Just need to vent, not kink related (10)

The only way I deal with it is to keep putting it back on the staff. So if there is a problem with a particular person – I challenge them on it. It's a bloody tough job and does make you wonder sometimes if it is worth it. But and there is a but, when you have a team who support you and want to do a good job because they know you will support them and value them as people, that one person being a pain in the arse pales into insignificance. Remember the bigger picture

I don't know if any of the above will help but just know that you are not on your own with this type of thing. We all have someone in our teams who just don't fit.

Hugs and breathe……

mse x

I'll follow you and make a heaven out of hell, and I'll die by your hand which I love so well….. William Shakespeare

Your own job comes to an end in a few weeks so in the grand scheme of it, how you play this doesn't really matter longterm.

It could be worth asking them why they seem so negative incase it's something you can rectify but for the sake of a few weeks you need to cut yourself some slack and say to hell with it.

The quandary you are in, however, will be a useful anecdote at your next interview.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. Mark Twain

Sometimes the problem with hiring those with experience is that they're not trained to your company structure.

It means that the ones who look knowledgeable and all round impressive on paper and in interview, can suddenly become a cog slipping out of place to try do something else to "fix" the whole machine. They sometimes snipe at other people in the team about what people are doing wrong, or loudly announce what they could improve, or go hunting for problems to fix (when they don't understand the big picture) or complain that the work they are doing isn't the best way of doing it/pointless etc.

Does your culprit fit any of that description?

If they do, have a chat with them that you can see they have great potential and can do a lot for the team, but it's all about playing the system - and that they have to choose when and where to play. If they go storming in trying to change things, when that isn't their job, they're seen initially as trying to fix something that isn't broken and it can annoy people. Even if it's frustrating, hold back and collect information then when a clear problem does come up, offer a solution and then people will listen. At this stage, don't fix things, until somebody higher up says it's broken.

Also make the point that they have to work a team, because they're seen as a team by management and that this is just a friendly warning to not get too ahead of themselves.

In the long run, they're often the characters who go on to be managers themselves because they're "go getters" (who, let's face it - are annoying!)...

Patrick
IndelibleMarker
Specialist Extreme Fearplay
@U35Munch - London U35 Munch Details

A few thoughts crossed my mind, mainly does this temp really want to work? Is she actually better off on the "dole" and just applying for work through a temping agency to satisfy the requirements?

A strongly worded letter to the agency from whence she came would probably get her fired from their books too so perhaps you could address her attitude problem from that angle. If she genuinely wants work then that might be enough to buck her ideas up.

No one willingly wants to make anyone else redundant, but the office needs to run smoothly to be efficient.

Good luck, hope you find a solution

Or you could have a smoke, and give up again tomorrow.

If I was your uncle, thats the kind of sound sage advice I'd offer if you came round to my house all sniffly and stressed out. Come on in love, have one of yer uncle Frank's herbal remedies and some chocolate buttons.

ps havin a fag aint goin to make the problem go away or You ultimatly feel any better. Please don't !

*hugs*

"Yeah I like Kinky stuff,dirty dark pervy stuff,weird sex.... An' Yerself ?"
Award Winning Switch.

This situation has come up at work before and made you feel bad, and it sounds like whats hanging over everything is pretty stressing anyway. And sometimes you know we can get too locked into something, especially if its going downhill fast and we're trying hard to level it out. We are problem solvers. But sometimes some problems have no solution - or a more radical one.

Well as predicted I'm having an unsettled night - hence I'm online again at 2:30am typing away.

Some very useful feedback from you all, and I shall definitely take it all on board. I think one of the reasons this temp may be so hostile is that she is a fair bit older than the rest of this team, as she doesn't seem to have an issue with one member of staff who is older than the rest of us, even though his role is quite junior compared with the others. She also seems to think some of her duties are beneath her - even though her role is identical to another person who is part of this team.

What @IndelibleMarker said was certainly true of the temp before her - he kept trying to "fix the system" from within by loudly saying how it was at fault, although the way we function is set up to run effectively for us. He also kept trying to reinvent his job so that he was one of the database administrators, which is not what he was employed as - I think he was under the impression that he was appointed the wrong role and was trying to steer his work towards data admin rather than operational support, which is what he was actually employed to provide.

This current temp on the other hand just, I don't know, seems to not be a team player and just doesn't want to know what her role involves at all. I am genuinely surprised by her behaviour as she seemed to really do well at the interview. I thought that two weeks into it would be enough to let her "bed in" and get used to her duties, but her behaviour seems to have really pissed us all off in the last 3 days. Operational Support is by no means just a glorified gopher in the office (go photcopy this, go fetch that etc...), and they are an essential part of the team, and I do make it known how much they mean to us. It's just their duties are different from the data support team but we are all in it together.

I think I shall approach this from a softly softly approach first, rather than go in guns ablazing - hence I needed to go home and sleep on it first. I'll do this as a probationary review and first of all ask her to review how she feels she has got on so far, what has gone well and what is not going so well. It may well be that when she was in her last role, she was used to being somewhat more senior, or at least a more established member of the team and is not adapting well to the idea that there are some staff 20 years younger than her with a more senior role in the team. If that is the case, she needs to learn that that my workplace works well as a team but re-establish that we all have duties that we need to carry out that are not necessarily what we want to do.

I mean hell, I'm a database manager primarily but I still have to muck in and set up and clear out the conference rooms if we are short-staffed, and instead of seeing it as a chore beneath me, I see it as helping my team out and supporting the rest of my team.

Her behaviour earlier today (ok technically yesterday) just really ruffled some feathers: she could see the phones were ringing whilst we were away from our desks on other errands and refused to take other people's calls, even though I explained we need to pick up each others calls since we are monitored for response times. When one of my team asked if she knew how to pick up the calls she rolled her eyes at this senior member of staff and asked very frostily "why, am I not doing it right?" - clearly not since she was asked if she knew how to do it. Everything seems to be a chore for her, and she seems to be responding negatively when the other two ladies in my team try to train her up on her duties. I really don't want to bring age into this, but as I touched on earlier, she is about 20 years older than both of the other ladies in that section of the team, and at least ten years older than me. Of course I shalln't mention the age thing in our little "meeting" this morning.

It's just getting me down as this is the second temp to do this to me in the space of the last three months. Having said that, I put some thought into it tonight, and I do recall that one of the other members of this team had some teething problems when she first got this role. Ironically, this other member of staff (i.e. the one who used to be troublesome) is bloody brilliant at her role now and in the year I have been there has really evolved and become an asset to my team.

I'm really hoping this is just a case of misunderstandings and teething problems. This temp also is scheduled to leave when I do. It's just a really rotten time for this to happen as we have downsized drastically - my original team of nine staff plus me is now diminished to 4 permanent members, me as a temp (since I'm doing maternity cover and the original line manager returns in January) and a temp. I go out of my way to ensure the temp is an equal in the team, and do not give her all the nasty tasks that nobody else wants to do. I've been the temp in that situation and I know how isolating and demoralising it can be if temps are treated as outsiders.

I just hope I can resolve this later this morning. I genuinely love my team, and we do have great camaraderie - perhaps the temp is perceiving this as cliquiness? I certainly hope not as we have constantly tried to engage her in everything. Well there's only one way to find out: bite the bullet and confront the issue, but not in a confrontational manner.

Thanks again for the kind words - it really has helped.

However, I've been a very bad girl and have fallen off the wagon: after two months of quitting, I did end up buying some cigarettes on the way home. Sounds a bit pathetic (god I feel pathetic saying this) but after a couple of smokes, a bit of a cry (trust me its not just this matter that's got me down at the moment, but this is the tip of the iceburg) and then an earlyish night I do actually feel somewhat calmer now.

Hopefully this time tomorrow this will be water under the bridge. Well if anything else, I can at least look forward to having Friday off as annual leave - god knows I need a day or two off.

And with that, I'm going to grab a hot chocolate and try and bed down for another few hours before work.

I don't know where I'd be were it not for you lovely people out there on IC so a great big thanks to you all for sound and practical advice

ETA: Blimey just realised I spent nearly 45 minutes typing that - no wander it started resembling a chapter in a novel. Can you tell I just needed to vent it out? Anyway, this is eating into my hot chocolate and snuggles with the cat in bed time. My kettle and bed are beckoning. And the Shipping Forecast shall be on soon. Night night

I want to hold you close / Skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes, girl / So lovely, it feels so right
I want to hold you close / Soft breasts, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear / I want to f*cking tear you apart

Edited 1 Dec 11, 3:21 AM by MissAnnThropist