Woman is frustrated when supervisor hires incompetent wife; 'HOW do I get rid of DONNA?' UPDATED 3X

When this woman is fed up with a recent hire at her company, she asks the internet:

"How do I [32F] protect my work relationships from a bad nepotistic hire?"

I work for a small company with 11 employees, soon to be 16. I like my job and most everyone I work with, bar one member of the senior team I'll call Gavin [40M]. Gavin isn't the top of the food chain but he has a lot of clout, as the CEO really likes him and handpicked him to join the company based on their past relationship.

Most of the people at my company have worked with each other before in past roles or know each other personally. Hiring friends is the norm, though I'm one of the few "outsiders".

This hasn't been an issue at all up until recently, when Gavin hired his wife Donna [F39] to work part time at the company and asked her to work on some of my projects without consulting me first. I only found out she was going to share projects with me on the day she started.

Unfortunately, Donna is not experienced nor naturally talented in the work she's been assigned. She's been insecure, needy and anxious from day one, and lacks the basic skills necessary to do her job well.

I've tried to help her adjust because I would actually welcome some help with my workload, but she pulls me into meetings for an hour or two every time she's in the office, asking me really basic questions and/or just quietly panicking at me. She also does this with CEO, who she knows personally through Gavin.

I've tried to pull away a little bit by not responding instantly to her Slack messages and not accepting every meeting she's tried to book with me. The result has been that she's started interrupting me in meetings, asking basic but usually inappropriate questions addressed to me

. I don't think she's intentionally undermining me because she's always grateful when I 'help' her but I'm finding it hard to stay patient. Gavin, of course, always chimes in to support her in team settings.

I've also tried to build my 1:1 relationship with Donna so there's enough trust to establish boundaries, but unfortunately I can't really find much common ground with her.

She's quite negative, complaining loudly that no one at the company has their shit together and I feel like she probably says the same things about me to her husband and the CEO outside the office.

There are very subtle signs that the CEO may be starting to realise hiring her wasn't a great idea - if she wasn't Gavin's wife I think she'd definitely be on her way out, so I think my best strategy here is to wait this out and try to stay calm.

However, the CEO booked a 1:1 with me next week and if he asks me about Donna I'm not sure what I'll say. I feel the resentment growing, not just at Gavin and Donna, but also at the CEO for not establishing a fair work environment.

I don't want to ruin my place in the company over this. My question is, how do I handle Donna while covering my own ass? And what should I say if asked about what I think of Donna's work?

Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some top responses:

gara8 writes:

My advice: Be honest but tactful, and focus on the impact to your work. Even though she's obviously frustrating as hell, don't share that.

Say things like, "It's hard for me to spend the time I need on my own tasking when Donna is asking me to meet with her several hours a day; for example, on both Tuesday and Wednesday I sat with her for ninety minutes answering questions. Is there a better way for me to be handling that?"

"The document she produced needed an extra two hours of editing before we could give it to the client." Act in the manner that you aren't complaining, simply giving him information about how things are going and if this is what he wants then that's fine with you.

And if he indicates that he doesn't want to hear negative things, then stop going down that road for your own sake. But you can't expect him to fix things if nobody has told him what needs fixing - you need to give him a chance to be a good manager until you see that he's not going to take that chance.

facels writes:

With being interrupted in meetings, I used to have an assistant like that. The only thing that worked was to say "hey, I'm in a meeting right now, we'll talk later," like a stuck record every time he tried asking a question or saying it would only take a second or whatever.

I think what I would do at this point is set up a regular meeting slot with her- daily, weekly, every other day, w/e- and then turn down any meeting requests outside of it. If she keeps asking to meet, just tell her your next meeting with her is on [DATE].

If she asks questions, ask what she thinks she should do (quickest way I've found to redirect stuff like this!) And if she complains to you about people, just make the most noncommittal response possible- or 'oh, that's odd, X doesn't strike me as being so bad', and then go back to work.

In terms of what to say to the CEO, be cautious. Don't say anything about her unless he asks, and ideally wait until you have a sense of how he's feeling before he says anything at all. Point out specific things, and make it clear that you've discussed them with her or otherwise tried to work on it before bringing them to his attention.

So rather than "She's increasing my workload', say that she still needs a lot more support than someone at her level would be expected to, and that that's eating into your time. Tell him that she's repeatedly interrupting meetings and other work despite being asked not to. Mention specific instances where the work she's produced hasn't been up to scratch and what impact that has had.

Also, I would suggest job hunting. You don't want to work for a company with that level of nepotism, because it will bite you in the ass at some point.

casuallogiq writes:

Been there, done that, word of advice: Don't forget - YOU are the outsider here. No matter how tactful you are regarding Donna, CEO will use YOU as the excuse to be rid of her, passing the buck on the responsibly so YTA. What's that? Oh, he'd never do that to youuuuu? He's the guy who hired her without checking her skills - and then pawned her off on YOU. C'mon man.

Don't say ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT DONNA! Make the meeting about your own lack of training ability - 'that's why we're always in one on one meetings' CLEARLY I SUCK AS A TRAINER, maybe have somebody else take on the responsibility - like her husband.

Best way to CYA is to pretend Donna AND Gavin are in the meeting with you & CEO and not say anything. Let them have the rope to hang themselves, time will out her.

Update 1:

**EDIT**: Whoa, this blew up. Thanks all for your comments and advice - I just read everything. To clarify a few things:

Donna isn't my direct report. We don't have managers at our company, so technically no one is. I wasn't asked to train her, but when I found out on her first day she'd been told to "support" some of my projects I sort of had to step in.

I don't know if the CEO is going to talk about Donna in our meeting, but I don't like being caught off guard so I'm thinking more 'what if?'

She doesn't have a JD or even a title, so I understand her anxiety to some extent as our environment is pretty chaotic. Given her personal connections I told her she could probably just define her own role and give herself any title she wants, but she hasn't done it.

I don't ignore her messages, I've just stopped responding *immediately* because it fs up my focus

I'm not the only person she's doing this to. She naturally also books Gavin into long meetings and also the CEO . She's the only one who gets this level of attention from the senior team in the company and it's not really sustainable in any case

6. The work I've tried to help her do is still substandard, which is mainly what's worrying me, and she doesn't really have the right mindset for this type of business that I've seen. She might get away with it as just an average employee in a big company, but in this setting it's glaringly obvious.

She's made references a few times that she's been near quitting from stress, so I really don't want to get any more involved in this unless I have to. I don't want to get her fired.

But her flailing around, taking up my time is indeed disruptive to my ability to get things done, especially right now because I have additional project work on top of my daily responsibilities.

I would just talk to her but I'm afraid she'll take it totally the wrong way because she's so wound up, and I already have a not great relationship with her husband so I don't want any of that backsplash.

I think my best case scenario is that the CEO takes over her coaching completely if he wants her to stay. I don't feel like I can really ask for that directly but maybe I could angle for it.

TL;DR: Senior colleague hired his wife to join my team and she sucks, how do I manage the relationship with her and minimise collateral damage to my own relationship with other colleagues who are friends with her?

Update 2:

I'm sure at this point Donna realises this is not a good situation - in fact, she realised it almost before she even started the job based on her behaviour. In the past Gavin has behaved in ways in that show a lack of self-awareness so I'm not sure to what extent he feels accountable for this situation.

It wouldn't surprise me if he was worried way more about her panicking than her actual performance. However, it's at the level where she sometimes asks the CTO or me how her how to use her computer because it's a make she's never used before, rather than just Googling the info herself.

She's entitled for sure. We actually had an outsider in the company with a similar but not *quite* as bad work ethic/level of experience as Donna who was fired for incompetence after about 6 months, and Gavin was the one leading the call for her head, so to speak.

He's also called me out publicly on occasions where he's thought I've been wrong about stuff and only the CEO has ever stood up for me, so it's hard not to feel resentment towards him as this unfolds.

Still, I don't know what goes on behind the scenes and it's relatively early days. I think in this case Gavin will try to avoid getting involved in any hiring/firing decision about Donna. But I don't think he'll behave with more humility, either.

As for the CEO I agree he probably just doesn't know what to do yet, but he has taken the lead on difficult decisions in the past. I know he values my work and I think he's actually a good leader most of the time.

Your advice is sound and I'd like to support him, but if he doesn't approach me first I still think I'm going to keep quiet, unless things get really, really bad. If we do end up discussing this I'll try to be pragmatic as you scripted.

I still like the company and want to work here, but how this unfolds will influence whether I decide to stay or not, and honestly if I take the fallout for some reason I won't feel bad about leaving/being fired. Donna's performance at the very least should help the senior team realise my job isn't easy and they can't just hire someone off the street to do it.

Update 3:

Since my story got way more interest than I anticipated, I thought I'd give an update. The CEO didn't want to talk to me about Donna and I didn't bring it up in the meeting a few weeks ago.

However, everything kind of came to a head last week when Gavin started telling other people on the team that a few of us, including me, were making his wife feel awkward. I think some of the original commenters predicted this would happen, albeit in a slightly different way. He didn't tell me directly and I found out from the other people who had been accused.

I then decided to talk to the CEO about Gavin. *I didn't mention Donna or her work quality* but I wanted his advice and input on whether I was making anyone uncomfortable.

I also gave my side of the story, focusing on how the accusation dampened my morale and pointing out that I feel like outsider sometimes since most people in the company are old friends. Fortunately for me, he didn't see things the same way Gavin did and said he would speak to him.

After the meeting, the CEO quietly took Donna off my projects and reassigned her something small and not really connected to the core business objectives to work on.

He's also now interviewing someone from outside the friends and family circle to take on the lion's share of what Donna was originally assigned to do. Gavin has been told to provide more direct support for Donna, which he seems annoyed about but obviously isn't going to fight.

TL;DR: I'm lucky my CEO is a wise dude. All in all I think this is a good and fair outcome for everyone, though things with Gavin and I will almost certainly get worse. Thanks for all the advice in the original post.