How do you deal with crazy coworkers, DL?!

Report it immediately before it causes permanent damage to your career.

See if there are any openings at the fries station, salad bar or drive-thru, and transfer. That way they'll have to hire another temp for the grill- and the threats will fall on the new person.

R1 I guess the issue is, there's no way to 100% prove definitively to my CEO or supervisor that the comments come from that person. But my gut tells me it's them. It makes No. Sense. otherwise. I know I'll sound like a crackpot if I go to the CEO or supervisor and tell them my suspicions.

However, I do KNOW that this person has been keeping a keen eye on me. One of my coworkers did casually mention that particular employee was paying attention to what I was doing and complaining to her. The coworker who heard this told me that she told them to "back off" and quit worrying! So that clued me in to, huh... something fishy is going on. Obviously, how do you tell your boss this? Should I mention the comment my coworker made about this particular Person watching me and freaking out???? I'm going to come across as the insane one at this rate!

Maybe I should start looking for a new field.

It sounds like this coworker should have been cut loose a long time ago, even without these social media shenanigans. I'm hoping the higher ups are unaware, rather than avoiding the issue. Your coworkers should discuss their concerns with the supervisor/CEO. And if their response is to do nothing but sit on their hands, then you have more than a coworker problem.

Just wanted to update... R4, you're right. The CEO told me not to worry because they know that Coworker is nuts, they figured out it was fake before I did.

It's weird because why does she report the CEO or her supervisor? Why you?

I just chop their heads off

You are there as a temp and will replace them while they are away for one year? Why would they be away for one year? Maternity leave? It is hard to understand what the situation is from the way you wrote.

Threaten to sue for libel.

R8 I was trying to be vague. I'm doing the coworker's job while she is away on maternity leave. She doesn't like now I'm doing the job, so she's made a fake Facebook account to submit a FALSE complaint about me to our Organization. The CEO and our supervisor have figured it out that the Coworker created the fake Facebook page to send the Fake complaint.

Also, I was anxious because I had figured it out from the fake Coworker, well, but had no proof. The CEO told me he knew the complaint was from the employee the second he read the complaint. They aren't ignoring this behaviour either. They've tracked down the IP address of the Fake Account, etc. and are documenting everything.

There's obviously a history of crazy with this Coworker!!!

Facebook exposes client addresses?

Apparently you can get it via Messenger. The complaint was sent through Messenger, naturally.

Yikes. Keep us updated on the situation, OP. This sounds like it will get worse before it gets better. And the company can get sued if they fire a woman on maternity leave.

Anyone else noticed there hasn't been a mass shooting at a company by a psychotic, disgruntled worker in a long time? Anyway, good luck OP!

Due to COVID-19 no members of the public are allowed to visit our workplace, including the coworker who's away. The silver lining of a pandemic??

R14 Yes, for sure. They're being very careful, but closely monitoring the situation.

[quote] They've tracked down the IP address of the Fake Account, etc. and are documenting everything.

How would your company see the ip address of a random Facebook post?

According to the article linked above, you need an open connection with the other user on Messenger to see the ip address. I find it extremely unlikely that your company/HR went through the trouble of establishing a live chat with the complainer and then traced her address.

This woman might be crazy, but 1) you are a temp and easily replaceable and 2) they cannot fire her. I would not put my trust in the company on this one at all.

No, the complaint was sent THROUGH the open connection via messenger. She complained via the chat messenger! That's how they grabbed! She sent it while everyone was at work on Friday, so while she went on her rant with the open connection.

R18 I know that I'm easily replaceable and I'm not asking that they FIRE HER or anything. They're just watching the situation closely.

Also, as I said before. Coworkers have asked to be moved to new work-stations due to her. Soooo, obviously there's a history that they're monitoring.

It takes a special kind of loser to make fake accounts to try ruin somebody, OP. Don't worry about that bitch, she's well on her way to fucking her own life over. Just keep on doing your job, getting along with people and following policy.

In my career, I've had to deal with two crazy coworkers. The first one worked directly with me. I knew she had a vicious streak, but she was wildly inconsistent - kind and thoughtful one moment, fucking nasty another. And she had no inhibitions about running down coworkers and even superiors, which I thought was stupid. But I never dreamed she'd swivel her guns towards me.

Until the day I took a call at my desk. It had a single ring, meaning it was an internal call. But when I answered it, the person on the phone said, "You don't know who I am and I'm not going to tell you. But there's something you need to know about your coworker. She's filed an official report with administration claiming you're taking kickbacks from the companies you're doing business with in exchange for throwing business their way."

I boggled. And said, "Who is this?"

"Nobody you know. But because of the report, an investigation was begun, until a Powerful Person made it clear she did not believe it, and quashed the investigation. And then ordered me to tell you what happened, because YOU NEED TO KNOW what your coworker is capable of doing."

(Because of the nature of my work at that time, not only would taking kickbacks lead to termination, it probably also would've led to criminal charges. So this was a big deal.)

I got off the phone, and I still couldn't believe it. So I kept quiet, and waited until my coworker left for one of her leisurely lunch breaks. She always kept her pc unlocked and her work email account logged in. So while she was gone, I went through her Sent box, and found the email where she made the false accusation about me. I made a printout of the email and took it home and filed it away.

She tried setting me up again several months later, by sticking a purchase agreement for a negotiated price with a past-due deadline at the bottom of my incoming box. When I worked my way through my inbox and found it, I was horrified. How could I have failed to get this done on time? Missing the deadline added thousands to our cost. So I gritted my teeth and turned myself in to our supervisor. Instead of writing me up, she asked lots of detailed questions, then shrugged and told me to forget about it. "But aren't you going to write me up?"

"Will you stop and THINK about it? About how something that OLD ended up buried underneath all the NEW work in your inbox? Where do you think that order really came from?" I got the clue and walked out.

TL;DR: never assume your bosses aren't aware of what's REALLY going on behind your (and their) backs.

I would slap her face. Viciously.

In the other case of the crazy coworker, it was actually a higher-up whom I occasionally worked with. She suddenly came gunning for me. She had a horrible reputation for mistreating the people working under her. I never worried about it, because she wasn't in my chain of command. But I did screw up something she'd tasked me with, and though I apologized and swiftly corrected it, she went absolutely bananas. So over the top in her reaction that I began to seriously doubt her sanity. She was sending nonstop complaints about me to everyone in my chain of command, all the way to the top. Which was stupid, because it made her look unbalanced to her superiors, too.

I kept my head down, took responsibility for the initial screw-up, but none of the higher ups backed me up that time. But then I was suddenly promoted and transferred. I had very rare contact with her in that new position - but I was in a position to see how she was performing her own duties, and quietly snickered in one meeting where her failure to perform was not only discussed, her metrics were displayed on the screen for all to see.

When her boss confronted her about this, she accused me! She claimed she'd done the work and I'd hacked into the system and deleted it. This was a major mistake, because it wasn't our system, it was that of a third-party vendor. Since she'd made the accusation, another official investigation was opened. And since it involved the vendor's system, the vendor performed the system audit and reported the results.

Once again, I knew nothing of this. Until a coworker I knew came to me in person and said, "I've been told by a higher up who does not want to be identified to tell you that L. reported to admin that you'd sabotaged her work in (vendor's system). As a result, an investigation was done, the vendor did a system audit, and the investigation has now concluded. And I was specifically told to quietly give you the investigation's unofficial conclusion, which is: L. is crazy."

A couple years later, we had a big upper-level reorganization, and L.'s new superior swiftly terminated her. So in the end, I got promoted and she got fired. As for my coworker in my first story - she's in a nursing home with early-onset dementia. And I don't feel sorry for her at all.

Be very wary of the pregnosaur.

I worked with a crafty lady who aligned herself to me, so I was thankfully never the brunt of her gaslighting, and basically did no work (as oversight was minimal--our manager was a moron). Once we were assigned an assistant manager to do the manager's job (the manager specialized in having lunch with the Vice President), she filed a complaint about the Assistant Manager sabotaging her work. It took two months for HR to deal with it, and in those two months, she got pregnant. So, once HR called her in (and rumor was they intended to fire her for the false allegations), she announced her pregnancy.

She literally did nothing for 6 more months and then was sent on maternity leave early. They extended her maternity leave to 9 months, and only got laid off because we all got laid off. Essentially, she did not work for 15 months (and trapped her cheating husband, who I bet was ready to leave).

Two lessons: a woman who uses a pregnancy to save her job is messy; HR will always bend over backwards to avoid a lawsuit related to pregnancy.

Backwoods, thank you! Jesus, it's so easy to forget how crazy people can be.

The other "development" with this Coworker and her fake account is that, hmm... by the request of my CEO (who's the CEO of a non-profit, not a Fortune 500). I did a search for posts by the Coworker and the fake account in some professional communities on Facebook (related to our specific job). And she has actually posted in those communities WITH her real account and *engaged* in a conversation with her fake account. One comment was, literally, about blogs. The Coworker said that her "replacement" hasn't been updating the PUBLIC BLOG enough. The "fake account" agreed and said "it's awful when you're replaced by someone who's terrible at their job." OUR SUPERVISOR TOLD ME NOT TO WASTE MY TIME ON THE FUCKING BLOG!!!

I don't think they can/would/expect them to fire her for this at all. I think they are closely monitoring her behaviour for when she comes back. What does make me laugh, is that our CEO is one of the most "powerful" people in our field. SO, she'll have fun getting a new job after this one, I'm sure (if she can get one). And I respect your warning R18, but he's already trying to help me line up new positions when this job ends. I'm not really "just" a temp, due to my contract with them. However, I've never actually MET this coworker, I started in the position after she had already gone on leave (I don't live in the US, so they are given 1-year).

People were visibly relieved when I stepped in and started to work there.

[quote] No, the complaint was sent THROUGH the open connection via messenger. She complained via the chat messenger! That's how they grabbed!

I understand that. Based on what that article said, they would have to plan in advance to grab the ip. Is your office in the habit of grabbing the ip of every message they receive over messsenger? Definitely not. Your boss can tell you anything they want. They no doubt suspect her, sure. But you're assuming that they'd want to keep you over her. Even if they do, even if everyone hates her and wants her gone, they cannot get rid of her because she's on maternity leave. Stop being so naive. It sounds like your office is full of drama queens and I bet management sees you all as liabilities.

[quote]But you're assuming that they'd want to keep you over her.

No I'm not. I'm not stupid, I know that they can't legally fire her due to this. My job has a specific end date and then she returns. It's weird that everyone thinks I want to get her FIRED.

The actual question is how to protect myself from a psycho coworker like this.

R28 - they may not be able to get rid of her because she's on maternity leave, but they can get rid of her job. Which is the favored end-run around legal leaves, such as maternity and FMLA, when you want or need to get rid of a person on leave. Oh gosh, the position has been eliminated so there's no job for you to return to, and we can't find anything else you're qualified for. So sorry, goodbye.

It's actually much much easier to get rid of people than most of you seem to think. It's only management inertia that stops it from happening more often. Management just has to do the work of documenting to justify their decision and out you go. Want to challenge it? Sure, go ahead. But you don't have thousands of dollars to pay a lawyer upfront. And good luck finding a lawyer who'll take an unlawful termination case on contingency. And even in you do have the money or find a lawyer willing to work on spec, management will just stonewall and delay, delay, delay, running out the clock. That is, your money. Because you're bound to go broke long before they will, and at that point, it's all over.

Speaking as a union rep here.

document everything

Are you really safe in the workplace?

I work at a law firm and just busted one of the partners using his vape pen in the bathroom. He’d been vaping in his office which is across from my cubicle and I reported him then and he denied it.

Management told me to keep them in the loop and yesterday afternoon I walked through a cloud of the vapor. I went straight to management and they’re fucking pissed.

I would be concerned that was the CEO's response. That employee should be terminated if they are trying to sabotage you?

Whatever you do, don't visit your mother.

How long have you been a janitor for that Wendys?

From the CDC:

[quote] about 700 women die each year in the United States as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.

Hope she is one of them.