Dealing with Coworkers
Dealing with coworkers is inevitable… No matter what your job, you’ll most likely have to deal with coworkers one way or another. Maybe you work in an office with 100 other people on your floor, or, maybe you’re in a smaller office, where you’re a stone’s throw distance from everyone you work with (and for). Whichever way it is for you, your daily interactions are as mixed as they can be. Some days are great where everyone is getting along and the company is clicking on all 6-cylinders. Other days, Susan from Marketing and Bob from IT are fighting again, or your boss is favoring two of the five Sales Reps and the whole team is now divided, or worse, the guy who trained you, who just got promoted, is being super passive aggressive for no reason and now doesn’t talk to you.
Whatever the case may be, there are, thankfully, ways to deal with this. Just like in life, you’ll inevitably come across people and situations in which you can’t control and that truly deserve a moment of “WTF?”
There is probably no completely correct way to deal with coworkers, however, we can at least try to deal the best we can…
Probably the most common thing to do is to take the high road – however hard it may be. Time and time again, someone’s actions towards you may be due to insecurities, or it may have something to do with their personal life, so just try to smile and shake it off…
Take the high road, but always stand up for yourself. If things are bad at work, and are impacting your daily work output, talk to your boss or HR – they deal with this kind of stuff all the time – that’s what they are there for. If someone keeps taking credit for your work, say something, so it stops happening and doesn’t continue to happen in the future.
Another thing to potentially do, is to subtly speak with some of your more trusted/friendlier coworkers – if someone in the company is acting one way towards you, they may be acting the same way towards others, so you can at least ask to see if this is a common behavior from the not so nice coworker.
Like life, it won’t always be rainbows and butterflies at work, so if you find yourself in a sticky situation, try to make the best of it. Consult with friends and family, even old bosses or old co-workers to see if anyone else has had the same kind of issue, and see how they resolved it.
We hope you don’t have to deal with bad co-workers at work, but if you do, we hope this helps.
