There is a coworker who absolutely brings out the worst in me. I react the way I reacted to my oldest brother, because his attitude is fairly patronizing. The problem is not him so much as my reaction to him.
I tell myself I’m going to have a strictly professional reactions to him. And I do well, until I have to work one on one with him (which has happened a lot lately, by the way). Then, something will be said that I take wrong, and I react without thinking.
If there was a remote bit of physical or intellectual attraction there, I’d go for it figure that was the problem. But there’s not, at least from my point of view (yes, I know there is from his, but that has been discussed directly with him, and he has quit the flirting stuff).
The problem is, I don’t like who I am when I react to him. It’s gotten to the point that I know it’s not a healthy work situation for me or for him, and I’m the bigger of the problems. There used to be a buffer between us, but that person is no longer working there.
Tomorrow, I plan to sit down alone with our boss, and explain the situation as well as I can to her. If she feels that it’s so unhealthy that one of us needs to go, then it needs to be me. Because I’m not really happy there anyway, and I think that’s part of the problem, and part of why I react the way I do. But I have almost no savings because I’ve been working on getting out of debt. There’s a little there, but not much of a cushion. It’s not like I have another job lined up either.
Basically (and I know it’s my decision), how do I change my reactions to him? Assuming that I have a job after I talk to my boss tomorrow, that is.
hey, congratulations on your self awareness. you are already halfway there. the way you change this situation is exactly what youre doing. examine your reasons for reacting the way you do, be mindful about it, and take positive steps to change the situation.
good luck, and let us know how it works out. you can do this; you just have to want to badly enough.
Gosh, I had a similar situation a few years ago. The other person was perpetually annoying, but then I ended up even more annoyed at myself fot letting myself get so worked up over her.
The two things that seemed to work the best for my situation were:
I tried to imagine how the other person was going to respond, and come up with a pat answer that I would recite by memory. I would practice a few times so that my own response was free of emotion. Immaturity alert: I also liked this because I would get very pleased with myself if I was able to correctly guess her response, which put me in a better mood.
As much as possible, I tried to steer things toward email. That way, she could send me a ridiculous email, and then I could read it, get hysterical, calm down, read it again, and then figure out what had to happen next to get the job done. This is also nice because it created a paper trail, so that if something did go amiss, I had some backup. I don’t know if your workplace would lend itself to this. At first, my annoying person was miffed that I insisted that even simple interactions be via email, but I had presented this to my boss in a positive light – that it was more productive for me to have this sort of confirmation to make sure that I did my work correctly. I didn’t say anything about the coworker to my boss, I made it all about me and my need to check details accurately. I very deliberately set this up so that I looked like the more conscientious worker.
It sounds like you want to be up front with your boss, but I would advise against setting up the story to make it look like you’re the only one with the problem. If at all possible, could you position the meeting so that you are letting your boss know about the situation, and how you plan to handle it?
Maybe you should discuss this with your co-worker before you talk to your boss. If you explain this to him the way you’ve explained it to us, you may be able to get him to modify his behavior so as not to set you off.
Only if that doesn’t work should you take it up the ladder. This is not a good time to be talking about leaving a job.