[Long post alert]Ladies,

[Long post alert]Ladies,

Really really need your help with the situation that I am facing with my current team, especially one specific team mate!

To give you all a background about my team, I am an IC working under my manager with 2 other women, one of whom herself is an IC and the other is a people manager managing 2 junior employees under her.

All these folks (5 of them including my manager) are old time workers at this company where I am a relative new comers- these folks have been here for a decade and are very close to the founders. My manager is pretty comfortable where she is and has no steady plans for growing her team. The other team members too are unambitious people who do not want to grow- which is something I don't really judge, except for two reasons- the job security in my company is really really low and second, I suspect my team mates including my manager are still around because they are old timers and hence the founders will never fire them (All of my team members know this and they are therefore extremely comfortable where they are) . I know that will never be my case, so I work extra and hustle more simply to save my seat or get better opportunities. One of my team members- the old timer peer and Individual contributor I have mentioned in the 2nd paragraph seems to have a huge problem with this. She also moved in from another team and from the time she moved in, she has subtly tried to create a wedge using her age within the organisation between me and the other team members amongst other things. I used to find myself excluded from all conversations or sidelined in team meetings ( she would often take the centre stage and keep discussing the good old things about the company which new joiners like me couldn't appreciate) until she went on her mat leave and my manager made me handle her entire work-portfolio -which was internal communications- organising town-halls, helping leaders relaying difficult communications ( in an unstable company) and writing out company reports. I took this over and gave her portfolio a facelift- we got more attendance, and my work was praised by leaders. She came back from her leave only to openly express her insecurities at me. My manager for her part told her that she needed to be more efficient, but instead of coaching asked me to handle the execution bit for her work giving me no option- Ms. Insecurity would deliberately plan things at the last moment, improvise them and then force me to execute it for her or put me under the bus with the leaders for inefficiency, until I put my foot down and told my manager that I no longer wanted to handle her work for her and that she lacked skills- This was a very risky move on my part because my manager and this team mate are neighbours and I know my manager turns a blind eye to her faults. But the thing is I supported this woman on her mat leave while I was myself going through divorce proceedings, which she knows and she comes back tells me some really cruel stuff like " You eat like a pregnant woman" or makes jibes like " You look good with your hair open since you have low volume" or stuff like " You paid a steep price for your ambition" .. these remarks come out of nowhere and she knows she's hitting me where it hurts the most. Else she keeps purposely going on and on about her domestic bliss- replete with 3 kids, a dog , her beautiful home, her parents, her love marriage - like she cannot stop showing her life off to me and about how she suffers as a mother and faces the kind of hardship no one has (subtly hinting I havent suffered enough). All these nastiness are in private- during lunchtimes in the cafeteria- she even hounds me if I dont have lunch with her. After she tried to overtly blame me for one of her assignments where I pitched in for her when she again went on leave, this time unnanounced, I took my manager aside and briefed her about her behavior- my manager refused to hear anything against her, including the fact that she had tried to rob me of credit for work done on yet another back breaking recent project and had expressly tried to blame me in a report that she wrote to the senior management. My manager also told me not to have boundaries within the team ( who says this?) and that I had to make things work with her.

I am unable to withstand this behavior from this woman, its like even if i breathe it sets her off. To make matters worse she overtly flatters me in public, its almost becoming an embarassment saying anything in front of her because she immediately jumps in to add her view point and then falsely flatters me. She has now started shadowing me on linkedin as well.

Now I am slated to work with her and this other team member on a new AI based project, and i see that she joins hands with this other team member of mine to hold meetings behind my back or quietly brush aside the work that I have done. Thing is both of them don't know the first thing about AI and I can see they will use me for all the knowledge and the execution work and finally portray it as their work and walk away with credit.

My manager isn't helpful at all in this situation and infact keeps asking me if I have tried to make things work with her. I feel excluded and cornered at the same time for no fault of mine. How do I deal with this woman ? My nerves are really frayed. I've had some very tough last couple of years and could use some sanity in my life and I am a little enraged that this woman chooses to envy me when her life is overflowing with abundance. Gal pals any inputs would be really helpful ! Many thanks