Everything Breaks in the End
So I've been having some minor issues at work with an annoying co-worker. This guy is lowest on the totem pole, so to speak, but drives everyone nuts for a whole load of reasons. The most notable being that he acts like a 16 year old with a bad attitude. During the last week though he's been getting progressively worse. And finally on Friday morning, within 30 minutes of walking through the door I finally snapped and yelled at him.
It's pretty hard to get me to yell at anyone and I don't think I've ever yelled at a co-worker in anger before, but he was pushing all my buttons and when he kept butting into my conversation with two other co-workers and making inane and useless comments (which he does regularly) I finally snapped.
So the details go something like this. I walked in to our open-plan office and said Good Morning to everyone, he was on the phone. To cover a bit of the background, I usually sit down, check my email and then ask anyone if they'd like anything from the cafe, then walk over to the cafe to get my coffee. This morning though the second I walked through the door he yelled "Hot chips" at me and snapped his fingers a few times to get my attention, before he'd even said Good Morning, while he was still on the phone and before I'd even indicated I was going to the cafe. Not a good start.
Then one of the other techs tells me he's got some bad news. He's going to need the Mac that I have sitting on my desk for a while. I've kind of adopted this Mac and it's become my primary desktop, I only use the Windows computer for two pieces of annoying corporate software that will only run on Windows. So I say something to him about "Awww, what do you need my Mac for?" and instantly annoying guy butts in with, "It's not your property," as if this wasn't entirely self-evident. We ignore him and have a brief discussion about what's required. At one other point I refer to it as "my Mac" and he butts in "It's not your property," again. We also ignore this.
Finally, the previous day there had been an outage of some switches in a building we support because of a power problem. We don't control the switches so we'd had to refer it to a team called Networks. They'd fixed the problem, but hadn't officially told us yet. A user had called in asking about it and one of us had told him we were quite sure everything was okay. Three of us had then started a bit of discussion about how we hadn't actually been notified but everything was working so it was all right to tell the users it was fixed. To which annoying guy starts spouting something about, "No, no, we haven't been told it's fixed yet," and is largely ignored. This team often fixes things and doesn't tell us, so one of the guys mentions, "That's not how they work, I'll give them a call." He picks up the phone and suddenly annoying guys is spouting, "Well that's crap, they should tell us," and so on and so forth. Every time something he doesn't like happens he refers to it as "that's crap," or "that's bull-shit," even if it's happening for a very good reason. And so I finally lose it and start yelling that sometimes some stuff is crap, but that's reality and you've just got to put up with it and work around it as best you can, and maybe it's not crap, maybe it's just a different way of doing things. I stop yelling. And he responds, "Well, you're crap."
And that's when it dawns on me that I've made a fatal mistake. I have started arguing with the proverbial fool and he's dragging me down to his level. I grab the stack of asset forms that are perched on my desk and walk out of the office. I spend about an hour in another building doing busy-work. As I walk back I run into our supervisor who has been off at a meeting and explain to him that I finally snapped. He laughs. We're all well aware that this guy is a problem and everyone else in the team has blown up at him at least once, so it's not a surprise. So I'm certainly not in trouble.
And so my supervisor has had yet another chat with him about not being a dick. These are starting to become a regular feature and they do good for a few days, maybe even a week and then it's back to the way things were. I'm guessing this one will do like-wise.
But, there is room for me to do something. I think I've been approaching this guy in the wrong way. I've treated him as an equal, when I really should be treating him as someone ranked below me, and I've been treating him as an adult, when I really should be treating him like a child. So I'm going to change the way I behave. If he butts in I'm going to tell him to butt out. If he's being stupid, I'm going to say so. I'm going to act strictly professionally and only communicate with him when it's actually necessary for work. It'll probably drive him nuts, but at least he won't be driving me nuts.
It's pretty hard to get me to yell at anyone and I don't think I've ever yelled at a co-worker in anger before, but he was pushing all my buttons and when he kept butting into my conversation with two other co-workers and making inane and useless comments (which he does regularly) I finally snapped.
So the details go something like this. I walked in to our open-plan office and said Good Morning to everyone, he was on the phone. To cover a bit of the background, I usually sit down, check my email and then ask anyone if they'd like anything from the cafe, then walk over to the cafe to get my coffee. This morning though the second I walked through the door he yelled "Hot chips" at me and snapped his fingers a few times to get my attention, before he'd even said Good Morning, while he was still on the phone and before I'd even indicated I was going to the cafe. Not a good start.
Then one of the other techs tells me he's got some bad news. He's going to need the Mac that I have sitting on my desk for a while. I've kind of adopted this Mac and it's become my primary desktop, I only use the Windows computer for two pieces of annoying corporate software that will only run on Windows. So I say something to him about "Awww, what do you need my Mac for?" and instantly annoying guy butts in with, "It's not your property," as if this wasn't entirely self-evident. We ignore him and have a brief discussion about what's required. At one other point I refer to it as "my Mac" and he butts in "It's not your property," again. We also ignore this.
Finally, the previous day there had been an outage of some switches in a building we support because of a power problem. We don't control the switches so we'd had to refer it to a team called Networks. They'd fixed the problem, but hadn't officially told us yet. A user had called in asking about it and one of us had told him we were quite sure everything was okay. Three of us had then started a bit of discussion about how we hadn't actually been notified but everything was working so it was all right to tell the users it was fixed. To which annoying guy starts spouting something about, "No, no, we haven't been told it's fixed yet," and is largely ignored. This team often fixes things and doesn't tell us, so one of the guys mentions, "That's not how they work, I'll give them a call." He picks up the phone and suddenly annoying guys is spouting, "Well that's crap, they should tell us," and so on and so forth. Every time something he doesn't like happens he refers to it as "that's crap," or "that's bull-shit," even if it's happening for a very good reason. And so I finally lose it and start yelling that sometimes some stuff is crap, but that's reality and you've just got to put up with it and work around it as best you can, and maybe it's not crap, maybe it's just a different way of doing things. I stop yelling. And he responds, "Well, you're crap."
And that's when it dawns on me that I've made a fatal mistake. I have started arguing with the proverbial fool and he's dragging me down to his level. I grab the stack of asset forms that are perched on my desk and walk out of the office. I spend about an hour in another building doing busy-work. As I walk back I run into our supervisor who has been off at a meeting and explain to him that I finally snapped. He laughs. We're all well aware that this guy is a problem and everyone else in the team has blown up at him at least once, so it's not a surprise. So I'm certainly not in trouble.
And so my supervisor has had yet another chat with him about not being a dick. These are starting to become a regular feature and they do good for a few days, maybe even a week and then it's back to the way things were. I'm guessing this one will do like-wise.
But, there is room for me to do something. I think I've been approaching this guy in the wrong way. I've treated him as an equal, when I really should be treating him as someone ranked below me, and I've been treating him as an adult, when I really should be treating him like a child. So I'm going to change the way I behave. If he butts in I'm going to tell him to butt out. If he's being stupid, I'm going to say so. I'm going to act strictly professionally and only communicate with him when it's actually necessary for work. It'll probably drive him nuts, but at least he won't be driving me nuts.