This post is a follow on in my personal rant series in which I am trying to understand and let go of the frustration of dealing with a colleague so hungry for sucess that it seems she will do anything for it.

So last time I left off with the first incident that occured between me and Emma, that started me doubting how genuine she was trying to make friends with me. We eventually discussed what the issue was that caused her to stop talking to me and I apologised fully letting her know that I did not realise that my actions would have hurt her, but also asking that she would speak to me straight away if there was osmething bugging her instead of not talking to me for some time. I am the type of person that once burnt I am very cautious with people so I kept my eye on her. She started coming up to me and being overly nice, in a way that grated against my nerves as it was an act. I mirrored her behaviour.

This went on until our manager went away again, now I missed this out on my first post but realise now that it was a key factor in what caused the next run in. The first time our manager went away Emma called in sick the first day. I did not think much of it at the time and as it was my first time backing up our manager did not know how the sick day would be organised with human resources. I assumed that she would call HR and HR would record it in the calendar then I would just need to know to communicate it to the team. When our manager came back to work I let her know who had been sick and for how long so that she could check that it had been recorded in the system. However, our human resources insist that sick days are recorded the same day that they occur, so there needs to be a check on whether people do call in sick or not.

So the next time our manager went on sick leave, Emma called in sick the first day aswell. I did not quite know how to go about ensuring she called in sick so I checked with the manager of another team to see if they would check. They insisted that I have the person send me their reporting better email when they return to the office. Now this email is an automatic email sent to anyone who has reported sick with our HR just asking them to reply with the day they are better and the amount of hours they will be working (which may be reduced if you are not fully recovered). No personal information whatsoever and you would normally copy in your manager. So not foreseeing any problems, when Emma came back in to the office, I asked her just to copy me in instead of the manager. She said that she did not want to and she would call HR to complain. She did call HR who did not quite know what to say. I spoke to the other manager again and he advised that if she was not willing to copy me in on the email she should copy him in. I advised her if she did not feel comfortable copying me in to the email she should copy in the other manager. She then went off to have a discussion with him about this "injustice". From that point on anyone who called sick, I advised should copy in the other manager when they report better.

This incident resulted in my outright dislike of this person. I still communicated to her, but only in professional situations and with no personal information. Surely I know that this was not the correct action to take but I realised that there was something much bigger behind these issues we were having and I did not want them to escalate as we still had to work together as colleagues.

However, a little while later we received our annual bonus and raise information, which is based on a performance rating. The information is reported on one sheet of paper, where your annual salary, bonus and new annual salary after your raise is noted. As I am very good at calculating out and explaining these figures, she came to me and placed the paper on my desk and asked me to explain everything to her in detail. *SHOCK HORROR* She refused to copy me in on her reporting better email, which contained NO personal ifnormation, yet she wants me to explain to her just how much money she will be earning for the next year based on her performance as rated by our manager????? Does this make sense to anyone else, because if it does please explain this to me?

So this covers the second major incident in this saga. After this our communication shuts down and we stop speaking to each other all together. However, due to gossip the next part become much more interesting and is when I start building up a better picture of Emma and how determined she is to suceed, it also brings me to question how I see life. I'll cover some more in my next entry.