my coworker asks people the same questions I just answered for her

by Alison Green on December 9, 2012

A reader writes:

I have a quick question about how to deal with a new coworker. She’s still learning the ins-and-outs of the office and asks me multiple questions throughout the day. Every time I answer her, she immediately asks another coworker the same exact question! It’s really insulting and it’s like she doesn’t trust me especially since the other coworkers only repeat everything that I’ve told her. (She knows I can hear this since we sit right next to each other and she usually shouts the question to a coworker across the room.)

How can I get her to stop asking me questions in the first place? I really want to tell her that what she’s doing is annoying and insulting. Do you know the logic behind this ?

By the way, I don’t have a reputation for being unreliable and my good performance led to me receiving two raises in my first year on the job (I’ve only been here 14 months).

Wow, that is annoying.

Why not just ask her about it in the moment? The next time she asks a coworker a question that she just asked you, say, “Jane, I’ve noticed that you sometimes ask people the same questions I just answered for you, and I’m confused by it. Do my answers not make sense to you? I’m glad to spend time helping you, but it’s confusing when I give you an answer and then you immediately ask someone else the same question.”

Come back and tell us her answer, too, since I’m as baffled as you are.

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{ 63 comments }

{ 63 comments… read them below }

  1. Anon*

    If she is asking things like “who sorts the mail in the department?”, that’s kinda silly, but if she is asking about actual work tasks or processes, it may not be that outrageous. Oftentimes, two people in similar roles have very different ways of getting the same thing done, and getting more than one perspective is a good idea. If I were the new woman, though, I’d be careful to phrase it better, like “Jane told me that she does X, Y, and Z to accomplish task A, is that how you do it, too?”

    1. Anon*

      Sorry for the double-post, but to go one further, I’d even, in talking to Jane, say something like “Thank you. I’m gonna go talk to Joe, too, to find out more about his process for accomplishing task A”.

    2. Sarah G*

      This. In one of my previous positions, there was a huge learning curve and a ton of detail involved. Methods and policies were constantly evolving, and each person had their own way of doing things. Sometimes the variations were equally correct, but oftentimes someone had unintentionally developed a habit of doing incorrectly. If files weren’t audited, they might go on making the same mistake without realizing it.
      When my manager wasn’t available, I found that if I asked 2 people the same question and got the same answer, it was safe to assume that it was correct. But if I got conflicting answers, which was common, I would then be sure to ask my manager later.
      Because we had 360 evaluations, I discovered that one of my colleagues was frustrated for the same reason you are. It was anonymous but I knew exactly who it was, and wished he would’ve told me his concerns directly. I’m still friends with that person (we now both work different positions at the same organization), so I guess it wasn’t a big deal, but it was never my intention to be rude or disrespectful.
      Talk to this colleague, and ask her about this without using words like “annoying and insulting.” Give her the benefit of the doubt until you have this conversation, and let her explain where she’s coming from.

  2. Josh S*

    It’s possible that she has a different communication style than you, and that while you’re sending a perfectly clear message, she’s on a different wavelength and unable to ‘receive it’. This has nothing to do with you being a poor communicator, but that sometimes people just don’t hear what we’re saying despite our best efforts.

    My wife is somewhat the same way. There are frequently times that she asks for advice, I’ll tell her to do A, B, and C and she’ll basically ignore it. A day or three later, someone else will tell her she ought to do A, B, and C (albeit in slightly different words) and she’ll say “Wow! What a great idea!” and proceed to do just that. Makes me laugh (in frustration) every time.

    But what can I do? It’s not that I’m bad at communicating–I’m just broadcasting on a different wavelength than the one she’s receiving on.

    1. Katy*

      If this is the case, I have to wonder why the new coworker would continue to ask the OP questions if they don’t understand the answers.

  3. cncx*

    i had an ex colleague who did that and it turned out being a time waster for the department- we were a pool of paralegals. One had been in the company the longest and the colleague’s typical MO was to ask the “senior” person for like 10 minutes how to do a routine task (find a litigation file, for example) and then go around as ask one or two more people “to be sure.” It got to the point that we were all losing time. Finally the senior person told her to save all her questions for one point in the day and she would answer then, and back up with the rest of us where needed. Unbelievable hand holding. This went on for like two months.

  4. Marie*

    I did this at my first job (when I was very young). This may not be the case with your coworker, but for me, there were two reasons:

    1. I’ve very rarely worked in a place with a good training program. Info is sort of locked in people’s heads, and they don’t always seem to know what’s important to share and what’s not. So I might ask one person how to do X, and they say, “Do it this way, but remember to always check for Y, because once I didn’t and that took a while to fix,” and I ask another person, and they say, “We do X this way because the person who worked in your position before used to do Z.” Both bits of info made me way better at my job and gave me really helpful context to understand both the task and the culture of the office.

    2. It was a really awkward way to start conversation! I didn’t know at first how to make and maintain appropriate work relationships, and I was really worried that if I tried to be “friendly” I might come across as too personal, but if I didn’t talk at all I wouldn’t get to know anybody. So while I was new, asking about “safe” work topics was a way to look like I was proactively trying to learn (and I was!) while also starting conversations with my coworkers.

    2. Ask a Manager* Post author

      I can totally see that, but I bet you weren’t doing it the way the OP’s coworker is — repeating the same question right in front of her with no context for why she’s not simply using the first answer.

      1. Ryan*

        Yeah…I’ve worked placed where everybody has a different answer but there’s a way to go about asking other people for their own personal methods of how to get things done w/o smacking your trainer in the face with it. Presumably if someone has been assigned to train you they know more than you do..especially if you’r new. The kind of behavior the trainee is engaging in isn’t going to win her/him any friends. Yeah it’s important to get things done right and yes sometimes there is more than one way. Instead of flat out asking other co-workers the trainee needs to pay attention to what is being explained, take it in, do the job as instructed while keeping eyes open for how other people do it and maybe down the road say, “Hey Frank, how do you do this process? I just want to make sure I’m doing it right.”

  5. Anonymous*

    I can be like the person that is described in the above situation. In my experience, I ask similar questions to other people because I like to get difference perspectives on a problem, not because the first answer is untrustworthy. I agree that you should say something to your co-worker, along the lines that “I feel ‘x’ and ‘y’ because of ‘z'”. People have different communication styles and different methods of processing information, and there are repercussions of these differences if they aren’t discussed and made explicit (i.e., feeling insulted and not wanting to answer future questions).

    1. Kou*

      This is me exactly. And you get more information by asking several people, as a few people have mentioned before, because you’ll often get several different answers. It also eliminates the possibility that any single answer you get will be misinterpreted, or just flat out wrong. And that has nothing to do with who you’re asking, really.

  6. Anonymous*

    One of my old coworkers did this all the time. She’d ask me how to do X. I’d tell her this is how you do it and point her to the section in the handbook. Then she would ask 2-3 other reps. Then she would ask 1-2 managers. Eventually she said she likes to ask a lot of people the same question to see if we are all on the same page… which #1 isnt her job #2 she wouldnt bring it up to anyone if we all gave her different answers.
    Eventually, I would ignore her (by email or messenger) or if she came over I’d say “it’s in the handbook” Just thinking about it makes me pissed again ahahhaa

  7. Sara*

    hmmm i remember in another blog post some time ag, someone in the comments mentioned that the person who asks many times may come from a culture that doing otherwise would get the person fired. Possible I may be remembering incorrectly, but is this person new to the work force?

    1. Lala*

      Yea I remembered that post too. I think that person came from a country where making mistakes at work would get toying trouble with the authorities and if you weren’t 100% sure it was correct , you wouldn’t do it

  8. Katie the Fed*

    You could always go with the empowering-but-slight-annoying approach of feeding the question back to her to get her thinking more on her own:

    “Well, Jane, let me ask you that. What do you think the best way is to handle that?”

    And then you can encourage her if she comes up with a good solution. This gets her thinking for herself and will make her think twice before asking you silly questions.

    1. Mike C.*

      I really, really hate it when people do that to me. I’m asking a question because I don’t know the answer, having me sit there and guess is a waste of my time and makes me feel like an idiot and that my time isn’t valuable.

      1. LK*

        I agree with Mike. It’s rude and demeaning to answer a new employee’s question with a version of “well what do you think is the answer?” If someone did that to me I wouldn’t ask them for help ever again.

        1. books*

          Depends on situation, “What have you tried” is better, and it also shows they’re probably slackers who haven’t done anything.

          1. Jamie*

            After asking if they’ve rebooted* before coming to me, I do like what have you tried. It gives me information and a starting point.

            If the answer is nothing, well, unless it’s something where they shouldn’t have attempted self-help than that gives me information, too.

            *Or to quote Roy Trenneman, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

      2. Katie the Fed*

        Agree in most cases, but this sounds like an employee who is pestering her coworkers. And sometimes people need a nudge in the right direction to know that their instincts actually are good. If nothing else, it would help the immediate problem of this person asking the OP too many questions – the letter writer specifically said “how do I get her to stop asking me questions in the first place?”

        It’s not something I normally do but I also don’t encourage helplessness. There comes a point when I expect you to use your best judgement to come up with solutions. An employee bothering all of her coworkers with the same questions might need to be re-vectored.

  9. JfC*

    As a tech writer (in training) I have to say giving procedural information can be harder than you think. Sometimes people need repetition, or slight changes in word choice to really understand what to do. I wouldn’t take it personally.

    1. Pam*

      At my first job, I would often have ask my direct supervisor to explain something to me. Sometimes I wouldn’t get it all, but was too afraid of appearing incompetent in front of him, so I’d ask someone else. Even if it was the same answer, having them explain it again (in a different way / their words) really helped.

      Although, this doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here. If it is, she’s going about it in a really weird way.

  10. Amouse*

    The only thing I can think of is that she wants to get a few different perspectives on the answer and then come up with her own mthod of doing things based on that but yet is clueless that this might come off as disrespectful and annoying to people giving the help or doesn’t care if it does.

    My office had a situation like this with a new co-worker and it was more of a communication-style issue. She would ask for help and when any of us were trying to explain something to her she would constantly interrupt or act like we didn’t know what we were talking about even though she was asking us the question! We were all incredibly annoyed after her first three weeks like this. When the two of us were alone in the office and she told me my co-worker seemed unhelpful I finally just said:
    “Jane, do you want my honest feedback? (she answered yes) I can’t say for sure why co-worker X is not coming across as helpful (even htough I did but I made it about me) but for myself, sometimes I find when I try to give you help that you interject as I am trying to explain and it can be frustrating because it feels as though you are not listening. Also sometimes when you respond with ‘No that’s not it’ when we’re trying to help it can seem like you don’t trust that we know how to do the job,” She handled this pretty well and was glad I told her. She did get a bit defensive but overall she took my feedback in. She’s still a pretty bad interrupter but i think she’s trying to be conscious of it.

    I agree with Alison that being straightforward about soemthing like this is the best way to deal with it. Good luck!

  11. Sabrina*

    I had a coworker who did this. She’d ask me how to do something, I’d tell her. Ten minutes later another coworker would call and ask me the same question. I’d say “Did Amy just ask you that?” She say yes, but she didn’t know the answer, thought I’d find out if I did. Problem was, Amy was older than me had a huge issue with someone who was near her daughter’s age actually knowing how to do things. The company, of course, made her a manager. Dilbert principle at its finest.

  13. Laurie*

    Ha. My first reaction was to recommend the OP just say in the moment, jokingly, “Hey are you gonna turn around and ask someone else this question?”. But after reading the other posters’ more nuanced responses, maybe follow their advice haha.

    1. Not So NewReader*

      Nuanced response on first attempt.
      This response on subsequent attempts!

      Seriously though. I think it depends on the personality of the speaker. If you can carry this one in a light-hearted, off the cuff manner, you can get away with it. And sometimes this approach brings about results when the more serious explanation draws nothing.

      I have done this on jobs- asked two people the same question. But I tried to do it with some discretion…

  14. jesicka309*

    I had a smiliar issue when I first started here. I picked up the job super quickly (was rewarded with a quarterly award within 4 months!), and was pretty proficient and knowledgeable about things.
    My team was being really awful to me (tall poppy syndrome maybe?) and had a habit of pretending I didn’t exist.
    Often things would go like this:
    Jane: Hey, what’s the procedure for XYZ again? (to the group at large)
    Me: We have to do ABC now, then notify Dave if it happens again.
    Jane: Anyone? Sue, do you know?
    Sue: No idea, let’s ask Dave.

    Jane would be sitting right next to me while this all happened. Sometimes they would acknowledge I’d spoken, then continue asking the question!
    I gave up trying to interact with them at all – I think they were upset I’d mastered their jobs quicker than they had!

    2. Annisa*

      If the next time that happens just say,

      “I don’t know, well I do know, maybe the others have better solutions and answers than me, why not ask them?”

  15. Jamie*

    I have worked with someone who, when instructed by someone they found intimidating or someone whose communication style want great, would come to me or others for a reality check about what they heard or for clarification. On the other side Ive overheard people clarifying instructions I’ve given with each other.

    But the OP’s situation just seems bizarre to me. And she shouts across the office? Is this comonplace in your office, or is she the only one yelling across the room. That alone sounds like a nightmare.

  16. Cassie*

    I have a coworker who does this, but he asks questions regarding policy and not regarding procedure. It’s annoying because he’ll ask me, he’ll ask the accounting person, he’ll ask HR manager and then will finally ask his supervisor (the dept head). The rest of us can only tell him what we “think” makes sense – it’s his supervisor who calls the shots so he should just ask her directly and stop wasting our time.

    Some places want everything done the same way while other places don’t care as long as the end result is correct (our office is the latter). It’s unclear which one the OP’s office is. I get that as a new worker, one might want to hear different methods to figure out what works and what doesn’t – but it would be a better idea for the new worker to ask one coworker, use that method for a while, and then ask another coworker, rather than just asking multiple coworkers at one time.

  18. pidgeonpenelope*

    My one suggestion involves getting her to stop asking questions in the first place. I recommend teaching her how to fish which she needs to be doing in the first place. My work has a intranet resource where all of our policies and procedures are noted. When we have new hires, we teach them how to use that resource so that they can be self sufficient. Is there one available for your workplace’s new hire? Or, is there any literature? It’s ridiculously annoying to be asked questions over and over again especially when they can and should try and get the answers themselves first. I feel for you!

  19. Anonymous*

    Adding on, it might be interesting to listen to how other people answer the question. While the method is certainly… singular, who knows, you could learn something at the same time. Our culture is very open, and repetitive questions have brought issues out to light. Granted, not quite in this fashion, but it’s always been interesting when several of us realize that we all have a different “right” way of doing things. So much so that I now include that in my informal employee orientation manual.

  20. dejavu2*

    This is obviously a different situation, but something similar used to happen to me. I provided administrative support in an office. We used an office management computer program that was extremely complicated and difficult. The senior people I was supporting didn’t understand it at all, so even simple tasks that had to be executed within the program fell to the office manager and me. The office manager was driven insane by this, and started to deal with it by telling our bosses that the program couldn’t do certain things that they wanted it to, only to spare herself the hell of having to figure it out and then explain it to them. I had no idea she was doing this. One of our bosses figured it out, and started to run an experiment wherein she would ask the office manager to do something, the office manager would claim it was impossible, the boss would bring it to me, and I would spend two hours figuring out how to do it and then explain it to the boss. Eventually, there was a big reveal re the experiment. The office manager was furious, and I was mortified.

    Unfortunately, that was not the most dysfunctional office I ever worked in.

  21. Suzanne*

    My reaction is that the OP’s co-worker probably has lived through a couple of jobs like I have at which every question asked had at least three different answers, depending on who was talking and what day it was. She may simply be testing the waters and thinking that if she gets the same answer (wonder of wonders! miracle of miracles!) from two different people, she may be close to the real answer.

    OP should just bide her time. If her place of employment is anything like those I’ve often been blessed with, the co-worker will soon give up asking anyone anything at all out of sheer frustration.

  22. AnonEMoose*

    I had a co-worker who did this. But she’d do it if she didn’t like the answer the first person gave her. And when the second person gave her the answer, she’d get confrontational and argue about. I expect that from clients…it’s really annoying from co-workers.

  23. AB*

    Although the explanations about why the co-worker is doing this make sense, it still doesn’t justify the behavior. Like AAM and others have said, the co-worker should know better and think that anyone would be very annoyed to be asked a question and hear the person ask the exact same question to someone else right away.

    If you want to verify that everybody does a task the same way, or want to confirm the information, you could at least do it discreetly. Otherwise, it just looks like you don’t trust the person who just took the time to answer your question, or can’t understand what she says (and if any of these things are true, the co-worker should have started to go directly to the second person the next time she had a question).

    No matter that’s the reason behind this behavior, it’s simply not polite the way the co-worker is behaving.

  24. KayDay*

    As someone who has been chastised for following a coworker’s directions, I understand why the questioner might be doing this. As someone whose advice has been ignored, only to have the person then do exactly what I recommended after being told by someone else, I also understand the OP’s frustration.

    OP – you need to talk to your coworker. Both about the frequency of the questions and why they ask other people after you answer. Say something like, “did that answer your question? I’ve noticed you tend to ask Betty after me; is that because my answer was not clear or because you wanted a different perspective?” Also, it’s important to be available to answer questions from a new employee (how else will they learn?), but it’s okay to tell them that with tasks X, Y, or Z it’s okay to make an educated guess first and then ask, because mistakes can be easily corrected (or tell them that with A, B, and C, always ask first because mistakes cannot be corrected). If the information is written down somewhere, be sure to tell them, “actually if you you have a question about the widget database, there’s an online help page you should use. You can access it by clicking on the button in the upper right corner”

  25. Brooke*

    I have been having this problem from two girls in my office. Not only do they do it to me, they do it to each other. I’ve recently moved up to office manager and they will ask each other questions, and then come to me as if they never asked their team member. When I found out about this, I spoke with both of them together and told them it was disrespectful and rude and to stop. Then, I happened to be filling in for one of them and the girl I was working beside asked me a question. I answered it and when she went to do the work in the computer, she missed a step and since it didn’t work the way she thought it should, she called MY boss and asked him right in front of me! I politely cut in and apologized to my boss for interrupting, but explained to him that I had already answered her question. She snapped at me and told me what I had said did not work, so I asked her to do it in front of both of us and then advised she had missed a step that I had told her. I then asked her right in front of my boss why she did not ask me the question when it did not work the way she thought it should and she did not know what to say.
    Maybe take an approach like that? When your co-worker asks you a question, then calls on someone else, tell that person that you’ve already answered the question and then ask your co-worker why your answer did not suffice in her mind. Either that, or like a comment above that I saw, just tell her that it is disrespectful for her to ask you a question, then turn around and ask someone else as if you would give the wrong answer and tell her that if she does not trust your answers, maybe she should begin by asking someone she does trust.

  26. I wish I could say*

    A few of my coworkers do this to me. They ask me a question and then go ask one, two, three more others as well. It also happens in my “real life”, so I’ve come to think that I just don’t “sell” my responses, even though I am certain my answer is correct. (I am not referring to opinion based questions (OK, well, sometimes. . .), but on hard and fast rules questions. I have become SO VERY FRUSTRATED by this. I gather I come across as an idiot, but it leaves me to wonder, why oh why do people keep asking me questions?
    Back to the coworkers . . . I have been in my current office the longest (pushing 20 yrs.) so do have a pretty good handle on much of what goes on around here. One person in particular (who ranks above me) CONSTANTLY asks me what to do in a certain situation then goes DIRECTLY to our supervisor for her take.
    I know though, that much like my inability to sound sure of myself, I am very uncomfortable about calling someone out on their behavior. (But I can vent here and THAT is awesome!)

    1. Suz*

      My vote is answer shopper.

      I used to work with someone like that. When he didn’t like my answer because it would require more work on his part, he’d ask my boss, hoping to get a different answer. This wasn’t a case of there being multiple correct answers. My answer was “It’s off spec so you’re not allowed to ship it.” but he was looking for “Go ahead and ship it and we’ll hope the customer doesn’t notice”.

  28. Cruella DaBoss*

    UGGGG! I have one of these too! Luckily, everyone in the department directed this person back to me for the “correct” answer, so that habit died rather quickly.

  29. Anonner*

    My coworker does this, too! I actually wrote into AAM because her questions in general were getting out of hand (here: https://www.askamanager.org/2012/10/my-coworkers-questions-are-getting-out-of-hand.html) and the only explanation I can think of is she’s so terrified to make a move one way or another she likes to have an answer “confirmed.” It is particularly obnoxious when I give her an answer I KNOW is correct, and then she says “Okay, I’ll see what xyz says.” and then later she will IM me with “Just so you know, the procedure is [exactly what I told her].”

    YOU DON’T SAY?

  30. some1*

    The only thing I can guess is that she doesn’t understand or remember your answer, and is too embarrassed to ask for clarification.

  31. Editor*

    If the employee comes to you again, ask her about her learning style — does she follow written directions better, does she need to hear something more than once, does she need a walk-through, or does she — as other people have suggested — believe she needs more than one opinion?

    At one time, I had to back-up another employee who did more complicated computer stuff than I did. Her idea of “training” was to have me stand by her desk while she clicked through the task. That didn’t work for me, especially for backup tasks I did every three or four months. I prefer to do the task myself so I have some muscle memory for it.

    So also find out if a better solution would be:
    1. An email description of how to do the task instead of a verbal answer.
    2. A description of how to do it with a supervised trial run.
    3. A verbal answer followed by her retelling the procedure back to you so you can correct any missed steps and she can set the procedure more firmly in her mind.
    4. A longer description of how to do a procedure, followed by a short summary in which you condense the steps, so that “Find the file on the ABCD server and open it, then save it to server MNO so the original file remains as a backup because blah blah. Watch out for difficulty K. Then open the file in software Z and do task R, because blah blah blah …” which then becomes, in summary, “Find the file. Save it to MNO. Open using Z. Do R. …” This gives the complicated explanation with reasons and contingencies. Then it provides an action list that helps her remember the steps without all the explanation.

    I had an employee who drove other people crazy. What I found out is that if I took the time to explain things while she wrote painstakingly complete notes down, then let her do the procedure while I supervised, she asked very few follow-up questions because she was using her notes to get the work done. The training process was slower with her than with others, but once she’d followed her notes a few times without my help she was good to go, and she asked fewer dumb follow-up questions. I had younger employees who claimed they learned faster, but had to retaught after a week’s vacation, or were careless about doing every step necessary. It was sort of a tortoise-and-hare scenario.

    1. Jamie*

      Excellent advice. I am a huge fan of training people with the big picture. The whys and the data flow, as much as appropriate, how what they are doing affects other parts of the system and co-workers.

      But this works best IMO when accompanied by documentation in the form of screen shots which is basically a cheat sheet of click here, go there, enter this, etc. some tasks can be documented so an alien could drop down, know othing about earth (much less the company) and follow the instructions and get the job done.

  32. WorkerBee*

    My boss and co-workers also do this. It is frustrating, and highly annoying, and makes me feel very disrespected. I’m the manager over a very specific product our company sells, and, my boss will often ask questions that have very simple answers “Does product X do Z?” The answers are basically yes/no, with a tiny bit of explanation as to why it is yes/no. I provide an answer that is straightforward, in a matter-of-fact way. And then, he will ignore me completely (even a written emailed answer), and then go to the provider of Product X (who is our affiliate) and ask them the question I’ve already answered. Then, he will tell me what they said, as if I never answered the question in the first place! And, I there are co-workers in the same general space as myself, who will ask a question out loud, to ‘whomever’, but then ignore my answer, as if they can’t hear me at all. I’ve learned to ignore those ‘shout-out’ questions and am not really bothered by them anymore. It’s the way my boss disrespects me that is the most frustrating part.

    1. Jackie*

      Most of us want to be good team players, not crazymakers. These passive-aggressive people seek to control the emotions of others and thereby, control their behavior. Ignore it if possible. Or speak up and tell them they have hurt your feelings. I used the “hurt my feelings” statement and got an apology once from my crazymaker.

  33. Anon*

    I just had someone start in my office that is about on my last nerves. I am her immediate boss and it is just two of us in the office. She is new to the business and learning.

    I have taught her policy, I have instructed her to read the manual, I have also emailed to her policies regarding PARTICULAR tasks so I have a record that she read it. She doesn’t seem to “retain” this information but when I am gone, she has taken it upon herself to make decisions (not in her job description).

    Today, I specifically instructed her to verify something by faxing or emailing to get a a signature and she did it by phone. I again told her she was to fax or email the verification form and she called the person back, asked one more question and hung up. I told her she WOULD get the signature and I was fuming. She blurted out, why do I have to email it, I got the information fast on the phone.

    I am speaking to my boss on Monday about this. I am not sure how to handle this without blowing up (this is a first for me). I do not do the hiring or firing and I have been stuck with people I know are not going to work out in one of the busiest offices in my company.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Put together a list of the problems with her, what you’ve tried to do to resolve them, and signs that the problems are continuing, and go to your boss to advocate that she be replaced.

  34. Kevin*

    I’ve had this happen many times in all kinds of jobs as an IT project manager then as an information security specialist. I found that if people are trying to take the fast way to get something done (bypass process) or do something they shouldn’t do, they’ll ask multiple people until someone finally says “yes”.

  35. Same Issue - Help!*

    I’m having the exact same issue with a co-worker except he keeps going to our supervisor and it’s not a process question. My co-worker is new-ish to the team, and is in a junior level role to me but we both report to the same manager.

    He asked me about a name that was wrong on a feed we recieve from a different LOB and asked if he should reach out to the vendor. I told him that I had noticed this as well, and had brought it to the vendors attention but that it wouldn’t impact our numbers since we pull data by a different key than name and there wasn’t anything further we needed to do for this on our end.

    Well I left for vacation the next day and while I was gone he sent an email to our supervisor and CC’d me saying that he had found an error on the feed and asking if he should reach out to the vendor.

    I’m frustrated by this because I believe it reflects poorly on me. It looks like I didn’t notice this error, and it also looks like I failed to review my work appropriately with my co-worker who would be covering some aspects of the report while I was on vacation.

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