I’m(35F) currently journaling about the past week and I’m noticing that I’ve been writing about my coworker(28M) for a few entries now.
To summarize, I think he’s jealous of me but I don’t know how to bring it up without sounding crazy. How do I protect myself/bring it up to my director? Do I get ahead of the situation by having a conversation with either him or my director about it?
I work in a male dominated industry and I would say I’ve probably “seen it all.” I’ve managed ok and thankfully have had good enough relationships with my Directors wherever I go. I think I’m doing well at my current job, just got a small salary increase and good performance review.
But I can’t quite put my finger on my coworker’s behavior. I mean, it can be simple enough that he views me as competition, but I’m not doing anything that would warrant this.
I couple of things have happened- we were giving a small presentation to consultants and each had to talk about our projects. I was pulled in last minute and mentioned to this other guy, my associate, what I would be talking about. When it came time to present, my coworker fully stole my topic in relation to his project and I was really taken aback because it didn’t have much to do with his project. Luckily my project had more technical talking points that I could elaborate further on.
Then the other day I was presenting project updates to my team and he zeroed in on one line item I had and was grilling me about it till I had to essentially put my foot down and be a bit of a bitch just so we could move on. But then I noticed he does that a lot in team meetings actually! I’m able to stand my ground for the most part, sometimes admit things I don’t know.
A couple weeks ago, I organized this networking thing with some consultants that was totally impromptu. He even said he couldn’t go but the others ended up being able to meet up anyway. He called me about it the next day (he never calls me about anything) as if I intentionally left him out. He said he couldn’t go! A different instance- I was coordinating where the other members of my team and I were in the city to meet up. He said he had other plans, didn’t know what the others were doing. I ended up getting tired anyway and leaving, then some other team members said they were meeting up with him elsewhere. He didn’t mention this to me.
He told me once he was planning on leaving next year and going back to his home country. I never mentioned this to anyone. But all his actions point to angling for leadership positions and favors with the client.
Sorry this is long already, but it’s just a few examples and it doesn’t quite capture the full aspects of what I’m noticing, that’s why I’m like do I even bring it up if it could be seen as nothing? I’m not even angling for promotion or leadership, I’m planning on leaving this job in a year. Idk, I feel like I’ve had to get on my guard now, which is a shame.