I need advice for approaching this character at work. I don’t know where her defensiveness comes from because I never disrespect her, or got in fights with her at work. From the moment she got there, she would get defensive about general talk about work. I work in a hotel where you constantly have to communicate about the status of the place, the state of the rooms, the occupancy, the, the state of things at the front desk. Etc. It doesn’t matter what.. if I am trying to communicate with her, she takes it the wrong way, gets defensive. I don’t know where this comes from. It started off just normal communication. Then somewhere.. aggravatingly started becoming defensive with some kind of curt reply. It’s like she wants to get a reaction, and is trying to throw all kinds of things at you to get the reaction she wants. I’m not going to do this though I don’t get paid enough to deal with drama… Or get caught in something like that. So I tried to bring it up with saying we need to talk, find some kind of understanding. Her reaction is to point out things I’m doing wrong, or dredge up a whole discussion about why I’m “incompetent”. She actually went as far as calling me a waste of space, and goes on to describe this huge whole imaginary picture about how awful I am to have at the job. It is really character assassination and I don’t know where it comes from, because before this job we never knew each other.  I’d known her in a really business casual way for about a month……. Though since the whole thing started she’s always waiting for a chance to point out something I did wrong/ am doing wrong. It feels like ..literally pointless random joyride antagonism…if you can’t communicate about little things how can you work together, how can you get anything done at all. Like maybe its a game to her, she’s bored, so she picks out a person and let’s it all get ugly it doesn’t matter what it’s in the middle of or how little I get paid to care.

Anyway I try to find the words to explain this to my boss, and I’m too tired/ blown away to correctly explain what’s going on. Or also I couldn’t see it clearly at the time. He proceeds to lecture me about something because he wants to avoid confronting it.

Somehow… in person I’m not good at disputing my case when it’s about //a job// and it’s //my boss//. I feel like I can’t get the words out right, or that I can’t get a word in at all. Somehow I refuse to be let it be that way this time. I feel really disrespected and dismissed, I’m furious because it doesn’t feel like a safe place to work. I rarely have run ins with people who bring this much bs to a job.

How can I bring it up and feel //confident//?

What do I say and what don’t I say, of what I’ve said here? I’m too uncomfortable bringing this kind of thing up to a boss to think clearly in the moment I HATE dealing with this kind of thing? But I know if I don’t it will continue to happen, I can’t perform well in a place like this. I just know she’s going to try and twist words against me with my boss, I have to consider that first.

Unfortunately I can’t leave I need this job.

All advice is really appreciated, thanks.