I realize I’ve spent over a year in an organization where things kept falling apart because, ultimately, people in the organization just plain didn’t like me.
It started, perhaps, when I brought up that HR’s onboarding process made me uncomfortable because it involved a third-party sending out a third-party email to go to a third-party website to entire our personal information. Since this was a training by the larger corporate IT department, and we had just finished talking about the dangers of phishing, I thought it was a good time to mention it.
Mistake.
The next week I was visited by someone who took issue with, “not what I said, but the way I said it”. Lesson: don’t embarass HR in company-wide trainings.
Anyway, after a few similar call outs by me, I was labelled a trouble-maker, sidelined, ignored, and mistreated. This is an organization, I note, that assiduously avoids contradicting or discomfiting superiors in ANY way. That is deffos not my style.
Anyway, my question really isn’t about my toxic workplace, but what you learned about YOURSELF by working in a place that didn’t like you.
I’ll give you two more stories:
1
When I just graduated from school, I started working with a team model. I was paired with someone with fewer certifications, and I was to lead us boldly on our mission. The person I was assigned was a very beaten-down older, brown woman in a field dominated by young white women (seemingly universally with long, straight hair). She seemed to be universally disliked and disrespected by everyone. Because I was incompetent both at my job and my Spanish (sabo kid in denial), this woman essentially did my job and HERS and still got treated like absolute shit.
She invited me to an event that had nothing to do with work, an event for an organization she volunteered for where she was on the board. People treated her with respect and, in return, she was bright and bubbly. I saw a completely different side of her that night.
Lesson: Where we are beaten down, we get small. Where we are supported, we flourish.
(Kind of an aside, she was from a small country, and when I told her I was visiting, she INSISTED I go see one of her family members; he turned out to be an extremely well placed person in the government; she wasn’t royalty, exactly, but she had a social prestige in her country that was unsustainable as a middle-aged brown woman with an accent in the USA.)
2
I was working retail at one store. I’d been there for maybe two years. I always lived in fear of being fired, and when I made mistakes that I worried about getting me fired, nothing happened. I learned that, ultimately, what mattered is if people liked you, and, there, people liked me.
I eventually had to leave because of some restructuring but the manager found me the EXACT SAME POSITION at a nearby store. After a few weeks, I noticed people did NOT like me. Conversations were kept short, nobody ever volunteered to talk to me,. I got along with exactly one cashier, who was an awesome dude. It wasn’t a horrible experience, I was allowed to do my job and I did, but there was always an empty, hollow feeling.
Then the original store invited me back and it was like night and day. “Oh, so this is how people act when they like you.” I’d almost forgotten. I loved going into to work to see my work buddies and I loved shooting the shit with them during downtime.
To some people the idea that others might die wasn’t as important as them being perceived as being in charge.
I had a very slow decline over a couple years. Basically a senior VP got a married male coworker drunk at lunch and then they “stopped by VP’s condo real quick” where my coworker was SA’d.
The coworker tells everyone, HR gets involved, coworker gets a huge promotion reporting directly to the VP, and suddenly coworker “think it may have happened differently” when I asked him what in the gd fuck he was doing.
Over 2 years my team of 8 + director bailed. I stayed thinking I’d outlast the shitty leadership and be a shoe-in for the vacant director position. Instead I got put on another team where I trained a handful of actually nice people on how to work with a data warehouse but leadership was still soured on me. What broke me finally was when my new director gave a promotion related to the job I’d been teaching everyone to another person. Also after hours one day while I was teaching a different coworker how to code and my new director came by to ask if it was done. I told him it wasn’t but it would be as I was letting this person take the reigns while I watched. My director told me “just quit bitching and get this shit done.”
At our standup the next morning I resigned in front of him and the entire team. The calls I got for MONTHS after that still help me fall asleep some nights. I’m talking about being asked to debug entire log files and providing admin credentials for the database that I “couldn’t remember exactly” but they were “stored somewhere on [a cluster of 16 different servers”.
So I took a lateral move to another agency where I had the same pay but since then have more doubled my salary and been promoted 3 times in 7 years.
What I learned was actually from something my douchebag director told me: “you can’t make people act how you want to” which was a dig at me but I’ve thought about it a lot. I wanted my agency to see the wrongs, see the people fleeing, have my coworker be honest about the SA that he almost resigned over, and I wanted to be vindicated. But that’s just not what happened.
If you’re in a toxic place where someone like my old VP has the ear of leadership and turns them against you, just bail. I knew my time was coming when I’d turn the corner on a city block and see my building and I’d feel my heart race. It’s always good to fight the good fight and we all need to but you’ve also gotta realize when it’s best to walk away and do what’s solely best for you, not some higher broader moral principle.
It also taught me a lot about workplace politics. I shouldn’t have been so open about about my displeasure and the betrayal of the coworker getting everyone involved and then doing a 180 when he got a promotion to be quiet. I’ve learned to keep the smile on my face and be more covert; otherwise the people you don’t like see it coming.
A funny part is that within a couple years of me resigning my old agency fired all the top brass - president, CIO, top VP and the VP who SA’d the coworker and that coworker also resigned. I think something blew up or happened again and it wiped that place out. It’s also seen a 70% turnover in the time I’ve been gone with 50% of that being within a few years of me leaving. It’s also never quite recovered and they’ve had to bring in “morale experts” because people breakdown and are seen crying in the hallways.
So your key mistake was in not supporting your co-workers decision to trade in their sexual abuse for career advancement?
What a shit show.
I have to agree with you on bailing. There really is nothing to be done once the narrative against you is set.
I was too much of a straight shooter. Every new project my boss gave me, id explain all the pros and cons. And they’d just stare at me and go, “Okay so are you going to complete it?”
I didn’t realize how toxic and annoying it was until years later, when I met a guy who did the same thing when I was manager.
Fuck 'em, that’s what I learned.
I learned that being autistic and working for large employers does work well at all. Although I have only worked for one big company but they probably all suck anyways.
My first ever job was at Walmart, which was an absolutely miserable experience. I didn’t last long there cause no one liked me and the managers hated my guts for no reason. I was always on time, did my work, and never complained but I was consistently treated like I was lazy and a troublemaker. I remember getting yelled at by management and having absolutely zero idea what I even did that was wrong.
All my other jobs have been at small businesses and they have always been infinitely nicer and kinder than Walmart ever was. Small businesses are much quieter and they feel more human cause they don’t have many employees. I think they did realize that I’m a little bit off (didn’t tell them I’m autistic) but they were cool with it cause I did my work, just like I did at Walmart, but Walmart just fucking hates me for no good reason.
There are layers to being liked:
- Are you nice and pleasant around people? Always do this.
- Are you agreeable and easy to work with? It really depends on you and the job, but here you have to be smart.
- Do people respect you? You have to be honest and good at what you do, while keeping a careful balance of the second point.
Balance is hard and sometimes you may just find out that the issue is that the workplace do not deserve you and you need to move on.
Thanks for this, I wasn’t sure how to phrase this as well as you did.
Work is always a compromise between you and your needs, coworkers and their needs and management. If you know how to navigate that it goes well, or well enough till you find something better.
That it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job, if someone above you doesn’t like you they’ll fuck you over sooner or later.
So, now I play politics and use gentle language to handle fragile men.
Yeah, fragile men. My boss is a middle-aged man, and his pretty young female assistant director is essentially his emotional support animal. Even though I don’t know how he justifies being in the office all day because he should, by all rights, not have that much to do, he still meets with her every day for about an hour–sometimes multiple times a day.
Unfortunately, that seems to the norm in this organization; men run the show, and women are there in supporting roles.
I know it’s a little off topic, but there’s a lot of great work on how women are co-opted by the white patriarchy to serve the white patriarchy. That’s kind of the deal being offered to women–they are given access to power, but only so long as they serve the patriarchy; this is just as true in fields dominated by women (teaching, social work).
Here’s the ur-text on the subject: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/educ_llss_etds/124/
Preaching to the choir there, lol
My current boss is a woman, and in the two years since she got the job I’ve had more advancement and opportunities than in the previous 10 years
I don’t think I have a gender preference for who I work with or for, but I think I have a slight tendency to like women better. Men a lot of time fall into “respect/deference” traps and are obsessed with their authority, whereas women tend to be more collaborative.
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong I don’t have a blind trust in working with women - the most artful and cruel backstabbing I ever got in work was from a woman.
But, I find that it’s easy to work with a smaller proportion of men. And since I’m in a male-dominated field, that’s mostly what I know.
The onboarding processes at most companies is broken. The bigger the company, the more likely it’s terrible.
The big companies I’ve worked for tend to keep you in their weird bloated and labyrynthine propietary HR systems.
Here it was some random site I’ve never heard of before with an e-mail like, “Bro, we heard you got a new job. Enter all your bank account info on our awesome website.”
Among the MANY HR e-mails (directly from HR) was one saying that I would receive an email from this site, so they made SOME kind of effort to not make it completely blind, but, really, all they’re doing is training employees to be phished.
Two jobs ago, we got an email out of the blue from our “new payroll provider” telling us to log in and provide our banking details. It was so obviously a phishing attempt I thought no one would fall for it.
Except it was correct and finance emailed us all a day later to tell us to click the link in the email and follow the instructions. Heads up, guys, heads up.
Knew that before but it reinforces that: unions matter, you owe your company nothing
Which union are you talking about? There isn’t a single union in my entire industry as far as I know.
There always is a workers union. Just because your workplace hasnt fully unionized doesnt mean YOU cant join one
I mean, that sounds fine, I guess, but what’s the point of joining a union when you’re the only person in the union at your job, other than to paint a target on your back?
Unions also give you an insurance. They have lawyer experts for work and social policy matters, for example.
Besides the whole chicken and egg thing.
Louder for those in the back, please.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of unions; I think they are the ONLY real mechanism slowly welath inequality, which is why they have so ruthlessly been targeted, neutered, and dismantled.
But I’m in the US, and most employers would rather close an entire store than allow a union in.
The situation for workers in the US absolutely sucks balls. The ONLY people that have any kind of legal right to be treated decently are those in protected classes (race, disability, etc.). Everyone else can be treated with arbitrary cruelty.
But I’m in the US, and most employers would rather close an entire store than allow a union in.
Whenever it comes up in real life, I get the impression that most employees would also prefer to close up shop than join a union 😞
I did have one union job and I remember supporting the strike and also hating the rule that said non-Union wrokers got paid the same rate while bragging about not having to pay dues, those fucking freeloading pieces of shit.
I don’t agree they are the only way. Political parties are very much possible, and governments can enforce inheritance and wealth taxes, for example.
But they are a very good way, of course (not mutually exclusive at all with politics too!).
A simple example: Imagine a small business, 20 people and a boss. Boss is an asshole, demands unpaid overtime, and bad conditions (like working without gloves on ice cold items). If even half of the people in boss inc unionize, suddenly, boss cannot exploit them without risking bankruptcy.
In the US specifically, it seems like you first need to take back your government from fascism/trumpism, which is why ordinary can be exploited this much. That’s not an easy task, but please keep in mind that most people are not fully committed ideological fascists.
At the end of the day, any good outcome–whether enforced by unions or by government–is the result of the same process: convincing people that a fair workplace is an expectation they can rightly have without destroying society. If you can get people behind unions, you can get them behind good government regulation.
Adding to what I’ve said: yes, being a known unionist can make you a target. This is why it’s a highly sensitive piece of data, and at least at work, it can be a good idea to not speak of it too openly to people you’re not sure you can trust.
Again, what is the point of being a secret union member? How are you going to promote the union without being publicly for a union?
You can still tell the people you trust. There are always more people unhappy with the conditions than they openly say.
And as I said, even if you’re the only unionist in a company, it still has benefits, like access to lawyers and payment while you’re on strike. A union is like an insurance, except less capitalist.
That’s not how unions work. You as one person don’t join a union. You unionize your workplace. Is it hard? Yes. But whining is pointless.
I’m very disliked - I’m not afraid to call BS out, speak my mind, I’m not false around senior management and treat everybody equally. I put my foot down with wrong doings, particularly those affecting employments rights (where others put their head in the sand)
I don’t do socials, I’m probably overly keen and grab work at any opportunity which makes others look bad. I’ve made suggestions that have improved the way we work, which others have taken credit for.
What have I learned?
It’s just a job. The only thing I have in common with most people is we work in the same place. I’ve learned not to care.
Do others see it the same way?
No offence, but I’ve heard this a lot over the years and every time (in my experience) the person was really over their head and wasn’t contributing as much as they thought they did.
You might have few good impacts, but the overall negativity causes a lot of other, more severe problems.
But as you said, it’s just a job. But if you make it tough on everyone else? Then you’re making it a painful job for everyone else.
I get that, some of this is what others have told me (in a positive way) and it’s actually gained respect.
But where it really matters, I’m seen as more of a problem in jobs (despite outputting more than a lot of people and having a lot of feedback/input)
I find in jobs that I get a lot of praise and respect from immediate colleagues, which is generally how I progress so quick (plus putting in the effort) but I can tell higher up I’m seen as more of a problem
Being self aware is important. Just remember it’s a very fine line you’re walking and you can easily have big impact on those around you.
I guess you’ve also accepted that:
a) you’ll never be promoted and b) you’re liable to get fired
?
Edit: asking if this is the situation?
A) There is no further progression in my role.
B) Everybody is a number. There’s employment laws and trade unions for a reason.
There’s employment laws and trade unions for a reason.
Ah. Non-US lemster detected.
Carry on.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I’ve learned that working very closely with someone, night after night, does not mean that they can be trusted. I’m not talking about money. The sobering realization that everyone knew about the rumor, and no one said anything. No one had my back. And I think Team Lead was the originator.
What do you expect? You work in a factory
Thanks supervisor
You may see the same cast of characters, day in and out, but you don’t know the actors. It’s best to work with that in mind.
That said, a coworker invited me over to dinner just the other day. So that rule is obviously not an absolute. Since the rumor, though, this is how I approach things.
im super curious to hear the story if you feel comfortable telling it
You may see the same cast of characters, but you don’t know the actors.
Damn. Nice metaphor with some profound implications for life…
That line from that Bob Seger song has been bouncing around in my head a bit these days. “Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends.” The past few weeks its like the scales have been lifted from my eyes and I can see exactly how bad things have gotten at work, but also just given up on ever expecting some personal “friends” to ever be real friends and I’ve cut them loose.
Turns out being autistic in a society designed against autistic people made me apparently the bad person because I wasn’t “normal”. Like I have a fucking choice.
Did you ever find a workplace that works for/with you?
I’m considering autism a little more than I used to for myself, but my problem is that I know what people are feeling most of the time, it’s just that I don’t particularly care. Like, I feel like you’re at work and you should be professional and competent and accept feedback when its given.
I was just on a job interview where I didn’t realize that the person I would be working who was in the interview with was ADAMANTLY AGAINST the position I was applying for. When I turned to her in the interviw and asked her directly, “So how is this arrangement going to work?” because it seems very amorphous and undefined, she just shot daggers at me until SOMEONE ELSE answered. She stonewalled the entire interview.
Maybe a savvier person would have picked up on the hositility and gone out of their way to butter her up, but it was just a little bit outside my thinking that someone would be so incompetent as to not be able to even be willing to entertain the question.
Never got called back for a second interview, and I’m pretty sure she picked a candidate that was much less curious about the arrangement.
I’ve had a pretty easy time getting along with people for most of my adult life, and I’ve learned to not take coworkers who are in a bad mood or always rude too seriously, so I can’t say I’ve had the experience of being actively disliked.
But I’ve always seen people as friends pretty fast and I’ve realized that a lot of my coworkers don’t see me the same way, which has made me realize that if I didn’t work in the same place of them, most of them would probably forget me pretty fast. I don’t really have a lot of friends who live nearby outside of work so it’s always kind of stung that my coworkers who I get along with great at work don’t really want to keep in touch at all outside of work. So I guess what I’ve learned is that I should expect that the people I like, respect, and even admire at work probably don’t see me the same way and that I shouldn’t expect friendships from coworkers.
my coworkers who I get along with great at work don’t really want to keep in touch at all outside of work
This could be a time-of-life kind of thing. Before I had kids, I had all kinds of time for socialising, once I had kids pretty much all my spare time was for my wife and daughters. If your coworkers have kids, they’re prioritising their family time above other things.
Uf, I feel that. My last post here was exactly about how it seems “friendship” is just another form of casual entertainment for most people. “Do I watch Netflix tonight or get together with schipelblorp”.
I don’t think it has that much to do with work–though the forced contact might give you a false sense of familiarity–there is a deep level of cultural rot.
I was going back-and-forth with someone about if we were friends or not at work. I would always be there to empathize with her about a bad work day and would ask her about her personal life; she sometimes did the same.
We had an explicit conversation about it–we ageed we were friends. Then she just kind of ignored me until it was convenient for her, and yesterday she totally threw me under the bus, so we’re not any kind of friends after all.
But I’d like to think seeing someone every day does give you the OPPORTUNITY to make a real friend, but I think most people just aren’t capable of it. Unless they can have sex with you or you are the biological result of them having sex with someone else, you’re just a streaming service they cancel when the cost goes up.
I have never been the center of dislike at the company i have worked for. I have been disliked by singular people, and it has hurt personally, but not affected me professionally.
I have however worked for 2 companies where i disliked the majority of my co workers. I have found that how much i look back at the time i have spent working, my enjoyment at the places i have worked is more about how much i liked my co workers and less to do with the work itself. Even in places where the work was hard and long hours, if they were with people i enjoyed, i still look back fondly.
Yeah, I had a horrible job with a horrible manager. I’d close the store at 9:00, leave by 9:30, be home by ten at night. Then this motherfucker would come in at 5 in the morning and fucking text me pictures on my day off about anything he didn’t like about closing. And he expected a reply from me because he paid me an extra 95 cents to be “management.”
Anyway, as stressful and horrible as that job was, I absolutely loved the people I worked with and, yeah, I, like you, remember it fondly.
I haven’t been the disliked person (surely not universally liked but widely liked so far) but I have sort of disliked a couple of reasonably competent coworkers - so not disliked because they sucked or dragged us down - just personality clash - and I have learned to ignore it because it’s not predictive of how well their work will get done.
Our IT department would listen to any ideas BTW, it’s getting more corporate (I joined when it was a start up but it’s been a dozen years) but not to the point of being heirarchish yet. I am sort of outspoken too and have found the wild west chaos of a startup to be my best fit, may have time to do it once more before retirement if this place gets too beaurocratic.
