The Bane of My Existence

At my day job I work for an ad agency as the HR/Accounting/Admin/Office Manager. I've been there going on 8 years. I started out at the bottom; probably the lowest you can get - as the receptionist, and have steadily worked my way up to be the right hand girl to the President and CFO (the owners). I'm very proud of my accomplishments and I am totally dedicated to my work. But for the last 5 years, I have had this thorn in my side that just never seemed to go away, no matter how hard I have tried to remove it.

5 years ago, I was promoted from Admin Assistant to Executive Assistant and even earned my own assistant. We ended up hiring what seemed like a very promising employee. For now we will call her T-BOME. T-BOME seemed to have all the makings of a long-term, committed member of the Admin team. She had all the right training and the first few months were bliss. She took direction well, was easy to manage and even implemented some new strategies. But after a few months, T-BOME turned into something completely different than what she had originally portrayed. She was disorganized; it took her FOREVER to complete any given task no matter how simple it was, she lost important paperwork constantly and she fought with other employees. As a new manager without any training, I did my best to motivate her and when that didn't work, I tried to show her the consequences of her non-actions. I was completely unsuccessful so I started bringing up her performance issues to my boss, the CFO. Unfortunately for me, my boss undermined me. For some unseen reason he truly liked her. Maybe it was her sarcastic wit. Or maybe she just made him look good. To this day, I have never been able to figure it out. But her inaction to her duties was ultimately laid on my shoulders and I was the one who bore the brunt of her bad behavior, being told that I was a horrible manager.

So I trudged along in a job that I once loved, now questioning if I really was a good manager, wondering if I really did belong in that position. I wanted to go back to being an admin assistant because I couldn't bear the thought of failure and disappointment. My boss decided that T-BOME would report directly to him instead of me, which was a major blow to my achievements but at the same time, a relief. Then one day I thought my luck had changed!

After only 8 months on the job, T-BOME announced that she was pregnant. Oh thank God, I thought. Now she will take a leave of absence and not come back. Once she made her announcement, my boss had started noticing little bits and pieces of the lack of quality in her work. Because he was out of the office quite a bit, he had me do some covert undercover work to find out what was going on when he wasn't around. With my excellent reporting skills, I thought for sure she was a goner. But after many hours spent recording her many misdeeds, my work was to no avail. Basically, I wasted my time.

They hired a temp to take her place while she was on maternity leave. The temp was nice. The temp was good. When she got back, the temp stayed. Thank my lucky stars. Since they couldn't let her go (due to lack of proof of her poor performance), they demoted her to receptionist. She was a horrible receptionist. Dropping calls, loosing packages, an easy job for anyone else but her. She was up at the front desk for about 9 horrendous months and then for some unforeseen reason, they promoted her to an account coordinator. She had no experience but all I cared about was that she wouldn't be in my Admin department anymore. She wasn't my responsibility. I was happy but I was still puzzled over their decisions, and they never offered an explanation. As an AC she was worse! She threw the account team under water. By this point she was so wrapped up in all of the office drama that was going on (perhaps creating the drama herself) and spent most of her time letting everyone know that so and so "threw her under the bus".

I have to stop and laugh at this catch phrase. I have heard it so many times in the past 5 years that it will forever be ingrained into my brain. It makes me want to puke every time I hear it. But I digress. Back to my story....

T-BOME's account executive/manager was very close with the President of the agency and eventually they decided to "re-organize" the Account teams. Once again, T-BOME was demoted, this time to PR assistant until she got in a massive argument with the Director of PR. Then they moved her to Media assistant where she has been at to this day. There is nowhere left for her to go. She has exhausted her welcome in every single department in this agency. She fights with the Media Director constantly, and is always caught in some sort of lie. But she is STILL here.

While she was going downhill in the esteem of the company, I have gone up hill. In my present position, I am now in charge of HR, but to a certain degree. I can't fire anyone myself (oh I wish I could!) but I can let the owners know what is going on and they make the decision whether or not to let that person go. I have caught T-BOME lying on many occasions but when I have brought this up to my boss, he let her slide without as much as a warning, making me feel petty for pointing out T-BOME's performance. Like I have some kind of personal vendetta to get her fired (OK, maybe I do now). This has been very frustrating to me and also, to the rest of the agency. If she can get away with it, what will stop the rest of the employees from doing the same? One day I caught her jury-rigging her computer to be able to use it for personal reasons. When she was loading her own information and disks on to her computer, she crashed it and called in an outside source to fix it for her on a weekend when no one was around. That was pretty shady to me but I debated on whether I should tell my boss or not since my track record was pretty bad. I told him anyways and he blew his top this time. I had to sit in the meeting with him when he wrote her up. And he warned her that this was THE LAST time he would put up with her nonsense.

To this point, T-BOME has literally broken every rule in our policy book but my bosses are in so deep that they can't let her go due to the fact that she might sue the organization for any number of missteps on our part (such as not writing her up appropriately, not following our own policies and letting her go sooner). But the other day, she made the BIGGEST blunder anyone could ever make. T-BOME went to the President and basically told her that she wanted her work schedule changed to suit her or T-BOME would quit. I don't know where she got the audacity to think she was a top dog in the agency and that it mattered but I salute the Pres because she told T-BOME these simple little words that have made my last 5 dreadful years so sweet: "Then I Accept Your Resignation."