How to handle a toxic employee

[Mx12345]

I have a woman who I have overseen for almost a year. She is in her early 50s, a veteran, our company is only her second civilian job. When she left the military, she didn’t work for a few years, then went to school to get her degree, then was at her previous job for about a year. This woman is a 7 out of 10 when it comes to her work. She turns everything in on time. She makes a mistake here or there but nothing crazy. There are definitely items she could work on, for example, she only does her workload, never steps up to help anyone else, doesn’t do the bare minimum but doesn’t go above and beyond. These are nitpicky things though as her work is mostly solid. There is one section of her job that was completely new to her when she was hired. Ive trained her on this, given her cheat sheets, did another training six months in, updated the cheat sheets, and she still struggles with it. Ive told her this is part of her job and she needs to be well versed in it, but in this part she is mediocre at best and knows that I will fix her mistakes because these are items that go up to the owners of the company and I want them to be accurate. I personally feel like shes never really put in any effort to know this task. She comes in on time, makes up time when she has doctor appts, etc. But there are a few issues that Im really struggling with.

I of course have never asked her, but I think she has some sort of bipolar disorder. She can be super nice to you and then super mean within 10 minutes. Shes very drama inclined but also plays the victim. She sits in a cubicle setting. Our office is set up with actual offices around the perimeter, and the center is filled with cubicles. The offices are filled with owners, CEO, COO, vice presidents and directors (myself included.) Everyone else sits in the center in cubicles. We even have VP’s that work from home 75% of the time and when they do come to the office, they sit in an open cubicle because we have no more physical offices for them. She has come to me different times in the past year complaining of her workspace for various reasons. The guy next to her wears too much cologne and it bothers her. The light shines in her face from the windows. People talk around her cubicle and she cant concentrate. The pest control people sprayed the office early in the morning before anyone got there but she can still smell it and it bothers her. The lady who sits within a few feet from her uses a space heater in the winter and it makes her sweat. I have tried to be VERY accommodating to her in these instances. The guy said he wouldn’t spray too much cologne, the window blinds stay closed even though it makes the area gloomy, employees have been advised to not congregate around people workspaces so they can concentrate, shes been allowed to wear headphones to block out excessive noise, she was told she could work from home when the pest control people spray quarterly, etc. When I didn’t bend to the other lady using a space heater she lost her s***. Started crying, etc. She also said the guy was still using too much cologne. Every time she has complained she has asked for an office. Ive told her time and again there are no offices available and that if there were they would be given to the other directors who are still using cubicle space. So we moved her to a new cubicle. It was fine for awhile. But now she and the lady next to her keep complaining about each other. She came to my office saying the other lady was using 60% of their shared corkboard space and not half. Im at my wits ends with these complaints. On the flip side, I have had one formal and three informal complaints against her in the past year. She talks to herself, loudly. Now that she wears headphones she cant hear that shes talking so loud to herself. Ive asked her to be mindful of this. I guess she listens to comedy on her headphones, and she will randomly burst into loud boisterous laughter and everyone will turn and look at her. Everyone also knows when shes frustrated, because she loudly sighs, slams her fist on her desk, slams desk draws shut and will (talking to herself) loudly say things like “are you f-ing kidding me?” Ive called her in with these complaints come in and verbally warned her of her behavior. She cries, says she doesn’t mean to, etc etc. But the behavior doesn’t change. But she still continues to come to me every time someone is talking around her desk and tell me they are bothering her. She has also gotten testy with me. She will come to me with a question, ill be explaining the solution and she will get frustrated and get rude with me. After the second time I stopped her and said “I will only go on helping you if you go take a five min breather. You are being rude. Would you talk to the owner like this if you asked him for help? No, you wouldn’t. so stop.” However I have had to remind her of this another two times when she started getting rude again.

So what do I do? She does her work, her work is mostly good, but she also spends half her time complaining about EVERYTHING. And shes bothering other people around her. The most recent incident is the new lady next to her. She put in a formal compliant to HR that the woman I oversee is creating a toxic work environment for her with all her loud talking, evident frustrations, slamming fists, etc.

[Pleasant-Sage]

I am also a veteran. Her veteran status entitles her no special treatment. When you first get out of the military and transition to being a civilian. It's a huge adjustment and it takes awhile. Not saying this is an excuse for her behavior but it brings me to my point.

This is going to sound extremely sexist but the military probably spoiled her rotten since she is a woman. She probably complained all the time and got her way everytime and her coworkers probably hated her there too. Not all women in the military are like that but I'd go out on a limb and say 1 out of 5 are from my experience.

While the military tries to do what's right in regards to sexual harassment. It tends to go WAY overboard by giving women special treatment just because they are women. Men often don't even have a voice against women in the military. I'm sure she took advantage of this fact and very often to get her way.

Not sure if you are a male or female but if you are male, you need to be careful that she doesn't try to use this tactic to minimize your supervisor abilities and control you.

I would go to HR and start building a case against her to get rid of her. There's no amount of manager to employee coaching that's going to get her to change her ways. It's going to go in one ear and out the other. She's already showed you this.

The only thing you can do is make your work environment better for everyone else including yourself. Your other employees are already helping you do this as well.

Her good work isn't even good if she's creating additional problems just by being there. You can find someone a whole lot better to replace her.

[MsJayne]

I'd pull her in for a proper discussion about her behaviour.  I would also very discretely contact her previous employer and tactfully ask about her performance and attitude, to see if there's a pattern of this behaviour.  My guess is that she has some sort of stress in her life which she's not coping with, and it could be anything. She could be going through menopause, maybe she's a closet drinker, maybe she has an abusive spouse, maybe she has serious depression, or, as you say, she may be bi-polar.  She sounds very much like an old friend of mine who would behave exactly like this at work, reasonable at her job but constantly complaining about petty stuff and grumbling to herself. The cause was the fact that she would polish off 1 or 2 bottles of champagne every night, go to bed at 1am and then get up at 7am for a 9.30am start, so she was always over-tired and depressed from drinking a bucket of sugar every 24 hours. The cause was irrelevant through, she was making other employees angry and uncomfortable.  If she's negatively impacting other employees this is reason enough to give her the written warning, but definitely talk to her first because if she has depression the thought of losing her job could be more than she can deal with.  

[d0nnivain]

You need to document all of her complaints, your solutions & your frustrations.   

then you need to speak with other executives & HR people about having some kind of office wide training about working together, team building etc. 

Meanwhile, find some way to move her cubical away from the space heater & the window.  

[Cersei]

Uggg. She sounds frustrating to deal with. She needs to go.  I have no words of wisdom but I do wish you the best. 

[Mx12345]

Ive been in a management position, overseeing people for about five years now. So not new but I don't have a wealth of experience. What I have learned though is when an employee comes along who does their job and does it well, I try to accommodate those individuals. Ive seen all kinds of employees, slackers, lazy, always late, unethical, people who have just flat out lied on their resume and couldn't do any of the tasks they supposedly had experience doing, etc. But I'm at my wits end with this woman. 

I'm younger than her by about 18 years, and I'm a female. I don't have an authoritative management style, but I don't let anyone undermine me.  I'm not "friends" with the people I oversee (learned that lesson early on, then they thought they didn't have to listen to me), but I'm always approachable. I'm direct and to the point, but encourage ideas and reward a job well done. The reason Ive been thinking about this more and more is that next month I will have to write her one year review. The president takes the VP and Director reviews about their employees very seriously, as in I mostly determine if she gets a raise or bonus. I struggle because she will go days being friendly, turning in her work that is all correct, etc. But then comes the complaints about everyone, then comes other people telling me how loud and obnoxious she is, and Ive witnessed it too. I was helping someone next to her one time and she was slamming her fists and sighing loudly. Even I started feeling uncomfortable. And like I mentioned before, she has gotten rude and frustrated with me before, when she didn't understand something I was trying to teach her. After I kindly say "does that make more sense?" slamming her pen down and crossing her arms and saying loudly "NO, it doesn't but whatever!" 

And someone mentioned her bothering other people. My main concern with that is that I have other people on my team that do a good job as well. And a few of them have been the ones to informally tell me that she is loud and bothers them. I don't want another good employee to get fed up with her and want to quit. 

[preraph]

Well for starters she needs to be told point-blank no more slamming her fists on the table. someone should also point out to her that while she complains that everyone else is disruptive, that she is just as disruptive. honestly she's probably learned to be the first one to complain because she knows she's going to get complaints. Offense being the best defense.

She very well may be a drunk. All this business about wanting to keep it dark reminds me of every drunk I've ever worked with. if she's causing a hardship on everyone else in the office by keeping it dark in there, I would simply stop accommodating her on that. If she complains the person next to her has a heater, tell her she can bring a fan to put under her own desk. 

 

I don't understand why someone hasn't already just talked to her about that she has too many petty complaints. Of course if you really want to hasten her getting fired, perhaps you should give her an office in between a couple of the executives because when she starts slamming her fist and complaining, they will just fire her themselves.

 

You need to tell her she needs to complete that one task herself and that you delegated it to her and don't want to see it again. And then if she still screws it up well that's another way that she's not performing and perhaps that's the Achilles heel that will enable you to fire her if you decide you want to.

 

[Blind-Sided]

Depending on the company size... I would start down the path of removing her.   She is not worth keeping since she is disruptive.   So... give her a formal reprimand, or take her to HR for an actual "Write up"... and next time... she's gone.

[justwhoiam]

On 2/26/2020 at 6:35 PM, Mx12345 said:

So what do I do?

Hmm, if I were you I'd be proactive and smart. I'd contact like a workers union or association defending workers' rights, or one of those companies that work to make sure about every worker's wellbeing. I'd ask how much they take for their assistance. If you call a private company, they will have someone right in her face all day long for two or three days 🙂 and it's legit. Because they observe all that's going on and take notes and offer solutions.

After that, you call her to your office and tell her that in an effort to do all you can about her wellbeing, this year the company will invest a sum on a consultant helping out with her requests so that all her problems can finally be solved, but that will also mean that there won't be a bonus, as that money will go to a consultant.

The consultant will offer solutions and will avoid her possibly suing the company in case she gets fired.

[Mx12345]

I wanted to open this back up for more advice. 

At the beginning of March I wrote her review. I only skimmed on the issues I mentioned here and basically only said that she should work on maintaining professionalism. I know now that was a mistake. She was given no bonus and a 1.5% increase, basically a cost of living adjustment.  

Very soon after that we all moved to working from home due to COVID-19. During this time Ive noticed that her "Last Active" on our communication portal is always at 20-40 minutes multiple times a day. This working from home is new to all of us, so Im trying to not micromanage my staff's every move. I however am still as busy as ever and hardly ever leave my desk area and my active status never changes, its always green during working hours, so is alot of my staff. 

At the end of last month two issues happened that I had to get on the phone with her. One was I discovered she was not completing a task as trained, she was doing it a way she thought was best and took less time. However in an audit it was discovered this way caused 7-8 things to not be included on a report for the last 2-3 months. In my verbal warning to her she basically said she wasn't going to "argue" with me any further on the process. I told her this wasn't an argument, this was me as her supervisor giving her an order to complete the task as trained so this wouldn't happen again. The very next week I discovered she was also not doing something as trained, that caused two mistakes. When calling her to discuss she got very unprofessional with me from the very start of the conversation. She was evidently frustrated, agitated, etc. I finally had it. I told her I would no longer allow her to be disrespectful towards me when Im going over with her errors she made and I would be writing her up with HR. 

The write up happened. I decided to include other items as well, including the items above but also all the disturbances she causes, and how she complains about other people but does not work on her own disruptions. My goal was for her to realize she can not just go around being rude and disrespectful to people and especially to me as her supervisor who is going over how to avoid errors with her. She is allowed a response for her file and her response basically said all the complaints about her were petty and not appropriate for the write up and she basically dismissed them. She provided me the definition of insubordinate and said thats not what she was doing. She said she LEGALLY is allowed to take breaks to stretch and walk around because she can not sit for multiple hours at at time due to being a disabled vet (I confirmed with HR that she has never submitted anything to HR to indicate she is a DV and needs special provisions.) I wasnt going to go tit for tat with her, the write up is there if she causes any further issues.

So now its been two weeks. In the past she always reposed to everything that was sent to her. She wasnt required to tell me when she was taking lunch, but she always did. She would send an email or message "going on my lunch break." She has not done that in two weeks, not a problem since she wasnt required to. She would also answer all my emails with "got it" or "received thank you" or "Ill work on this when im done with xyw" etc. Again, not a requirement, but it was nice to know she would confirm she received something. For two weeks she has only emailed to give me her work. I will get copied on an email to her from someone else, and she will respond  to them "received thank you." I will send her something as well two min later and get zero response. I get copied on lots of emails to her because our protocol is if you are tasking my team with something include the supervisor on the email so the supervisor is aware their staff are work on something outside of their assigned duties. She responds to everyone but me. She is also ignoring my pleasantries. Per the owner of the company, since we are working from home, she is required to send an email to me every morning that she is online for the day, and an email every night that she is logging off for the day. When she sends her email for the night, I always say "thank you for the email have a good evening" to which she used to respond "you too" or "thank you" or something. Now she ignores me. To an extent, none of this bothers me. She is being childish and I dont have time for her games. But to another extent I think she is being rude and I dont think I should be treated this way. Do I bring up this behavior again to HR? Is she really even doing anything wrong? 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

You are now letting business life bleed over into 'personal'.

 

You keep saying you  won't allow this and  won't allow  that...

 

and then you (obviously) allow those things.

 

It appears that you have made your own proverbial bed  with this person, and now you're complaining about sleeping in it.

 

She has been given clarity  with regard to requirements  and you seem unwilling to accept that clarity.

 

Stop making it personal, and stop making it about you.     You have delighted in causing her grief and now you're mad that she isn't cordial with you when you want her to be.

 

 

[preraph]

Oh, she's petty.  You already knew that.  You will have to get rid of her eventually.  You have now laid the groundwork and you included a lot of material in there so if she repeats any of it, she should be fired.  She's really bad and really disrespectful and causes too much disruption to keep her.  I'm glad you wrote her up.  If she breaks protocol again, just fire her.  

[Mx12345]

2 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

Stop making it personal, and stop making it about you.     You have delighted in causing her grief and now you're mad that she isn't cordial with you when you want her to be.

I haven’t delighted in her grief. I have verbally warned her multiple times now that she becomes agitated, Frustrated, and rude when either asking for help and not understanding or when I’m going over correct procedure. I finally had enough and wrote her up but I don’t gloat about that. I’m of the mindset that I wish people just came to work and did their jobs and I wouldn’t have to write anyone up, ever. 
 

I do agree maybe I’m taking her not being cordial too personal. However there is a fine line between not being cordial and being disrespectful. We still have to work together. I still over see her. I would like to just move past this with no further issues if she can be an adult about it.