My colleague won't stop commenting on everything I'm eating.

My assistant rolls his eyes at people and meeting.

My manager expects me to work 24-7.

Why does my coworker keep taking credit for all my ideas?

Have any wisdom for me?

Hi, I'm Alison Green.

Welcome to the Ask a Manager podcast.

Some of you may know me from my website, AskA Manager.org,

where I answer daily questions from readers about how to navigate all sorts of sticky situations with coworkers, managers, and employees.

Each week on this show, I'll take calls and talk directly with listeners about the toughest, most frustrating, or just plain weirdest work predicaments they're facing.

I'll help you figure out what to do

and say to handle these situations successfully and get the outcomes you want. So let's get started.

I get so many questions at Ask a Manager about coworkers who are annoying in some way. They monopolize meetings or they keep political talk

radio on all day long or they won't stop talking to you when you're trying to work.

Today's guest has a coworker who is being frustrating in a very specific way, which we will get to

in a minute. But first, let's welcome her to the show. Hello. Hi. Thank you so much for coming on. Let's see. Why don't you start by reading the letter that you sent to me initially, and then we'll start talking about it? Okay. I have a relatively new co-worker who I will call Jane. I was initially responsible for training her, which I did in depth.

She took notes and she seemed to catch on okay.

Since she started, nine months ago, it's become apparent that either she isn't retaining the information we share with her or she's second guessing herself a lot.

She repeatedly asked me things I've already gone over with her that she's taken notes on and that I've emailed her instructions for. It's gotten to the point that I've saved every email containing instructions that I've sent her so I can simply resend them when she asked the question again. Plus, when she has a question, she'll go from person to person in our department and ask it with

such a sense of urgency that we have to stop work to answer. Even though we all provide her the same

answer, she'll then ask another person. When we've brought our concerns about her to our director,

our director says Jane's former company was a lot more stringent on everything being perfect.

...