I'm working in France not the USA.
Started working in this company about 4 months ago.
Manager went on maternity leave for a year so I never saw her.
We were a team of 5 people, with 2 new people me included.
One coworker is the only one in constant contact with our manager's boss aka our cfo. To the point that he acts like the manager and the cfo kind of treats him like it.
Cfo never talks to us, barely acknowledges our presence.
Co worker makes comments to other co-workers about their work, basically saying they don't do their job or do it poorly.
2 people ended up leaving the team, in part because of him. A third one is in very bad terms with said co-worker because of previous comments.
One is currently on vacation plus sick leave.
We're now 2 doing the work of 6.
What annoys me is that this coworker seems to be the eyes and ears of our cfo.
And if one day he does not like me, I'm afraid he'll start talking shit about me on my back.
Now I don't earn much but I was promised training to become manager by my manager who's on maternity leave.
But the more I stay the less likely it will happen, mainly because I don't know if my manager will come back and because of the co-worker.
Rumors are the dude I replaced left because co-worker fucked him over and he got so demotivated he got fired for not doing his job.
I'm tempted to talk to HR about this matter. But I don't know how I should bring this up.
When I say it to myself it seems like a lot of conjecture, not hard proof of toxicity.
=> What would you people do?
Note. I could leave my work, not afraid of that at all. I'd rather not. What I want is management training and it seemed like this company could have provided it to me in the future, if not for that coworker influence.