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’m polite and friendly to everyone except one colleague who I’ve given up with. To someone not in the know, it could look like I’m frosty and unkind to her and lovely to everyone else. But what they wouldn’t know (although they soon would if they joined the team) is that she is awful to work with, has no manners, lazy, disrespectful, entitled.. gah I could go on. An example is when I booked a week of annual leave and she decided she wanted that same week so she confronted me in front of everyone demanding to know if I had booked my holiday or not because she NEEDED that week.

So I literally don’t bother with her. I don’t include her in conversations, don’t invite her to social things, ask her how her weekend was or anything. I pretend she doesn’t exist

This looks like a case of straightforward bullying. Please do not feel you have to just put up with it, or take it on the chin. You are new to the place of work so she is deliberately being nasty to you. Please raise this with someone you can trust in the company - your line manager or the HT department perhaps? Also does your company have p&ps on bullying and harassment (hopefully they do).

I have 'you've upset me' look which I use on occasions when I have a deadline (my DCs are well aware of it ' they call it the oh fuck we've upset her face' .) My colleague was very tempted to send an email to our team saying 'If you don't do xx by a certain date, Kasey will come and look at you' I'm not THAT scary

I'm polite to everyone and I pride myself on my professionalism, I hate being made to look unprofessional, anyone who compromises that will get 'the look'

I have been told that I'm a bit scary, not sure how much of this was in jest (ragging on me!) or in earnest. I am, however, known for getting things done and delivering to teams what they didn't know could be provided.

Some of the "scary-ness" can be a bit cultural, I suppose, I come from somewhere people are considered much more direct in their approach :)

There's one colleague I avoid like the plague, though, it's a male (about 50/50 in my organisation) who is very dependent on others to do his work for him, or find all the relevant information for him (and then taking the credit, oh yeah). I can't help being snippy and sarcastice, so I rather avoid, which I can, fortunately, 364 days of the year.

@OhTheRoses
Thanks for taking the opportunity to make a snarky comment about nurses. I’m sure you are a joy to work with.

No I'm not unless I'm provoked. There is this one guy who spread lies about me to the boss and he never apologizes since caught. I don't go out of my way to be unpleasant to him but I don't feel guilty telling everyone what he did either, especially as I can see him doing it to another person now.

I wasn’t unpleasant but I knew with the stresses mounting at work and a couple of immensely incompetent colleagues I was going to become miserable. I took early retirement I know I was very lucky but my last couple of years at work were deeply unpleasant for me, I didn’t want it to rub off on me.