I have a (female) coworker who always has a terrible mood and curses everything. While I can deal with that, now, after working a few months at this place, I see more and more that she terribly backbites people. Not just some usual shit-talk but just plain bullying with the goal to let the other person look as bad as possible.
At first, I didn't care because
- she seems to always have a bad mood
- she hates everyone
- she isn't even working in my team
- she (physically) changed the office
As this didn't stop and she didn't care to openly yell even at team leaders telling them all disgrace I'm cautious about confronting her directly.
I told another coworker who just bad-mouthed me once (and not as severe as the female one) that I'm always open to feedback and I would desire him to give feedback directly to me. He was very confused and left the place.
Why I consider telling her over mail:
- I don't want a discussion. If I do something wrong you tell me, if I don't listen or behave badly you tell my boss
- I don't see her in a 1:1, since she's in another team
- I can point out that it's important for me that she has a good image of me
- If she continues I can at least prove that I tried to encourage her to an open talk
- I'm bad with words when I'm nervous. She is someone who uses her anger to silence people, unfortunately this works on me
- Several co-workers told me that they asked her (since she does this on all persons) and she didn't care
Why I consider it bad doing it over mail:
- It could come off as passive-aggressive
- I could appear weak not talking directly to her
Making things harder for me is that I'm relatively new in that company (less than 1/2 year) and if I do it wrong it could look rude (someone <30 telling someone above 50 how to behave).
That being said its incredibly hard for me to work in an environment where you get trashed as soon there's a possibility without you even knowing. No problem with it if it happens from time to time, but she does it constantly.
(Or, to put it into an example: Some fires are too big to fight(leave the company), some are so small that you just have to wait till they extinguish by themself, but in this case someone with matches is starting fires over and over)
Is a mail (just with her as recipient) appropriate since a normal talk won't work out or should I approach the situation differently?