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.

The title of this post refers to the hunger for success, and alludes to a situation I have been dealing with at work and am having a hard time letting go. I feel that I need to understand the situation before I can let it go and therefore I will start recording this issue in this blog and in that way I hope to it out of my system. These rants relate to personal finance in that it affects my attitude to earning more money.

I would to set the scene: I work for a international company at their headquaters and in my work I have to work with people for all sorts of different backgrounds and cultures. Now since I've been exposed to an international environment from a very young age this does not bother me, and I do consider myself very flexible when it comes to other people. Well just over a year and a half ago I was working in a team of about 10 people when a lady from Jamaica joined us. Let's call her Emma. She appeared to be a very beautiful, intelligent, well spoken, quiet and serious lady. Emma appeared to pick up the job very quickly and did not readily involve herself in the frivolous antics of them team. She would take every opportuntiy to ask questions about the job and would ensure she wrote down the answer. we were all very pleased to have her as part of the team, despite her reticience to join in our attempts to lighten the spirit in the office. Then slowly after time she started joining in the conversations and bulding relationships with the other team members. At the time I was one of the longer serving team members and everyone in the team would come to check their question with me, including the new manager. I was the team mentor and the manager's back up, however it is important to know I did not mentor Emma.

Then as she began to realise that I would alsways give her a full answer to her questions, whereas the other team members did not always know how to answer her questions, she started coming to me and adopting me as her mentor. She did this by flattering me and she tried very hard to become friends with me, even offering to walk with me on my way home, which meant she would need to walk 20 minutes instead of 10 to get to the strain station. We seemed to be bulding a freiendship, albeit rather quickly. During these walks she would tell me about her personal situation and as she eventually filed for divorce from her husband, these conversations were quiet personal. More personal than I wanted them to be, however I got the sense she needed someone to talk to.

Then one day, while our manager was away on holiday and I was back them up, this girl started being awkward towards me and eventually stopped talking to me. I only found out why many weeks later and will now share both her version and my own version of this story below so that you may make your own conclusions:

Emma - During the few days that I was backing up the manager, it was announced by our director that one of our team members would be leaving us (he had been fired). That day Emma told me that she was worried about her contract as it seemed as though alot of people had been leaving lately and I told her not to worry as each case was different, there was no general trend. It was more a co-incidence that alot of people left the department that month. However, after that the director and I were discussing how the team had received the information and he asked me if anyone had any particular worries and if I thought he should maybe go and reassure them. I mentioned the conversation that I had with Emma, so the director spoke with her to reassure her that she needn't worry about her contract.

According to Emma, the fact that I spoke to the director about her worries was what annoyed her. She saw at as me dimishing her in the eyes of the director. She took my actions as a betrayal and told me that everyone is ambitious but not everyone has to step over other's bodies in order to grow.

Please would you share you opinions about Emma's opinion to me, as I'm not sure if I'm being obtuse or not, but I found it strange.

My version - Up until that day before the incident described above, Emma had received praise from all angles on how good she was as an employee. How happy we were with her, that she was the best our her training group etc. Several months after she started we hired an American guy, who was also very serious about his job, so much so that he would come in early, do nothing but work until lunch, take his lunch and then leave late at night. The few days before my manager went on holiday and the several days before this evident, he was handling the work that would normally require 3 people to handle. So the incident I believe caused the issue with Emma is, I asked this guy if he was okay or if he needed any help from anyone else in the team. He said no, so I told him I thought he was doing an excellent job, thanked him and asked him to let me know if he needed any help. When I sat down at my desk Emma stood up for a chat and I made a comment on how well I thought this new guy was doing and she quickly returned to her own desk.

I believe I stood on some toes with Emma, by reaconizing someone else's work to her.

Again, I'd appreciate your comments on this situation.

I will break the rant here as I feel you have enough spelling mistakes and rambling sentences to deal with.