My Co-Worker Has Discovered a "Hack" for Getting Out of Doing Her Work. Now the Rest of Us Are Paying for It.

"Sandy is the department accountant and is meant to keep track of our budget and such, but she also has some direct dealings with clients that involve sensitive monetary-adjacent paperwork. The problem is that no one is sure exactly what she does day-to-day because she seems to offload as much of her job as possible on everyone else."

"She sat a couple of us down recently and informed us that we would be taking on some of her client-facing responsibilities, on top of our other duties! And she didn't even explain what we were supposed to be doing very well, so we royally messed it up in different ways!"

"All of this is happening alongside a series of minor, inconsiderate interruptions she causes every day, which distract from my ability to focus on my own work (such as ringing the doorbell that's meant to tell us when clients have arrived every time she enters or leaves the main part of the office)."

An employee describes ongoing workplace frustration with Sandy, the department accountant, who consistently delegates her core responsibilities to colleagues despite being the designated person for budget tracking and client-facing financial paperwork. Sandy deflects basic questions to the department head, refuses to explain processes, and recently reassigned some of her client-facing duties to other staff members without proper training, resulting in errors and reduced efficiency. Beyond work delegation, Sandy causes daily minor disruptions, such as repeatedly triggering the client arrival doorbell when entering or leaving the office, forcing colleagues to check the lobby unnecessarily. The writer feels unable to directly address these issues due to Sandy's higher rank, despite not being their direct supervisor.

Read at Slate Magazine