Colleague's negative attitude

[Weetabbix]

I've been in my current job about 9 months now and I love it, everyone is great, all except one colleague who is just so negative about everything.

It's like she pre-empts that people will behave badly. She has such a grumpy persona, always sour faced. Thinks she "says it like it is" but is actually just in a bad mood all the time and also rude. I am quite a positive/ upbeat person and I find it such a downer to deal with her negative energy.

We had a team meeting today where people were trying to think of solutions to a problem - most people were contributing positively - but she kept jumping in saying things like "X team will be arsey about it if you ask them to do that" or sort of throwing up her arms and rolling her eyes.

When I first met her I gave her the benefit of the doubt thinking she might have some stuff going on - but it's now been 9 months of this.

The job is a people-facing profession and when I shadowed her I felt sorry for the clients she was working with because she was so abrupt and patronising with them.

Has anyone else got colleagues like this, what do you do, do you say anything? AIBU to find it really irritating or is this just how people are?!

She’s either naturally like that, or she’s disenchanted and burnt out. No amount of positivity is going to change either option. In fact, the more positive you are, the more likely she is to think you’re being really stupid and not thinking about how that will be impossible because of A, B or C. There are just as many people at the other end of the spectrum too. All those managers who come in with an absolutely ridiculous idea and don’t want to hear about the things that need fixing because those aren’t positive.

So treat them the same way. Tell her that she’s been there a long time and has seen a lot, what she would do to get around the problem? (being very careful with your tone so it doesn’t sound like a challenge to her attitude). Does she know anyone in X team who might be willing to be a contact with your team? Put her in charge of something ‘troubleshooting’ (such an wanky thing to say but it gets the point over) and praise her so she gets enthusiastic about it.

YANBU unreasonable to find it irritating at all, I call people like this mood hoovers, they just suck all the energy and positivity out of any given situation, conversation or day and make it as miserable as they are. It's annoying because it's not exactly as though I'm always overjoyed about being at work myself, we all like a good gripe, but that doesn't mean I want to hear in constant and excruciating detail all about someone else's (often unreasonable!) moans and whinges. It's a vicious circle as well because people will start either avoiding the mood hoover person altogether or reacting negatively to them, this makes the mood hoover even more rude or negative and feeds their narrative of 'everything is shit, nothing can be done' so it goes on and on.

What can you do, I don't think you're likely to be able to change her fundamental personality, it depends on how much you need/want to stay in her good books. If you don't mind risking offending her there is the very blunt say what you feel 'Mood-Hoover, you are being really negative about X/you are being unfair to Y, I don't want to listen to this any more' and if she continues literally walk away. But if you want to be a bit more gentle you can try and cultivate a detached attitude I guess, it must be really horrible and shit being a person as constantly negative as that, so turning your internal narrative into more of a sympathetic one towards her, while also being amused at how predictable she is sort of works for me. Maybe if you can bear it try and get to know her a bit better as a person, are there things outside work she can speak positively about (her family or hobbies/interests maybe?), so that if in casual chit chat she starts up on the complaining and you're tired of hearing it you can politely divert her by changing the subject to something nicer?

In meetings and so on, keeping conversations going rather than getting 'stuck' in the negative loop by either a degree of ignoring the negatives and moving on so something like, 'thanks for your contribution Mood-Hoover, that's really useful, Sarah what do you think', or deploy the old 'yes and' rather than 'no but' technique, so rather than arguing with her that X aren't difficult or no that solution is a good idea say 'yes you're right Mood-Hoover, that team can be difficult and maybe this is an opportunity to turn things around'. You can also make a big effort to notice and thank her for jobs well done/things she does do well (she must have some strengths even if inter-personal skills aren't one of them!) and perhaps if there is a way to manage this without it impacting on the team and she's willing, arrange the work so she does more of the stuff she is good at and less people-facing/client interaction work? It's harder when you're worried about the impact on clients but if you aren't the manager/supervisor and you aren't witnessing it generally/don't have any evidence there's not much you can do, if there are complaints or whatever you could discretely raise it with your manager?

She'll shoot herself in the foot eventually.

Were there any supervisors or managers at this team meeting?