coworker says she hates me and refuses to have any contact … and my boss told me to fix it

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
A reader writes:
My coworker, “Jane,” was promoted to the same level as me eight months ago. I had only spoken to Jane twice in her two years at the company prior to her promotion. About a month after moving into the role, Jane set up a meeting with me. In the meeting, she yelled at me for scheduling early meetings (9 am) because she doesn’t like starting her day with meetings, she told me repeatedly she hates me, asserted the team hates me, called me names, mandated no contact with me, and then hung up on me.
I had a feeling Jane and I didn’t gel well on previous interactions, but there was never any bad blood, and I chalked it up as not everyone you meet will like you, and I remained cordial to her otherwise. I didn’t respond to any of her allegations and I immediately let my manager know about the interaction.
I was filling in for the vacancy before Jane was hired, so her clients know me and my team. Jane refuses to ask for help, and when her clients ask for something she doesn’t know, she will tell them “I can’t help you” and then the clients come to my team for assistance, since we have a previous relationship. My team is now getting in trouble for answering calls from Jane’s clients when she refuses to do so. Instead of telling her to work with my team or to ask questions when she doesn’t know something, my manager mandated that my team and I copy Jane on every message to my clients, so Jane can observe interactions.
Recently Jane and I co-presented, and she had not looked at the material, did not know the content, and admitted not knowing in front of 10 executives, putting our reputation and work at risk. She repeatedly shows up late to meetings with clients and scowls and rolls her eyes when I am speaking. I reported these behaviors to my manager.
Jane is now making accusations that I do not help her and is telling other colleagues that she is afraid of me. She will not send messages to me and directs them to others who are not familiar with the subject, which are then forwarded to me for response. I have responded to every question promptly, letting her know that I’m the appropriate contact.
She schedules daily meetings after hours with our manager, to complain about not knowing things. I get interruptions late in the evening to quickly jump in to assist Jane with step-by-step directions. The items I’m asked about are never complex or difficult and would be self-explanatory to most. I often have to repeat the information 3-4 times over several days, and Jane’s work product will still be incorrect, again driving her customers back to my team for correction.
I have tried to tell my manager I cannot assist Jane if she is unwilling to contact me directly and still is maintaining no contact under her terms. My manager is mandating that this is my problem to fix, and I need to figure out a way to solve Jane’s behaviors toward me. There doesn’t seem to be any accountability for her work or behavior, and I’m getting increasing pressure to help her be successful. Additionally, I asked my manager to collect feedback from Jane’s clients, and I’m told the feedback was just “she’s new.” How should I navigate this? Any advice?
Jane seems out of her gourd, but what’s up with your manager? Your manager sounds like a bigger problem than Jane in some ways — why is she tiptoeing around Jane and telling you to fix her issues, rather than expecting Jane to learn her job, treat people professionally, and stop this no-contact nonsense? (Also, how can Jane have a no-contact decree toward you while also complaining that you won’t help her?)
There are two possibilities here: (1) Your manager doesn’t fully understand the situation, which is why her response to it seems so off, or (b) she does fully understand the situation but is a terrible manager with awful judgment. What’s your sense of which is more likely, based on what you know of her?
If there’s any chance that she doesn’t fully understand the situation — because you didn’t give her the full unvarnished picture, or used shorthand, or felt uncomfortable spelling the whole thing out because of how bizarre it is — then the next step is to go back and really spell it out, including Jane’s repeated assertions that she hates you (!), the name-calling (!), and her announcement that she won’t have any contact with you. Those details should help your manager see that this isn’t a personality conflict; it’s being driven by Jane, who came out of the gate hostile right from the start and is behaving like a nap-deprived kindergartner rather than a professional adult.
But if you’ve told your boss about all of that and she just sucks  … well, there’s not a lot you can do. You could try cc’ing her on all those messages she wants Jane cc’d on, so she can see that you are trying to help. You can stop responding to late night messages and start only “seeing” them the next work day. But none of that gets at the core of the issue.
Normally I’d suggest trying to talk to Jane herself, but her behavior is so bonkers and her hostility is so over-the-top — and she’s already telling people she’s afraid of you, which makes me think she’ll just paint any conversation you attempt in an acrimonious light — that I don’t think that will be particularly fruitful.
Any chance you have decent HR? I’m not normally a fan of bringing in HR for this sort of thing , but given how your manager is handling this, the most effective approach — if and only if your HR is generally pretty good — could be to talk to them. Framing it as “Jane told me she hates me and refuses to speak to me and my boss is insisting I fix this — what do you advise?” might prompt some action from them.
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