My coworker has been faking her job, and I turned her in. Why am I feeling anxious?
 

I work in an emergency room registration department. The job involves updating peoples' information such as address/phone number/insurance/etc. If we don't get it right, the hospital doesn't get paid.

I have a coworker, we will call her Barbara. She works on different shift than me, so I have not worked along side her very often. But on the few occasions that I have, I have noticed she is totally faking her work. It is really easy to tell. We will be sitting at the desk, and a patient will suddenly become "complete" in the computer system, even though she never talked to the patient!

On 2 occasions I have reported this to the managers. The last time (about 6 months ago), not much happened. That manager was ineffective anyway and got fired. I hadn't worked with this coworker for a long time and was hoping she wasn't still doing it, but when I worked with her one day last week, I caught her in several acts of faking her accounts. I gathered my evidence and emailed my managers.

The managers said they would take care of it. It appears they did, however they failed to keep me anonymous and this coworker now knows that I'm the one who ratted her out.

IMO if I were her, I would be scared of losing my job, and I would do a really good job from then on. But she decided to SEND ME AN EMAIL.

Here's the email:

Great. I feel sick to my stomach about this whole thing. All I am trying to do is do the right thing, and now I have a coworker who is mad at me, and I am scared she is going to do some mud slinging. The problem is I do the best job I can at work, so there is not much she can dig up on me, unless she blatantly makes stuff up.

IMO it is NOT "just between me and her", because I have no right to say to her "why didn't you go talk to those patients?". She is grossly faking her work, and IMO, that means it is totally between her and the boss.

So, did I respond to her email?

No, I did not. I think she needs to sit with some anxiety for a little while. She know she did something wrong. (Lots of somethings, for a long period of time). Plus, I have nothing to say to her anyway.

I actually forwarded the email to my managers, with the attached note:

So RYL, did I do the right thing? Why am I feeling so crappy right now? Why am I scared she is going to try to confront me one-on-one when I get to work tomorrow? And if she does, what should I say to her, if anything?

I'm not even going to try to prepare for it, if she does confront me, I'm just going to improvise and try to do the best I can.

As my fiancee said to me, taking the high road is lonely. I feel pretty crap right now, but I still feel it was important to do the right thing and turn her in. So I just have to stick with that and battle it out, whatever the "consequences" may be.

Thanks for your help & advice

-Bob

This sounds like such a tricky situation. I think you did the right thing in forwarding the email on to your managers. Are you part of a union or is there a human resources department that you could get some advice from?

I would ignore her (in terms of this situation) as much as possible. Leave it for the management to deal with, have you gotten a reply from your manager? If not it might be worth chasing up some advice on how to proceed.

Yeah, they didn't disclose my name. But apparently they slipped and said "He", and there are only a few he's to guess from in our department.

My bosses both reassured me that I did the best thing by not responding to her email. They also apologized for her sending it to me.

Yesterday Barbara and I crossed paths at work, and she did not try to confront me or corner me.

So I hope the worst of it is over by now.