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Take a step back and try to explain the big picture to us.
You are the permanent writer,
Are you also the other person's boss, do you manage them?
Who gives out work?
Is each person responsible for their own projects or are you also
responsible for his?
Who hired him?
and who approves the bills that he sends in?
The bills should include only the projects that your company approves
him doing, so why is someone agreeing to pay for wasted hours.
Sometimes it is hard to tell the person not to work on these extra
things, is there someone else in the company who can explain that he
will not be paid for doing unnecessary work?
Somewhere up there you should have a boss, who is presumably the
person who hired him and the person with the power to hire someone
else instead of him.
You should make time to have a meeting and present to them why working
with this person is wasting the company's money and in what way this
is damaging the company, preventing you form meeting targets etc.
Try to make a list of all the problems you have with this person and
at some point you will have to say, it is either him or me!
This is not the first string of emails you have written on this
subject and it is not clear why you are letting this problem continue.
The only solution is to talk with management, explain you have
consulted with technical writing colleagues who agree that this person
is not working as he should.
Not only that, if you do have management, they should be able to see
that having 2 writers who do not manage to work well together is not a
good situation.
Then, be involved in the hiring process of the next writer.
Search the archives here for the large number of threads on the
subject of how to hire a technical writer.
On 2/25/08, SB <sylvia -dot- braunstein -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> Well, I don't think that he views this as reduced contribution.
> He is focused on doing things right. Of course, there is no end to how right
> you can do things. So, he formats and formats and formats his heart's
> contents. And he proofreads again and again. Of course this is very nice but
> he never meets the deadlines. I don't have the time to proofread what I do,
> partially because most of what he does not do falls back on me.
>
> Please forgive me for pouring out my frustration here in so many details and
> sorry for venting; I have just been steaming inside and trying to take as
> much as I could on myself but I realize that he has to be a lone technical
> writer, he has to be able to tell the "others" about the professionalism,
> and he has to be able to do things just the way he wants to do them. I am
> really ready to let go but can't right now.
>
> --
Caroline Tabach
Technical Writer
e-mail: caroline -dot- tabach -at- gmail -dot- com
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