Emotionally Unstable

I am getting a wee bit tired of tip-toeing around the weird girl at work. She's very shy and quiet, and has self-esteem problems, so I've always been extra nice to her.

I now realize that she is bat shit insane.

I work for a government laboratory where everything is meticulously documented and triple-checked. It is standard protocol to review someone else's work and notify them to fix errors, even if it's something minor like forgetting to initial something.

Recently, while working on a project I found that Miss Unstable submitted an unnecessary request for outside services, for an issue that had already been resolved. I sent her a courtesy email to let her know the issue was corrected and I had removed her request.

Instead of reading my email as "Hey just to let you know this was fixed after you sent in the request no worries!" somehow she misinterpreted it to mean "You screwed up and you're dumb! I will review all your work because I am petty! Bwahahaha!"

She stormed into the other project leader's office, literally in TEARS, and insisted I denied the request because I had a vendetta against her, and would rather quit the project than work on anything where I was in charge.

The Project Leader calmly explained that I did not know who had submitted the services request at the time I decided it was unnecessary, and that it was the Project Leader who had looked up the requester and asked me to send the courtesy email to Ms. Unstable, after she concurred that the request was unnecessary.

This did not convince Ms. Unstable. "You don't understand! She's always been bitchy to me!"

This was a surprise to me and the Project Leader, who then found out that Ms. Unstable had been nursing a grudge for months over a perceived slight. The "always been bitchy" referred to ONE other incident of her being bat shit crazy. One time she had to go home early and I offered to finish her part of the project we were both working on since management told us it was a rush job that should be completed ASAP.

Instead of thinking "how nice" Ms. Unstable thought, "OMG. She thinks I'm slow and incompetent."

I am now planning to avoid her like the plague if her paranoia allows her to twist every kind gesture into something sinister.

After her tearful rant in the Project Leader's office was not met with agreement, she stormed out and shopped her "Woe is me" speech around. Everyone's reaction was "If you can't get along with Snark, it's not Snark's problem." I presume she realized she was not winning the PR campaign, because later that day she went back to the Project Leader's office and backtracked. "Uh, I hope you don't think I was angry at Snark. I wasn't implying that at all. I don't want any rumors to start or people to think I don't like her, and you don't need to talk to management about my behavior."

She then sent me an email explaining why she had submitted the services request, and why she would continue to do so. It was politely worded, but essentially said, "I didn't do anything wrong and I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."