The Next Time You Want To Punch Someone At Work…Don’t!

Why unkind colleagues are doing you a favour

You have heard it a Hundred times, but hear it again;

if someone or something annoys you or makes you mad, its an opportunity for personal growth

I started working when I was 19, just a few months after I finished School. I didn’t attend university so my notions of collaboration and teamwork in a formal / serious setting was my 13 years of school, the team sports I played and the various club/society work that I was involved in at school. So when I started working at one of the largest conglomerates in the country at 20 (after a couple of short-term gigs at smaller set ups), there were a few things that I need to reassess.

One of the things was how no one really gave a fuck who you were. These were people who were working in this place for over 5 years or more and clearly were set in their ways and of course were territorial. To say that I had a few rude awakenings during my 17+ years in Corporate is an understatement. But in hindsight, I realise how those people, what they did, their insecurities, their personalities and the way that they treated me actually helped me raise my game and learn vital skills needed to survive in the corporate world and most certainly in the Adult world. I had a lot to learn myself and I had a lot of shortcomings in the way that I viewed the world. So all the people that I met, the Good, the bad and the nasty were all guiding posts.

Let me share a few of them here, for your general information, education and entertainment;

The “I can’t repeat myself guy”
As the new kid on the block, I had to shadow many people and ask them to explain certain things to me. I made the cardinal mistake of asking the ‘same thing’ on consecutive days from this one guy. He lost his shit and just told me that I need to remember what he told me yesterday and that he does not have time to be repeating things to me. It was not so much what he said (because it was quite reasonable), its how he said it that was unpleasant. So much so, that it made his colleagues cringe as well.
The lesson: obviously, I did not want to listen to his whining and rudeness again. So I made it a point to ‘write things down’ and learn things as fast as possible and on my own. I am a self professed Autodidact now!
Outcomes: I leant the new Travel reservation system all by myself and ended up being the ‘go-to guy’ for all the senior staff who were sent for training (I was not because I was the new guy).

The One who never used your name
I was transferred to a new team with a couple of rather aggressive senior colleagues, people were ‘scared’ to work with them. And one of them had this habit of NOT using your name and just using various sounds to get your attention. This HAS to be one of my serious pet peeves and I find it very disrespectful. Not shying from a challenge, I deliberately refrained from responding to these ‘pet-calls’ when I knew for sure that she wanted me to do something for her etc. I made it a point to tell her that she should use my name if she wants to get my attention and that I will not respond to random sounds. She was surprised that the ‘junior’ stood up to her bullying but adjusted immediately. We got along fine after that.
The learning: Doesn’t matter if you are Junior or Senior. You should not tolerate being disrespected. We all have dignity and are there for a reason, to do a job, not to be abused by bullies.
Outcomes: I make it a point to use people’s names when I interact with them. Waiters at a restaurant, Cab drivers, Garbage men/women etc. The difference in the way they respond to you when you use their name is just amazing. It is something that I also learnt at a young age from a Dale Carnegie book. Try It!

The Insecure Telltale
Worries that he was losing attention from the bosses, a senior colleague (who was meant to guide and train me), went behind my back and complained to our boss that I had not done something, without addressing it with me First.
The learning: always keep your boss updated with what you are doing, even when you have not done it. Don’t leave room for someone else to telltale about you because it comes across as shabby on your part.
Outcomes: No matter what I do and who I work with now, I make sure that all parties concerned are updated with the current status of the project. Good, Bad or ugly…updates are shared so that everyone is prepared and can adjust.

The Professional Bull-shitter
You don’t have to be a junior at large company to encounter assholes, it can happen even when you are in a senior leadership position. You know that person at office, you are not sure what kind of value they bring to the table on their own, but they seem to dominate the conversation in the boardroom and most of it consists of ideas that you shared with them earlier in the day. These people are nothing short of con artists, heck they might as well be actors and sometimes you let them get away with shit, simply because you are blown away by their ‘performances’.
The learning: be smart, do not share the whole idea with these people, hold on to the vital aspects of it. These people are seasoned and smart, they will not share things in public if they cannot back it up with more stolen BS and/or able to craftily pass the ball to you at a vital point. Don’t allow room for either. If you are sharing ideas, make sure that they whole team knows where it came from.
Outcomes: I was not able to survive corporate culture without accommodating and feeding information to people like this. But I ensure that I am sincere when presenting my ideas and always giving credit where credit is due in public.

You can choose to look at it any way that you want and helps you to carry on with work and life. Most people learn to live with people like this (like I did) but then eventually lose their shit and quit (like I did). But at the end of the day I believe that all this hostile behaviour boils down to One thing…people being Unkind.

How people are unkind and rude to you is just a reflection of who they, where they come from and sometimes what they are going through at that very moment. We can excuse and forgive their behavior if we choose to, but there is no excuse for us to not call it out and ensure that it does not happen again and again, to us or anyone else around us.

Some days we are Brilliant…and some days we are shit…but everyday, we are Human. And that alone, is a good enough reason not to be Unkind — Thushan Jayaratne