Do You Have A Nemesis?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I do. She is a coworker, and I will call her TP, which stands for The Princess, which is her name. I have worked with her for almost 5 years.

TP is 11 years younger than me, and is completely the opposite of me, in almost every single way. If she likes something, I am sure to hate it. If I like something, she hates it. She is the anti-me. She is extremely narcissistic and attention-seeking, always “Look at me!” She is mouthy, impudent, bitchy and rude. She has no female friends and nobody at work actually likes her, but we all go along to get along for the most part. Her and I in particular have a very stormy relationship- I try to ignore her and pretend she passed away some time last week, but she goads me. She knows just how to push my buttons to get a reaction from me. I have gotten much better at not reacting, but the first couple of years I almost got fired a couple of times for standing up to her. I am also mouthy but over the years have learned to shut it when it needs shutting. She has not learned that. IMO she just needs a good old-fashioned ass-whoopin’, just like all naturally mouthy people do, that don’t learn on their own how to shut it. I would not mind being the one to teach her that powerful life lesson, but seeing as how I need my job, I can’t. But another life lesson that I’ve learned and she hasn’t is that you reap what you sow. What comes around goes around and she’s got a negative future waiting for her.

For some reason she quit goading me and picking fights with me for a couple of months, but now she is back to it. I’ve trained myself not to let her bother me too much, but I also have to keep letting her know subliminally that I am the alpha woman and not her. Our relationship is like that of a mama dog and her pup. The pup is always playing around, nipping and pawing and bothering. The mama dog keeps her cool for a long time, just lays there and with great patience and virtue lets the puppy have her fun. However, every once in a while, the puppy gets a little too rough, the nip becomes a sharp bite, or mama’s just had enough for now. She has to let the puppy know, and that involves a sharp little bite of her own, just to get the point across. Then the puppy calms down, until after a bit, he gets all wound up again and breaks bad.

For you misogynists that are going to come in and make remarks about women being whatever, suck it. This isn’t a woman thing, it’s a person thing. I love other women (not in that way), have a lot of friends, and get along with every single one of my other coworkers, the vast majority of whom are women.

So that’s my nemesis. This is not an advice thread- I’ve been dealing with this little twit for a long time and have it down so no worries there. Just polling to see if you have a nemesis and what’s the story?

2

I used to. One well timed physical confrontation settled it once and for all.

Never put off till tommarow what you can do today.

Big bubbles, no troubles.:slight_smile:

Oops! I forgot the who! A step dad.

3

No, I don’t have a nemesis because I don’t think that way. Amazing what a bit of perspective and laissez-faire atitude can entworken.

4

I know. I’ve tried. But I’m very sensitive, you know, and what makes her really intolerable is that not only is she a horrible person, but she doesn’t even work most of the time. The laziness + the horrible person thing = I hate her. Like I said, I have gotten much better at handling it.

5

Yes, but I’m sure she doesn’t see it that way and I definitely shouldn’t. We started the same graduate school program together, studying a similar subject (but with different advisors), with the same funding, and both having changed fields slightly from undergrad, without a clear idea of our thesis topics. I felt totally threatened by her because she is incredibly beautiful and presents herself as very confident, and I’m not and I don’t, respectively. I always assumed she looked down on me.

I later realized that she is quite insecure in her own way, she has her own problems, and she isn’t as brilliant as she first appeared to be. Also, she’s very nice and when I think about it, I genuinely like her. But I can’t help but see her as a sort of “anti-me”, where I would be if I had been blessed with more confidence, social skills, a helpful thesis supervisor, and, let’s face it, much better looks. :slight_smile: And yes, I realize this is ridiculous.

6

I’ve had two people really quite detest me at work. The first was the only other creative guy in the company and I guess he just had a different style to design and approaching stuff as me, but it made it really difficult to work together. The second guy, at a different company, was a really poor programmer and possibly just the lamest most boring and petty guy I’ve ever met, who wanted to get into management. I was a really good programmer who pretty much ran over all the managers except the head of the company. This pretty much just rankled his every vision of a neat and tidy, boring and petty world and while he pretty couldn’t do anything about it, you could just taste the loathing coming from him.

The first guy was a pain since I was working directly under him for like 10 months. The other guy was just sort of amusing. I didn’t have to work with him, so I just ignored him. At some point I think dude #2 got the idea that I was out of his reach and mellowed down–though he still seemed exuberant when I said that my final project before I was going to leave the company was not get done in time, just to have his dreams smashed when I said so I was going to come in for free for one or two extra days to get it done. :wink:

7

I sorta had a co-worker that could sorta fit the bill, but she’s gone now. :smiley:

8

I had an overt work nemesis up until last week (given her behavior, I think she’s still an underground operative :wink: ). It was very odd. I’ve only been in this company three months and, even though she apparently recommended me for hiring, she didn’t like me after I started. A couple of people have speculated that my expertise makes her feel threatened, even though that’s why they hired me in the first place. Even though she’s not my boss, she’d report me to my boss for stupid things. One night when I left my monitor on, she ratted me out. Then she told my boss that I wasn’t putting in all my hours every week - which was absolutely incorrect - even though I’m salaried, not hourly and my boss and I had agreed on my hours when I started. Then one day last week, we were in a meeting and my boss was blaming her for something he failed to do in front of our entire systems group. Basically, he had refused to include her in development meetings even though she’s the end user to a product we’re creating and we really need her feedback. I had questioned it and was basically told that she knew what was going on, even though she apparently did not. Even though I don’t like her, it wasn’t right to let her take the blame for something she had absolutely no control over. So I piped up and said, “You know what? That was actually my mistake - we should have looped you in earlier. Systems, can you include her on your next meeting to make sure we’re all on the same page? Co-worker, let’s sit down together and I’ll fill you in on everything you’ve missed.” She’s been really sweet to me ever since, though I don’t trust the woman as far as I can throw her.

I had a high school nemesis for a while. She slept with my boyfriend after spreading rumors that I had cheated on him. Given that my boyfriend was an abusive asshole and delighted in beating me and worse, I couldn’t walk straight and had bruises and bitemarks all over my body for a good month after she started that rumor. She had been a best friend, though I don’t think she understood the consequences of her actions. I’ll never know what prompted her to do that. But I lost all my friends my senior year because of her and couldn’t forgive her.

I’ve also posted about my former gym nemesis, who followed me from machine to machine, putting her setting .1 higher than mine every time we were there at the same time. I no longer belong to that gym, so I haven’t seen her in a long time.

9

Lex Luthor.

But I’ve said too much.

10

We have a winner!

11

I used to, but I was not aware of it, at least until his parents explained it to me at his funeral after he killed himself.

No joke.

12

Today, no. I used to, but it was much, much more my problem than his. He was older, more experienced and skilled, and was assigned to train me, and I resented it. All of my flaws and inexperience seemed laid bare whenever I talked to him. He was often gruff and inscrutable, and that put me off. When he tried to be nice I hated him even more. Now that I haven’t worked there for 14+ years I can see it all so clearly.

13

Oh come on man, flesh that one out a little bit. That’s an opening, not a story in and of itself.

14

This attitude is probably a significant part of the problem.

As for me, all my nemeses have been friendly (i.e. rugby co-captains, classmates, etc.), so no good stories here.

15

Well, no. It’s pretty much human (and animal) nature for one person in a group that spends a lot of time together to establish themselves as the alpha. Type A personalities that are natural leaders, and other people look to them as problem-solvers. TP was that in the office before I came along, which is of course the reason why she guns for me at times- she is threatened by me, which I’ve observed is very common in offices when a very intelligent, capable person disrupts a long-established office dynamic by taking on the role of alpha. I never consciously want and try to make myself the alpha, it just happens. I’m not going to flip out and put the smackdown on her like I want to, but I’m certainly not going to put up with her bullshit, either. That move ends up with me losing credibility in the office and seeming weak, which I am not.

If I were a superhero, she would be my nemesis, and I’m sure in her comic book I am her nemesis. That’s doesn’t make us bad people or attitudinal, it just makes us human. We’re okay, you’re okay. Okay? Sometimes people who have to be together a lot are polar opposites, and that’s hard, and that’s what we’re talking about it, regardless of her laziness, of which there is a lot. Thanks for listening.

16

While I don’t have a nemesis, I have an evil twin* : we love the exact same things for absolutely opposite reasons, and thus can’t dicuss anything without getting in either Bizarro land or an argument.

*we don’t know which one of us is the good one, TBH. We both have facial hair.

17

I have no Captain Hammer, but I’ve had a few Johnny Snows. I ignore them. There are kids in that park.

18

*snort*

19

Co-worker. She hates me. I ignore her. She lies to her supervisor and her super has to inform my super, who informs me. End of incident. She continues to hate me. I continue to ignore her. She continues to lie to her super. I’m not holding my breath that her super will get sick of having to inform mine about unfounded accusations and I continue to ignore her. I used to wonder what her problem was, but I’m 3 years past caring.

20

Jeez Alice, she sounds awful. I would hate to work with someone like that. Office politics is one of the biggest reasons I took an 80% paycut to work from home…now I’m always skint, but so much happier! I generally cut people a lot of slack - we can all be assholes sometimes - but I just can’t stand people openly taking the piss - I would have smacked her by now. Think how satisfying it will be. You can always work in Starbucks. :slight_smile: