Most of us who work at something do so because we need the employment.  Whether you’re busy at something you view as temporary, longer term or fully engaged in what you feel is your life’s purpose, you will occasionally find yourself dumbstruck by difficult people. My old co-worker Kristin Smith used to say ‘They make it harder than it needs to be.’  Whatever you’re sorting through, below is great info and fab reads that will help you identify these challenging types and what you can do to deal with them by allying, accommodating, escaping, confronting or perhaps eliminating them.

I have been in the workforce since I was 12 years old, picking strawberries and later shearing trees for Christmas, in the Pacific Northwest. My first actual job, as opposed to temporary seasonal work, was Bob’s Big Burgers where I wasn’t fast enough on the line and politely let go.  I worked at Moto Photo 3 times (back when folks with cameras needed film developed), Richland College Planetarium 3 times performing laser light shows (great gig!) and finally Sprint 3 times where I had planned to retire but was part of a massive lay off instead. Interspersed with Sprint, I worked as a radio announcer with a smattering of acting & photography work.  Everybody would always hire me back when asked which made me feel I was a fairly adept employee to have around.  At 58 things are different than they were in my 20’s and 30’s out job seeking.  But the mentally instable folks are still there and may sit in a cubicle near you.

My work philosophy has always been to do my best, have some fun, be easy going as possible and in general, endeavor to get along even with people I might not otherwise have ever had the opportunity to associate with. Being thrust into different walks of life and people is a great educational experience.  It is great to mix with one’s own, but also to diversify, just as you would any of your other assets.

It has always puzzled me when co-workers preferred to stir the pot, rather than try and get along.  Each of us has our own crosses to bear and we don’t really know what all is going on inside an individual so erring on the side of compassion, is the best option.  Being of diverse backgrounds, personalities and predilections IS what makes all this great!  The problems arise when we have imbalanced personalities, insecurities, judgments, ego and stress thrown in the mixture as well as folks who plainly should be on meds.

I have learned exactly 3 things that are a job requirement with any company you work at. 1) Perform your job well. Fix what you break.  Own your failures as well as your successes here. 2)  Absorb and honor the culture, and just like people, every corporation is different.  Learn it and abide.  The dude abides.  3) Get along well with everybody else. Those you cannot tolerate, keep as far away from as possible without it looking obvious and conduct all business briefly as feasible and politely.   Humor goes a very long way to making all of this happen.  However well you do your work, you are replaceable. If you are tenured at some place, please enjoy that feeling because as soon as you start somewhere else, you will feel a culture shift that, unless you’ve been job hopping for years, will come as quite a shock.  I don’t understand this but sometimes when new folks come on board, the people who have been there a while, rather than welcome you with open arms, want to size you up and judge and get sometimes intensely combative and defensive, as if you are there to take something away from them.  At least this is what I experienced and I am still scratching my head over it.

Agendas – What is your agenda for working where you do?  What motivates you daily?  For me, I have always come to work with only one agenda, to do the work well. After being fired at Bob’s Big Burgers, I never wanted to ever be fired again so I aim to work well with others and do my job.  I have never wanted the spotlight, to derail someone’s career, to one-up anybody or cause needless harm and chaos.  I have never felt the need to scream insults at someone or single anybody out and make them look bad to pump myself up.  I have not once not ever, called someone up in the middle of their work day to shout threats at them as happened to me in my last corporate job. I am full of flaws so I tend toward helping people rather than be the stone that weighs them down or in any way be the reason they don’t want to come to work.  In short, my paycheck has always been based in part on my being a team player and I just instinctively knew that. 

In my 4 decades of working, I have encountered some very challenging people.  From sexual harassment to jealousies, and pettiness, a few very angry people and much ego.   Many have been clients where I had to be exemplary in handling them while maintaining composure.  For the last 20 years, I was a project manager over implementations (IPM) over voice and data networks for Strategic and Enterprise accounts.   As much as I loved my role, it was mostly very imbalanced in the hours worked which brought out many personality quirks not to mention health issues.   My superpower was taking an upset client and turning that relationship around.  I usually got the worst cases to turn around and accomplished this, to the point of Sprint winning Vendor of the Year from Overhead Door, as just one example. While many people shy away from angry customers, the reality is that most upset folks just want a partner in the business that will hear and understand them and what they want, speak the truth so they aren’t blindsided, while also putting all efforts into meeting all the goals if at all possible.  The 12+ hour days took its toll on my health.  I manage an ongoing swallowing disorder (achalasia) due to all these years full of long hours and stress.  When I took early retirement there, my goal was to put calm and my health as a priority and not work more than an 8 hour day.  8 is enough already. Corporations get greedy.

Wherever you go, there will be the slackers and the over-achievers and those that do their job well, but never push the boundaries to go over and above. You are never going to change that or them.  You can only control yourself. 

Through networking, I ended up with several job offers through folks who knew me and my tenacity.  One seemed perfect, similar pay to what I made prior, learning something new and upcoming (apps) and an 8 hour day.  I called it ‘Dream Job’.   I managed APIs getting tested and deployed, and was hired as a contractor along with 2 other newbies who integrated into an existing team. 
3 months later, 3 additional folks were hired and us new folks were asked to train them while we were all still learning.  This was a HUGE corporation yet there were no M&Ps, no training documents, only a Client Handbook that, while filled with great info, was absolutely NOT a training tool. I did what I have always done in new work situations;  I created a cheat sheet on all the steps to do my work and added to it as I learned more.  I created this cheat sheet so I would not miss a step. I liked this job and intended on keeping it.  The 2 folks training us in between their work, took offense that I would create a cheatsheet and refused to review it for accuracy.   When we new folks began training the other 3 that had just walked in the door, with no corporate training tool to use, I was asked to share my cheatsheet.  This turned into an ego blast where, rather than being happy the new folks were trained rapidly, in a matter of days by using this cheat sheet as a training tool, instead I got screamed at for several minutes in a phone call that was so unprofessional and crazy, threatening my job, calling me insubordinate and shutting my every syllable down.  I decided the best course while I had my ass handed to me, was to just go quiet.  Let it happen, let them scream, think about what I will do next for employment. For a minute I contemplated putting that individual on speaker. In hindsight, this is exactly what I should have done. Why allow someone to be that ugly and get their say in privacy?  Why on earth did I extend courtesy in the face of all that hateful spew?   Nobody ever in my life had spoken to me like this.  Nobody ever again will!  I sat in stunned silence.  Was making six figures really worth all this drama? I had anticipated an adult, professional work environment, not bullies on the playground.   I went home that day a puddle. My husband asked if I wanted a drink when he saw me walk through the door.  I couldn’t even speak. I nodded ‘No’ and went straight to the atrium, closed the door, curled up in a fetal ball and cried for hours.  When I walked into the living room much later, I quietly explained what had happened.  He asked me not to turn in my notice, it was great money and to see what could be worked out.  In all my years at work, I had never encountered such a rough experience.  And while this individual eventually calmed down and had the cajones to take me into a breakout room and discuss it, I realized that this person, who was the one training me, was someone I could not reliably go to for any kind of help.  Their mood could go from zero to hellcat in 3 seconds.  I just didn’t have it in me to deal.  I needed calm.  And this perhaps wasn’t the worst of it.

As we newbies began getting some work, one of the individuals began clashing with everyone else.  We’ll call him Howse.  Howse wanted to spend an exorbitant amount of time deliberating on every little detail, as if he were checking his own logic but the team gradually realized it was his way of trying to coach us, train us on what he somehow assumed he knew more and we needed training on. And yes, even folks who had been there a decade, he was trying to ‘coach’. Classic micromanager, Howse spent every morning of an entire week standing in my cube demanding status as soon as I walked in the door for an API he should have been going to his own resources for.  He created daily team reports and went through all of our work with a fine tooth comb.  He would keep me late (and I did not get paid overtime) to show me ‘my report’ he created.  He would go through each of my projects, their APIs and status and I had no idea why on earth he would keep me after work to go over my work as a peer that I of course already was well aware of since they were my projects.  Then he proceeded to tell us, and the boss or our client, what we did wrong whenever he caught something.  Be it a system glitch, a ticket really not in our shop to write or a simple mistake.  There was a team intervention where, after he reported one of us, he was pulled into a breakout room where team-mates tried to get him to understand why that was wrong to do. He insisted they ‘Needed to know she made an error.’  Ironically, Howse made the same error first, but of course, management didn’t hear about that.  He would jump into business that wasn’t his, join calls he was not invited to, cover up his own errors or justify them and create havoc and upset and distrust in the team.  Always looking to argue a point and demanding things must be done his way, I believe he is the reason I was laid off and amazingly, he was retained. The last thing I tried to help him with was to warn him from tenaciously demanding documentation from tenured folks.  My mistake entirely.  I should have let him go on ahead!  Instead I was trying to have compassion for the root of his behavior issues and help him.  His wife was stayed at home with the kids and he’d lost his last job over this behaviour.  Part of not going through things again is learning the signs of mental imbalance so to  avoid getting sucked into it.  It is never your role to fix a broken employee.  Sometimes trying to help the mentally unstable comes back to bite you.

Above all else, always remain calm.  Both with this phone call and when Howse was yelling at me in my cubicle, just coming completely unglued because I simply asked him to step out of my cubicle and allow me to get my work done my own way, I refused to get angry or shout back.  My personal MO has been to always remain kind.  In the end of it, the hothead screaming insults at you is going to look like the person they are if you remain quiet, calm and polite.  When you jump into the fray, it then becomes ‘he said, she said’ and the truth of it muddies.

If your corporation keeps the asshat, well, they deserve it!  Move onward and upward.  Don’t bother looking back and bemoaning fate.  But, I do encourage you to see what part you took in it.  You may not have known the morale or ethos going into the job but now that you have, think about what you did or did not do or say and make your own behavioral changes.  For me, my change is to not be as patient with mentally imbalanced people.  It can encourage their abuse and nobody deserves to be abused at work. Working for a living, whatever it is, is challenge enough.  None of us needs to put up with rudeness and ego.   There are ways to end a call, stop a person from jumping you in your cubicle every morning and to do this in a polite but firm way. And when that doesn’t work, get up and walk away.

Life is too short for unnecessary conflict.  One of the things I learned when my mother got dementia was that stress and shock can bring it on.  This can be a bad accident, such as breaking a hip, losing a loved one, a bad car accident or anything that seriously jolts you.  They don’t know why but I think I do.  I think the life most of us live is vastly removed from the life most of us were designed to live.  The pace is fast, the work hours long and judging by what I see, the respect and compassion has dwindled.  No work is worth affecting your mental or physical soundness because at the end of it, what you have left is you.  You have to be in shape to take on whatever comes next.  I have watched a lot of worker bees who are spent, not in great physical shape or emotional condition trying to find work.  Always put yourself first.  Because the corporation you work for will take what it can, the responsibility rests upon you to call it when it’s time to stop.  

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This is my master bath.  The contractor gutted, elevated the ceiling and did new sheetrock, ran electrical etc.  The view from my zen soak tub shows me a gappy unfinished wall, gaps around the medicine cabinet, a crooked light fixture where the round hole which he created for a square base is mostly covered by a cheap plastic circle. The light fixture moves. Not in the photo are unfinished walls, one that curves and child-like tiling.  This passes as quality work at Wilder & Wilder construction.

The photo absolutely will NOT load and I also blame this on the car manufacturer.  They must be working some serious mojo so that my photos won’t post. 😉   But I bought an LS600HL and the dashboard leather peeled up so high it blocked vision out the front windshield. Lexus refused to resolve.  I finally just sold off the car for pennies on the dollar. I believe hell will freeze before I cease talking about my bad Lexsucks.  There were other issues too with the vehicle, it was just aging far too fast for what should have been a quality built machine with a 6 figure sticker price.  Not 50k miles in, the water pump failed, as did the brakes and suspension among other things.  This is my experience and I have read a few other sad Lexus stories too and while your Lexus may or may not be behaving itself, I come away forever off the brand due to how my situation was handled.  It seemed nobody cared to change the outcome and I felt I was driving the most beautiful POS ever created that was a driving time bomb of when I might be left stranded and owing thousands to fix again.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, we are spiritual beings who bring intention and spirit behind that into everything we do, all that we touch and also with what we say.  None of us are perfect so if this sounds scary, don’t worry.  This life is just a practice.  But our practice is in perfection, in giving and doing our best in the service of others with whatever it is that we do or create, even if what we do now is only temporary, you’re going on holiday or retiring next week or starting something new and more in line with your goals etc.

This is the view I see every day I soak in my tub to relax.  Namaste MF comes to mind.  And I have not found anybody that wants to finish this wall for me.  I have thought a lot about work and the spirituality of doing great work, of striving to create happiness with clients, of making it look easy in front of the customer which used to be my personal motto at Sprint as an Implementation Project Manager.  Sure, you are not going to please everybody.  Some folks come with their own tightly packed bag of luggage that you are never going to be enabled to sort through or resolve.  All we can ever do is try.  Try hard.  Looking at this wall I ask you what lasting impression did you leave your last customer with?  Or perhaps it was the checkout person or mailman.  We all brand ourselves by how we typically think, feel and act and by our
personal code of ethics.  Are you a half-finished and poorly done wall? Are you advertising yourself as a flagship when your output speaks otherwise? If so, there’s time and need to go and do better.

We like to think in terms of hierarchy, of rank in importance, such as BMW might rank higher than Subaru or CEO higher than Project Manager.  The reality is that the heart is not one iota more important than the foot, the lung no more important than the lymphatic system, the intestines no less important than the brain.  I found it absolutely fascinating to learn the immune system is a completely separate entity that dwells within our bodies.  We are all made up of bacteria and hopefully more good flora than bad (check your diet.)  But all of the body, while bits, parts and pieces, all work harmoniously together for the good of all the entire organism called human, fish, dog etc or problems ensue.

When we observe the body, we understand that all the lifeforms, all the people, the other animals, the plants, all these bits, parts, and pieces, make up the wonderful and diverse and dependent world we live in with nothing being really more important than another.

Imagine nobody wanted the janitor job.  Nobody took out the trash or recycle? How important would that job suddenly feel after a couple of weeks missed trash pickup? Or a month?  Many of us do something we are not 100% sold on.  This may be a stepping stone or foot inside a doorway, the only thing you felt you qualified for or just a temporary gig to earn some pay.  Whatever it is to you, your hand is bringing spirit into the practice.  Whether it is the practice of customer service, medicine, the practice of implementing APIs or circuits, the practice of acupuncture, you are adding something divine when it is done right.  Whenever you are simply going through the motions or filled with anything less than thankfulness and a desire to do your best in the role you are filling, you are adulterating your power and providing a product whose end results will be less than stellar.  And no matter what you do, however trivial you may think it is, somebody cares a whole heck of a lot about the end result.

When I first took up yoga nearly 20 years ago, I was transfixed upon the meaning behind a word I had never heard prior; Namaste.  We are all spiritual beings, filled with the anima, the soul and breath of life that all animals are filled up with.   In the scurry to get projects completed, the car serviced, the kids off to school, pets to the vet, the home cleaned, and figure out how to carve time out to work on our frayed nerves, work out, work in and work on ourselves this is a great word to meditate upon. 

The meaning behind the word Namaste is that the divine in me acknowledges, sees, the divine in you.  When I say Namaste, I am acknowledging your spiritually divine spark, your holiness.  And amid all this chaos, you do have this spark!  The Indian people I worked with used the word as a greeting and a departure. Hello sure pales in comparison. 

I love yoga, and there are many forms, for it’s balancing and healing of the entire system.  Regardless of where you plan to practice, I encourage you to get a Manduka yoga mat.  They are the best, thickest for the knees and joints, easy to clean and last forever.  And now they come in colours!

Types of yoga really run the gamut from Flow or power yoga where you get your heart rate up a bit and flow from one position to the next swiftly, to Iyengar and Anusara where the pace is slow and methodical with high importance placed upon the body structure, stacking the bones and keeping a watchful eye on alignment.  My first teachers were Baron Baptiste,  Iyengar and Vinyasa trained so form was taught.

At the Y, I have become more involved and aware of Iyengar.  At first I felt it was too slow but now I get it.  And the man’s story is fascinating, sickly as a child, he was sent to live with monks in hopes he would find healing.  I highly recommend reading his book, Light On Yoga which is considered the bible of yoga. Here you learn to perfect your form and allow for the healing this brings to your practice.  There is also rope yoga and I am thankful the YMCA offers this!  I have never had such release in my lower back.

Another fabulous book is Baron’s 40 days to Personal Revolution which has great mediation instructions, poses, and deep inspiring thoughts.

Yoga not only tonifies the body, tendons and internal organs but works on the mind.  In yoga, we call it monkey mind, where our thoughts are all over the place.  We learn calm, to live in the parasympathetic responses in our nervous system, the rest and digest.  In our fast-paced world, many of us just stay on a sympathetic nervous system response and wear our systems out.  Think Coronaries.  So we need more calm in our lives.  As we calm, we think clearer.  Yoga helps us grow in compassion not only for others but also for ourselves as we see from day to day our body may be different, balance, stretch or move differently.  I learned which was my stronger side through yoga as well as the myriad ways my life is imbalanced in the day to day life, such as what fingers I use to pull my pants up, or which is my pot scrubbing hand and which is my pot holding hand?  Switch things up, create even strength and balance within yourself.

Anger – One time at work, where we had outsourced to India, I was very frustrated as things were not going well at all.  These folks were put into place with very little learning on something very complicated and add to it the language barrier.  After the run around and feeling my blood boil, I ended my chat session with this exceedingly unhelpful person with ‘Namste’.  In the depth and bile of my anger over not getting something done which should have taken 1 afternoon before but now had required 35 days, I was just done talking.  I had to stop myself and breath.  It would do no good to spew hatred at the machine that put all this in place. Perhaps it wasn’t this individuals fault, who knows their personal story right?  So I just took a slow breath, let it all go and said Namaste.  I was heading my finger on the button to then end the chat session when a message came back to ‘hold on one moment more, I think I can fix this for you.’  And so it was done not in anger, not in pushing my agenda, but simply in letting it go as I acknowledged the holy, the seat of the divine in another very flawed individual as I am equally flawed too.  I ended up after this getting a whole lot of work done faster.  And I shared with my US team what Namaste means as I shared my personal story.  Unfairness, laying off the wrong person, car accidents, loan interest rates going up happen.  Life happens.  The point of it all is to acknowledge the divine in everything which surrounds you.  There you find peace and gain enlightenment.  Namaste.