My Passive Aggressive Coworker Won’t Stop Trying To Control Everything — Counseling Corner

Every Thursday we highlight a problem from a listener. We give our advice and ask other listeners to offer advice. Welcome to the Counseling Corner.

Dear Brain and Courtlin,

There is a woman I work with who is the queen of a land called Passive Aggressive.
She isn’t the storeowner. She isn’t a manager. Yet, she insists on bossing other people around and causing a stink every time something isn’t done to her specifications.
From what I understand, people have always just ignored her bad behavior because she works at a store by herself most of the time.
She very well may have gone on doing as she liked and pretending that she was important—until I started working there.
The first time I came in and found one of her notes, I was mildly agitated. She had written a reminder to everyone to take the trash out at the end of the night, something I never forget to do. A few weeks later I came in to find the previous nights trash tied up and sitting in the bathroom sink. That really struck a chord after I found out she was the person who had closed.
Why would someone find it necessary to leave a written reminder to everyone to take out the trash if she herself wasn’t always going to do it?
So I took her note down, and threw out her trash and that was the end of it— or so I thought. I came in for work to find out she rewrote the note I had thrown out.

Then I found out she had begun complaining about me to other employees behind my back because I had the audacity to throw out her precious notes and prevent her from making her childish point.

The management team prefers that we try and solve problems between employees ourselves but I, personally, cannot handle this workplace witch much longer. What should I do?

Beverly