I apologise to all sales people for this bombastic title, and I do believe most sales employees are nothing like that. But hear me out.
I have this sales colleague who I find it increasingly difficult to get along with. We have been working together for 2, and nothing has changed but my patience has grown maybe thinner. I don't work in sales, I am one of the people whose PART of my responsibilities are realising what she sells.
All of my problems relate mostly towards how she ACTs towards my team and myself.
1) She acts like she is the boss when in fact she is not even part of my chain of command. I do understand that part of my responsibilities is to do tasks given by her. And there was never a problem with that. I was never late deploying a customer for her. The problem is in how she acts like her tasks should always be at the top of my pile. Even when I complained about my workload to everyone including the company owner and HR, her only response was basically 'not my problem'. I have gotten everyone to understand my workload problems, including the company owner, but she is 'not my problem'.
She does not even know nor care about my many responsibilities other than deploying new customers. Our core product actually working well seems to be unimportant to her.
In fact the company owner is less bossy than her. Or at least his act is better.
2) Sometimes she is arrogant, cold, patronizing. I hate being patronized.
3) She wants to be treated like a team player without herself being a team player. For context we are a small company of about 15 people. I know for a fact that most of us have at least once gone above and beyond and stuck our heads out for the team. Stuff that was beyond our job description.
She however, no. She sticks to her boundaries like a bug to a windshield. Jer mantra is 'I just seal the sale that is all I do here'. There are some tasks that I know for a fact that in competing companies would be her job. And I have confronted her with that, her response was, 'haha, I only do the sale. We don't work in competing companies, you do it.' I would not mind supporting her boundaries if she supported mine.
3.1) The cherry on top is that most of her sales are small, while the owner has a real knack for getting 'whale' clients. At least in comparison.
4) The worst part of her job is receiving angry client calls when something inevitably breaks. I get those too. In roughly equal amounts as she does. And unlike her I simultaneously have to fix the problem while getting those calls.
Previously I think I was able to tolerate her more because she had an even worse relationship with a colleague who left recently and she expended most of her energy on him.
And now I need advice, should I talk to my team leader first? You know the person who is actually above me in my chain of command.
Or should I talk to her in private first?
Or maybe I am all wrong about the entire thing in which case I am willing to listen?
If I am wrong I am willing to apologise.