive and argumentative. I don’t want to sit with her again as she has betrayed me and crossed boundaries. How to I keep it civil but not let her back in like I was friendly before? She is a liability.

Thanks.

She doesn’t need to know anything. Have you sat down with your line manager to discuss your workload ?

Just avoid her and if she starts chatting be professional and cut the conversation short by saying you’re sorry but you have a lot of work to do and are not available to chat.

This

Just be a grown up.
This sounds more like something I'd hear amongst school children than adults in a workplace.

Are you helping…if not don’t behave like a 12 year old yourself.

Gracious me, how unhelpful.

I don’t know why some people are being unpleasant OP. It sounds an unpleasant situation.

If it were me, I would ask for a meeting with my boss, explain that you will struggle to have the time to complete the task because of your additional workload. Ask for a solution re this.

Sit with your other colleagues and if she wants to know why, tell her.

But do you manage either Bob or Andrea?

Being as pleasant and professional as possible, you have to speak to your manager about the other employee's communication habits. Your manager is responsible for her. Lead off with "as the person responsible for all of us on this team, floor, however your group of employees is referenced, I have a concern about an interaction and feel we need additional communucation training and possible individual training for some. Then explain how you were saddled with extra work. Then ask what his/her intent was in assigning you additional work as you want to make sure you are meeting his/her goals. Then shut up and let them talk.

"Betrayed you". Gosh that all sounds terribly dramatic !

It's just work, you're there a fixed number of hours. If you can fit the task in then fine, if you can't, hand it back to your manager or ask for overtime.

I feel your pain, I really do.
That’s it really.
I can’t help much because I am too old to dissemble anymore and I was always rubbish at it.
In an ideal world you would be frosty but polite and avoid her like the plague. Being polite is really important because then you can’t get yourself into trouble. (Belated memo to self on that one).
Bad colleagues don’t confine themselves to being bad colleagues to just one or two people. Being disliked at work is its own inconvenience and incentive to move on, which hopefully this person eventually will.

Even if I didn't, I might suggest that they pick it up if it fitted with their responsibility areas.

ie. " It would be great if as a team, we could do XXX. Perhaps Bob can pick it up as part of his weekly duties? "

Some people have never left year 9, my poor husband has to manage such a woman, bloody nightmare. She makes so many fuck ups and denies it’s her, I’ve told him to give her warnings but he hasn’t, she’s pathetic.

I'm sorry op but I think this is all very school yard.

If she had a concern re: the work being done in a certain way etc then why shouldn't she raise that with the manager? Is it possible that it's been impacting on her work especially if the manager is often scatty?

When the manager came to you to delegate it then the response you needed to give was to highlight the extent of your current workload and the additional work you've recently taken on and asked what they would like you to deprioritise in order to make space for this in your working week? That's then between you and your manager to navigate.

You've said yourself the colleague has no idea how busy your week is but you're here saying they've 'betrayed' you. That's a very extreme reaction given what's actually happened and since you've said yourself they haven't had the full information. Nothing to stop you going to back to them and asking politely why they suggested you and highlighting your work load and suggesting that in future they speak to you re: changes in approach to make sure it's something you can deliver on before going to the manager.

The idea that you now can't sit beside them and need to avoid them is giving toxic workplace culture in all honesty.

It sounds like you are in general struggling, cannot say no and advocate for yourself and you're taking the frustration of that out on your colleague for doing her job instead of addressing the root of the problem with your manager which is really nothing to do with your colleague. I could never get worked up over this but equally I'd have been direct with my manager about my capacity in the first place so it would be a non issue. I'm sorry op but I think this is on you.

"a colleague I sometimes sit by kept asking me questions about a task the manager does. I told her I don’t know as I am not involved. For some reason she kept pushing the issue as though I needed to be involved. I changed the subject. Next thing I know she sends an email to me and the manager about this task as it’s a reoccurring one"..

Plus, it actually sounds like she's tried to approach this with you directly first and have a discussion about it but you've just shut her down with 'not my circus not my monkeys' instead of explaining that you cannot take it on because xyz legitimate reasons. She's then taken that further because you did not communicate with her that it would be an issue if she did and that you actually didn't have capacity. Again, your lack of communication with your colleague has created this issue op. So you cannot be mad at her for it nor is it on any level a betrayal and I wouldn't see that as a liability either. It sounds like she has been trying to be diligent.

It's fine for YOU to pick up more work for YOURSELF. Being an asshole by talking the boss into giving others more to do is being a total and complete jerk.

You sound like the person everyone is avoiding at the OP's job.

Ha. Get over yourself.

I work in a large team ( c. 25 people ) We all have assigned areas of responsibility.

If someone thinks of a way to improve the business overall, then it gets discussed and ' assigned ' to the person whose responsibility area it sits with.

If they have too much work to do as a result, it's up to them to discuss it with their line manager and agree what to drop.

This works because a) we want the business to do well, and b) we're grown ups.

We don't view other people suggesting improvements as a ' stitch-up ' .

All of this. The only time I've ever seen people work in this way is in very toxic workplaces where they weren't coping with their work load. I would expect service improvement to be on everyone's agenda and would welcome suggestions. Plus the other colleague discussed it with op first which was ops opportunity to say that won't work because xyz. She didn't do that so presumably the colleague then felt it was fine to follow it up.

Exactly. So the team I work in is Sales & Marketing. I head up the Marketing part of the team.

If one of the Sales guys came up with an idea for how to do our Marketing better, that would fall to me to implement.

Now, I can either say ' that's a cr*p idea; I'm not doing it ' or I can say ' that's a great idea, but we don't have time/resource to do it, sorry ' or I can say ' that's a great idea, so much so in fact, that we're going to drop this other thing that we currently do in order to implement this new idea ' ...

.. Any of those responses are valid.

What ISN'T valid - is saying ' oh noes someone in another part of the team has found some more work for me to do wah wah wah ' . Because - again - we're not children.

Thank you for your understanding. Everyone here seems to think it was ok for my colleague to put me forward for a task that didn’t need my input.

I guess the flipside of this - is if the work that you were given could have been done by anyone, then your colleague IS an *sshole for specifically trying to throw it your way.

The line ' didn't need your input ' is key. Was it work that only you could do? Or that fits best with your job description / areas of responsibility?

Or did she just think you were the one with the most spare capacity?

I think we probably need more details of what the work was, and WHY she thought you were the one who should pick it up?

Are you on work experience. Grow up. Your poor manager having to discuss office seating arrangements like in primary school.

People are saying it’s ok for your colleague to suggest to your manager that you pick up a task. But the decision lies with your manager, s/he can shut it down or agree. In this case it seems like s/he agrees so as per pp advice, you need to talk to them.

If you are at capacity you need to tell your manager that and maybe suggest a different task to be redelegated elsewhere , maybe the helpful colleague could pick up one of your tasks to give you space to pick up this one

You're being very selective with what you respond to op. What did your manager say when you pointed out that your input was unnecessary, that this doesn't fall within your job responsibilities and that you are at capacity?

Or does this actually fall within your responsibilities and job description? Did you say anything to your manager at all?

ETA: I'm not asking to get at you, I'm asking because it may not be too late to go back to your manager now and say you've reviewed your workload.

Your colleague isn’t really the problem, your manager is. And you need to be a grown up and push back to your manager. “I’ve reviewed [new task] and it’s going to take a lot of time. I just don’t have the capacity to take this on, y less something else is taken off my workload. Can this be reallocated to someone else or can something else be taken off my workload for this month/week? It’s just not possible for me to get it all sorted in my hours.”