I manage the prepress department at a printing plant - handling output issues, maintaining the network, and troubleshooting problem files. A salesman had a client in my office, and referred to me as a typesetter.
Only once.
I’m picturing two tough gang members running into each other on the street. One of them says, “Your law firm is hard to deal with,” and then the switchblades come out.
Be my guest!
huh. I guess never. 22 years at the same place. I would not consider the OP’s comment an insult.
We would not put up with insults were I work. Now my boss and I have gotten ‘into it’ twice since I’ve been there. Mostly because we were so stressed out. Apologies follow.
I do run a web site. A very outdated website. But I get out of the blue ‘Thank you, it’s great’ about once every couple of weeks. The few times people have bitched about it I can count on one hand. It happened to be down, or they are clueless in the use of a browser.
The ‘Contact Us’ button comes right to my desk. I can usually respond in minutes. Stuns the heck out of people. It’s fun.
Is that a subsidiary of Vandalay Industries?
Ugh, yes. I used to get yelled at by possibly-senile elderly people when I’d make them get up and bathe and walk. The joys of being a CNA in a hospital ward.
I also had several elderly men show me their penis during bathing/dressing. I got so that I’d just hand them a washcloth and tell them to wash it, for God’s sake.
I was 16 when I worked in the hospital ward. It was good toughening.
Do they sell latex?
There is a not insignificant amount of latex involved, but it is not a product we sell.
I can really only think of once in 28 years. Of course, the OP an I clearly have vastly different definitions of “insulted.”
It was a young Marine Gunnery Sergeant. In his defense, I had just finished yelling and pounding on the conference room table in an argument with an Admiral. We took a break, but I got trapped int he hall outside the door so heard him when he said “She is such a B****.”
Now, this was just after the TAILHOOK scandal hit, and everybody was afraid to breathe around a female, mch less curse around her, much less curse ABOUT her. So when I stuck my head back around the doorframe there was unanimous gasping around the room.
I said (very quietly, so they all had to be still to listen)
“Let’s be perfectly clear on this point. I am not a B*****. I am the A-number-1, top-of-the-line, B**** of the Century. And don’t you ever forget it again!”
The relief was palpable, and we all got along a lot better after that. Although the poor little GS was missing from future meetings.
Very rarely at work. My colleagues would never insult me, and patrons who are verbally abusive with staff are asked to leave, or banned from the library, or have to meet with a supervisor or some such nuisance.
I am trying to undertand how the comment in the OP is an insult at all.
That isn’t an insult. That’s a snippy comment. An insult is ‘You’re a dishonest, incompetent bollix who gives lawyers a bad name.’ If ‘Your firm is hard to work with’ is your definition of an insult, then no wonder you feel insulted a couple of times a week.
Seriously - if this kind of thing is costing you sleep, then for your own sake, maybe you should try to raise your threshold for what constitutes an insult?
To answer your question, I can’t remember the last time anyone from work deliberately insulted me.
The one that stands out for me was a cow-orker who didn’t insult me directly, but implied that I was less than her by doing things like offering me the soup that she didn’t want because it tasted off to her, but I might like it. Or telling me when the cheap fashion store down the street was having a sale but also saying in the same breath that she never shops there. I don’t even think the comments were deliberate on her part. She just assumed that my standards weren’t as high as hers.
It might not even be a snippy comment. It might be a simple factual statement.
I guess I was lucky not to have that happen much. When it did, it never happened a second time. I’m pretty easy-going unless someone gets in my face without good reason.
I manage IT for an industrial facility. I am as high up as anyone except for the BIG BOSS but I am outside of the organizational structure of everyone else there. I can basically be judge and grantor for any requests or favors that anyone else wants. I can also make people’s life hell by cracking down on some Draconian rules that I normally let slide. Nobody has ever insulted me in the 5 years that I have been there. They usually bend over backwards to give me compliments.
My office is right next to the big boss’s office and he really likes me. Everyone is terrified of him and knows that the repercussions would be swift and severe if they ever did such a thing. Insulting coworkers is a huge deal there because it is a blue-collar industrial environment with people from some hard backgrounds. Petty fights and general disrespect are not tolerated because of what that can lead to. We are lucky in that it is a secure and controllable environment that doesn’t have many outsiders allowed in and especially not the public.
Working security, the best thing I can say about most of the insults I get at work are that a lot of them are too drunken to be comprehensible.
None have been particularly memorable as yet.
I did briefly work driving an ice cream van, where the (sort of- his son was in the process of taking over) boss screamed random abuse at me, and everyone else, all the time. That was a bit odd, not least because everyone literally acted like he wasn’t there when he was doing it.
[the guys at the bar all start chanting “Cat fight! Cat fight! Cat fight! Cat fight!”]
Kelly Gaines: You get out of my way right now or so help me I’ll, I’ll, I’ll hurt your feelings!
Emily: You do, and I’ll hurt yours right back.
[“Kitten fight. Kitten fight. Kitten fight.”]
Hey Lakai. Welcome to the other profession where you get paid to drop your drawers and take it up the ass. To thrive in this profession, you need some really good lube.
If you practice in oppositional matters, you’re going to be dealing with all sorts of nutty, nasty and nefarious people who generally consider you to be the devil incarnate who is out to get them personally. You’re not going to change who they are, so either you have to learn how to deal with them, or you have to adjust the course of your career to keep the hell away from them, or you have to prepare yourself for a really shitty life with increased odds of depression, anxiety, etc.
First, learn to keep everything in balance. If you let any aspect of your life get out out whack, there is a good chance that other aspects of your life (including your ability to handle comments) will also go out of balance. Specifically, work on balancing physical, social, mental, spiritual, intellectual and occupational dimensions of your life (e.g. Roger Couture’s model at page 2 and 3). See if your governing body or your insurer has resources to help you keep in balance (e.g. Personal Management Practice Management Guideline).
Second, consider anger management counseling to learn how to prevent comments from getting under your skin. As you might have noticed from other posts in this thread, being told that you are difficult to deal with really isn’t much of an insult – perhaps a useful comment, or perhaps a catty comment, but it sure isn’t crossing into insult territory. When the opposing client goes after your licence to practice, or sues you, or tries to break down your office door to get at you, then you are getting into insult territory, and if you are in insult territory, you had best keep your head clear and deal with the problem at hand rather than skidding off track due to getting emotionally wrapped up in it. In short, take the advice that many family and litigation lawyers often tell their clients: learn to let it go. Anger management counselling can help you to not sweat the small stuff and learn to let it go concerning the insults, so in turn you will be better able to gather your resources to deal with the big stuff.
Third, develop a relationship with a mentor in your legal community. Sometimes it can help a lot to sit down with someone whom you trust, who has been through what you are going through, who is willing to listen, to *really listen *to you, grokking what you are getting at, and who can help gently guide you forward, lubing the way so to speak.
Speaking directly with the opposing party when that party’s lawyer is not present can seriously fuck up your case, and can seriously fuck up your career. Don’t do it.
Don’t mislead anyone, don’t dip into your trust accounts, don’t have sex with your client, and don’t speak with an opposing party when that party’s lawyer is not present.
(And no, the above isn’t an insult or a catty comment. 
It’s the honest to flying spaghetti monster truth that you should try to live by if you want to have a happy career.)
I’m a substitute teacher. I’m insulted almost daily. Luckily for them they are usually smart enough not to do it when I can hear them. My Look of Death is legendary and I will issue consequences for disrespect and especially for swearing. (Most of the insults I’ve heard have contained swearing. I’m not just a B. I’m a F’ing B apparently. Although neither word is considered acceptable in a public school classroom.)
My children have had to defend me a couple of times though and I do feel badly for them about it. It’s part of the job when you sub middle and high school kids.