Work Advice – What To Do When Your New Coworker Is AWFUL

(FYI, this is long so if you don’t wanna hear me whine about work then you can skip this thread LOL)

So I am in a situation… a situation that is getting harder and harder to deal with and I need advice other then “find a new job”

I’ve worked with this girl for almost a year now. (as background I am a Kitchen Designer at Lowe’s currently. I have been doing it for 5 years and before that I was a designer at Home Depot for 8 years so I have been designing a long time) There are only 2 designers in the store so it’s me and her. I lost my previous co-designer because he retired. He was the kind of co-designer you pray for. Knowledgeable, helpful, thoughtful, considerate, and above all… COMPETENT.

My job consists of helping customers, designing and selling complex designs including cabinets, countertops, backsplash, flooring, and installation services. Designing functional and beautiful kitchen and bath spaces, you get the idea. But Lowe’s isn’t a design showroom. It’s not the 8-5 Monday thru Friday deal. It’s a hardware store so there is also aisle maintenance, downstocking stock product, pulling and loading orders, cleaning and maintaining the department, and of course dealing with all the customers whether it be to sell someone a washing machine or find the correct sized nut or bolt for their project. So there is a lot going on all the time. It’s retail.

So… I get this new girl. Never designed a day in her life, but because she has no experience hey can low ball her on pay right? Wrong. She makes just a few cents less then me… someone who’s been designing for over 10 years. Okay fine… minimum wage has increased drastically over the past year with the fight for 15 movement, so I guess it’s good they are raising the pay of new hires… whatever. I’m comfortable, so it is what it is. I’ve tried barking up the I deserve a merit raise tree, it’s not happening. Fine. So maybe she’s a go getter and will work hard for her money then… She’s only 22 so 18 bucks an hour is pretty good right… well that’s also a no. The girl doesn’t do a damn thing except sit on her butt and play on her phone all day. She also has 2 kids (a 2 and a 6 year old) so she wants to work “mother’s hours” but it was explained to her prior to taking the job that this is a full time/full flex position and weekends and nights are required… but does she ever work them? No… I work them all.

I don’t have kids… and I could deal with it if she were at least willing to learn and strive to be good at her job, but she can’t sell a single design without a huge issue blowing up and causing a million problems. Cabinets don’t fit, doors and drawers open and collide with eachother, some cabinets can’t even be installed because they’re not meant to be used in such a way. Example, You can’t hang a wall peninsula cabinet on the wall… (a wall cabinet that has doors on both the front and the back) They are meant to be installed against a ceiling… hence why they have working doors on both the front and back… so why are they going to hang the door side against a wall? They’re not… so you sold the customers a cabinet that can’t be used, and cost twice as much as it should have if it were sold correctly… This is just one example. If you aren’t a designer I don’t expect folks to know what I am talking about… and I realize she is inexperienced. I try to show her what she does wrong and she has the attention span of a flea. She has her nose in her phone within seconds. She makes all the same mistakes I made as a rookie designer but she won’t learn how to not make the same mistakes over and over if she doesn’t learn what she did wrong. However it’s always someone else’s fault. “That’s what they asked for” she will say. They asked for something they can’t install that cost twice the price as the thing they needed? Sure okay. I tried looking over her designs before she sold them and she got offended and said she didn’t need my help. Okay… fine then deal with your problems then and stop shoving them all at me to fix. Then she just schedules consults to fix the issues on her days off so I get stuck doing it anyway.

So I have been putting out fires for the past 11 months basically. Cleaning up messes I didn’t make and getting screamed at by angry customers who’s kitchens I didn’t design. I’ve had it out with management time and time again and nothing changes…

So now the nice weather arrives. Two weeks prior to Mother’s Day 2019 I was told by my manager, that she approached him and was read the riot act because I had Mother’s Day off and she did not. I was off per my standard rotation and she did not request it off, but in her argument it should have gone without saying because she is a mother and I am not that she should have had Mother’s Day off. Because of similar prior issues with her schedule accommodations she did not ask me to switch because I had already had occasions such as this with every other holiday I happened to have off per my rotation. (4th of July 2018, Halloween 2018, & Christmas Eve 2018 which I was off for all but then forced to work because she snapped about not having the hoilday off with her children. Halloween and 4th of July annoyed me since I worked every other holiday, but Xmas eve was the last straw as that is the only holiday I really wanted and at that point more then deserved) so she has been reluctant to ask me for any favors since I made clear I was done doing them for her because of being forced to work every holiday because of her complaints to management about her schedule.

Nevertheless, I was feeling generous and switched my schedule anyway to accommodate her request as I had no plans anyway. Management approached me nicely and I didn’t refuse. So then she repays the favor by calling out that Saturday to ensure she would have the entire weekend off. Mind you the prior weekend was my weekend off also but I also had to work for her as she provided documentation from a doctor because she said her face felt numb. She goes to the doctor like 4 times a month with bogus doctors notes. The last one was because her toe hurt…

I had already been in discussions with her via Facebook instant messenger no more then 30 minutes prior to the call out asking when she had put in for vacation time for so I could put in some for myself and be sure not to overlap when I was told she was not coming in do to car trouble. I messaged her simply “I switched so you could have mother’s day off and you called out today. I guess you got your weekend off. LOL” She responded by calling my manager directly on his personal cell phone and stating I called and yelled at her and cussed her out for not coming to work. This was not true in any way shape or form and but I got hauled into the office and asked to hand over my phone so they could check the message I sent her which I gladly obliged. With an eye roll I was told not to message her again.

It took every ounce of strength within me however as she posted photos throughout of her and her family on snapchat riding bikes and going go-carting… in the meantime I am the one at trouble and working the weekend alone. She apparently had no trouble getting there but couldn’t quite make it into her job. It was absolutely gorgeous weather that day too. The whole ordeal when right up my behind sideways and is what I would call the final straw that broke my back.

Numerous times she has stolen my sales by selling my completed jobs because my schedule is a complete disaster to accommodate her, some of which being very large kitchen cabinets sales. We’re not on commission but we do get recognized for high sales. She has scheduled stock kitchens for pick ups on her days off while not pulling them and me getting stuck doing it, she does not clean or dust anything without being told by management to do it and if she does she is easily distracted and often leaves the task unfinished. She does not take out the trash, she does not clean up her mess, she does not ever properly close the department to leave it “opening ready” by pulling cabinets forward, sweeping, or down stocking or any sort of routine aisle maintenance. If a display needs attention or there is a safety issue she will point it out but do nothing about it. It will sit for days unless I fix it. She takes no initiative what so ever and constantly leaves early, using her kids as an excuse.

The real fault is of management and the lack of accountability… I feel like a complaining little kid when I have to try and explain why this is completely unfair. I come in looking miserable and everyone thinks it’s because I hate my job… I don’t hate my job! If I hated my job I wouldn’t be here. People see me pissed off stomping around the department, and it’s not the job, it’s her and her zero accountability.

I tried to get ONE Saturday off. Just ONE about a month and a half ago. Nope, couldn’t have it because she did. So I was forced to call out. However, because I didn’t want any customer to get screwed over by coming in and expecting me to be here I closed myself out for the day for appointments. That was nobody can schedule a consultation and come in to find nobody there to help them. She saw that I closed myself up and when she asked why I expressly said to her because I can’t come in and you already have the day off so I have to call out. PLEASE don’t run and tell management. She acted appalled like she would ever do such a thing. I come in that Sunday, and I get spoken to because her mother told on me. Oh yea, I forgot to mention… her MOTHER is the manager of the front of the building… You like that?

I’ve just hit my 5 year mark and now I get 3 weeks vacation plus 5 holidays so it’s almost like 4 weeks vacation a year. I’m not going to quit because of this entitled little upstart…. I just don’t know what to do to deal with her. She’s got it in with management because of her mom… the fact she called my manager on his personal cell phone I think is completely inappropriate but nobody seems to care. I want to punch her in her smug face. Anyone else would have long been fired. Now I caught her in my designs trying to change things so my orders have foul ups because if I have a mistake then apparently that makes her look good? Luckily I am so OCD I double and triple check everything before I sell it and have now resorted to putting a lock on my filing cabinet to keep my customers more private.

It shouldn’t be like this. My old designer and I helped each other, worked together, and thought about each others well being. We rotated holidays to be fair, rotated weekends and each did our fair share of work around the department. We would make sure our own orders were pulled because we would feel bad if the other person got stuck doing extra work that wasn’t their responsibility. If you were closing you swept and did trash, if you opened you down stocked… I have to do everything all the time no matter what and the fact management doesn’t care makes me want to just be a useless lump too, but if I did that my butt would be gone! I also just can’t be that kind of worker… no matter my job… even if I was a poop shoveler I would still take pride in my poop shoveling. I just can’t be that useless idiot that has to be told what to do. If something is dusty… clean it. If something is messy, fix it… it’s common sense.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying to transfer to a different store, but even that is impossible. My manager has me on a freeze here with the district manager and requested for me not to be moved because it would be detrimental to the store… Despite our store not being the highest grossing and her stealing about 80K worth of sales this year from me I am still the 3rd designer in the region for sales…. so they KNOW I do all the work… I guess they think I’ll just keep taking it like a door mat forever… I have so far but I’m really at my breaking point.

I truly believe calling corporate or HR will do absolutely nothing… so what to do other then go gangsta and slash this chicks tires… no.. that was a joke… maybe…

No really… it’s like working with someone who knows they wont get fired because mommy is a manager… so I guess get rid of mommy who is protecting her, but she’s been a manager here for almost 2 decades so that’s not gonna happen… I’m definitely not having kids to combat this…. so that’s out. All I can do it try and make her so miserable she quits but that’s kind of hard when she has such an advantage over me.

Any thoughts?