Need advice for a sticky situation

["Lurker writer" <lurker_writer -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Fellow Techwrlers:

I humbly seek your opinions, advice, and council on a situation I'm dealing 
with. Apologies for the length of the background information.

One of my internal clients is a design engineering manager who happens to 
have a lot of clout in the chip design center where I work. He's a most 
pleasant English chap, but he has the nasty habit of backstabbing, lying, 
and going around me to my manager with mostly bogus issues that could easily 
be solved locally (my manager is in Arizona; I'm in Texas).

He times his unsubstantiated whining when I happen to be out of the office, 
and his penchant for falsifying the facts, exaggerating, and creating issues 
where none really exist has put me ill at ease.  When he complains to my 
manager, he never gives the entire story (and the stories he provides are 
more fiction than fact).

Now, we get along great socially. The first time he went around me to my 
manager about an issue, I later approached him in a non-confrontational 
manner and kindly asked him that he come to me first, rather than 
unnecessarily getting my manager involved. I explained to him that he could 
consider me a "dotted line" direct resource and it was my job to see that 
his documentation requirements were met. He got all flustered and looked 
away from me during this brief conversation and mumbled a barely audible 
"OK." From his reaction, I could tell he doesn't deal with direct 
confrontation (a respected and taught skill at my company) very well.

The lastest incident occurred when I was out on vacation last week. Prior to 
my leaving, I had informed him (in my weekly report) who would be 
responsible for my projects in my absence. I even told him in person 2 days 
before my vacation the very same thing. He went whining to my manager about 
"not knowing who was working on my projects" and other completely bogus 
issues.

I get this "bad dog, no biscuit" email from my manager, who based his 
response to me on the engineering manager's version of reality.

I spoke with my manager yesterday about the issues in question (I'm glad I 
saved every email transaction with this engineering character) and gave him 
the facts that I could substantiate with emails. My manager apologized for 
thinking otherwise, and said that we've got a delicate situation. If we piss 
him off, then the DE team can get their own technical writing resources 
rather than use us (internal), which means much less work for me and the 
people on my team, which leads to....you get the picture.

Well, OK...it's a delicate situation, so here's what I'm proposing to my 
manager as a partial remedy:

1. Increase the granularity for approvals for every decision. (This manager 
usually will say on Monday "Can we get the such-and-such spec out this 
week?" and I'll say, "Yes, no problem." And when the spec comes out in PDF 
on Thursday because of other project priorities, he bitches to my manager 
that "it took 4 days to generate the PDF" when in fact it took 2 hours to 
generate the PDF files.
2. Copy my manager on all emails regarding decisions/approvals. (I though of 
blind copying him instead, but I want this engineering manager to be aware 
that I'm aware of what's been going on by directly copying my manager).
3. I've got to change this DE manager's perception of me, even though I go 
out of my way with him and all my customers to stay on top of all projects.

He is one of 5 internal DE managers I work with and the remaining 4 managers 
give me and my team stellar ratings.

So, any ideas or suggestions (short of landing me in court or jail) about 
how to go about changing his perception or other tactics I can use to help 
remedy this situation?

Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom.

LW
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