How to manage a narcissistic employee
I know this topic has been asked, and I’ve read all of the subs on this. But I am in desperate need of help because if I don’t get it, I think I’m gonna go crazy. And before anyone suggests it, I cannot leave my job. I am in a contract because I was relocated here for this promotion and if I were to leave, I would owe the company 25K.
My store has a new associate that we hired about a month ago. He used to own his own business in another state and has recently moved to our state within this year. He came into our store, trying to find the highest paying job he could get. And the team leader of the area really liked him and hired him right away! Everything seemed like it was great until about two weeks into the job. He started reporting every safety infraction possible.
I take safety very seriously, and I lead with empathy, which I realize was my first mistake with this guy. After his first concern, he started emailing a recap of every single conversation he would have with anybody in leadership. I even had to come in on a PTO day to take care of one of these situations. Which I tried explaining to him later this is how much I care that I came in on a PTO day, which of course he used against me. Because as I’ve learned narcissists don’t care about any kind of feelings, they’re “logical thinkers.”
My district manager is forcing me to constantly talk to this guy, but I feel like I have no support. He has sent about 10 recap emails every time we’ve had a conversation. He had an accountability conversation earlier this week which of course he saw as retaliation. Ever since he first reported this “safety infraction“ he has not been in his area working at all. He spends his entire day writing up these emails and documenting five minute conversations. When I tried talking to him about it on Monday, I told him it does not take eight hours to write the stuff up and he said I’m old and these things take me a long time. I said you can use talk to text and he said I don’t know how to do that. But the guy googles everything. So it just doesn’t make any sense. I want to hold him accountable again this week because he has spent about 24 hours upstairs just on his phone in the last week. And it’s an extremely busy week with the holiday and the store is suffering being down a person. Who’s just up there doing nothing. His team is constantly complaining and has a lot of frustrations about it.
The safety issue he brought to my attention, he submitted to ethics and it’s now gone up and into a global investigation so that’s out of our hands. But again he refuses to admit that it does not take eight hours to write one email. I have read about the gray rock method and the Jade method. But I just don’t know what else to say to this guy when I tell him that I need him to get back to work and help our customers. Because he says he is helping our customers by writing these emails and documenting all the safety infractions. I feel like I’m at such a loss and such a failure as a manager because I’ve never had to handle somebody like this. I don’t know what one liners I can say to him and in response to him thinking he needs eight hours to write one email. Because that is all opinion based.
Our district manager was even at my store this week and spoke to him and said it’s her opinion that it doesn’t take seven hours to write one email and that he needs to take care of the customers. He responded well to that and I thought OK this is done, but all day today he was upstairs just on his phone. I know I should not be afraid of him and I just need to act neutral and unbothered. I just don’t know what the right things to say are.
I apologize for a long post, but I am just at the end of my rope. I don’t know how to communicate to this guy. I don’t know how to get through to him (I know I will never actually get through to him). Any advice would be helpful. But if anybody has ever dealt with an employee taking too much time to document conversations where they’re clearly manipulating their time, please let me know. When I had him write a statement, it was 12 pages long and it took him FIVE hours to complete. And it’s not like he was coming up with original thoughts he was copying everything from the emails he had already sent to us. Nobody writes at that slow of a pace. But that’s when I knew that he is just a very manipulative person with his time.
Please, please. I need help. So bad.