Dealing with the "Jovial Dick"

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not putting this in The Pit, although it may end up there.

My definition, recently created;

Jovial Dick (noun); a person who acts and speaks in a very friendly and happy way, but whose speech and behavior contains snarks, insults and/or disrespectful behavior hidden in their jovial manner. This is a camoflage tactic by which they conceal their true dickish nature, by keeping the large majority of people believing that they’re good people because they’re always so friendly.

The trap being that if you respond to the negative behavior couched in their laughter, YOU are the jerk. Because most people think/see “Happy, smiling, friendly attitude = good person” and “negative emotions = Bad person”.

Example;

R, who I’ve written about in another pit thread. Today I’m on the phone with a customer who is describing his problem. R comes up behind me. I look at him while I’m listening to the customer. R says “hi”. I nod and go back to my call. R says “Chimera…Hi”, as if he’s talking to a child whose attention he needs to get. (Now I’m already angry) But my customer is still talking, so I simply wave hi and point to my headset. R repeats it a third time. I purse my lips and narrow my eyes, point to my headset and the active case I have on my computer. R pauses like he’s talking to an idiot and says “Chimera…hi” a fourth time. Now I’m really pissed, because this is insulting and disrespectful. But I know from a previous incident that this jackass isn’t going to let it go until I say hi back. So I do. He smiles, nods and says “Ok” in a tone of voice as if he’s just taught something to a small child.
At that point, the customer interrupts his long explanation to ask who I was talking to and ask if I was still listening to him. Oh sure, I have a mute button, but I’ve found that some people interpret the sudden silence on your end in the same way, wondering if you’re talking to other people instead of listening to them - which if you’re hitting mute, you probably are in most cases.

Frankly, this being the second time (the last time he was teaching me to say
“you’re welcome”, talking over the top of our instructor’s lecture to harass me into saying it), my inclination is to respond the next time as follows;
Step 1> The Look
Step 2> The Middle Finger
Step 3> The back of my head (as I turn around)
What I want to know or discuss is; What would be the best, least disruptive, least hostile way to both answer and terminate this behavior on his end?

2

Punch him in the face was my first thought. Ignoring him would be the explicit answer to your question though.

3

I tried to ignore him in the first incident and he simply raised his volume slightly and kept repeating my name until I looked at him. Even the instructor’s dirty looks didn’t stop him.

See my pit thread about clueless people. He’s the poster child. And he’s, unfortunately, a Jovial Dick to boot.

4

This is when there’d probably be more freedom from the guy if he were your enemy. I so feel for you. Ugh.

5

He’s interfering with your ability to actually do your job. Complain to your supervisior.

6

My reactions:

  1. Say very loudly “I’m talking to a customer! Go Away!” and then go back to your customer, ignoring him, no matter what if does, for the remainder of the call.

  2. As soon as the call is done, go to your boss and complain. Don’t complain how it bothers you, just that it interferes with servicing your company’s customers.
    And ask why R. has time to wander around the office trying to engage other employees in conversation when everyone else is so busy dealing with customers and trying to catch up on the backlog, etc.

Finally, as you are exiting, drop this bombshell warning “And I notice he never does this except to female co-workers!”

7

I worked in a call center for the first 10 years that I’ve been at IBM and your story rings a bell with me. I was one of the better technicians so after a while I had my ‘cult following’ that always HAD to have my attention no matter what I was doing so I could advise them on their problem. One such person in particular would always “cut to the front of the line” by trying to have a personal conversation with me in the middle of helping others. Since they were “nice” about it, I had a hard time figuring out how to handle it.

My manager at the time finally suggested that the only way to deal with the person was simply to perform a little public humiliation. The next time the person tried to interrupt me, I simply asked them to get permission from the other 3 people in line to go first. Sounds silly, but he actually just looked at me, looked at the queue, and just walked away.

The moral I took from this little incident (god knows there have been others, especially with that person) is that sometimes people need to be treated they way they are acting. If he’s acting like a spoiled brat, make a big deal of asking your customer to hold, calmly turn to him and ask him what’s so important that it requires your explicit attention. Hopefully, that’ll remind him that you’re AT WORK and responsibility is to the client and not to him.

If that doesn’t work, I say go with the “punch him in the face” technique.

8

do what i did, i printed out a sign that said

Excuse me, I am on the phone. When I am off the phone I will be able to speak with you, but if it is seriously important, email me and i will read it immediately.

Then next time he does this, hold it up and point at it.

9

Um, that would be quite the bombshell, as I’m very obviously male. The gray beard and balding head are quite a give-away. :wink:

Yeah, it’s wierd. It’s a CALL CENTER. We talk between calls, but suddenly dropping a conversation in mid-sentence to answer a call is frequent and expected. We sometimes talk during calls, but those moments are when we’
re waiting for the customer to do something or when we have them on hold while we look something up. Trying to talk to someone WHILE they’re actively engaged with a customer is a no-no and pretty much every individual with half a clue knows to shut up in those moments.

But what really bothers me is that this is TWO instances where he’s been what I consider rude, disrespectful and downright unprofessional toward me in front of others. You don’t talk down to your co-workers as if they’re little children who you are teaching a lesson in manners, especially when you’re rudely interrupting someone else in order to do it. I didn’t answer him at first in either case precisely because someone else was talking and it would be rude to talk over them. I acknowledged him non-verbally, but it wasn’t good enough for him and he decided to be condescending and treat me as if I was a small child.

The only reason I don’t simply tell him to go fuck himself is because that would both be unprofessional, and place me on the lower end, as too many people see his jovial, friendly-to-everyone attitude and would therefore assume that I’m being an asshole to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

I’m also very wary of complaining to my boss, because I already know, from both dealing with him and from past experience with this type, that his response will be the typical Jovial Dick response: The surprised, confused, laughing “I was just being friendly, why are you so thin skinned?” response that deflects attention from their behavior and turns the conversation to be about your (my) negative reaction.

I’m really thinking my only real response can be to turn my back and ignore the shit out of him, no matter how loud or obnoxious he is, with the hope that at some point, someone else (like my boss) will step in and ask what the hell he’s doing. Or until he tries to physically touch me and turn me around to face him, at which point I have an actionable complaint.

I was just kind of hoping that someone had some other idea that I haven’t thought of, or some additional insight into how to deal with the Jovial Dick types.

10

What it sounds like is that he doesn’t take his job particularly seriously and you take it excessive seriously. basically he is Jim Halpert and you are Dwight Schrute or Andy Bernard. He finds humor in being goofy around you and watching your uptight or uncomfortble reaction.

The problem is that a bunch of “jovial dicks” can work together and a bunch of “stick up their asses” can work together but it’s hard to mix them. I mean if you were a jovial dick, you would have politely put the customer on hold and then bullshited with R about the game last night or something. Another example, in my last job, we would be on a “very serious” conference call with a bunch of attorneys. In the middle of our “very serious discussion” we would be trying to make each other crack up with funny IMs.

As for how you deal with it, how would you deal with an annoying child? You wouldn’t tell a child to fuck off. Just be like “hey. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

11

“A friendly person would apologize for imposing. A self absorbed asshole would call me thin skinned. Laughing at every word that comes out of your own mouth doesn’t make you friendly. Be gone” Edit as required.

12

It sounds to me like he might have some form or degree of Asperger’s. Had that happened to me, as soon as my call finished I would have gone to him and asked him if he realized that I was on a call, then asked him if he understood why it was unprofessional and rude to talk over a customer. If he truly doesn’t understand (as someone with Asperger’s might), then you need to inform him that it’s completely unacceptable to talk to someone while they are speaking to a customer. If he needs to talk to you he can email you or wait or something. But it needs to be made clear to him that you will under no circumstances interrupt one of your customers.

In this way, you don’t have to be a dick about it. You’re just very clearly explaining the rules of professional etiquette, and if done carefully can be done without being condescending. If he’s just being a dick, then be as condescending as you’d like, because he’s doing the same to you.

13

I’ve found that shouting at people solves 95% of all the world’s problems. As soon as you getoff the phone, shout at him, loudly, in front of the whole office. Put him on the defensive.

If he complains to your boss, accuse him of being thin-skinned.

14

Been there, done that. Unfortunately.

Do NOT look at the JD, snap your fingers and point at the JD, continue the call. Rinse, repeat, until your customer hangs up.

After terminating the call, nicely ask JD what he wanted. If he babbles about something not work related, change tone to “brisk” and continue “perhaps you need to remember to hush when I’m with a customer.” Do not enter into a discussion of JD’s topic.

After three repetitions (whether in 10 minutes or 10 years) of the above, switch to telling the customer “please excuse me for a moment,” make damn sure your mute button works properly, and blow up at JD.

“Yo, dumbass, I’m working here. Ya oughta try it sometime. Hush up and go away NOW!” resume call, terminate call, go tell boss that JD is pissing off the customers.
Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t check my mute button (they rarely work, so why bother?) and comment #3 was “Do NOT ever EVER interrupt me when I’m on a call unless the fucking building is on fire and we’re all gonna die in the next 47 seconds, and THEN your legs had better-by-gawd be moving faster than your mouth.”

The go tell the boss that JD is pissing off the customers.

15

I don’t know why someone always jumps to a conclusion of Aspergers when someone acts clueless, but the rest of BRBSCS’s advice is sound. I’d keep the conversation as curt and one-sided as possible.

Personally, I’ve always found liberal amounts of swearing and abuse to be good ways to make personal space for myself at work. I would not hesitate to put the customer on mute, tell R ‘fuck off, I’m on a call’ and return to my business. I wouldn’t worry about others’ opinions of you. If they’re too stupid to see through his act, fuck’em.

And don’t involve your boss in this. No boss in the world likes or appreciates people bringing exceptionally petty problems to them to solve.

16

I couldn’t agree more. Thinking of JD as a child who simply doesn’t know any better might help in developing tactis to deal with him, and also lower your blooed pressure a little.

“JD, Daddy’s busy right now, but I promise I’ll come and look at your finger painting as soon as I can, k?”

17

Nothing to do specifically with the OP, but I thought y’all could use a laugh…

Back in the early 80’s, I worked as the assistant manager for a major paint company, and we had just gotten a new phone system with the capapabilty of speaking and listening without using the headset.

Working on some past dues back in our office, I took a call with the new speaker function and it was our district manager asking to speak to the store manager who was up front helping a customer.

So I sent one of the part-timers to the front counter, telling him to let the manager know he had a call from Mr. Smith waiting in our office.

Not knowing the phone was live and not on hold (he had his own new phone on his desk), Barry walks into the office saying, “What does that cocksucker want now?”

I didn’t hang around.:smiley:

Q

18

Hence the “might” in my post. It’s just a possibility, but maybe it’s because I’m usually ready to give people the benefit of the doubt before blowing up at them. Sure, he could be clueless without an asperger’s diagnosis, but you would treat the situation much the same. I just wanted to put out the reminder that some people actually do not understand social cues, and that it’s because their brains are wired differently.

19

Spray bottle full of water. Squirt him til he goes away.

20

Can full of pennies? Rolled up newspaper? I like the way you think, Scumpup.