*Throwaway*
I have to rant. I work in a medical setting as a receptionist, meaning bottom of the barrel. A person that would be considered “above me” (though we are a “team” and no one is supposedly above anyone) had someone call in and complain that they had sent multiple requests in for something and it hadn't been done yet. The client was angry, yelling at me, threatening things (like to stop taking his medication) so I looked up his chart, he was right he had sent 3 requests, but one of the requests were incomplete. He didn't want to hear about this, and just said he never wanted to return. I tried to suggest he follow-up with management to address his concerns but he didn't want to. So I told him yelling at me only gets him so far as I cannot do much but note what happened, so he calmed down, apologized to me but still said he was never return to our office.
So, I made a note in his file about the incident (as per usual) and alerted my manager to the complaint and they said they would look into it. The one manager called to get rectify the missing information, and added the complete request to the chart. This was about 4 weeks ago.
For context: when we get reports or requests, we scan them directly into the clients file and then the person responsible for these requests gets notified in our system via a message inbox that alerts them to the type of request that it is. For this particular co-worker, we also keep a physical file with the paper copies that he will take with him (and who knows where these end up) because he doesn't regularly check his inbox. There's 8 people that we upload requests for and he's the only one we take extra steps for.
So this is where the co-worker comes in. He finally checked his inbox (its all online) to see these requests that had been sitting, some for at least 6-7 weeks, and finally signed off on them. He caught me in the hallway and asked why I didn't just call him to tell him that those requests were there. I said I do the same thing for him that I do everyone and I can't do more than that. We were standing near the bosses doorway so he was making a big fuss saying that I should just call him when there's an issue (rather than telling management basically). He got all flustered at me and I said well I'm not sure what else I can do, I did my part and then I walked away. He asks the boss to come speak with him in his office. Boss tells me later that I “hurt his feelings” for not going to him first. More like I hurt his ego, because logging a complaint against him, made him look bad. However, I'm sick of trying to cover for him with clients because he wants me to make excuses for him. The other day a client came to see him, and after 40 minutes of waiting he left. I called to tell him his client left and he was like well why? did you ask him? Uhh no, this particular client has a history of cussing me out so I was happy that he walked out without giving me a piece of his mind first.
Why should I be responsible for A) his job, and B) his ego/feelings. I already go above and beyond for him, and I really shouldn't have but he's a pure narcissist that makes the lives of people around him miserable when he doesn't get his way. I have worked here for about a decade and I still can't seem to do anything right by him. I complained about him before and was met with a confrontational meeting with HR, manager, director, him, and another manager asking me why I'm picking on him. So I'm sure he's using previous situations against me. But when a client calls making threats and with inappropriate behavior because of his frustration with how he does his job, I'm not going to contact him so he can make it all go away and have no papertrail of him doing a bad job.
How the hell can I can continue to work with this man when he somehow makes everything everyone else's fault but his?? He's making work conditions hell and its already not great here!
TL:DR: co-worker said I hurt his feelings because I noted a complaint about him in a client's file.