‘It’s the same move every time’: Peer Executive Assistant keeps making up rules she has no authority over, then blames the chaos she caused on the colleague she's undermining

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Jul 24, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

This is a one-person run shadow government nobody voted for, complete with imaginary bylaws, a self-issued badge, and authority over things she's never once been asked to oversee

It's like some people wake up every morning and appoint themselves Supreme Court of an office they don't run. No campaign, no votes, no actual jurisdiction, just vibes and a really confident tone of voice. It's the workplace equivalent of a guy at a bar loudly explaining the rules of a sport he's never played, except everyone has to nod along because he signs off on PTO requests.

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  • Man covers his face at a desk with monitors, keyboard, mouse, and blue office lighting. And a bold quote: "Looking for a way to shut the pattern down"
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    Overwhelmed office worker covering his face at his desk

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  • TL;DR: A peer admin at the executive level keeps declaring rulings on things outside her authority.
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  • She once told a meeting that a senior leader had no right to change my job title and invented a job- description restriction that wasn't there.
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  • Most recently she publicly called my manager distribution list "unofficial" and tried to make her team the required routing point for all manager communications, while being the reason the list lags in the first place.
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  • Looking for a way to shut the pattern down without giving her the public fight she's good at.
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  • Full Story A while back, the senior executive I supported adjusted my job title. Routine, it was her own admin's title to set.
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  • Man leans back with hands behind his head at a desk with monitor, keyboard, mouse, and headphones.
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    office worker leaning back with his hands behind his head, looking worn down

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  • In a meeting with the exec suite, this other admin declared that the executive had no right to make that change and should have taken it to committee first.
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  • She was ruling a leader's decision about her own staff invalid. In the same meeting, she argued my new role was only allowed to support executives.
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  • The actual job description said the role supports "leaders or executives." Supporting the executive I already reported to satisfied it completely.
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  • She collapsed "or" into "must" to manufacture a rules violation that didn't exist. Two invented procedural objections in one sitting.
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  • I walked out understanding she believes she's the authority up there, and that was enough to make me turn down a move into that suite.
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  • Most recent one. I maintain a distribution list for managers across our sites. A manager tried to use it and hit some delivery failures.
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  • Instead of anything useful, she jumped onto the thread, told him my list was outdated and "not maintained by any of us," and redirected everyone to route management communications through her team's "official" list going forward.
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  • The part that gets me: the only reason my list ever lags is that she and her group don't pass me the management changes on their end.
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  • So she withholds the updates, then uses the resulting staleness as proof my list is unofficial, and positions her team as the required checkpoint for anyone trying to reach managers.
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  • It's the same move every time. Take something that isn't hers to decide, my title, whose job supports whom, whose list is official, how communications must flow, and declare a ruling on it as if it's policy.
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  • Is there a clean way to shut this down without handing her the public confrontation she's clearly comfortable
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  • She's good in a visible fight. I'd rather not give her one.
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  • The genius move is always the same: find a decision that was never yours to make, then make it anyway with enough conviction that people forget to check your badge. It works because most offices run on social pressure, not actual org charts, and confidence is basically a forged ID that gets you into rooms you have no business being in.

    Then there's the sabotage-then-scold combo, which is basically arson followed by a strongly worded email about fire safety. Starve someone's project of the one input only you control, wait for it to visibly struggle, then point at the wreckage like you're a concerned bystander instead of the guy holding the lighter. It's gaslighting with a paper trail, self-authored evidence for a crime you committed.

    Public confrontations are catnip for people who've built their whole identity around winning arguments nobody asked them to referee. Show up to their turf, a meeting, a group thread, anywhere with an audience, and you're just feeding a lion that's already well fed. The actual final straw here is boring and on point considering this is a feud between executive assistants after all. A quiet email. A shared doc. A conversation with the one person whose opinion isn't performative. No stage, no crowd, no chance for them to do their bit.

    Self-appointed authority only survives as long as nobody bothers to check its credentials. The second someone quietly says "actually, that's not how this works" without turning it into a show, the whole act loses its oxygen. Declarations aren't jurisdiction. Confidence isn't a title. And eventually even the loudest fake judge runs out of cases nobody's contesting. 

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management workplace discussion employment issues boss workplace-stories hr coworkers colleague Horrible Bosses
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