Have you ever came across a person who seemed to despise your presence for no real reason, even though you never wronged them in any way?
I had a 7th grade teacher who absolutely despised me. I was a well behaved kid but the teacher always found a way to punish me for the tiniest things that she would deliberately ignore other kids doing. She would deduct marks from my written tests for rediculous reasons.
Once she even told me I would never amount to anything! She also encouraged my peers to bully me.
She even badmouthed me to my mom during parent-teacher interviews
Also, have any of you been treated poorly by someone for absolutely no reason (bonus points if the person treating you poorly is known as a nice/good person by the general public or is nice to everyone except you)
When I was a couple years out of high school, I worked in an office, in a 15-ish person department (all women) and one of them was the same age as me and in the almost two years I worked there, she never spoke to me unless absolutely necessary, and seldom even made eye contact. I have no idea what might have happened, except maybe that I rubbed her the wrong way and she couldn’t explain why.
When I was in my 20’s and worked in a mid sized (800 person) tech firm spread across a five building campus. Each building had a receptionist, and you’d smile/nod/politely when you’d enter one of the buildings if there was nobody crowding the entrance. Basic politeness, nothing more. In one of those buildings was a young woman reception who I swear hated me. I’d say Hi, she’d ignore me or scowl or pointedly disapprove. She’d say hi to everyone else with a big smile, glare at me. No idea why. I didn’t work in that building, she had no reason to know who I was. I even slightly knew her sister who worked in another building, but I never asked what was up with her sib. Four years that lady glared/ignored snubbed me. Weird.
My last trip to Thailand, I stayed in a hotel next to a restaurant that had seriously great morning coffee. Turkish maybe, foam on top. It was ambrosia – soooo good. So I’d go there every morning, usually get breakfast, tip really well. And the server, a middle aged woman, seemed to hate me the more I showed up. Serious scowling and glares, though she’d service my table. I never figured that one out either. I finally gave up on the place; good coffee isn’t worth hated glares.
Your story reminds me of an incident in Taiwan that was so bizarrely cruel that it made the news 20+ years ago. Apparently there was this teacher who hated a straight-A student for no apparent reason and would actively look for excuses to hit him. One day she saw that he had “written a wrong answer” (which in fact wasn’t even a wrong answer at all) and then hit him so gleefully and violently with her wooden ruler that it left splinters embedded in the back of his hand.
Quite often. It eventually drove me to wonder what was wrong with me and/or what unfairness was going on. Either way, to wonder WTF this was about. I tended to find it more bewildering from adults, I don’t know why. Maybe because other kids would just sometimes take a dislike to someone and that was that, but adults, especially towards kids, tended to be a bit more fair. On the other hand, with other kids it was like a consensus, not just a couple now and then. So either I had the personality of a gobbet of snot or there was something else hideously wrong with me or something was going on. I mostly blamed the fad-following conformity thing and blamed the other kids for being blind conformist sheep who hated anyone who didn’t dress and speak and behave just like they did. Reciprocally though, I probably would have adopted their patterns if I’d been accepted among them, but I didn’t think of that back then.
I wonder if in some cases it’s because you remind them of someone else, whether consciously or unconsciously? Perhaps especially in cross-ethnic (or whatever the word is) situations where people tend to have less ability to differentiate appearance.
There was one coworker who didn’t like my face from day 1. There was one time–I think it was at least four years in–when she offered me a candy. My co-workers, shocked, put it on the calendar as first time she ever talked to me.
I’m more often surprised by people who like me for no reason and feel like we have a special connection. I’m personable but I’m not smiley, if anything I probably come off a little haughty.
Riemann’s suggestion seems the only possible explanation for my encounter with this. At a vocational school decades ago there was a woman in her 20’s (the same as me), who, for no apparent reason, made it very, very clear that she absolutely despised me and would very much like for me to disappear from the classroom, the school, and prolly the county, as well. It was really strange, but also interesting.
Yes. A few times. But I Silly sense of humor, I’m pretty sure that’s why some seem to hate me for no reason.
But I’ve also had bad feelings towards others for no apparent reason. But thankfully, I’m aware of it, and I make it conscious effort not to be a dick to them.
I think my biggest trigger is when people are oblivious two things I think they should be aware of. Like parking your shopping cart in front of that item I wanted.
I think a lot of times that people act that way is because they sense a threat to their own status in a group by the presence of a newcomer, or sometimes to bond with someone else feeling that way. That’s why in a new environment you have to quickly demonstrate your own alpha ability. It won’t stop people from hating you but it will make them keep it to themselves.
I have usually found the reason why after a while. Either they are prejudiced against people like me for one reason or another (race, national origin, gender, “bicoastal elite”) or are pissed that I got a job (as an outsider) that either they or someone they liked should have gotten.
I’ve been hired as an external hire or from another division/branch to be the boss of someone who had applied for the job themselves no fewer than five times. In fact every single time I have been hired except my first job.
Actually even when I was in grad school (over 30 years ago), I was hired as a part time Pharmacy Tech in a drugstore 15 minutes outside the college town. One of the long time store clerks was absolutely livid that a university student had been hired for a position she’d been waiting years to be promoted into. And pretty much everyone except the Pharmacist-Manager was pissed about the decision. Fortunately, the school came through with some funding and I quit after one semester. When they found out I had given notice they were literally screaming with excitement. Right in front of my face.
There might have been an extra ingredient of racism involved. This was an almost 100% white area historically but a number of Hmong refugees had been settled there and frequented the pharmacy. The hostility toward them was pretty scary and I suspect it “primed” them to hate any Asian co-worker who was inserted into their midst as well.
I see from their website that the Pharmacy Manager is now Vietnamese-American and the University has expanded to have facilities in that area. Strange that a University that has increased enrollment by about 50% in 30 years seems to have expanded its geographical footprint by 5-10 TIMES. No wonder college costs are skyrocketing.
Yes, and there seems to have been a couple groups of reasons. The first one I experienced was when I was trying so hard to connect with moms of the kids my small daughter was friends with. On three occasions a mom ended the relationship by blowing up at me. In every case, they were people I would never have befriended myself but was trying for my daughter’s sake.
The other main group was when I was doing my damndest to be a productive friendly participant in an activity dominated by redneck ranchers. They tolerated me but most felt that I was one of the Urban Elites who used a lot of long words and thought way more analytically than was at all necessary. Except for this one sort of unhinged person, who spent quite a bit of time badmouthing me behind my back, to the point that previously friendly folks started shunning me. I stayed way too long with that project, trying to understand why I was being treated so badly when I couldn’t figure what I could be doing that was so wrong. Evidently the answer was “being me”.
None of this could be called “no reason” – it just wasn’t a reason that had to do with something I could change about myself.
I once worked as a secretary at a law firm where the secretary of the highest-named partner took an instant dislike to me. You know the old phrase, “she looked daggers at me”? That perfectly describes her attitude. I think she felt threatened because I’m an unconventional, opinionated, geeky kind of person and she was the popular prom queen type. The managing partner liked me because I embraced the new tech we were trying to adopt (this was in the 90s) and I was a hard worker. She had limited technical abilities and resisted learning anything new. After I had been there awhile, my own boss said that she had a case of “Queen Bee Syndrome”.
She hated me until the day she left for a better job, years later. Oh yeah, there was another secretary at that firm who had tremendous technical skills, a kind of proto IT geek girl. The mean secretary hated her, too.
I have this problem occasionally. I have even had a stranger tell me “I don’t like you and I don’t know why”. I have had a college prof refuse to give me an A and gave me a C even though my scores were above 95%. I took that one to the grievance committee and easily won.
Back in the late 80s when I taught a few years of college full time, my boss would shake her head every teacher evaluation day. I was simultaneously both the most liked AND most dislike professor…semester after semester. Every semester, I think. The Dean of the college said I got the most people coming to him personally to explain an issue with me and also the most people coming in person to praise me. I asked him about those complaining…is there a common thread? He said he had thought about it as well and the complaints were never specific, just a general dislike.
This continued when I left teaching and entered a career proper (pay, advancement etc) and went on 6 more years. Then it seemed to go away.
However, I am retired and don’t get enough exercise. Therefore, a couple years ago I took a part time gig at a local liquor store. I noticed right away that it was back. 3-4 others liked me and 2 others hated my guts…and it seemed to start at day 1. It wasn’t because I was old, as there were some others working there even older than me.
Why? I have no clue. I think I have the equivalent to the ‘resting bitch face’ or something. Maybe a mild mutation of ‘Hostility Field’ from Gamma World.
