Pardon me for this brief moment of venting, but I really need to let this out. Perhaps I should get therapy, you tell me after reading the following.

I have to work with this near-her-thirties, crazy, Office Space- like woman. She drives me crazy. She works in the IT department and who knows why? She has no IT knowledge and simply runs reports like crazy. For some reason, she thinks that I care to hear her stories. In fact, she insists on telling them to me 3 to 4 times IN A ROW. Sometimes, I just leave my desk and she keeps blabbing. She tells me way too much personal stuff that I really don't care about. She's definitely Histrionic and I think Bi-Polar. One moment, she's talking about her new house and the next she's complainning about me. I haven't even done anything, save ignore her.

She was given the task to develop the internal website. She was offered classes to take and learn how to make websites. I think my boss gave it to her to shut her up and keep her out of our hair (although he denies that). She constantly came over to ask, "what color do you think I should use for the font?", "do you like this?", "how about this?" etc. etc. Usually, I'd tell her what she did do was wrong...well, more like "it looks good, what if you try this though?" Basically, trying to avoid telling her she's a complete moron.

When she was about to go live with the internal site, she had me look at it. I was like, "not bad, why don't you center it though?" Her wtf-worthy response, "Okay, I haven't gotten that far in my classes though." I had a nice view of my brain while I tried to roll my eyes back into their sockets. I said, "well, let me see what I can do." I sit down and type "<center>" outside of the table that everything was wrapped in followed by the </center> tag at the end. I have no experience in web design, but I do know how to do that. Bam, it centers her website. She's like, "Wow, that DOES look better." I then grab her a nice background (stole it from our external site that was done by another company) and made it even better.

So we go live. Everybody's happy, I get no mention of all the mistakes and design choices that I did. Later on, I notice the title of her site says "index4.jpg". I tell her this to which she quips "I'll get to it when I have time." Again, something that shouldn't take longer than typing an appropriate time. Of course, she didn't know how to do this either. So, I end up doing it for her. I told her that I fixed it for her. Next day she complains that I messed up the website, but it was actually because she had just messed with the code herself. Grrr.....

Fast forward a week and now we are working on making our reports electronic. She asks me how to send files from our linux server to the report server. I write out a detailed description of how to use lftp. Next day I come in and our senior analyst calls me in and says "so woman's name tells me you are having trouble with ftp, want me to show you how to do it." I had to do everything in my power to keep from losing it. I carefully explained how SHE was having the problems.

The electronic reporting that we are trying to do is through a third-person party's tool. It's relatively simple to use, but not for miss-knows-nothing. Her comment, "if you put the VB page break script in wrong, then you have to delete your profile and start over." Not true at all. I look at her script and see that she has copied the page break script right out of the file (like she is suppose to), put it into the software VB code section (like she is suppose to), changed the text to find what to page break on (like she is suppose to), found out she didn't want to page break on that, and then copied the code from the file again and put it right in the middle of the code she had already inserted (NOT what she is suppose to do). If she wanted to change what she was going to page break on, you just change the text like she had done a few steps ago. She insists that I am wrong, but I've fixed it and it works fine.

Then, I get called in from my boss. He says so-and-so has a complaint about you, we need to talk about it. If I ever felt like cursing, now was the time. She keeps messing up, and I keep fixing her problems, but I keep getting the bad rep.

If you made it through all that complainning congrats, because I'm barely able to myself.

[/vent]

You just need to calmly explain in your meeting all you did here, just without the insults and the (imagined) screaming.

I'd agree, but I hear there's a new moderator in town who might turn me inside-out.

So far, I've kept my cool, hence the need to vent. I just keep trying to do what work I can to hopefully impress somebody...

You know what, I hope she is.

I suggest you watch the first episode "The IT Crowd."

I agree. You know what you want. You want her to stop bugging you. So stop being the nice guy. Stop helping her. Tell her to go away when she's bugging you. There's a rather thick line between being nice, and being crazy stupid. You crossed that line without looking back and now you're paying for it.

EDIT:
By the way, I was really hoping this was going to be a thread about Ventrillo.

Last guy who was just plain rude to her got fired. I'm already starting to be a little more "do it yourself", but she has worked here for 25 years. Me? Only three. She's got a lot of people wrapped around her fingers (including the CFO, which use to be the head of the IT department), so I want to avoid getting on her bad side.

Well, if she was hot, I really wouldn't have a reason to vent, would I? Man, I wish she was hot...

Don't you have your own work to do? Can't you say you're busy and you'll get to it later, then never do?

I am so paranoid about old ladies that get people fired. I barely avoided that one time and it scarred me. You need to start a hardcore campaign of self defense:

Goto your boss and lay it down: are you in charge of this woman? Are you responsible for mentoring her? Are you responsible for training her? MAKE your superiors clearly define your relationship to this woman and go from there. If you don't have any connection to her (according to them) then make it known that her habit of coming to you for help HAS TO STOP.

But IF they define some role for you with relation to this woman, you'll most likely have to start doing all her work for her and suck up to her.

The one thing I hate more than anything else in the work place is people who talk to you about stupid shit even when you make it clear you don't want to talk to them.

So far as her being attractive: remember the face may be wrinkled, but the butt is always nice and smooooth...

It sounds like you are in a loose-loose situation. If she asks you how to FTP files and you give her instructions you still get blamed for not knowing how to do it? And if you would have told her that you don't know, you would have gotten the same result. I guess you would have gotten the same result if you would've told her you where busy as well.

I would get angry as hell about getting complaints like you seem to get. Is she unable to talk to you directly about her complaints, and she still expect your work relationship to be good? And how is it possible that your boss know this little about you when you've worked there for three years? He has no idea at all of how good you are at your job? And he has no idea of how good she is at her job either?

If I where you I would start too look for another job. In case that's not an option I would try to focus on my own tasks and not help her unless I really am supposed too. She probably knows that she lacks "what it takes" for her job position, but tries to hide it like some kind of psychopath by complaining about coworkers, which she at the same time uses to barely manage to do her job.

If she really is on her bosses good side, this can turn back against him. It can be good to try as the step before quitting / getting fired for incompetence which she has "brought to management attention".

All women are. They certainly don't belong in IT departments. They're only good for cooking and having babies.

Simply take an MP3 player and record your conversation to have some evidence that she's lying.

I meant to say near-her-late-thirties, but now that I think of it, that can't be right either. I saw a picture of her in the hall that was from '89 and she looked like the same age as she does now! For all I know, she could be 60.

Actually, best guess, 43-46.

Talk to your boss and explain the situation. If she complains about you then why are you helping her? Tell your boss this too.

If you can't change the relationship you have now with her and your boss then leave because she will always have more power than you unless she leaves first.