Furious at colleague who doesn't pull their weight

breaking_free

liveyoung wrote: »

Take out every reference to your colleague:
'I want to be recognised for my efforts'

Your problem is that you're so annoyed with her that you're looking for her to be penalised. While I realise it is frustrating, concentrate on yourself. Do your job well. Speak to your manager about your progression, your opportunities and your hard work.

Everything in your statement screams 'Petty'. Ignore her failings and concentrate on your achievements.

Liveyoung you are right. It's just damn difficult to ignore her failings when they increase my own workload so much. Everything she doesn't do gets pushed onto me.

bingo_bango

breaking_free wrote: »

Liveyoung you are right. It's just damn difficult to ignore her failings when they increase my own workload so much. Everything she doesn't do gets pushed onto me.

That's your power point. Just refuse to take her work on the basis that you are already at full capacity. The powers that be will soon get the message.

Antagonising the bosses by telling them how to do their job will end badly for you. Nobody is indispensible no matter what they think.

If your colleague is failing at their job and you aren't, then that will manifest itself very evidently, but only if you refuse her workload. Do your job as well as you can, let her fail and let the bosses manage the fallout.

As a caveat, if I was the boss here, I'd see that you can do the job (including her slack) so my solution would be to get rid of her and just have one post. Just be careful what you wish for!

And remember to breathe!! No point getting stressed about something you can't actually change yourself!

Flyonthewall

Can you not do half and leave the other half to her and when it's not done it'll show how little she's doing and the bosses will get fed up of incomplete work.

Could you offer to teach her?

If you're going to talk to the bosses about it then it shouldn't be about you personally and it shouldn't be about her personally. It needs to be about the company.

They clearly refuse to do anything regarding the both of you. You need to highlight the effect on the company.

Is less work getting done because the setup isn't being done by both of you so she's waiting around for you to finish so she can type the content? Could projects be done faster if you both did one each and did the whole lot rather than just doing half of them all. Afterall, you've set it up so you know exactly how you expect it to look by the end after the template and content is complete and switching it over to someone else means they may do something different. Is she costing the company money?

If the company is doing as well as it should and it's because of that they may be more motivated to actually do something.

breaking_free

Breathing furiously, but breathing nonetheless. Thanks Bingo Bango, I agree with everything you said :-)

breaking_free

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Can you not do half and leave the other half to her and when it's not done it'll show how little she's doing and the bosses will get fed up of incomplete work. I'm going to do this.

If you're going to talk to the bosses about it then it shouldn't be about you personally and it shouldn't be about her personally. It needs to be about the company. You're right.

They clearly refuse to do anything regarding the both of you. You need to highlight the effect on the company.

Is less work getting done because the setup isn't being done by both of you so she's waiting around for you to finish so she can type the content? Exactly this.

Could projects be done faster if you both did one each and did the whole lot rather than just doing half of them all. Yes.

Afterall, you've set it up so you know exactly how you expect it to look by the end after the template and content is complete and switching it over to someone else means they may do something different. Is she costing the company money? She doesn't change any templates, only uses the ones I make so that's not a problem.

If the company is doing as well as it should and it's because of that they may be more motivated to actually do something.

Thank you for your comments. You've got it completely.

Retrogamer

I wonder how she would cope with her role if you were off sick for a couple of weeks due to stress induced from doing all the stressful stuff in your work.

Slinky

I had a similar situation many years ago, except it was worse than yours, the other person who wasn't pulling her weight ended up being paid more than I was even though her pay had been increased when I moved into the department, to match mine.

I got mad, nothing changed, so I gave in my notice and left with nothing to go to. Because I was available immediately, after a few weeks temping I got a job I could start immediately. That job led via a chance remark to me meeting my husband, and many years later to me setting up and running my own successful business.

I'm so glad the old job never matched my salary to that of my colleague which was all I was looking for. What has happened since in my life wasn't worth hanging round there for.

Get out of there and find somewhere that does appreciate you.

BTW do not mention work-shy colleague in interviews as reason for wanting to leave.

Takeaway_Addict

breaking_free wrote: »

Hi there.

I create documents, online help and so forth for a living. A very small portion of my job is actually writing the documentation; the biggest part of my job is learning how to use a plethora of publishing tools and configuring them 'just so' (setting up templates, creating styles and formatting, applying company branding etc).

Take this website for example: somebody has created the menus and buttons, set the colour scheme, and basically 'got it all working'. That is the hard part. The easy party is typing the content - that is no harder than you guys making a forum post.

End of background - now for my rant. I have a colleague who has the same job title as me and gets paid the same. However, our work is apportioned completely unequally - I do all the 'making it work' while she just does the 'typing'.

I have [STRIKE]howled till I'm blue in the face[/STRIKE] talked to her about this and always get the reply "But I'm not confident to do what you do. I don't want to mess it up". I've also spoken to my two bosses on numerous occasions about how I have to do ALL the difficult work. They're well aware of this but will not deal with it. My colleague's "Can't do" attitude has gotten me so down in the past that I threatened to leave and went so far as to attend a job interview (with the full knowledge of my bosses). I didn't get the job so I'm still here. I love my job and don't truly want to leave.

My colleague and I were given a project over a month ago where we were both (gasp!) tasked with doing half of the technical set up work. I did mine and surprise, surprise, she once again failed to produce anything at all - zero, zip, nada. She told the boss "I've been researching how to do it", however she didn't even start doing that till last week.

I want to talk to my bosses again but I don't know how to approach them without coming across as angry and spiteful. Specifically I was going to ask my bosses to base our next performance related bonus on how much we learn to use and work with our latest software.

What would you do?

For what it's worth I've asked for a considerable pay rise in the past to reflect the greater amount of work I do but have been told that "There is a certain amount in the pot and you each get an equal share of it".

Just let her fail and when the bosses ask mention you thought it was meant to be a fair and even split of the work so why isn't she doing it?

breaking_free

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Just let her fail and when the bosses ask mention you thought it was meant to be a fair and even split of the work so why isn't she doing it?

Good advice. I'm going to do this.

BigAunty

I appreciate how you feel. One of my Senior colleagues got made redundant and a promotion was offered to me to move from Assistant to Analyst to fill their role. Great, I thought, 10k payrise as that was the going rate. Except my bosses said promotions were capped at a 9% payrise, giving me masses of extra responsibility for an extra 2k per year. I handed in my notice and nearly doubled my income. Morale was low in the team and all of colleagues left within a year. So much for the company saving 8k by binning a more expensive colleague and trying to persuade me to do a technical/management role for admin level wages. My colleague who got made redundant (on poor performance grounds) swanned into a more senior role with a consultancy company.

However, I don't understand from your post if you even want to do more copywriting and your colleague's behaviour and management's behaviour is stopping you from doing this? Or if you simply despise the fact that your colleague won't do the technical side and is earning a similar sum? Or if you just feel you are generally underpaid, regardless of what your colleague contributes?

By the way, do you adapt pre-designed templates or hand-code? I am trying to understand how technical your role is.