False Accusations - but not sure what to do
I’m wondering if anyone has dealt with something similar before.
I’ve been at my company for 8 years and never had a complaint against me. I generally try to be respectful and easy to work with.
There’s a colleague I’ll call Julie. She has a habit of making it sound like she’s heavily involved in projects when in reality I end up doing most of the work. Right now I’m already covering what feels like 3 jobs, and both leadership and Julie know that.
A new project came up recently and Julie emailed leadership saying she would be supporting me on it.
The problem is that whenever you ask her a direct question, she avoids answering and instead asks multiple questions back. Even my manager has noticed this. It makes it very hard to clarify ownership and responsibilities.
After her email, I went over to her desk to clarify what each of us would actually be doing on the project. I asked what support she’d be providing and what she needed from me. Instead of answering directly, she again started questioning me in a way that made it seem like I wasn’t doing my work properly.
I stayed professional and tried to clarify again.
I said something along the lines of:
“So just to confirm, I’ll be doing the calculations, preparing the numbers, and submitting the request, basically most of the work?”
We both laughed, and she replied, “Yes, that works for me.”
That was the entire interaction.
A week later, my VP told me Julie complained that I was rude, made her feel horrible, and created a bad experience for her at work. Apparently it was escalated to her VP as well.
I was shocked. I never raised my voice or acted aggressively. I even went to lunch with a coworker sitting next to her 10 minutes later, and nobody mentioned anything seemed wrong. She said people around her asked her “if she was alright“ after our conversation.
I spoke to a few coworkers afterward and they were surprised too, especially since I’ve never had issues like this before.
Now my VP wants me to talk to Julie directly, but I honestly don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong or that apologising makes sense here. At the same time, I also don’t want unnecessary drama or escalation.
I feel like I’m being unfairly targeted for simply trying to clarify responsibilities on a project where I’m already carrying most of the workload.
Has anyone dealt with something similar? Did you address it directly or just keep communication formal and move on?