Letter to _____ (I hate you).

Good morning,

As I have been working here for a while now and have gotten to know the way things work, I have begun to notice that you have been taking advantage of me and my perceived kindness to you. I would like for that to stop very much. Upon my commencing work here, my day-to-day life was laid out by you in a very nice letter detailing the tasks I would face and what things to avoid. I struggled with the avoiding things early on, as I felt awkward telling Partners and Associates “no” to their tasks which I deemed very important for the firm. You had a very harsh discussion about that with me, stating that I need to stop letting people take advantage of me and “don’t let them hog me” and keep me from doing my work. You had the audacity to discuss this with me in the hallway very loudly where everyone could hear, which lead to your downfall. Everyone here has always hated you and I used that knowledge, and that particular incident which angered a lot of people, to turn them against you and have them complain to Human Resources about you. You seemed sad on Monday after your review; no good news?

You told me that my job was to help keep all the files organized around here, and that there was little time for much else. I agree to a certain extent; there are days where I have no time to even eat lunch but others where I surf the Internet for 8 hours. You stated that I should tell people that I could not help them with their assignments and to have their Legal Secretaries (you being one of those Secretaries) to either do the work or get the paralegal to do it. That being said, after your Partner’s recent promotion and your recent pay and workload increase, you have been calling me to your desk to do things that were not laid out in my job description. When I told you “no” as you told me to tell others, you told me that it is my job and then you made a complaint to Human Resources. I am confused. I did not get promoted or receive a pay increase. In fact, the only thing I did receive recently, on top of the 10 associates and 5 partners that I currently work for, is another 4 associates. Yay…

I’m going to lay out some suggestions in order to make our relationship go more smoothly since, in your formal complaint about me to Human Resources, you stated that you did not feel a “friendly relationship developing” between the two of us. This is, of course, after making myriad complaints about my work ethic and reaming me in front of the rest of the staff. My suggestions are as follows:

1) Do not change my job on a day-to-day basis to fit your needs and then tell me that others cannot do the same. One day I “work for this entire team and should not be doing work exclusively for one person” and then the next, you have me at your desk all day doing mundane tasks while you talk to your friends on the phone about your new bathroom fixtures.
2) On mundane tasks: Do not call me to come over to your desk two stories above me to retrieve something five feet away from you or to tell me something that could have been said via e-mail or a simple phone call. While I do value the exercise, I don’t want to get it running up and down the stairs because you are lazy.
3) Most of the people in the office do not like you and have recently realized that the others hate you too. Do not sit with us at lunch or come interrupt our conversations (which are usually about you) cheerfully smiling. The winter’s chill that rolls in whenever you come near us and the symphony of crickets whenever you ask a question should tell you that none of us like you.

These are just a few of the many suggestions I have to make things flow more smoothly around here. I’m sure others have things that they would like to add but, in the interest of not losing our jobs we shall remain silent and this letter will not be sent until I quit or get fired, in which case, I will make the necessary edits (curse words included this time) and send.

Thank you for your time!