Dealing With Difficult People

When I was at U. S. Worst Telecommunications, I attended a seminar by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner, Dealing With Difficult People. I just found a slideshow from this presentation-click on the previous link to go there.

Obviously I need to review this material!

WHY Did I Want To Avoid Them (Co-workers)

I was just re-reading my post about co-worker avoidance, which caused me to pose an interesting question to myself: exactly why did I want to avoid these people? Also, I asked myself if the avoidance involved all people, or just some people.

I'll answer the second question first: The truth is that I only want to avoid some people, not all people. I think that was true ten years ago, or twenty years ago, as well as today. It's not based on shyness alone, although I am somewhat shy.

OK, then which people do I want to avoid, and why?

I want to avoid people who are trying to impress others with displays of social status or materialism. For example, when I worked in corporations, I frequently was around people who made a big deal out of shopping at expensive stores, eating at trendy high-priced restaurants, fancy overseas travel, and this sort of thing. Furthermore, I didn't get the sense that they deeply ENJOYED any of this on any real level, rather, they wanted to impress others with the prestige or status they felt was associated with these activities.

I am uncomfortable around the sort of women who perform stereotypical femininity to an extreme degree and assume that all female people aspire to the same. Likewise, I am uncomfortable around their macho-man counterparts.

I get completely lost and confused in the company of people who are immersed in mainstream pop culture. Usually I have NO idea about the TV shows, movies, and pop stars they are talking about.

I was never a particularly good corporate team player, and I didn't understand people who were. They reminded me of the people called "Soshes" in high school. I think they call them "Preps" now. While I cared about the work I performed, I didn't care for trying to promote my image in the workplace, competing with others, or networking for the sake of networking. I strongly dislike office politics.

Maybe it goes without saying (or maybe it doesn't), but I definitely don't want to be around sexists, racists, homophobes, or people who want to force their religion on everyone else. Nor do I seek the company of rude people, obnoxious people, arrogant jerks, and the like.

I actually enjoy being around people who are intelligent, thoughtful, and just plain nice!

Avoiding My Co-Workers

I often felt so uncomfortable interacting with co-workers that I devised all sorts of ways to avoid them.

One of my favorite methods of co-worker avoidance was to spend every single break and lunch hour studying. When anyone would ask me to lunch, I would always say I had to study for a test in accounting, statistics, economics or some other tough-sounding subject. This would usually elicit sympathy and a quick departure.

The fact that it took me over 15 years to graduate from college helped make this a very effective ruse indeed.

I also would make frequent lunch hour trips to libraries and bookstores to obtain "books I needed for classes."

I went on lots of exercise regimes that required me to be out walking during the lunch hour.

When I was in management positions, I simply worked through lunch most of the time.

During my last few years in the workforce, I finally figured out that it was helpful to have a few "safe" topics of general interest that would help me attempt to actually interact with people. Gardening, pets, kids and food (nothing too exotic) usually seemed to work pretty well. I was also mindful to steer clear of topics like beat poetry, philosophy, dumpster diving, politics, gay/lesbian issues- the kinds of things that really interest me-- I felt that I had to be self-censoring all the time to even be marginally accepted in the workplace. This level of alienation creates a constant feeling of anxiety and tension.