What to do about a confrontation at work?

Question

I work at a Wendy's (sigh) in my area and there's this senile old woman employed there who won't stop harassing me during my shifts. We're both crew members which means she doesn't have the authority to tell me what to do, yet that doesn't stop her from constantly making rude comments about how I do my job. Recently however, things have escalated from angry rants to her shoving me into the sandwich station for "being in her area". There was also an instance where I ignored her comments until she snapped and threw a block of cheese into the sandwich station. (She works the grill next to me -- I make the sandwiches) The last straw for me was when I was moved to working at the fry station and it still didn't stop her from trying to tell me what to do. Finally, we argued so much about the procedure of something that she, once again, flipped out and slammed a basket of nuggets so hard a wave of hot grease flew out of the fryer and almost hit me. I told my manager but nothing changed. Help?

Answer 1

contact the manager over him and tell him what is going on and that u went to your boss and nothing happened.

Answer 2

Escalate the issue to area management and head office if necessary. Her behaviour constitutes personal harassment and the duty manager should be dealing with it.

The Muse

Answer 3

Take a moment and look at this from her view. This is really hard to do when things are amped up but trust me on this. It will work every time.

She is older lady, and had to take a job working fast food. Very likely she was retired, and ended up running out of money, and her social security money only goes as far as the medications she has to take.

Her situation is in my view very sad. She is upset at the whole situation. Not just you.

With that in mind, I would go to her on a slow time. Try talking to her about what she likes to do. Go out for coffee with her and listen to her story. You have gotten off on the wrong foot and you want to make it right.

Imagine working your whole life, only to find out you can't stay retired anymore.

Answer 4

Since your manager is not willing to help you , I recommend that you contact whoever his/her boss is, if you really want to keep your job at Wendys.  Otherwise, I'd start looking for another job.

Answer 5

Tell your manager again, only this time, remind him of the last conversation in roughly this manner: "You recall that on Wed. 07May I spoke to you concerning a problem I was having with so and so..." Aside from informing him that the situation remains unchanged it also reminds him that he's failed to intervene appropriately to solve the problem (or that his initial efforts weren't successful) without you having to state the obvious. This also telegraphs to his psyche that you are documenting events as they transpire, so if he was tempted to blow the situation off in the past he'd better get proactive about solving this dilemma now as he is duty-bound to do. True, this is a burger-joint job and it may be easier to simply look for another job elsewhere, but the principle remains the same no matter what kind of job you're talking about...managers are responsible for ensuring and maintaining a safe, non-hostile work environment. So my thoughts are, if you start running now you'll be running the rest of your life; the old lady's behavior cannot go unchecked. Good luck to you.

Answer 6

Next time tell her, "At least i wont be here for the rest of my life! This is how I was told to do it, Im going to do it this way. If you have a problem with that, tell the manager so she/he can tell me how to fix it, until then, YOURE NOT MY BOSS!" Be really extremely nice when you tell her that!