Toxic employee strikes again!

Post date: 2018-04-22 03:02:19
Views: 123
My direct report plagiarized my own work in her written performance review, copying sections of a document I had written nominating another team member for an award to describe her own performance. The document itself was confidential. My manager and I can't think how she could have accessed it in the first place. Help me get past my befuddlement and come up with a plan to deal with the situation.

For some background: It's performance review time for staff at the large University where I am a low-level supervisor. The University HR department has been incredibly lax over the decades, and in the three years I've been working there, I've regularly observed poor performance and toxic behavior from long term employees who know that there are very few consequences for bad behavior. This particular employee, let's call her Louise, has been a known problem for nearly 30 years. She has terrible attendance, regularly screws up straightforward work, doesn't take any responsibility for her actions, is a huge gossip, etc. etc.

Louise's coworker, with whom she feels a strong rivalry not reciprocated by the other employee, won a service award a few weeks ago. It was my manager's idea to nominate this person, and I wrote the nomination (2 pages), and then subsequently the blurbs for a poster and the announcement at the award ceremony. We assumed Louise would do something to create drama, but as luck would have it, she was absent the day of the award ceremony so things have been fairly quiet. Fast forward to Thursday, when I'm reading the comments Louise has input to the performance management software, and realize that she has copied language I used in the nomination for the other team member. She changed some words, but with some sentences largely intact, it's clearly ripped from my work. Louise would never use some of the vocabulary or the fairly elevated writing style I was playing with in the nomination.

We do not know how she accessed the file, though she's no computer whiz so assuming someone else gave it to her. It had been shared from my Google Drive account privately to my manager and the person in admin collecting the nominations. The awardee herself has not seen the nomination, but I don't know who else has seen it in admin. My name is on it, so Louise should know I wrote it.

I've introduced the situation over email with my manager (who has a long, frustrated history with Louise herself), and she's asked me how I would like to handle the situation. My brain isn't wired for dealing with this kind of passive-aggressive, petty person, and I'm at a loss how to proceed. I can't get past how bizarre this is, and generally how grumpy I am that I have to deal with the situation at all over all of the other productive, interesting things I could be doing. This feels a like a big ol' drag, but I need to get past my feelings and deal with it.

Performance reviews are due a week from Monday (hard deadline). My manager and I already have a meeting on the calendar to discuss issues related to my team's work with my manager's manager, our organizational development person, and our HR rep for this upcoming Thursday. Any suggestions how to address the issue with Louise and/or the higher-ups would be appreciated!
Number of Comments
Please click Here to read the full story.
 
Other Top and Latest Questions:
Trying to recall British TV drama from 2000s about teen model
Graphic novels for 13 year old girl
Movie: The American Society of Magical Negroes
TurboTax for contractor and non-contractor work in the USA
I'd like to book my trip please...
requiem
Seattle-area Radon mitigation recommendations?
How to change the duration of "hotness" section
When did my mono symptoms start? When might they end?
Remind me of a verse, Beowulf edition