am I being mean about my incompetent coworker?

A reader writes:

I work in a field similar to event planning and equipment rental. I’ve been in this position for three years. Our marketing and PR manager, Regina, has been with the company for 15 years, at first as a delivery driver and someone driving the truck to community events to show off our stuff and promote our organization, and then she was inexplicably promoted to her current position three years ago because she also assisted with creating event flyers and she does make really pretty flyers.

She is not my boss, but she is responsible for posting our events to our website calendar, creating flyers, posting to social media, and reviewing products I create for event activities for accuracy and aesthetics. She is terrible at all of these things. She misses the deadlines she creates for herself to get these things done so often that I’ve created an Excel document to help me remember to check that events are being added to the calendar and flyers are produced early enough in advance for someone to see them. In the last two months, she’s created and distributed two external flyers that didn’t include the event location or organization logo. Event descriptions are frequently copy-pasted with information from previous events. She has admitted that she doesn’t review my products and one of her subordinate’s (Katy) products because she doesn’t have time, so we’ve started asking other co-workers to check our work. She claims all these issues are the fault of her other subordinate, Karen. Karen and Katy are both part time and in entry-level positions. She has told Katy that she wants to fire Karen but is kind of just hoping she’ll quit soon. Katy is stressed to be missing her own deadlines because she doesn’t have information she needs from Regina and is distressed to hear their mutual boss talk about firing Karen.

I do have empathy for Regina because she does not have the education, experience, or skills to perform her job, but unfortunately, she seems to be completely unaware of this. I’ve elevated these issues to my boss, Amy, so often that I’m sick of hearing myself complain. Our big boss, Tina, has only been with us for a year, so I did give her a few months to recognize these issues on her own, but for the last six months or so, I’ve been looping her in as well.

I’m not leaving my job because I honestly love every part of it except babysitting someone who earns double my salary. Amy and the two other event planners are also very frustrated with all of these things. When I talk to Tina, she also seems to recognize that these are serious issues, but when we’re in group meetings, she’ll say things like, “Well, Regina is our marketing expert, so I’ll defer to her on this issue.” Regina is not a marketing expert. I’m sure Tina doesn’t want to undermine one of her managers in front of everyone, but I feel like I’m being gaslit.

Am I being gaslit? Or am I the mean girl?

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

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