Working With Someone You Do Not Trust

You can work beside someone for years and still not trust them.

Maybe they repeat private conversations. Maybe their handovers are incomplete. Maybe they blame other people when something goes wrong. Maybe they are technically weak and overconfident. Or perhaps one serious incident changed the way you see everything they do.

The temptation is to solve the problem emotionally: avoid them, warn everyone about them, check everything they touch, or wait for proof that your suspicion was right.

A safer approach is narrower.

You do not need to trust the person. You need to make the work reliable.

Start by naming what “I don’t trust them” means

Mistrust can hide several different problems.

You do not like them. Their style, personality, friendships, or opinions irritate you.

You do not trust their competence. They forget calls, make frequent errors, misunderstand procedure, or give poor handovers.

You do not trust their judgment. They know the rules but make inconsistent decisions under pressure.

You do not trust their honesty. You believe they conceal facts, change stories, take credit, shift blame, or misrepresent events.

You believe there may be misconduct. The concern involves money, harassment, theft, collusion, game integrity, falsification, discrimination, retaliation, or another issue that may require formal reporting.

Those categories should not be treated as interchangeable.

A coworker who is disorganized needs a different response from a coworker suspected of theft. A person you dislike does not automatically need formal escalation. A serious integrity concern should not be handled as a personality clash.

Make the handoff strong enough to survive the relationship

Weak trust creates the greatest risk where one employee depends on another employee’s memory.

An outgoing pit boss says, “Everything is fine except table 14.”

Fine in what sense?

Was there a player dispute? A rating correction? A fill still in process? A dealer performance issue? A promise made by a manager? A surveillance review? A guest returning later?

When trust is low, vague handovers become accusations waiting to happen.

Use the normal operational record properly. Record the facts the next person needs, not commentary about the coworker.

Instead of:

“As usual, Daniel left a mess on 14.”

Use:

“Table 14: player disputed a rating at 01:20. Floor manager advised that the rating will be reviewed before the guest returns. No outcome communicated by handover.”

The second version remains useful even if Daniel is your closest friend.

The existing guide on shift handovers explains this principle more fully: the handover should transfer unresolved work, ownership, promises, and deadlines rather than personalities.

Use required controls; do not invent private controls

Suppose you do not trust another cashier’s count.

The answer is not to secretly recount their drawer whenever they leave the cage.

Use the property’s required count, dual-control, sign-off, reconciliation, or supervisor process. If the process is inadequate, raise the process.

Suppose you do not trust a dealer’s late-bet calls.

Do not create a personal rule that every action they take requires your approval. Apply the authorized supervisory standard. If performance is below standard, coach or document it through the same process used for other employees.

Private controls create two dangers.

First, they may violate role boundaries, privacy rules, surveillance restrictions, or segregation of duties.

Second, they make the feud operational. One employee is now running an unofficial system against another employee.

A healthy control should be explainable without saying, “because I don’t trust her.”

Do not withhold information to test someone

Mistrust sometimes produces experiments.

You know a VIP has been promised a review, but you say nothing because you want to see whether the supervisor “remembers.”

You notice a cashier is missing a document, but you let the transaction reach balancing because “they need to learn.”

You see that a new inspector has misunderstood a table condition, but you wait for the error to become public because you want proof that management promoted the wrong person.

That is not evidence gathering. It is deliberately allowing preventable operational failure.

If you have information required for the job, pass it through the proper channel. You can still document that the other person should have known or checked it.

Do not damage the operation to strengthen your argument about the coworker.

Keep disagreement factual enough that another manager can review it

“I cannot trust him” is difficult to investigate.

“On three handovers this week, unresolved player complaints were not recorded, and on Tuesday the incoming shift learned about one from the host after the player returned” is reviewable.

Useful records focus on:

• date and time;
• task or decision involved;
• what information was available;
• what procedure or responsibility applied;
• what was communicated;
• what was missing or inconsistent;
• the operational consequence;
• what follow-up was requested.

Do not create a private dossier of every irritating behaviour. Record what the job or formal process requires.

Acas’s 2025 Great Britain research found that workplace conflict commonly involved both colleagues and line managers, with discussion being a frequent route people used to try to resolve it. That does not mean every serious concern belongs in an informal conversation. It does support dealing with ordinary relationship conflict before it becomes an identity: the person I can never work with.

Direct conversation works only when the subject is safe to discuss directly

For a normal working problem, a short private conversation may be enough.

“The last two handovers did not include the unresolved guest promises. I need those written down because I am receiving the follow-up on the next shift.”

That is stronger than:

“You always leave me your problems.”

The first statement identifies behaviour, consequence, and expected change.

A direct conversation is not appropriate for every concern. If you reasonably believe there is violence, harassment, theft, fraud, retaliation, serious discrimination, collusion, evidence tampering, or another matter requiring a protected or formal reporting route, follow the property’s policy and local obligations.

Do not confront someone in a way that puts people or evidence at risk.

Do not recruit the department to validate your mistrust

An employee who distrusts a coworker often starts asking others indirect questions.

“Have you noticed how she always disappears when it gets busy?”

“Did he tell you the same story he told me?”

“Do you trust him with fills?”

Soon the department has two groups: people who “know what the person is really like” and people accused of defending them.

This is how a specific working problem becomes casino workplace politics.

If another employee independently witnessed a relevant event, they may be an appropriate witness through the proper process. That is different from building a social coalition.

You do not need votes to raise a factual concern.

Be careful when mistrust crosses departments

Casino operations depend on people who do not work under the same manager.

Table games may distrust surveillance after a disputed review. Cage may distrust a floor supervisor who sends incomplete paperwork. Marketing may distrust operations because guest promises are changed. Finance may distrust a department whose adjustments arrive after cutoff.

Cross-department mistrust becomes expensive because each side can create defensive work for the other.

The cage starts rejecting anything that is not perfectly formatted rather than clarifying a correctable omission.

The floor stops calling surveillance until absolutely necessary.

Surveillance sends technically accurate but unhelpful replies because it is tired of being challenged.

Finance adds manual checks around one department without addressing the process that creates the errors.

The solution is not “trust each other more.” It is to define the interface: what information is required, who owns the decision, what evidence is retained, and how exceptions are escalated.

If you supervise the person, fairness becomes part of the control

A supervisor who distrusts an employee can easily begin interpreting ambiguous behaviour against them.

The employee is quiet: “attitude.”

The employee asks a question: “challenging authority.”

The employee makes an error: “proof of carelessness.”

Another employee makes the same error: “one of those things.”

That is why performance management needs observable standards.

If the concern is late calls, define the expected call. If the concern is documentation, identify what is missing. If the concern is attendance, use the actual attendance record. If the concern is tone or conduct, describe the words or behaviour rather than writing “bad attitude” as if it were self-explanatory.

NIOSH’s Quality of Worklife framework includes trust, respect, fairness, supervisory behaviour, teamwork, role conflict, and staffing among workplace factors worth measuring. It is not a casino disciplinary model. It does reinforce why a supervisor’s mistrust should not become an invisible standard that only one employee has to satisfy.

Some relationships need repair; others only need boundaries

Not every coworker relationship will become trusting again.

After a serious lie, a public accusation, a grievance, or repeated unreliability, the realistic goal may be professional predictability rather than friendship.

That can be enough.

You know what the person is responsible for. They know what you are responsible for. Handoffs are complete. Required checks happen. Disagreements go through the correct route. Neither person uses players, subordinates, or other departments to fight the argument.

The dealer–inspector version of this problem is examined separately in When a Dealer and Inspector Stop Trusting Each Other, because that relationship has immediate consequences for calls and live table supervision.

For other coworker relationships, the same principle still applies: make the work less dependent on personal faith.

Know when the job is asking too much of an informal repair

A private conversation is not a substitute for a formal process when the concern is serious or persistent.

Escalation may be appropriate when:

• the same control failure continues after clear correction;
• required information is deliberately concealed;
• a person retaliates after concerns are raised;
• harassment, threats, or discrimination are alleged;
• money, records, game integrity, or regulated duties may be affected;
• an employee is being asked to ignore or bypass a required control;
• the conflict is now affecting several employees or departments;
• direct discussion is unsafe or has already failed.

The exact route might be a supervisor, department manager, HR, compliance, security, surveillance, union representative, regulator, or another authorized channel depending on the issue and jurisdiction.

Use the route that belongs to the concern.

You are allowed to remain cautious

Repair does not require pretending nothing happened.

If someone has repeatedly failed to hand over critical information, you may reasonably verify that the next handover is complete. If a manager previously changed instructions verbally, you may ask for the new procedure in writing. If a coworker broke confidence, you may stop sharing personal information with them.

Those are boundaries.

The line is crossed when caution becomes punishment: withholding work information, setting traps, spreading allegations, denying ordinary cooperation, or imposing private controls you have no authority to impose.

Trust may return slowly. It may never return fully.

Professional reliability can be rebuilt sooner because it depends on things both people can see: clear roles, complete records, consistent procedure, appropriate checks, and a route for disagreement that does not require either person to pretend the relationship is fine.