Angry coworker pawns off his workload.

A couple of months ago we hired a new person. He’s been with us for about two months now.

During his first month of training, he didn’t like how I was doing something and suddenly snapped, saying something along the lines of, “This is f*cking stupid, it makes no sense, it’s slow, let me show you how to do it.” His way wasn’t completely wrong, but it actually ended up being slower. I brushed it off at the time and assumed he was just having a bad day.

A few weeks later he was done with training, but he still relies heavily on me. I was already planning to talk to my boss about the workload, but before I could bring it up, my boss said, “Can you do me a big favor and continue to support John?” That felt like a punch in the gut, because I’m already overloaded doing both my work and a big chunk of his and I get to deal with antsy pants.

Supporting a new coworker is one thing, but this person is also very short-tempered. I recently found out he had an issue with two employees from another department, both at a lower level than us. In one situation, he told someone, “Well, if you knew how to do your job, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” In another, someone emailed him (basically asking him to pay attention and follow the process), and he called me just to rant about how big of a bitch she supposedly is. (She was looking out for him, and he still called her a bitch)

Fast forward to today: he called me to go on a rant about how our company is “stupid” and how he wants to tell upper management how things should be done. His ideas might be simple, but they don’t actually support the company’s goals. On top of that on Monday, he emailed my boss asking for even more support from me.

Meanwhile, I still have my own job to do. It’s getting harder and harder to deal with his anger and constant negativity. He has a very short fuse, and the smallest thing can set him off. We don’t have an HR in the office. Just a phone number for someone who oversees HR remotely. I really don’t want to call her because she’ll just loop in my boss and then my boss will wonder why I didn’t come directly to him.

I know I should probably talk to my boss, but I don’t even know how to bring it up. Do I say, “John is too aggressive and it’s affecting my work”? Or do I try talking to John first and ask him to dial it back? I feel like he’s unpredictable and don’t know how he may react.

To add to it, he clearly struggles with anxiety and stress over things that haven’t even happened yet. After our Monday morning calls, any time we’re given new tasks, he calls me to vent, panic, or try to push his responsibilities onto someone else.

I’m at the point where I just don’t know what to do. How would you handle this?