A co-worker is constantly bad-mouthing other co-workers. I'm tired of hearing it and being caught in the middle. How do we tell this co-worker to mind her own business and don't worry about everyone else? When she doesn't get her way or attention, she sits at her desk and cries.

Your co-worker is nuts. As in, she has psychological problems. Anybody who cries at the office in this way is certifiable, in my opinion. She's miserable, complains about others, wants to create cabals against people to shore up her own self-image. You can do one of two things: ignore her, while being polite, knowing that she will eventually self-destruct, or you can get together with the rest of the people in the office to tell management that there's a screw rolling around loose in your department.

It may seem kind of mean, but what you've got here is a person who needs help, and she's not going to get it if everybody is running around enabling her craziness. This is business, after all, and while business may at times be an asylum, the inmates of this brand of sanitarium need to be at least marginally social, effective and capable of melding with the corporate culture.