Aggressive Co-worker makes regular angry personal calls in the office

[Emilia]

In our office we have a 42 year-old woman working as an Account Manager who has absolutely no respect for (or understanding of) boundaries. She has 20 year-old twin daughters whom she phones several times a day from the open sales floor to argue with them, cursing them, calling them b***es, c***s, etc. She also has arguments with others, including a poor shop keeper whom she threatened with the police a couple of days ago. Some of these conversations go on for ages and she shakes with anger at times. Listening to them is terrible and many of us would rather not hear about her grim life and her family problems day in day out.

 

None of us have had a quiet word with her yet because she never takes responsibility for her actions, rather, she gets defensive and starts shouting.

 

How do you handle that? Personal calls are allowed in the office to a degree and most of us make some (though personally I take them outside the office). Her nearest supervisor works outside the country in France and to be honest he isn't that much use.

 

Short of going to HR - don't think anyone wants to do that - how do you make it clear to someone who doesn't behave like an adult that her behaviour is unacceptable in public? It's not against HR rules and would rather not allow it to get too personal.

[nana841121]

she is nuts.

i am sorry that i can't contribute to the advice.

i am on the same boat as you.

[D-Lish]

Bring it to the attention of your supervisor. He may not be there that much to witness the behaviour- but he can't help if he doesn't know what's going on.

[Afishwithabike]

So no one wants to confront her and people think even if she were confronted by fellow employees, she would shout at them? The answer seems pretty clear to me. Your co-workers should report this to HR so that they can take action. This is the exact type of situation that calls for an outsider to intervene in the matter.

[Trimmer]

Bring it to the attention of your supervisor. He may not be there that much to witness the behaviour- but he can't help if he doesn't know what's going on.

I agree this has to be a part of it. If he is her supervisor, then his location may be a problem, but he still needs to know what's going on, and it still falls to him to do something about it.

 

And you referred to him as "her supervisor" - do you have a different supervisor who is on-site? That's another path you could take.

 

Bottom line, you either (1) take care of it yourselves, at the employee level, (2) send it up the line to a supervisor or HR, or (3) do nothing and live with it. I'm not feeling very creative at the moment, but those seem like the only realistic options.

 

Your co-workers should report this to HR so that they can take action. This is the exact type of situation that calls for an outsider to intervene in the matter.

And HR is exactly the entity with the charter to handle those interventions...

[D-Lish]

Sometimes I will hear about drama, an issue- months after it's happened.

I visit my stores as often as I can, but if they don't tell me what is going on, I can't help.

[spiderowl]

If you think HR would treat this confidentially, then someone should go to HR and talk to them about it. If you think they are indiscreet for some reason, then it might be worth resorting to an anoymous, typewritten letter to HR stating exactly what the problem is. Someone from HR would then have to look into it and, if they do take their job seriously, they might start asking questions or making tactful observations. It's such a problem if supervisors and their supervisors are not up to scratch as it leaves staff wondering what to do.