How do I deal with an annoying coworker?
 

Over the last seven months at my job on campus (I work in food service here), I have had to deal with a sometimes pain in the ASS coworker. She's not even a college student. She is 16-17 and got a job partly because her mother runs another food place on campus. No secret.

Anyway, my problem with her is that I am a little annoyed with her attitude. On Friday night, our closing supervisor asked us to do her one more favor when we were done with the cashier closing duties. She said oh can you help me put the chairs back at the tables on the one side. Well I was like yeah OK cool, but my coworker was like I WAANNAAA GO OUT WITH MY FRIENDS. It bugged. :x And my supervisor tries to tell her, no no it won't take long and the chairs aren't heavy. My coworker kept whining about how she wanted to go out and didn't want to stay. Hello? When you have a job, typically you sign up to well...work. I mean, the way I saw it, friends can wait.

Then one of her friends calls her cell phone and she talks to them for like a few minutes. She gets off the phone (yes, she was talking on the phone while I was moving chairs!) and she starts bugging our boss to please please PLEAAASEEE let her go (and yes she actually sounded like that on the last please) and my boss is finally like GO. After she left, my boss told me that the girl left some of our job undone and guess who got stuck picking it up? Yep. Me. And my poor boss. For the record, in case anyone is interested, it didn't take me long to move those chairs. 10-15 minutes AT BEST. Why her friends couldn't wait that long was beyond me. But hey, whatever.

Tonight another incident happened where we were very busy and as usual, we were down at least one staff member. Guess what this chick was doing? She was basically la-de-daing about and just standing around yapping while the rest of us, managers included, were working their asses off trying to serve god knows how many students. I couldn't believe it! We literally had to tell her to jump in and take orders because I guess she couldn't figure out on her own that geez we looked busy and could use her help rather than her standing-around-doing-nothing-and-wasitng-airspace-ness (like my new word?). Then at close, my boss asks her to do something else and she's like oh I don't wannaaa. His reponse? God forbid I make people work. Believe me, at that moment, I totally wanted to tell him how much I agree. I even told the chick...I said honey, you are here to work. God forbid you actually have to do something. I know, not my place or time. But I just let it slip.

The odd thing is that I have not held any other frustrations against this girl until what she pulled Friday night. I just couldn't believe I witnessed her whining to my supervisor about how she wanted to go out and not work. Any other place, we know (and even she knows!) that she'd get fired in two seconds. However, I suppose that she is kept around because her mother is an employee.

I don't know what to do. Do I?

-Try to let the girl know she is on my nerves and didn't like seeing her act?
-Approach a manager? One who will actually listen? (I already know who I would talk to because I get along amazingly well with one of my bosses and she takes no crap. From anyone. End of story.)
-Ignore her?
-Ignore the problem because there is only three weeks left of school anyway?

What would you do? I think all of my solutions are feasible. I'm just not sure which is best.

Just do your job. Her performance is not your performance.

Don't vent about her at work either, not only is that unproffessional, it would make you seem uncouth and trashy.

All of those solutions sounds good. Will you be working at this place next term? If you are, I don't think you should ignore the situation if it IS bothering you that much.

Yes. I will be going back to my place of work in the fall so long as I can apply for rehire or however the process works (This is only my first year at the job; I don't know much about that stuff). I mean for now, I think trying not to get too worked about the girl might be the best solution because I don't have that much longer to go for this year. I also only see her on weekends because she is still in high school and only works Fri/Sat/Sun, so at most, I see her twice a week as opposed to the 3-4 days a week I work.

It's not even like she has a trashy mouth or anything; it's just that I don't like how she whines about having to work when she knows full well what she signed up for. Last night, she was mentioning how she doesn't have to do whatever she was doing at home so she doesn't get why she has to do it here. I was seriously just...wow. No words can describe that one. But I mean...maybe I am better off just letting it go? It's hard to make a decision. I can keep it held up, but it might keep bothering me. I can tell a manager, but I might look like a tattletale. So I think for now I'm just going to try to push it to the side and see how the next weekend with her goes.

To be honest... you work in food service. It is not a field known for high quality workers. If this is the worst you have to deal with, i'd consider you lucky.

Finish up the three weeks left then start looking for a new place to work. Get another job next year. One that has more decent people, one that pays better (i can't imagine campus food service paying much), and best of all, looks good on your resume and will give you some more real world office skills. Working in campus dining is doing nothing for you.

Any time anyone complains about anything at work (teaching, retail, food), you put the work down and then say look for new work.

Some people may enjoy what they do. Shakespeare of course had pretty harsh words about lawyers but some still want to be lawyers.

Some people may also find it difficult to join pick up and find a new job. You had a lot of difficulty finding a job yourself from the posts you made on here so maybe you should view your posts through that lens.

Penguins, the problem is more your manager's than yours. If the issue is dealing with an end-of-day time crunch, see if the manager can shift her into something that you guys don't want to do during the day. If her not doing work makes you guys have to pick up the slack then say something about it. Maybe she'll have to clean bathrooms and can't complain that her friends want to hang out if it's at 7AM. If you don't get affected by her just ignore her along with everyone else and she'll leave eventually if she hates it enough or she'll start working harder and try to make nice with people.

Good luck. :)

-Rudey

This sounds like good advice; it seems to me that the co-worker in question is not long for the environment, especially if she's complaining every time she has to do some extra work. If you're feeling like this, chances are some of your co-workers may be as well.

I'd give it a bit of time though; if this is the first time she's acted up like this, maybe it was just a couple of bad days. If it's recurring behavior, though, and you and your other co-workers are getting stuck with the after-effects, someone should go talk to the manager (maybe a group of people).

Good luck with everything - we all know what it's like to be frustrated with a job, co-workers, managers, etc.

Rudey, you have agreed with me in all of those previous posts, so don't play innocent. You are also completely mischaracterizing my job search, which in any event is an irrelevant comparision to a college part time job scenario.



Back to I_Love_Penguins, in college, there are a lot of opportunities for different jobs. Sometimes it's easy to get comfortable in something because you know it. You have enough going on in your life, that dealing with headaches in a job that's not going to do a lot for you personally (unless you are planning to go into restaurant/hotel management) isn't worth it. Check your student newspaper or school's online job site. If there's a department that you're interested in, see if you can work there. Work in admissions, student activites, etc. Or if you really like the food biz, try to work at a local restaurant. At least then you'll make tips!

For now, with three weeks to go, there's not necessarily a whole lot you can do. You can ride it out and try to ignore her (which granted, isn't easy- particularly when you're the one who has to do her work). You can talk to the manager about the coworker. There may be limits as to what she can do, since she's under 18 and not allowed to operate certain machinery and do certain jobs. But you're in all likelihood just stuck :(

No I haven't agreed with you in all those posts kddoni. I only made a comment about the level of difficulty in teaching, a while back, in which you wrote me loving words praising my support for you but I think you might be confused. Of course that was only teaching. I am sure I could discuss lawyers or hand models as well but we'll save that for another day. And you're job search wasn't easy from what you posted about it on here and I'm just saying that a lot of people can have difficulty finding a job (like you). That's not mischaracterizing it. I tried to be helpful to you even by letting you know a lot of firms in NY hire and pay well but you weren't interested in big law.

Anyway, good luck to you as well. I'm happy you took me off ignore (or was that a flirty little hoax teehee) and now we are friends :)

-Rudey
--PS I will paypal you 5 American dollars if you literally create a thread that says "Rudey made me teehee" so I can win a bet. Let me know!

Rudey, get off her nuts already. It's old and annoying and stupid.

I am confused about what you're talking about. She made a post and I made a post. If she/he has nuts, I know nothing of it. I mean I make posts to everyone on here and this is no different.

Sheila, were I from the city of Pitt I would hope you would love me just as well but "It is what it is" as the hot dog vendors in NYC always say.

-Rudey

Yes. The bagel vendors would tell me they "Were too legit to quit", the hot dog venders would say "It is what it is", and "The colored girls go Doo, doo doo, doo doo, doo doo doo."

-Rudey
--You don't even want to know what the churro vendors in the subway say.

Thanks for all the help. I am kind of stuck in this job though because I did apply several places at the beginning of the year and out of all my apps, this was the only place I got an offer, so I just took it. I had another job last year, but it was only a work study and we employees were basically left to sign up for our own hours (we were athletic event staff...working scoreboard, selling programs, etc.) and I left because it came to a point where I could barely sign up for anything due to everything I had going on. I made no money and all I got paid was minimum wage ($5.15 an hour here in PA). I took this job mainly because I am getting more money because food service here is not considered a work study job; we have an outside company providing our food.

I digress though. It does however, kind of upset me to see people putting down my work. I don't drive so it's not like I can work at the local newspaper where I can get experience in my communications major. I do, however, hold an assistant editor position on the school paper and write when I can. I've tried to get in with my local paper at home but no one ever contacted me back after I spoke to someone in March. So it's not like I don't want experience; it's just that I've tried an opportunity that didn't work out. :( I guess that's why I keep taking these food service jobs...at least I can get hired there. But no matter what job I take, I still try to work hard and be a reliable employee so that should count for something, right? :confused:

It does. Just work hard and it'll all be fine. And keep trying for more. I hope our advice helped you a bit.

Good luck penguin! :)

-Rudey

Have you tried working for an academic department in your school? I don't know what your field of study is exactly (but check and see if there are any opportunities there. A lot of departments may have publications that need someone to help write for them, or check out your school's alumni magazine. Think outside the usual hourly jobs that come to mind... there are some great opportunities out there. What kinds of jobs do your friends do?

Actually, by looking at your profile, I see that you want to go into sports marketing and are majoring in mass communications. There has to be other opportunities in the athletic department for meaningful work (not just the selling programs stuff). Are there other colleges in your town? Any local sports teams? I'm not sure where in PA you are, but there are tons of local sports teams, aside from just the biggies. Just off the top of my head in my side of the state there's the Washington Wildthings, the Altoona Curve, the Baby Penguins over in WilkesBury-Scranton ( know i spelled that wrong). I'm sure there are others that i'm not familiar with. Or look into work for the various high school sports conferences in your area- for instance, in this side of the state, we have the WPIAL.

It can be intimidating and overwhelming, but really, there are a lot of opportunities out there. Find them, present yourself well. If you've applied to several jobs and didn't hear anything, check out your school's career office. They can help go over your resume and what kinds of things you put on your application, and can help you with your interview skills.

I don't mean to put down your work, but the kinds of problems you're complaining about are inherent to that kind of position. It doesn't pay well enough to put up with that sort of headaches when you can make money elsewhere.