Message #20491

[twhfan]

I dealt with my annyoing person recently.  She is a manager but rather disorganized.  Her boss is my boss, too.  She constantly tried to blame me when she forgot a meeting, didn't get a message, etc.  I was beginning to fear that my boss would believe her and question my competence.

I fixed her by putting "read receipts" on all the e-mails I sent to her, so that I'd have proof that she got her messages.  Recently when our boss called her on the carpet for failing to meet a deadline, she did her old "I never got that message" routine.  

When my boss questioned me, I sweetly replied, "Oh, I have the message receipt right here.  It says "deleted without being read"."  The culprit was absolutely flabbergasted!  She stammered and stuttered and said that it's not her usual practice to delete messages without reading them, etc., etc.

She hasn't blamed me for anything since!  Yes, I felt a little bit evil for hanging her out to dry, but I was sick of taking the blame for something that wasn't my fault.

My other annoying people trick is to keep the chair in my office covered to keep anyone from coming in and getting comfortable and thereby wasting my time.  For the people I want to talk with, I simply ask them to hand me the pile and tell them to have a seat....