You know how you can just tell when someone’s smile is condescending? I could see it on my coworker; her smile too wide, her eyebrows pulled up high, and her eyes closed while she bobbed her head up and down. She had just come over to lecture me about a customer file I was working in, and I’d tried to explain to her what I was doing with it. I was working on something that was only my responsibility and not part of hers, so I might have wondered why she was so worried about what I was doing, if I hadn’t already come to expect this pattern.
This coworker seemed to have made it her mission to make me feel inferior and make herself look better to our boss. Even though we had very different responsibilities, she frequently came over to watch what I was doing and give pointers (and with a tone - you know what I mean?). She would also randomly look over at me, feign panic, then rush to my side to lecture about what I was doing wrong, and it would usually coincide with our boss’s arrival into our area.
I know what you might be wondering: What if I was just messing up constantly? But the stuff she was going on about were always things that I knew how to do, and I knew that she hadn’t ever done them here. And she was so theatrical about it that every exchange felt bizarre.
Other than her pointers and lectures, she never spoke to me. She would only give the same too-stretched smile with closed eyes. She would even stay silent and smile that way when I greeted her or said her name, and it was so awkward that after a while I’d just wave when I walked in.
It was still the early days of my employment anywhere. I was twenty and this was only my third official job. I already wasn’t feeling super confident about my job security in this place, and now this coworker was really stressing me out. What if our boss started seeing me as completely incompetent and her as the one who had to come rushing in to save the day all the time?
And what was I supposed to feel about myself in this office where the only coworker who acknowledged me was the one who was constantly telling me I wasn’t cut out for this job?
I’ll cut to the chase: she ended up getting fired. Then I ended up getting fired, but it was a while after her and it wasn’t because of her or for anything she’d ever lectured me about (I know you’re curious; it was for my inability to communicate effectively and sound professional on the phone). So I got to have the satisfaction of seeing her exit, and of knowing later that she didn’t have the satisfaction of seeing mine.
The whole thing ended up being a good learning experience, so I’m not sorry it happened. But I started thinking about it lately, when I got a comment on one of my videos from someone who’s dealing with a coworker who sounds familiar.
And it’s got me thinking: If I could go back and give my back-then self some advice, what would I say? And what can anyone’s game plan be when they’ve got a toxic person out to get them at work?
I’ve had more than one experience with this by now, but fortunately, none of them ever became extreme, or crossed the line into abuse. They also weren’t ever really anything that I needed to seriously worry about. They were frustrating and stressful at worst and eyeroll-worthy most often, and that’s what I had in mind when I was first considering this topic. So I gave my initial thoughts in the following video, and this is part one.
Since so often these situations can escalate into something much more cruel, and since they can also sometimes seriously jeopardize even a great employee’s position in their company, I’ve decided to do a part two and give my thoughts about what to do if things are or become more abusive, or if there’s any chance that your boss could become influenced against you by a toxic coworker.
That will be out soon, and when it is, I’ll post it. But in the meantime, here’s the first video: