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Are your workmates toxic?

Written by
March 1, 2012
Be Smart
26 Comments

It’s Thursday – one more sleep until the weekend.

I worked at a place once where a colleague was presented with a pair of knee pads and some mouth wash at a party celebrating her promotion. The gift was given anonomously and although there was much discussion about who gave her the nasty gift, I never found out who it was. Regardless of whether I liked or did like working with her, I felt the joke was distasteful, highly inappropriate and just plain mean.

Have you ever worked with people who have made you feel uncomfortable? Have you ever fantasised about screaming “I hate you” at a workmate? Have you ever counted the minutes until lunchtime and then run out door and cried while eating your lunch? Have you ever disliked going to work so much, you’ve rung up sick and watched daytime tv for hours? I’ve done all those things.

Sometimes work is a struggle. Photo: Pinterest

On the flipside, have you ever cold-shouldered someone you’ve worked with or raised your voice, only to regret it later and had to apologise? Yep, done that too.

Work is such a highly charged environment and for many people it’s the place they spend a majority of their waking hours. It’s impossible to always get on with people no matter how much you like them. People can do annoying things like not wash their dishes in the shared office kitchen or drink all the milk and not let anyone know to replace it or microwave fish curry. Need I say more!

Work colleagues can also be wonderfully supportive (insert names of JustB-ers here) and encouraging. Sometimes only they will understand the pressures of the daily grind. There are ups and downs in all walks of life, whether it be work, indoor netball, your local knitting club, the school canteen or home. It’s how you deal with it which defines you as a person. Me, I’m a bit hopeless. I like to get things off my chest, even when it’s not the right time or place. I’m working on it. How about you? Do you deal with office conflict or office saboteurs with tears, grace or fire?

Workplaces are so varied, so too are colleagues. Photo: Pinterest

What about the work mate who eats with their mouth open or tells you far too much information about their love life or is a huge slacker? What about the photocopying machine? I always referred to it as another workmate. They never work properly and you spend far too much hanging around it. Even at Christmas parties (that’s another story)!

How about this work colleague? She was doing her best to help. She really was!

I love that she tried her hardest to get out of the shot. Not everyone at work is that kind though are they?

Have you ever worked with a nasty or annoying work colleague? How did you deal with it?

Have a fab day,

Bianca xx

Main photo: Pinterest

 

  • Bad Santa!

    I worked in London for a couple of years in a fairly stuffy investment bank, full of those kind of people that turn their noses up at everyone and think they’re far above everyone else.  At Christmas time we did Secret Santa at our office Xmas party.  I bought my work colleague a gorgeous pair of bed socks (safe, appropriate, and warm for winter).  I got the Xmas gift oh so wrong.  Each of my colleagues presented each other with a various array of gifts.  There was a candy g-string, an Irish homosexual porn magazine (because the person that received it was Irish?!?), a maids outfit (the sex shop kind) and I received a pair of hand cuffs.  I think I sat with my jaw hanging on the ground for most of the evening as these stuffy investment bankers absolutely let loose.  The next day in the office it was like nothing had happened…

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Is that why your name is Bad Santa!! He he he. Sounds gross. I bet the person who got your gift still wears them. xx

  • Emma

    My last job was a nightmare… It was just me and the practice manager in the office… And as soon as I told her I was pregnant, things changed. She started looking for a replacement right away ( I was 12 wks) dropped my hours “until we find someone else”. When I said I was happy to stay until the end of the pregnancy, she told me it wasn’t up to me, and then started to say my work wasn’t up to scratch. When I suggested that they couldn’t get rid of me because I was pregnant, she accused me of being a pathalogical liar…. It was the single worst job of my life… I went on leave to Thailand in the middle of it and just never went back.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      That sounds awful, Emma. Being pregnant doesn’t mean you don’t still have a brain and am highly capable. Grrrr xx

  • Trish

    I have awfull workmates and a boss who just wants it all to go away. They make my life a misery but thankfully I have broad shoulders and 1 great workmate that is my ally. The irony is that we are treated badly by some that we’ve protected because there is such a toxic culture of bullying in the workplace and it’s gone on for years. It’s a small factory made up largely of an ignorant female uneducated workforce. I’m there out of convenience for the moment but know I won’t stay because of what’s going on there. My biggest issue is wondering how my other workmate will cope when I leave. It’s all so unnecessary.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Oh Trish, I sincerely hope it gets better for you. Work is not meant to be a place of toxicity. I agree, it’s all so unnecessary xx

  • Saw Hole

    I threw a dictionary at a photographic editor who was infamous for his off-colour sexual innuendos. This day he described me as “exceptionally over-weight”. I grabbed the dictionary and hurled it at his head. He was like: “What did you do that for?” A senior journalist walked past at the time and said: “You can’t say that to anyone, D.”
    I then got called into the chief of staff’s office and was given a chat  about how the chief of staff needed to run around in the shower to get wet. Seriously! I then stomped out and said I was sick of the women in the office being objectified. Not bad for a 25 year old.
    Fast forward a few months and the editor lost his job for sexual harassment. I had left and went to work for a woman.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Ah the life of working in newspapers. Have you seen Dr Louise North’s latest survey of female journos. It’s fascinating. You’d love it x

      • Saw Hole

         Thanks so much for that. I just passed it on to my journo friends and my boss at the uni, who runs the journalism courses.

  • FlamedButRefuseToBeBurnt

    I’ve been the victim of email flaming at work, and chose not to enter the war. I rocked up to the person’s desk to sort it out in person. People are not so vicious when you are speaking with them face to face.

    Recently, I’ve been flamed (not so anonymously) in the blog of someone I know professionally. So uncool, but now I know where I stand, and I’m glad to be leaving the work relationship. I work from home, so even WAHMs still have to put up with the B.S.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      You’re so right – face to face is often a much better way of dealing with people. Email can be so flippant, rude and gets misconstrued. Hope it’s sorted now x

  • Whipping Girl

    I worked for two years in the office of a family run business with the eldest daughter as the office manager. She was the most selfish, hypocritical monster I had ever met. Most days it was just her and I there. One day, we were showing each other internet sites that we’d found interesting or hilarious, and I showed her a virtual reality site similar to Second Life where your avatars could have ‘intimate relations’. for the next year I had to put up with listening to her have cybersex either over skype or on her mobile with people she’d met online (sometimes with people from overseas), or hiring djs and exotic ‘dancers’ for her online lover’s virtual nightclub – I kid you not. I had to either wait months for stationery supplies or buy them myself because she was always ‘too busy’ to get them, I wasn’t allowed to get them with the company card because she didn’t trust anyone with that.  If any employee dared to question their pay or made any sort of disparaging comments about the company vehicles, she simply wouldn’t call them into work anymore, as they were all casuals, and she would gloat about it. She put a screen spying software on my computer so that she could view my screen and make sure I was working, I couldn’t even check my emails in case she was watching – she never told me about it either, which she’s legally obliged to do, I just saw the icon on my desktop. But the catalyst to my leaving was when I was forced to sit on a broken chair for 3 weeks (with a bad back) before finally buying myself a nice, sturdy one online, which I was promised payment for. It took 3 months to get the money out of her, and then when I went on a 2 week leave, I came back to find that she’d taken the chair for herself and refused to give it back. I simply walked out and never went back. I’m now in the process of claiming back pay for unpaid super to the tune of $3,600, and underpayment of wages to the tune of $2,400.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Good luck with your claim. Family businesses can be tricky to worth in if everyone isn’t above board. I bet walking out felt good x

  • Jess

    Like Whipping Girl I worked for a small family business as office manager with a brother and sister. I loved the sister and we got on great, the brother was a complete nightmare but with her around, he towed the line and we worked well together for about 6 months. The sister then suddenly left after a huge family row and I was stuck in the office with just the brother. I regard this time as a particular low-point in my life. He referred to me as “his secretary”, would look at porn on my laptop after hours (ugh, I still shudder), undermine all my work decisions and come in completely drunk in the morning after being out all night. The rest of the family were based in the country and they were all great but at the end of the day he was family so nothing got done. Needless to say I left after 4 weeks of this and decided to do some study – best decision ever. Still good friends with the sister – we laugh about it now. Life lesson for me – no family businesses ever again.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      I love that you and the sister are great friends and laugh about it now. And in the end it sounded like it worked out for the best – studying and new beginnings.   xx

  • http://twitter.com/ShesSonic She’s Sonic

    Sitting here, reading this at my desk and nodding my head.

    I am very emotional and while I may not say anything (I tend to go very quiet when sad or stressed), my face gives the game away.

    I don’t let it interfere with my work, but I have a great relationship with my boss so I will let her know if I’m dealing with something difficult in my personal life so that she knows where I’m at.

    Ahh, office politics. Just as bad as actual politics…well…

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      It’s cool to know you have a great relationship with your boss that you can fill her in with your worries if you need to. I do the silent thing too and my face ALWAYS gives the game away. Xx

  • Jackie

    Several years ago I was in a workplace that had the most horrible people…one woman had worked there forever and thought she was the boss of everyone (in reality she was the boss of no one) and behaved terribly to any of the younger group of employees – email flaming, yelling, abusive comments etc.  Most of the senior staff turned a blind eye to her – I think they were a bit scared of her themselves or just didn’t want to deal with it.

    My immediate supervisor in the same workplace was just as bad in different ways.  She remains the most passive agressive person I have ever dealt with.  She was ultra-conservative in a twin-set-and-pearls-way and would never fail to comment on my outfit – quotes like “Oh, you’ve bought a new blouse….no, it looks really nice” were frequently heard.

    I had such a bad time of it, I would go home and just cry!  But things got better, I got an awesome new department boss who dealt with the mean one properly and my supervisor retired.  And when I was miserable I decided to go back to uni and change industries, which I now love.  So it wasn’t all bad in the end.

    My current colleagues are the best!  Super supportive, great team.  Even today I was reminded of this by a colleague that found a book I would like in the new book deliveries (I’m a librarian) and put it aside for me.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      What a fabulous comment. So happy it all worked out for you and you are now in a caring, supportive environment. Work is much better when you enjoy who you work with x

  • Maxabella

    They are and I am leaving. Great post, Bianca! x

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Nikki @ Justb.

      Are you really?

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Thanks honey. Good on you for making a change xx

  • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Nikki @ Justb.

    It was the actions of some awful people that pushed me to leaving my employer of 20 years and start my own business. So glad I did! Great post Bianca.

    • http://www.justbaustralia.com.au/ Bianca @ JustB

      Aside from having to go through that which is awful – BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED! x

  • Petra @ JustB

    Bahaha, that video was classic! The newsreader may have JUST gotten away with it if she hadn’t done those shifty eyes at the end….!

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