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[eatapeach]

A few months ago, we were forced to be on the receiving end of a transfer of a problem person from another department to fill an opening in our department.   My supervisor, who is well equipped in the spine department, made it clear this person was to be in a probationary status for three months with performance expectations clearly spelled out or transferred person would be out.  So far, it has worked out well and the person is much happier and more productive in our office.  Of course, we will see what happens when the three month probationary period is over.

[engineer_adrift]

OP, I recommend that you obtain professional liability insurance in case you do not have any yet.

Our department was saddled with one of these 'pass-around' problem staff members.  I worked with her for two years to try to improve her performance, documenting as we went, and then gave a fair but failing evaluation and teminated her.  I worked closely with the Dean and HR.  It can be done. 

I had hoped that her performance would improve, but it didn't.    Her repalcement is wonderful, and the quality of life in the department and especially for the chair and other staff is much, much improved.

Good luck.

[firefly]

This staff member you speak of obviously needs counseling, and I do feel sorry for her. I hope that she gets the help that she needs.

However, I am very curious about some underlying ethnic and gender messages that I am reading about in your message.

Just out of curiousity, is your office dominated by males?  If you read your message carefully and also look at a number of responses, it almost infers some gender issues.   I want to be very clear here- her personality is indicative of her specific situation and is in no way reflective of female employees or any other "group"  as a whole.

Is the staff member's last name "Hu"?   I certainly hope not, as I would be offended that someone would actually post someone's real last name (and ethnicity) on a public forum. 

One of the issues is that human resources (or whomever is doing the hiring) needs to do much more careful and sharp when they are checking references during the job application process to weed out these kinds of "personalities" in the first place.  They need to press the previous folks that applicants worked for to find out what they are REALLY like. Anyone can make themselves look great on paper or during an interview.

Second issue is manager training from HR on how to deal with these types of personalities if they are already in the workforce.

I worked previously in a government engineering department with essentially the same issue- a male-dominated profession with one female administrative assistant who had some major psychological issues.   She was not a team player, and this created many, many, many headaches for the male-dominated engineering staff who are typically not well-versed in dealing with human resource -related issues. (I am not generalizing here, this was just my experience at this specific department)

Essentially, in that situation, she was a very manipulative person. The person in charge of the engineering department was a super friendly person, but unfortunately "spineless" as you mention in your post.

I hope the situation is resolved quickly. 

[zeegirl]

Firefly--

"Hu" is used by many people on the fora; it is a fora-specific reference, used in an attempt to not identify the gender of the person in question. In other words, neither a "her" or a "him".  Many, many, many discussions have taken place on the fora about the adequacy, usefulness, accuracy, etc., of the term.

I think the OP was attempting to disguise the person's gender in the original posting, but made a slip and eventually identified the troubled staff member as a woman. I did not read this as a last name, nor an ethnic identifier.

I'd also like to throw in my two cents worth here.  I read frustration, venting, and a "throw-up-my-hands-and-give-up" quality to the OP and the subsequent posts by her/him.  I didn't really see the other qualities that some people saw.  But then I've had to deal with depression in my own family, and I can see where it would get a little frustrating. My SO, ZeeGuy, also suffers from depression, and he and I have had long discussions about how to help each other work through it.  I'm not sure that I have any advice for the OP, other than to turn it all over to the Dean in question.  The Dean really should be dealing with this, as well as HR.

[firefly]

Thank you Zeegirl for the clarification. I have been on other forums where actual last names or very specific descriptions were being used, which I found shocking to say the least.