Title says it all.
I’ve (23F) had issues with this coworker (60F) ever since she started working for our team (I’m a legal assistant for an attorney). She’s been here over 6 months and still doesn’t understand the basics of the job, and constantly pushes things on to me, claiming she “doesn’t know what to do, can you just do it for me.” I am pretty much doing the majority of the work for the team despite her being a paralegal, and officially a “higher” title than me.
But the cherry on top of it all is that she’s now started policing when I come and go.
She’s mad that our entire team doesn’t come in early enough (including the attorney). She gets in at 8, the rest of us filter in between 9/9:30 (company is flexible with schedules as long as the attorney is okay with it). She complained to the attorney and now we all have to come in earlier.
I get ~5 hours of PTO every other pay period. I’ve been here for almost two years. On days where my workload is light or my boss isn’t here, I’ll leave the office an hour or two early. It’s never been a problem. My boss doesn’t care. We’ve been doing better than ever.
But my coworker has started texting another member of the team asking if “she has left too” whenever I get up from my desk (this other member is salaried so technically she can leave for the day whenever she gets her work done). Today I took my hour long lunch break and went home to prepare dinner in my slow-cooker (I live 7 minutes from work) and coworker texted the case manager asking where I was. She’s also texted this coworker saying “she feels like the only one who ever stays and works” even though I have no idea what she does all day. She doesn’t communicate with the rest of the team.
I feel like I am being watched over by someone who isn’t even my boss. It doesn’t help that she is incredibly anti-personal (whatever, it’s work, we don’t have to be friends but she isn’t even collegial) and doesn’t even understand what we do here. I’ve told my boss multiple times that I don’t trust her because I don’t feel confident she even knows where to begin. If I left the office for two weeks, everything would fall apart.
It’s making me incredibly stressed and sad. She sits all day at her desk, locked in her office, never getting up to walk or move around. I’m the exact opposite. I have to stretch, move, walk around or else my body gets incredibly sore. My health and mobility is important to me. But she makes me feel like I can’t even get up or else she’s going to have questions about where I am. I don’t know what to do. I’m just infuriated. I honestly like my job and I like where I work, but she is making me dread every day.
Edit: for those mentioning I should go to HR, I’m trying to avoid that the best I can. I don’t want them involved to start monitoring my schedule and them take away the flexibility with my schedule that I have. They are pretty hands off about this stuff and try to let attorney’s handle team conflicts.
Edit 2: She just got up and walked over to our desk to check and see if our other coworker (the one who is salaried) had left for the day (she had). It’s officially starting to get weird here. Salaried coworker isn’t even working on the same cases as the paralegal.