Coworker Sabotage! 2

[JillofAllTrades]

I have a coworker that is trying to sabotage my career. I have no idea why! He is actually a consultant, but has been working here for almost exactly as long as I have been - 4 years. He is unofficially the lead programmer and I am the PC/Network Admin.

Most recently, he asked for help with his home network including hosting a website. I started to help him against my better judgement, but ran into roadblock after roadblock. I could not get connected to him remotely and he could not describe what he was seeing very well.

At this point, he started to bad-mouth me to other coworkers, saying that our company doesn't need a full time IT person, that the newest programmers we hired had enough knowledge to maintain our systems. So I decided I was done helping him. He then asked another coworker to help with the home network. Miraculously, that coworker could connect remotely to his network and fixed his DNS problem in 10 minutes. Well, I could've fixed it in 10 minutes too, had I been able to connect remotely.

This guy then gave me a check for my time, which I insisted I didn't want. He left it on my desk. I picked it up to write VOID on it and I noticed that he didn't sign it anyway. (Intentionally?) I plan to write VOID on it anyway and give it back to him, pointing out the lack of signature anyway.

Now he just won't shut up about my incompetence and how useless I am to other coworkers. I know my boss likes me, but he values this guy's opinion very much and I wonder if this guy is also giving his opinion on me to my boss.

Do I proactively go to my boss or will I just sound like a high school girl?

Christine

 

[rphips]

JillofAllTrades

Welcome to the brutal world of office politics.

You have just learned a valueable lesson, don't fix co-workers or friends computers unless you are prepared for the consiquences.

Basically all you can do now is prove him wrong by doing your job and looking for ways to advance the network and take the comapany up to the next level.

I know a lot of programmers who think they can do a network engineers job cause the can fix basic little things - but when you start pouring out enterprise solutions and incorporating all that goes with it such as (routers, switches, VPNs, Email, Main DNS servers and so on) they are just flashes of ignorances.

So your choses now are hang in there and escalate your position or find a new job and let the company have him do the work.



bob

"ZOINKS !!!!!"

Shaggy

 

[SQLSister]

First, document everything that happens between you and this guy. Write down the date-time and details of every conversation, print a cop of every email and keep it ina folder, etc. Especially note every time you hear him bad-mouthing you or whenever some co-worker mentions it. You will have a lot more ammunition to deal with the problem officialy if you have documentation.

Also document anything strange that happens to the system. I had a co-worker who used to change my database so it wouldn't work. If he is trying to get rid of you he may try to break things so you look incompetent.

Now beyond documenting, your options are:
1. Confront the guy and specifically ask him not to bad mouth you. More than likely he won;t change, but it heps you own case to have done this. Consider asking him why he is doing this. Ask him to give dates times and places where your performance was not up to snuff. (I'll bet he doesn't have that information, if he does maybo you need to look at improving your performance.) Rememebr many bullies won't continue to bully those who push back.

2. Take all your evidence of his attempt to make you look bad to the boss. Point out which incidents occurred after he was asked politely to stop if you also chose step1. Ask him to resolve the situation.

3. Start looking for a new job.

4. Ignore the whole situation and hope it goes away. (Bad option but the one most people choose.)

5. Start bad mouthing him back. Not a good option either in my opinion. However, there is no need to cut this guy any slack. If he does do something that causes a problem, make sure the boss knows about it and don't go out of your way to help him. (Don't refuse to do things he should legitimately expect you to do though, this makes you look bad.)

6. Make sure your boss is fully informed about what ptroblems you have solved and how technically difficult they were. Make sure people above him becaome awre of how good your performance is too.

7. If you have internal customers outside you own work group, get them to chime in with how much they like your performance. Especially if they will do it in writing.

8. Go to your boss and, without naming any names, say you have heard that someone has been complaining about you. Tell him you are concerned about getting a bad reputation; that you take pride in performing well. Ask your boss if he has observed any performance problem with you and if so what steps should you take to fix it. Make sure this meeting is documented. It is harder to fire you for poor performance when your boss just told you he had no problem with it. In fact if you are due or overdue for a performace rating, now might be the time to ask for one, before this guy gets to your boss and he no longer has a good opinion of you.

Since you seem to be female from your handle, I might also suggest you go to the bookstore and find some books on office politics that are specifically directed towards women. You may be uncouisly sabotaging yourself through some typical female behavior patterns.







Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[JillofAllTrades]

Thanks for the replies.

First, I have taken this company from 12 desktops, 1 server, and a shared 56k dialup connection at one location to 50+ workstations, 8 servers, and a T1, plus 8 remote locations with frame relay. I have brought in VPN, an accounting software package, email, firewall, etc. I am not trying to toot my own horn here, but I have been busy! And my boss knows and appreciates this. My boss is, by the way, the VP - his dad owns the company.

I don't know if he would be brave enough to break something purposefully, but he is first to yell to everyone, "The network is down" when he can't send an email. [rolleyes]

1. I actually did confront him and he blushingly said he didn't know what I was talking about. That he would never say anything bad about me. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

3. I lovelovelove my job - this guy is the one fly in the ointment.

5. One opportunity really presented itself when he was doing his other favorite pasttime - trying to get people riled up. He insisted that a new contractor wasn't running antivirus software. I asked the boss if I could insist that the contractor use AV s/w. The boss walked over to the contractor and asked him and the puzzled contractor said that he was using AV s/w. So I said, right in front of the contractor and the saboteur, "<Name>, why in the world would you specifically tell me that <contractor> didn't have AV software?" The boss said that the saboteur sure has a funny sense of humor. ??? Other examples of his sense of humor include, "I installed XP SP2...was I not supposed to do that?.....Just kidding."

6-7 The boss tells me often verbally and with $$ that I am doing a good job. I have even won the 110% award twice (a company record) which is voted on by coworkers.

8 - Well, I am leaning towards this option. Unfortunately, knowing my boss, he will want to know who and will want to call the other person into his office to "work things out". I am due for a review (as are all the employees) this month. I think I will wait it out and bring this up then. Nothing specific against his favorite employee, but just making damn sure he hasn't been hearing any rumors about my obsolesence.

So, all in all, I know I should not worry about this. I know my boss likes me. I just can't help but worry though that this guy will put the bug in my boss' ear that I am not needed any more now that things run so smoothly.

I did get a small sense of satisfaction today. He was buying an expensive lunch for the new guy that made his DNS work and invited everyone to go along to "celebrate". Everyone bailed so he quickly changed the venue to a much cheaper sandwich place. You know, without anyone to impress, why bother spending more money than he had to.

Christine

 

[jtb]

No one can "fool all the people all the time"... just do your job and make sure to audit his account's object access... ;-)

JTB
Have Certs, Will Travel
&quot;A knight without armour in a [cyber] land.&quot;

 

[Tarwn]

One thing you may want to consider is to keep a sense of humor about it. You sound fairly confidant about your abilities and, though the market is tough, you could find another position if you had to and shape it to your needs. That being the case, be amused at this losers expense. When he complains publicly that the network is down, make a joke out of it, something along the lines of 1,000 more to go and we'll be caught up with x company. Or invent some cute name for some gnomes that walk around and pull out netwoking cables and blame them (with a smile, you don't want people to think your serious ). Anything that comes off as slightly humurous, but not so much that your not doing your job or taking it serious. If this guy is trying to sabotage you, the fact that you never seem concerned to the point of pulling out hair and always seem confidant about your ability to handle it will just piss him off further. It may very well push him over the edge and make him do something stupid to try and sabotage you. It's obvious he already tried and it backfired with the AV software thing, this will just make him take greater chances. And it will make you feel better and allow other employees to see you as a fun person to work around (someone that works hard but doesn't act like one of those elitist networking types they've heard about, someone that always appreciates a challenge, laughs in the face of danger, etc).

Anyways, just my two cents. I generally always inject a little humor into everything I am doing. Especially when I am the source of the fault. Having a ready answer and being able to laugh at yourself or difficult situations goes a long way to helping you calmly attack problems and making other people look at you as if your fearless in the face of rampaging, spear-waving, rabid network gnomes .

-T

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Witty Comment Here

 

[chiph]

The phrase that comes to my mind to describe this coworker is "Manic Panic". Everything is a crisis (to them), and they let everyone know about it.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[shortone]

At first I thought you worked where I do! I have to agree with SQLSister and Tarwn - keep doing what you do best and keep a sense of humour about you. Document, document, document (keep copies at home). I save all emails, keep copies of help desk tickets in binders, back up copies of all my working databases everyday on CD, etc., because I had a problem with someone sabotaging our database (though I think they were trying to get back at someone else), as chunks of data disappeared. At that point, I locked everyone but the two people who enter data out of the db, gave everyone else read-only access to .mde files and backed up the back-ends daily, so I could always go back to the day before the problem existed and do some investigation. Data stopped disappearing in chunks and now if it comes "missing", I can find it easier, as it most likely was just entered into the wrong field.

Since your boss likes you and knows your work, you really shouldn't worry too much. As long as your work is at the same (or better) caliber as it has been (and it seems to be, since you get props and $$ for your hard work), you will be fine. Here at my job (not private enterprise), we have a lot of disgruntled people, who hate to see others move up. I just keep doing what I do, no matter who tries to throw a wrench in the works. I've had mail opened "by mistake" that came to me from the Personnel Office regarding a promotion that I was going for (and subsequently received) and I knew copies were made, because the staple had been removed and the document re-stapled (helps to have worked in law enforcement!). None of that mattered, because I kept doing what I had to do, and now my office has paid for me to become an Oracle OCP DBA, which means, after I'm finished, ANOTHER promotion!

There will always be people who are "haters". You just have to ACT in the correct manner, and not REACT. Everything comes out in the wash.....


JayeD
"I'm sure of two things: there IS a God, and I'm NOT Him!" - R. Williams

 

[GMcNamara]

I had a similar experience with a coworker. She would never say that she failed alone. She always tried to sneak in the 'We tried but..' even when I was not involved. I went to my boss and explained to him that I was not complaining but I wanted to be clear that 'We' weren't always failing. He soon began to realize that this coworker was doing very little in the way of work on her own and when budget cuts came around, she was let go. If you go to your boss with a good attitude and don't present yourself as whining or 'telling on someone', things work out.

 

[rosieb]

Jill

As you are on good terms with your boss, maybe a quiet "look, I seem to have an issue with X, not of my making but..." Try to phrase it not to be critical, you tried to help them but failed because of issues outside your control.

The issue to atttack is how their attitude makes you feel - not their actual attitude to you, try to defuse the situation, at least superficially, "It feels as if X is trying to undermine me, and my value to the organisation"

Don't cash the cheque.

Rosie
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think" (Niels Bohr)

 

[JillofAllTrades]

Interesting development in this situation. The guy seems to have backed off in the last few days. Now I find out he is pushing for a management promotion, which the VP is reluctantly considering. Now, I would never try to hurt his career, even though he tried to hurt mine...but I could let him think I might.

Christine

 

[SQLSister]

Permaybehaps it would not be in your best interest for this guy to get promoted top management. Just saying is all.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[kmcginn]

Especially if he would then be your boss!! Is the management job something you might be interested in? If so, you might consider going for it - it would serve him right if you beat him out of it!

 

[Tarwn]

Evil Plan #423:
Step 1) Ok, So go meet a coworker in HR that you feel you could get along with (as a friend). Bump into them at random a couple times, have some interesting conversations, suggest going to get coffee or a beer after work one day (completely platonic).
Step 2) Make sure work advancement comes up in some of your conversations (this is probably coffee/beer outing 2, 3, 4). Without a doubt one of the ways this HR person could advance would be to save the company some large amount of money, if they don't bring it up themselves, you should edge towards it, perhaps by talking about some time that you saved the company money by cutting the number of necessary servers or making a process more efficient, etc. Determine some of their goals for later use and raise the implication that saving the company some money could help them achieve those goals.
Step 3) Having a good relationship with this HR person now, manage to bring up (in a joking manner) something about how contractors that sit on the clock eating out of the company pocket. Maybe even bring up the issues from above (again, treat this lightly, like it was so far beneath you it was barely worth noticing). Make sure you mention how much time this guy has been a contractor and anything that would make him appear to be sitting around doing nothing on the clock, such as time between projects spent doing nothing, time n projects spent doing nothing, etc.

At this point if you have chosen someone who doesn't mind getting themselves a little dirty with work, they will have considered the past conversations about advancement and achieveing goals and will now decide to look into just what this contractor is costing the company, how much it would cost to replace him, and how much it would save the company to have a contractor who didn't sit on the clock eating contractor rates for no work. You have managed to bring it up so subtley that your name doesn't necessarally apear on the report.

Evil Plan #424:
Step 1) Find a programmer that has a good balance of experience with the company and communications skills
Step 2) Make sure you always say hi,m have small conversations etc
Step 3) After getting a good working relationship going, ask if what you heard was true. This will ineveitably make him pause and ask what your talking about. At this point you mention that someone over in HR had heard a rumor that this programmer was considering a move towards management of the programming group and how effective that would be compared to having an outside contractor in charge that didn't necessarally have the companies best interests at heart. Maybe throw in something like, "Kind of makes me wish I had been a programmer, I wouldn't mind management pay scale."
Step 4) If nothing immediately happens, ie said programmer going to the boss and asking for the management position the contractor is lookingat, try to push them gently with comments about how a contractor might try to replacethe programming team with their own friends, or arguments designed to be re-used by that programmer when talking to the higher ups.

Evil plan #423 is to get rid of the contractor, #424 is to reduce his capabilities to step into management

I don't know how well these would fit into your current situation, generally I judge that sort of thing on the fly and then pomptly forget their was a plan to begin with, but if nothing else it ought to provide you with some food for thought and perhaps a chuckle or two

-T

[sub]01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111[/sub]
Help, the rampaging, spear-waving, rabid network gnomes are after me!

 

[Dollie]

What I find sad about threads like this is that people seem to be afraid of communicating honestly and have to figure out a way to get around it.

I've always found it best to communicate problems the same way you communicate everything else at work. "Hey, the coffee pot is broken! The copier doesn't work! You have toilet paper trailing on your shoe! This contractor is doing more interfering than work!"

Communication is the most important part of any job. I may be spoiled in my job, but I'm sooooooooo glad I can walk up to my boss and tell him we have a programming bull in the computer china shop!

 

[MasterRacker]

I haven't used this one for a while but just knock 'em over and kick them in the face with a flaming, electrified, poison-tipped, spiked iron boot.

(Or just think about it while you're talking to them and let them wonder what the smile is all about...)


Jeff
The future is already here - it's just not widely distributed yet...

 

[JillofAllTrades]

Well, the management position is managing the four other programmers and the hardware engineer - not me! So I don't have to worry about having him as my boss. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here posting on a BB if that was the case - I'd be in my boss' office!

The HR department is the VP. Small company.

I actually did Evil Plan #424. I was already very friendly with 2 of the 4 programmers and we discussed this. They dislike him. Unfortunately, the VP told this contractor to discuss this with the programmers and of course, to his face they all agreed this was a good idea. Well, what are they going to say? If they say they don't like it and he becomes their manager, then they have shot themselves in the foot.

So, it looks like this is a done deal. :|

Dollie - if you read my other posts above, you will see that I did ask him why he was bad mouthing me and he blushingly professed his innocence. Not sure what else I could do - beat it out of him?

At this point I am taking a two fold approach. First, I am killing him with kindness - i.e., he complained in passing about a Word error and I swooped in and fixed it immediately ("Let me worry about that! [Smile]" Second, I am letting him see how friendly I am with the other programmers so he can worry about this. In fact, I scheduled a happy hour for tomorrow, conveniently forgetting that he can't go on Wednesdays. He is very wigged out about this! [Evil grin]

Christine

 

[Dollie]

JillofAllTrades,

I'm glad you were able to confront the contractor in a way, but were you ever able to talk to the VP who apparently seems serious in hiring a contractor over his own employees? While you may not want to hurt this contractor's career, you still need to protect your own.

It seems to me that your concern spreads farther than your own job, and that you're concerned about the company as well. Wouldn't it be in the company's best interest to hire someone who is capable of doing the job rather than someone who is only capable of sniping and backbiting coworkers, brown-nosing the boss, all the while trying to hide his own shortcomings?

If you feel you can't tell the boss without him dragging someone else (much less the contractor) in, you may want to encourage the others who feel the same way you do to stand up with you on this. It's always easier when someone's got your back. If the boss sees it as a general department attitude, he may rethink his options.