I (26F) have been doing back office work for a little over two and a half years at this company and my coworker (27M) started a few months after me. We are in the same role and he has no authority over me but likes to boss me around. The way he messages me on Teams comes off unprofessional, bossy and rude. At the same time he cuts corners anywhere he can to make it look like he completes lots of work, which usually means more work for me.
Late 2020 I started noticing that in the morning he takes all the quick and easy work. We have to review checks to either pay or return. We’re supposed to sort the checks in numerical order by client and save the first and last checks in the range in our names. One of our clients we don’t have to check signatures and hardly ever have to call about them. The other client is highly sensitive, involves more steps and phone calls about the checks. So I started noticing that every day he would save the first clients checks under his name every single day and I would get the latter.
It would take me much longer to review my checks for that reason but in the productivity system it would count for the same amount of time as my coworker’s checks. Then while I was finishing up reviewing my checks my coworker would work ahead to afternoon maintenance cases. We’re supposed to split it as evenly as we can. Management made it clear that while we should split evenly the main goal is getting the work done on time for the client. We usually work in previous day cases but if we finish all our work we can work on same day if we have time.
I started noticing that while he would work ahead on the afternoon maintenance work he would do the majority of the cases, including most of mine while I was still working on checks. And then I would go to lunch because I was pregnant and tired. He would just rush through them. But he would save a few time consuming cases for me that would take way longer because they needed to be rejected or required assistance from another coworker with more experience. I noticed by looking into the case history that he was opening the case to view it and then closing it so that it would be left for me to do. And then he would rush through all the other cases so the productivity system would show he did more work and wouldn’t account for how long it took me to get through my few that he left me.
I didn’t think this was something I could go to my manager about but to me this behavior was pretty lazy and every work day was stressful for me. So a few days a week (not every day to be fair) when I was working from home I would log in early to save my range of checks and then make my coffee or whatever and then I would start working on them at my start time. When I was done I would try to start any afternoon maintenance work and do it while he was on lunch since he usually goes to lunch at 11am. Then I would take a late lunch. Instead of doing what he does (doing most the work to look good but leaving all the time consuming cases for me) I would just do my half of the cases whether they were time consuming or not but at least that way we both had a mix of normal and hard cases. For example if we had 50 items I would do the first 25 in the order they were in. If I got a hard one I would work on it instead of closing out of it and leaving it for my coworker.
Once I started doing this he started sending passive aggressive messages. The first time he just saved over my checks so that they were put in his name instead of mine and messaged me to ask which ones I meant to save. Even though they had been saved under my name like that for 20 minutes before he started working and I even refreshed the page to confirm that before he started. I told him I had already saved them under my name and he was like…
Coworker: “If you had saved at the same time, it wouldn’t have let me claim it, so I don’t think that’s how it worked. but it’s cool. I will do difficult client, I am sure you are tired of working them anyhow lolol”
Which is untrue as you can save over someone else’s cases in our check system. Another time he messaged me…
Coworker: “Lolol you really don’t like the difficult client’s check referrals ”
Even though I had just done them 3 days in a row. Sometimes when he has to call for checks for the difficult client he will message me things like…
Coworker: “I am not liking the amount of checks I have to make calls for. This is ridiculous.”
I never complain about making the calls to him or anyone. I at least keep it to myself. Once I started logging in early to claim my checks I noticed he would log in earlier and earlier to do the same. One time he even messaged me
Coworker: “Good morning. I didn’t know you also signed in at 7 every morning lololololololol”
Anyway, my productivity started getting better this way and I felt less mentally drained at the end of the day since work was being split fairly and I could get more done. But he got increasingly rude and started putting his work off on me. One time I saw that he had opened a few time sensitive cases and then left them for me to do so I gently confronted him.
Me: “Are you looking into those cases?”
Coworker: “What cases?”
I sent him the account numbers.
Coworker: “Oh those. I have not yet, I can reach out to whoever indexed them, but you will have to complete them as I am heading to lunch and into the office in 45 minutes.”
Me: “Okay they were showing they had off totals and that you had opened them so I wasn’t sure.”
Coworker: “I have not yet. Busy morning.”
I can see in the case history that he had been in the cases so he lied about that. Also we aren’t supposed to go to lunch until all our morning work and checks have been completed but he would often leave them for me to work on printing mail and leave early for lunch and go to the office. I think he likes printing because you can get like 50 items done in an hour and it’s really hard to make a mistake on so it looks really good in our productivity system but takes no time at all and you hardly have to use your brain. So he often prioritizes printing at times when he shouldn’t. Management has made it clear that printing is our only function that isn’t essential and should be the last thing we do every day. At that time it was during Covid so he was volunteering to go to the office (because he’s an extrovert and loves being in the office) a few afternoons a week to work on printing and during that time I would do all the afternoon account maintenance on my own on those days. However, it doesn’t absolve him of his responsibility to complete all our morning work with me before he leaves.
Later that day when he was printing he noticed I made a minor mistake and mixed up which blank tax form to send and snapped at me over it even though I catch his mistakes all the dang time and I never do that to him. Our entire team does quality checks and we are all very respectful when we bring up mistakes to other partners. Due to the nature of our job we’re always catching minor mistakes. It happens. Anyway, he kept asking things like…
Coworker: “Did you ask beforehand to make sure there were some forms in the office?”
Which has never been protocol to ask. We just fill out the cover sheet and whoever is in office deals with attachments. And…
Coworker: “Have you ever done this before??”
It came off somewhat condescending and then he sent me an email about the mistake.
The month before I caught 3 of his mistakes in one day and very nicely asked him to fix them. I just told him no worries and it happens and I appreciate him fixing the mistakes and he told me I wasn’t required to send the email about the mistakes but he definitely made sure to send it to me when roles were reversed.
Part of printing is uploading the documents into our system so whoever is working on printing is supposed to do it and he frequently wouldn’t do that part and then would ask me to do it as well even though I was processing afternoon account maintenance on my own.
My coworker had a responsibility of closing transactions at the end of the day that I didn’t have. I am the backup for that on days when he is sick/on vacation and then I did it on mondays so I wouldn’t lose access but all other times were his responsibility.
Since he volunteered to go into the office to handle printing, our lowest priority function, I would take over all the afternoon maintenance on my own, which is a higher priority than printing. There recently has been a push for making sure we complete maintenance on time due to client sensitivity so I make that my priority. One Friday my coworker messaged me on Teams and asked if I could close the transactions that day and didn’t give me a reason or anything but I had a very busy day with maintenance.
Now I normally don’t mind helping my other coworkers if they’re super busy with import stuff work or have something going on. They don’t ask often and are always very nice and grateful and let me know if I’m busy it’s okay and let me know I can take my time if I choose to help. And usually it’s something quick like finding a check for them since they don’t have access to that. However, my coworker approached me with the expectation that I am to always do any work he tells me to. He’s not nice about it and usually only asks because he thinks whatever he is doing is more important than what I’m doing. He also asks frequently and on top of his other laziness I was sick of it. I ignored it for that reason. Of course if he actually had an emergency or something important I would gladly do it but usually he just puts his work on me because he thinks his time is more important than mine.
Coworker: “Did you happen to get my prev message?”
Me: “No I didn’t see a previous message.”
Coworker: “Do you think you could close transactions today?”
Me: “I can’t today! I have a lot of cases to get through still!”
Coworker: “Kay. Eventually it will become a sole responsibility, so I would start anticipating that you will have to make time for it between maintenance cases as I have :)”
Except on days he’s in office I do all the maintenance by myself. The only days he processes maintenance and closes transactions he has me to split it with him.
Me: “Of course I would make time for it when it’s my sole responsibility and if we need to start transitioning me to doing it full time we can absolutely talk about doing so no problem! I just hadn’t anticipated closing transactions today and I want to make sure these cases get done :)”
Coworker: “I appreciate the understanding. Those cases will always get done, if not same day then the next day, remember that, no one is going to fire you cause a couple of cases weren’t completed in a day, try not to be so hard on yourself that work will always get done.”
Me: “Yeah of course! I’m just making sure to stay on top of deadlines as that’s been a big thing this year. But if we need to talk about me taking on certain days for closing transactions to help or every day even that’s not a problem.”
Coworker: “We will get to that, especially on office days. I really need you to take over.”
Then there was more back and forth about which days I will end up doing it. And him going to manager to let him know the new schedule of who will be closing transactions.
Coworker: “Just remember this, transaction closure is more important than maintenance deadlines it has to always be closed everyday, the most important thing.”
What he was saying directly contradicts what manager has been saying. I also decided he was a little too rude for my liking so I would only answer him in a private message if it was an actual question about how to process a case or something like that. But for all other messages I’m only answering in the group message where other people are so he can’t talk to me like that. A few days later he claimed to have technical difficulties earlier in the day so he’s behind on printing and needs me to close transactions again. This happens at least every couple weeks even with me already doing it 3 days a week now.
He began arguing with anything I would tell him and would frequently boss me around even though we’re in the exact same role and he’s not in charge of me. During an increase in cases he messaged me this…
Coworker: “Let’s really prioritize keeping the account closure queue as low as possible, those should take precedence over address changes each day.”
Our manager has literally never said this and all maintenance are to be done equally. He just called out sick the day before, after I got us all caught up on cases, which caused us to get backed up again. I had to remind him that I had knocked out the entire queue and then he called out sick so I had to do everything by myself the day before.
Another time he bossed me around by saying this…
Coworker: “Hey could you reach out to coworker and figure out how to process those applications. I have to get ready to go into the office.”
Me: “Who normally does those?”
Coworker: “Coworker in another state I believe. I’m not sure but their manager needs assistance with those. Are you getting the emails?”
Me: “I don’t think I’ve seen it on the list of that coworker’s applications. I’m checking my email now.”
Coworker: “It might not be but the out of state team is shorthanded and they need assistance with applications.”
Me: “I would but I have a doctors appointment.”
I had a sinus infection at the time which was common for pregnancy.
Coworker: “Well I will let coworker know that we don’t have steps for this program. They will have to take it from there.”
We literally had no training on those applications. We weren’t even the backup on them as shown on the email and the coworker wasn’t even asking us to do them I found out once I read the emails and messages so I don’t even know why he was telling me to complete the request. But if they were telling us to, he was supposed to complete them with me before going to lunch and the office. He doesn’t have a set time he has to go in. Just after lunch sometime.
One time I sent him the count of how many maintenance cases we had to do for the day, which is something we do daily and he immediately got defensive. I had said there were 5 closures.
Coworker: “So there are 7 closures. I am not doing just 2.”
But then he realized he was looking at the wrong thing and was like nvm.
He’s ignored urgent messages from me before when I had questions about closing transactions. I had just learned and it was a day we were working from home. He had trained me but didn’t give very specific steps. He didn’t answer for a good 40 minutes while working from home so who knows what he was doing. It resulted in my deleting a transaction and pissing off another coworker but that’s what he had told me to do during training and wasn’t answering when I was asking for clarification. I have to answer the same question about how to do basic procedures a million times because he won’t just take notes or read them. Some of the work he leaves for me to do is stuff he’s asked me how to do before. He also just has a horrible attitude. Every now and then we have system issues and it’s annoying but we all act professional about it. I’ve seen him yell at his computer in the office over it in front of everyone.
One time he sent me a screenshot of his vpn giving him issues. And I told him I had the same thing happen recently and what IT did to fix it just to give him some hope. It was a really simple fix. His response:
Coworker: “I will not. I will quit before doing all of that mess. This should never happen.”
Another time when he was having system issues he messaged the team complaining. We all have issues sometimes but he acts unprofessional about it and has even yelled at his computer in the office. Anyway here’s what he said this time…
Coworker: “can’t work if the applications won’t. I can’t open a pdf. My patience/kindness levels are depleting.”
Senior team members have even had to tell him he needs to be more positive and that it’s not the end of the world.
Most of these events I was pregnant for and already emotional and ended up crying over the way he would talk to me. But I went on maternity leave finally and I was hoping he would be gone when I got back or if he was still there, hopefully he would be nicer. And he was at first but it didn’t last long. I’ve been back about three months and I’m miserable. After my maternity leave I lost access to all of my systems and it took a few weeks to get everything reinstated. I lost access to my phone system so I had to ask him for help making phone calls for checks.
Me: “I have one check that has to be called about but I still don’t have my phone system. Would you be willing to make that call for me?”
Coworker: “I will make the call, but in the future I would just return the check. My phone was down while you were on maternity leave and I had no choice but to just return the check.”
Me: “Okay I’m trying to get my access back as they take away your access to everything when you go on leave more than three months. We do have to do our due diligence and call about a check being returned. Obviously, if there isn’t anyone else who can make that call and I don’t have access, I would have no choice but to return the check and not call. However, I would rather check with another person first to see if anyone can make that call so we can do our due diligence. If you’re unable to make calls for me in the future I can see if another person can!”
Coworker: “Oh yeah absolutely. I’m just saying if the situation allows it, an exception can be made. I can make the call. I just have to finish up this work real quick and then I will call. Sometimes I had no one who would call for me when I was having system issues and the check had to be returned regardless so you have no choice to return.”
Protocol is that we have to make the call as a courtesy to our very rich clients and I literally couldn’t do it because I was waiting for my access after leave and he had no reason to argue about it. Previous coworkers made my calls for me when I was a new hire waiting on my access with no questions asked and I did the same for him when he was new. One time I accidentally did two extra afternoon maintenance cases. I guess I had miscounted and he blew me up on Teams.
Coworker: “Did you process 6 cases? Cause I know you counted 8 but only two are remaining.”
I was in the middle of something so I didn’t answer. So he mentioned me in my own message and kept messaging.
Coworker: “I just need to know if I now have to process same day maintenance to cover my half of the work.”
This isn’t something he needs to know. It’s never been protocol to discuss exactly how much we have processed. If you finish all your previous day cases and you want to do more work you can start processing same day maintenance anyway. Besides, he does more than his fair share of cases all the time and I never complain or confront him, I just change what I’m doing to he as productive as I can. Anyway, then he sent me a screenshot of every case I completed that day. So if he knew where to find that info I don’t know why he was bugging me about it when I was busy trying to work. He mentioned me on our message like 3 more times. I kept ignoring him because he was being passive aggressive and this is a frequent thing he does.
Coworker: “Please for future reference make sure we are splitting the work equally. Unless circumstances don’t allow for that.”
Then he started messaging me in our team group message. I feel more comfortable talking there so others can at least see how he talks to me.
Coworker: “Are you getting my messages in Teams?”
I pretended I wasn’t getting his other messages because I didn’t like how he was talking to me.
Me: “I just got one!”
Coworker: “K. I sent you a few, just want to make sure that we are responding in an adequate timeframe.”
Me: “Teams is being finicky for me today. Is there anything you need assistance with?”
Coworker: “Nope, thank you.”
Me: “Okay! Let me know if there’s anything you need help with!”
Coworker: “Did you get my message regarding the maintenance from earlier?”
Me: “I did not!”
Coworker: “Ok. Just checking. Thank you.”
Me: “Do you have a question about maintenance?”
Coworker: “No I figured it out.”
If it was something he wasn’t trying to be passive aggressive about he could have asked in the team message but he didn’t and instead only blew up Teams privately. But I hate that he’s flipping out over our cases being exactly even when he has no problem rushing to finish most my cases before the day is halfway over. And I don’t want to tolerate him messaging me that way. And guess what? After that he still didn’t even complete the cases he was supposed to. He saw they were hard and closed out of them.
The past year and a half, especially lately, I’ve noticed all these lazy things he does. If I’m ever sick, he calls out the next day. After this last conversation occurred he called out on Monday but I also had to miss work because I had to take my baby to the hospital. He seems to have system issues almost daily and when he’s not having system issues he’s having a power outage. Once we started going back into the office part time, I noticed he always seems to have battery issues with his car and won’t go in for the entire week. Our first Monday back in the office he called out.
The week before we had started training a new person in a different state over Teams. Our manager said it was up to my coworker and I how we split the training. Last week my coworker conveniently started having issues with the system we use to pull up most of the accounts so I had to do most of the work and most of the training. He kept saying “If you train today then I will train tomorrow.” And then tomorrow would come and he would ask me to train again and said he would do the next two days. It was hard because I was doing the majority of our work and doing all the training. We have a different system we use for one of our clients and he still had access to that so I suggested that he complete any cases for those clients and train the new person on those cases and when he’s done I will train on everything else. That way I could get caught up. But he made an excuse about training him later and not only did he not train the new guy but he didn’t even complete those cases so I had to do those ones too. This week he keep telling me when I would need to train the new guy. He even asked me to do it because he got a new work laptop and wanted to take time to organize it. So I asked him if he would train Thursday and I said I can train on Friday.
I guess he has realized that I do my afternoon maintenance while he’s on lunch and so sometimes he has harder cases to do now. This week he has been going into the maintenance queue and locking his half of the cases and then going to lunch. So I’m stuck with whatever he chooses not to lock. I was told we’re only supposed to lock one at a time. Last week he had a case locked all day that was supposed to be overnighted to the client and he didn’t end up doing it and that client was pissed so I can now see why we are only supposed to lock cases we’re working on in that moment. But by locking them all at once I know he’s just trying to be lazy and petty. Also, he’s supposed to coordinate lunch with with me since one of us always has to be online so we go to lunch one at a time. He doesn’t communicate with me anymore either. He just goes!
Since there is a time difference between us and the new guy, I have to work around the new guy’s schedule. On Friday I trained from 9:30-11:30am (which is when I discovered all the locked cases) because he takes lunch from 11:30-12:30. For training it would have made sense for me to take lunch at the same time as the new guy so there would be more time to train but my coworker went to lunch from 11-12 and didn’t ask or communicate that. He just went so I couldn’t go. Then my manager messaged me about a case at noon so I took lunch from 12:15-1:15 and then I had a one on one with my manager from 1:30-2. And then the new guy usually is off work around 2/2:30. During the earlier training I did manage to get through my morning work and almost all my afternoon cases with the new guy before lunch. And since my coworker still had all his cases left and I had a one on one after the late lunch I had to take because of my coworker, I decided I would ask him to train during that time and confront him about locking the cases because I’m tired of how lazy he’s been and I’m sick of being a doormat. I maybe could have been nicer but I returned the same energy he’s been giving me for over a year and a half.
Me: “Is there a reason all the afternoon maintenance cases are locked?”
Coworker: “They shouldn’t all be, I just claimed all of my days work. Has someone else done your half?”
Me: “With this queue we usually don’t lock all the cases. I did whatever was left but let’s make sure we don’t do that moving forward. Our morning checks are the only ones we claim like that. I’m heading to lunch now. When I get back I have my one on one so I won’t be able to train. If you’re able to I would greatly appreciate it.”
In the past as a new hire I would lock all my cases for the day and other coworkers told me not to so that’s been the standard but he’s just randomly started locking all of “his.” I haven’t done that since I was new and neither has he. The only time it happens is if I have a question about one and I’m waiting on an answer and so I move onto a second one while I’m waiting to make the most of my time. But that’s like two at most. Not all of half of the days work.
Coworker: “First of all, I have seen you locked into cases for afternoon maintenance before you actually processed them. So let’s not go there. I will continue to do so as there is nothing that states I am not allowed to claim my equal share of our work. I claimed only my portion of the work for afternoon cases and nothing more today so if you didn’t get your equal share done, then you need to ask manager who processed your share of the work. Cause it wasn’t me and you will not tell me how to do a job that I am significantly. You also told me yesterday that you were going to train the new guy for me, you offered to do so. Now you are telling me last minute that you can’t. I will be notifying manager of all of this.”
He actually did go to manager who used our scheduled one on one to talk about this and now I have my actual one on one Monday which is a career development thing where he’s going to ask how I’m feeling about the company and team and stuff. It’s been planned for awhile but I’m nervous about what to tell him because I’m not happy.
On my one on one with the manager I just told him that since I was trained it was always protocol that we only work on one case at a time and suddenly coworker is locking half of them all at once which is something we’ve never done and has recently caused issues with clients because cases get locked but never worked on. It prevents me from being able to assist if needed. And I said I’m okay with either option being our protocol but I think we should be on the same page and if we decide to start locking all those cases then we need to be accountable to complete them but at the end of the day my priority is getting the cases done for the clients. I also addressed that I trained all morning and was able to go over both morning work and afternoon maintenance since the queue was light. But that I had to wait for coworker to get back from lunch and then I had a one on one and I can’t train during those times. Manager ended up agreeing that for now we should just work on one case at a time and that he would talk to coworker. He also thanked me for training and helped me come up with some ideas for the next step of training. So overall I think it went well and manager was very nice but I still feel nervous about things because I don’t know what my coworker said or what manager is thinking.
The rest of the day coworker went into do not disturb on Teams and all the cases he had locked were suddenly unlocked but not completed and I confirmed in their history that he was in them and then had to process them myself.
How do I handle my coworker? I feel like he’s going to keep being petty and passive aggressive until I just let him do whatever easy cases he wants, I do all the hard ones and also do whatever he tells me to.
I’ve tried ignoring him unless it was a question about a procedure or case or a message in the team group message. I’ve tried confronting him about some of the stuff he does both gently and up front. I’ve tried working faster than him so our work is split fairly. I’ve tried being friendly. But he acts like he’s my boss and if I don’t do what he says or ever stand up for myself he flips out. If I boss him around the way he does to me he gets very angry and runs to the manager. I don’t feel like this is how professional adults act or communicate in the workplace. What do I do?
Husband suggests that I either go to manager and tell him about all those other conversations where he bosses me around and tell him about coworker opening cases and then leaving them for me to do. But I’m afraid if I do that I’m starting a war with my coworker where we’re constantly tattling to the manager and to me that’s a waste of all of our time. But at the same time I want to cover my butt.
My husband also suggested I take screenshots of all the conversations and cases that he opens and doesn’t complete just in case things escalate and then just make sure I don’t make any mistakes, don’t be late, etc so coworker can’t have anything on me.
This whole thing feels childish and I don’t feel like manager should even have to be bothered with stuff like this. We should just be doing our work as best and fairly as we can and then move on. Both me and manager having to deal with this is a waste of time. Why is this coworker so desperate to be lazy? I feel really uncomfortable working with him and I may start looking for a new job.
But how do I handle things with my coworker? Ignore him? Ignore him unless it’s business related? Let him know we should only talk in the team message? Just let him get his way and do all the hard cases and say yes if he asks me to do his work for him?
This whole thing feels childish and unnecessary. I’m scared I’m going to lose my job over this. My coworker may not have kids but I have a baby to support. I have so much on my plate, I don’t want to be dealing with this. I just wish we would both pull our weight and be respectful. Like I just want to be left alone to do my work and then get back to my life.
What would you do?
Tl,dr: My coworker is passive aggressive and takes shortcuts to make himself look productive while leaving the complicated work for me and telling me to do his work. He has a horrible attitude and bosses me around even though he has no authority over me. I finally stood up for myself after a year and a half of this and he tattled to our manager immediately. How do I handle this coworker?