Be honest: are you unpleasant at work? Why?!

[sevencontinents]

I have a colleague who is very unpleasant to me much of the time. She doesn't say good morning, confronts me about perceived mistakes (only to find that no mistake has been made and the mistake is an assumption she has jumped to), never apologises for this and makes sly remarks. I am not the sensitive sort and I actually find it quite funny that she behaves this way towards me.

So my question is, is there anyone here who can admit to behaving like this towards a colleague? Why do you do it? I am trying to understand her!

I work in a place with a lovely culture, but there's one woman who seems to have a problem with me. I have no impact on her job, we just work in the same (small) building. She is sweeter than honey to my male boss, laughing at his non-existent jokes, wanting to show him things on her phone, all sunny and light and I barely get a grunt even though I'm at the next desk.
It seems clear to me that she has a thing for him, though she's openly gay and in a relationship (maybe she's actually bi?). I don't get too worked up about it, and I'm always trying to engage her. She appears fine with all the other females in the building, she just singles me out as someone not worthy of the effort.

I’m never unpleasant and it seems to have got me quite far in the type of job I do. I am a good mediator and even if I don’t like someone they probably would not know about it. I have come across some very horrible people and have never let them see how much it has bothered me and tried not to take it personally.

People can assume I am ‘too nice’ aka weak but I usually have a way of getting people to do things or listen to me by building bridges with them and making them feel comfortable. I am better at approaching uncomfortable topics with staff than my boss sometimes because she makes them nervous, she’s very blunt and ruthless so we can go well together good cop bad cop 😂

I don’t socialise with people outside of work and I also don’t really disclose personal info

Used to be the running joke that people tell me things they would never usually tell anyone, or say things they shouldn’t and drop themselves in it - like a job applicant on the way out of an interview would disclose a complete clanger! I’m usually the smoother-over, recently my colleague was getting het up about a flexible working request and I had to step in and smooth over the tension.

The downside is I can sometimes be over helpful, and I can’t always see straight away when someone is being manipulative. My boss is always cynical and assumes everyone is on the take so she can come over quite uncaring.

My last 3 jobs I have encountered the most horrible people, really mean nasty and selfish (women) and I honestly feel sorry for them that their lives are so bleak that they need to make their work colleagues lives unpleasant

But I get fed up of having treat people like toddlers because they're incapable of doing a basic task without either losing focus and doing something else, or messing it up entirely

I imagine I can also be seen as grumpy at work sometimes. I'm really not generally but sometimes I get pushed to it by people's stupidity.

An example, I am super busy on a project and doing 14 hours a day just to keep my head above water, yet I constantly have to field questions from colleagues such as yesterday's corker of 'do I have to save what I'm doing?' I came very close to losing the plot at that one!!

I think this comes down to whether people actually enjoy or resent problem solving generally. A lot of people don’t like it and just want to get on with that they are doing, the job in hand and not be interrupted. Some people are extreme and want to problem solve everything all the time instead of just doing their job. And some people don’t mind and have the patience to manage the petty/minor queries of the world. I would probably admit that I really enjoy helping people and I like solving even their minor problems 😂

Part of my job is that I am a complaints manager, so I frequently have to listen to people’s issues. In my experience this is always worse for staff when they have no outlet to do it - workplaces can become very toxic when issues are never heard or addressed so it can be very beneficial for the company to have a way of offloading and also getting resolution for problems you are having - but the key is empowering people to do things for themselves too!

I also get frustrated with some people and how they can be a little dense at their jobs. (The receptionist who after 11 years at the job still does not know how to transfer phone calls so has to take messages for a call back for example). But that is a senior management issue and although it annoys me I still treat her with courtesy and respect.

Because that is what you should do both in the workplace and in life, surely.

There is never ever a valid reason to treat a colleague with disrespect, I believe. If you have an issue with their work or their laziness or whatever then you take it up with them or their manager.

Love this thread it's very cathartic! I always struggle understanding why people are so unpleasant and just plain rude. It frustrates me so much because technically we should all operate under the same moral and ethical code/rules but some people think that those codes of conduct don't apply to them. Whether it's due to ASD, menopause, rules of treating others with common curtesy and politeness is what every mother teaches their child... So it's infuriating when people forget this teaching 😒

Sometimes.

I regularly think about this and promise myself I will stop the internal dialog in my head “are you for real” “ I’ve explained this 50 times already this week” “ for fucks sake can you not do it yourself” in the hope it will lessen my stress and make me a more pleasant person.
I am ALWAYS polite to service users and when someone has a genuine problem.

welshcake my children have asd, and if anything we've over taught them manners and kindness to make sure no one feels they're rude. Their lives are hard enough already!

Most of the time i could be viewed as being rude because I don't fit into the social norm. I am sick of working with people who think they are better than other people. I am sick of working with people who think this is the way it is done. I would probably take a step back and question why this person is coming across as rude to you ... it's probably you.

Most of the managers posts on here I find saddening at their total lack of intolerance. Explains a lot!

I'm another who doesn't get it.

I have opinions on people I work with. They are my opinions and opinions aren't fact.

However I treat everyone with the same amount of respect and I'm polite to everyone. Even the ones who are rude!

Some colleagues are friends and I see them outside of school.

Inside work we are all employed to do a job. Yes we have different levels of responsibility. But I think with respect and kindness everyone has equal responsibility.

I have a few colleagues who like to do things deliberately to get a rise. They are great at acting all horrified, angered and surprised when they do and it's not a positive one.

It's an absolute hard rule to me never to be shitty to people further down the food chain than me.

I work in a high-pressure environment where there's a culture of always putting the best possible spin on what you do and not taking responsibility for your mistakes unless its impossible not to. It leads to a tendency among the senior people to push shit downhill which I really dislike.

I am big and ugly enough to look after myself but I despise people who needlessly bawl out juniors or fail to take responsibility for their own poor behaviour and I would never do that to others. Not only is it a shitty thing to do, its profoundly damaging to a company culture if junior people feel they can't afford to make mistakes.

I have never been unpleasant

However I am currently working with a colleague who is incredibly incompetent, and consistently messes up, and I am endlessly picking up the pieces. They ask questions time and time again, and blatantly don't listen to the answer. I am not unpleasant but it is incredibly frustrating to yet again have to spend the morning sorting out their mess, or desperately trying to talk through with them how to sort it while they don't bloody listen! I'm not their manager, our manager did have to have quite a serious chat with them about their performance. I am getting pretty exasperated tbh.

Just because someone cried doesn't mean you've done wrong. I once made a small but fairly important mistake. And when manager spoke to me about it, I cried. They were right though to speak to me as they did, luckily nothing happened but it could have done. I cried out of embarrassment really and I've not done it again.

I try not to be, but I have on occasion been short with people. Mainly because they've not followed the processes that are in place for a reason, and then it's down to me to fix the issue they've caused. The first couple of times, OK, but I do get short with the people who should know better.

There is also one person in particular who I cannot stand. I do my best to be civil but he does wind me up. I tend to just stay out of his way, as do most others in the business.

Ha ha! The smiling, patient, pleasant person I am at work bears no relation to the real me whatsoever.

I have a colleague who was like this and very challenging to get on with- it ended up in tears.

I have persevered though and it's mainly that she has personal stresses to deal with. We're quite friendly now and she has admitted that she has been in the wrong

Does no one work with bitchy men? Seems like most are women.

I don't think I'm unpleasant at work. I'm just an eccentric weirdo.
I'm painfully shy and awkward and seem to come off as aloof or awkward. But when you're the boss, all that is tolerated. Another boss told me, "know that your jokes are always much funnier when you're the boss"

I'm always surprised by things. I remember going to manage another team who was doing poorly, and one by one my old team came up to my office asking to be moved to my team. It just really surprised me.
I don't have much tolerance for petty things at work. People who are miserable and have issues like tattling, gossip, backstabbing, can go work somewhere else, as I just don't tolerate that crap.

I'm in senior management position but within my family business, I only was only asked to join it a couple of years ago. But the some of the other senior management have been letting everything slide for a good few years. This means I'm having to start to be really assertive with people and I know what an assertive woman gets called!

I made someone nearly cry the other day when I was ambushed by him and one of the SLT as to why after 8 episodes of sickness in a year we want to write to his GP. He tried to tell me this wasn't excessive, I did explain to him that if it wasn't for the fact he has an underlying condition (which we've not got any evidence of only his word) and that we recognise he is a valuable member of the team, I could sack him for that level of sickness.

Problem is that some of the SLT are causing problems by letting these things accumulate or deliberately undermining what I'm trying to do partially because they don't want to be seen as the bad guys and partially because having a precedent for not dealing with sickness within the business means that when they are off frequently we can't hold them to account.

I'm sure over the next few months some people are going to find it unpleasant at times although I will always be professional.

Does no one work with bitchy men? Seems like most are women.
Bitching and shit stirring in the workplaces I've been in has been mainly a female past time.

I've worked with my fair share of incompetent men and lazy men (who I've also had to take the polite and direct approach with on certain issues), but on the whole they tend to get over it, or grumble to themselves and still get over it.

What tends to happen with the bitchy women who I've had to be polite and direct about certain issues is they have form for moving between different members of the team, planting seeds, testing the waters on who to bitch to, quick to pass the buck etc.

Both aren't very positive workplace behaviours, but the bitchy shit stirring behaviour is much more toxic and sly in my opinion.

No I'm not. It's utterly unprofessional to be unpleasant or rude to people at work. I always think that anyone who is an adult can behave properly and with manners towards others.

I cultivated a slightly difficult persona at work. When I first started people would ask me for my material and to help them and never give anything back. The constant take take take with nothing in return completely drained me. So I stopped doing it and became a bit unapproachable and spiky. It didn't stop those who I actually wanted to work with, but put the takers off. So I would imagine if you asked them about difficult and unpleasant colleagues, I might make the list.

91% of my workforce is male and believe me you still get childish bitchy men...if anything they are worse as they don't hide their behaviour they also seem to take it to a whole another level at times, something I'm trying to stamp out as there's no need for it.

Ha@cookingonwine.
That's all I have to say say about your comment.

I work in a male dominated STEM office environment.

I can be unpleasant if I choose to be, but i think I’m fun to be around mostly ( for those that like me, i m probably annoying for the misogynists who don’t). That’s deliberate though, all part of office politics, so that people know that I can bite if they try to take the piss or mess me about.

TimeforanotherChange
I agree that it's not professional to be rude.

However, I also think some people need to have a reality check on what is rude/unprofessional and what is perfectly professional but not super sociable.

For example:
Team members deciding they won't be spending an hour with Sally the day before a deadline where she claims she doesn't understand why her mock papers need to be marked like everyone else when have all had 3 weeks to do it because this happens all the fricking time.
Deciding that coming to see me an hour before a data deadline is unreasonable when it's common knowledge Babs likes to claim she "doesn't do computers" so she can not meet well publicised deadlines. Babs couldn't possibly look at the handouts with steps on it, nor could she speak to IT staff, nor could she seek assistance from the team in advance of the deadline.

Babs and Sally spend a huge amount of time complaining, interrupting people working to try and bitch, seek excuses and so on.

Babs and Sally like to think everyone is so rude and corporate and have no time for people. The reality is people end up running out of patience with them because of their attitude and so whilst people are polite, the don't indulge their bullshit.