How to be emotionless with colleagues?

June 13, 2020 11:59 PM

I seems to have uncontrollable anger towards one of my colleague...

I have a colleague Jake, who likes to use other people’s time to finish his own work, if u don’t help him, he will accuse u for not being a team player, and play politics.... his entitlement had finally drive one of my other colleague(Terry)insane, so Terry quit.

I felt really bad because I didn’t help Terry by “helping” Jake more. But I just couldn’t , working with Jake is like doubling the actual work while I have to act like I want to do it.

I love helping people, because I was actually the youngest person on the team. But I really resist to work with Jake, I felt I lost all my respect towards Jake after Terry quit, even though I am not close to Terry at all.

Which , made me stopped talking/helping Jake, I went even far to trying not to get in a conversion with Jake, cause he also has a habit of escalating shit real fast. ( like talking to manager, confront u in front of everybody ), I am super shy, I don’t want confrontation ...

And I also start noticing myself not listening Jake’s advice, when he has to review my work, I will try super hard to counter his feedback.

Another thing I noticed is Jake started working super hard while we getting into the end of year ( work review ). Deliberately staying late ( sending goodbye msg at 6/7pm..nobody on the team even send goodbye msg lol) Actually working stuff that been asked to do.( the rest of the year Jake is just slacking ..)

I really despite this kind of behaviour, but my other team member seem doesn’t care ,especially my team lead doesn’t give a ****, however my team lease would get pissed off when I couldn’t get up to her Standard.


I REALLY don’t understand, I feel like everybody just enabling Jake, while he get away with evething I have to work super hard like a stupid rule follower...

I know I am on the right track I will continue work hard, but seeing Jake just pisses me off!!!! I Don’t wanna talk to my manager cause I don’t want anybody in trouble. But I am sure they are aware of his behaviour as Terry quit( Terry was doing 80% of the team work )

Am I overreacting ? How can I ignore my anger and be peaceful with Jake?

posted by dadaxiang1204 to Human Relations (15 answers total)

Is it possible to ask your manager for advice about how much of Jake’s overflow you should cover?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:06 AM on June 14, 2020

Response by poster: I am not covering Jakes at all, I am just letting him ask other people for help, and I don’t want to cover him.
posted by dadaxiang1204 at 12:13 AM on June 14, 2020

You have put so much of yourself into your work. It reads in every line of your post. You are not your work. You are not your work. YOU are NOT your WORK. I mean that as a good thing, you are not your work.

I REALLY don’t understand, I feel like everybody just enabling Jake, while he get away with evething I have to work super hard like a stupid rule follower...

Get clarity on your job. Do your job. Disconnect when it's not your job. Your sense of fairness and right/wrong is not a bad attribute, but it is probably off-kilter and completely clouding your judgement. It sounds like you're all in email jobs, they're often either 5 hours a week or 50 but it usually comes down to automation.

I understand being an introvert. You're putting all of this energy into your brain and then just.. spinning. If you read your post as an outsider, I don't think you'd see an emergency, you'd see that Jake is just nonsense that really doesn't matter.

Buddha asked his followers, "Would it be worse to be shot by one arrow or two?" Two, of course. "When circumstances wound you, choosing to be hurt or disappointed by them is the second arrow." In the moment it might sound impossible, but we are shooting the second arrow into ourselves. You're not at work right now, imagine if you had that time you spent thinking about it back, and you're only the part of your job that does great work and is satisfied with it.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:32 AM on June 14, 2020 [8 favorites]

Best answer: To clarify (let's say your job is producing widgets):

For most of the year, Jake doesn't actually produce widgets and spends most of his energy ingratiating others into producing widgets for him, or just ingratiating others.

Shortly before evaluations, Jake goes into overdrive, becomes a great widget-producer, and relies on managers' recency bias to think that he's like that all the time.

Jake does a lot less work than you but still gets the same (or heaven forbid) a better review rating. He might even make more than you because he (I assume) is a white man and you are not. This seems injust.

I have heard these complaints so many times from my parents before they figured out the American workplace.

Some practical solutions:

1. Make less widgets and spend some of that energy into self-promotion. Jake clearly has this off balance, but producing widgets with your head down also isn't 100% your job -- your manager needs information to say good things about you and your work, and it benefits you to give them this information. This is what Jake is really good at ("playing politics"); look for "managing up".

2. Make peace with it. Are you happy with your salary and job security? Do you take pride in your widgets? Great; leave it there. Suffering is pain times resistance. Jake is a huge pain, but you don't have to resist.

3. Just make less widgets. You working harder is not going to get people to notice that Jake is a slacker. The corporation just takes your labor for granted. Phone it in a little more. If Jake needs "help", tell him you're not the subject matter expert (even if you know a little); be a team player by connecting him to someone else who might know.

And look, fundamentally, Jake is using coping mechanisms. He's not good at making widgets, so he does what he can. You have to pity him a little bit.
posted by batter_my_heart at 12:49 AM on June 14, 2020 [10 favorites]

Response by poster: I don’t know how to disassociate my emotion... I tired not to care...
I already star producing less “widgets “ , and it made me nervous cause I don’t wanna ppl say I do less work ... and it seems my TEAM LEAD expect a lot from me.

I got a raise ( very tiny one ) I think because it’s so little that I got anger even more.

I know in this current climate it’s good not to get fired. But I think for the amount of work I do I deserve at least 15% raise ....I basically replaced Terry ...

But I can’t ask for a raise now cause of the covid and they already give me one , I can’t quit due to complicated medical reason.

Everything is just boiling up on me that I just think it’s unfair...
posted by dadaxiang1204 at 12:59 AM on June 14, 2020

Of course it's unfair. The whole system is unfair. You cannot make the system fair. Your sense of fairness is laudable but not going to change anything about the system.

But you must be fair to yourself. Instead of rehashing how unfair it was for Terry and still is for everyone else, including you; you can be fair to yourself instead.

Utilize batter_my_heart's advice above and be kind and fair to yourself. The system will not yield to your sense of fairness; there is no one single measure of fairness, anyway. So be the one who decides what's fair to you.

Look after your mental health and treat yourself as you see that the system should. You are worth that.
posted by mightshould at 4:11 AM on June 14, 2020 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I think your anger is worth looking at, and that effectively processing it might give you some peace of mind. Anger is a signal that something is wrong. Anger can also be a cover for other emotions, like grief. Anger can sometimes tell us what we want.

I think the real problem here isn't Jake; it's the system that isn't recognizing your efforts or recognizing that Jake is a problem. Perhaps you were raised, as I was, to believe that hard work would always be recognized and rewarded over poor work. If the system worked as we'd believed it would, Jake would have been disciplined, demoted or fired. Instead it doesn't seem to matter, and yet you still feel that you can't stop working hard and pushing yourself.

That sucks. It's hard to face the proof that the world is not what you thought it was, and to find yourself on the shitty end of unfairness. I've been hearing that life isn't fair since I was a kid, but I keep learning it in new ways and it's still hard.

It's helped me somewhat to try to see the discrepancy between how I want the world to be vs how it actually is. I want the quality of my work to matter to my employer. My employer assures me that the quality of my work matters, but people who do work of poorer quality have been promoted over me. This hurts and makes me angry. I'm asking myself what I want from my job and what other people do in this environment to get those things.

Example: I have been astonished to see how much my managers just parrot back what I've told them in my performance review. So now I work on making sure, throughout the year, that I tell them about my wins and that when I discuss my weaknesses or failures it's in a strong, change-oriented way. Because for the most part, management doesn't really look at what I'm doing unless there's a big win or a big problem. For everything in the middle, I control the narrative. Realizing this has been helpful.
posted by bunderful at 6:41 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Can you create something like a Widget Production Tracker? With the genuinely useful purpose of making sure no widgets fall through the cracks, or production time gets faster over the years, or whatever, but work would be identified with the person doing it, so it would become clear how little of it Jake does most of the time.

And when he asks for help, send out a message that the managers can see, saying, “I’m going to be doing a training for Jake at noon on Tuesday on Widget Finishing. Anyone else who could use this training is welcome to join!”

You asked for help managing your anger about this and I agree that’s the most grown-up approach. My only suggestion there is to envision the day when his jerkish behavior comes back to bite him.
posted by lakeroon at 7:08 AM on June 14, 2020

Response by poster: I work in tech, everything we do it’s tracked and can be quantified , that’s one of reason bothers me why nobody cares even tho there are concrete evidence...

My other team member are very genuine people who can pick up hint real fast,.

My coping mechanism has been working extra hard, I never liked brag, I guess I have to change...
posted by dadaxiang1204 at 7:50 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I got a raise ( very tiny one ) I think because it’s so little that I got anger even more.

I know in this current climate it’s good not to get fired. But I think for the amount of work I do I deserve at least 15% raise ....I basically replaced Terry ...

Okay, so I have dealt with the consuming rage of being the undercompensated high-performer on a team, a few times over. It absolutely sucked watching an idiot with a toothpaste ad smile be paid significantly more than me while I did a lot of his work. I am validating how overwhelming this anger is, and no amount of disconnecting your self-worth and identity from your work will overcome spending 8+ hours a day being slapped in the face with the fact that your organization values some jackass more than you (because let's be real - this is capitalism, and cash is ABSOLUTELY a direct representation of a company's judgment of your value).

BUT.

A 15% raise while you retain the same title at the same organization would be... wildly unusual. In my experience, across organizations and industries, normal annual merit raises range somewhere from 2% (for average performers) to 4% (for high performers). Taking on more duties due to a reduction in team size might - MIGHT - get you an extra 1-2%?

Unless you have internal information that shows your current salary is way off from the median for the role (will your coworkers tell you what they make? are you protected if you want to talk about salaries with coworkers?), you should be making medium-term plan for a promotion - either internal or at a new company. Talk to your manager about what it would take to be promoted, set out a compelling argument for a timeline, and set your compensation expectations early in that discussion.
posted by amelioration at 9:48 AM on June 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

This may or may not be helpful but rest assured that everybody is likely very aware of Jake’s lack of productivity. Most of them will have no power to change and are simply more able to let this go, either because they only care to get paid at the end of the week or because they have become a bit more cynical than you are at the moment.

Yes, don’t work extra hard, work smarter. Meet with your manager. Highlight allllllll the ways in which you’ve been supporting the team, going far beyond your current role/targets by picking up Terry’s tasks. Explain you’re clearly willing to continue to support the team, it’s great learning opportunities etc.

But you’d also like to discuss [whatever you want to achieve-figure out what your ideal outcome is for you, ignore Jake’s existence or that of the rest of the team, you’re not the union rep, they can request their own meetings*]

For example, your ideal outcome could be

- your path to promotion (and better pay) as you are taking on all this responsibility and proving you are ready to do more or
- you’d like to agree priorities with your manager because you have other commitments outside work and whilst you are and will continue to support the team while they replace Terry you can’t keep working x hrs overtime/wk because Terry’s tasks were simply added to yours...these are your suggestions for your priorities...
- etc.

*I don’t mean to sound uncaring and nor should you. But this is a conversation about your goals and objectives, not about the team as a whole. You have not become their spokesperson and they may very well not want you to be one either. This is only about your role and management’s expectations of you and your expectations of your employer.
posted by koahiatamadl at 9:48 AM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I have started a development plan with my manger, but I don’t think it will get me anywhere. Thank you for pointing out a 15% raise it’s impossible for staying in a current role.

my salary after this tiny raise is now in the MID of the PB...
posted by dadaxiang1204 at 10:25 AM on June 14, 2020

Apologies if this was already suggested; I didn't see it in the other responses. If you want to manage your anger, I recommend meditation. It's helped me control my emotions (some); it can teach you to put some space between some thing and your reaction to it, giving you time to control that reaction or even turn what would otherwise be an involuntary reaction in the moment into a more deliberate response. Meditation is a whole huge sprawling thing that you could explore, if inclined, but for me, 10 minutes a day just attempting to focus on my breathing can be very helpful. There's also been a wave of smartphone apps that incorporate mindfulness that you might find worth exploring; some of them take an approach similar to video game apps.
posted by troywestfield at 11:38 AM on June 14, 2020

First, yes, you have to start bragging about yourself at least somewhat.

Second, I worked with a Jake in a past job. This person drove me out of my mind annoyed. The only thing she was good at was sucking up to the boss, and she was really, really good at it. Otherwise she was a terrible employee and coworker (and person). I watched her succeed for years even as she did bad work or didn’t do work at all. She got promoted way ahead of much better employees. Other coworkers tried to explain to the bosses why our Jake was so awful but she was still pleasing them, so they didn’t care. Eventually I left that job, partly just to get away from her. BUT...her terribleness did catch up to her a couple years later. It took a long time, but she did such a bad job on one project that it became a scandal for the whole company and her reputation (which she never really deserved!) went up in flames. It’s not very nice of me but it was so satisfying. I do think that people who treat other people badly, or neglect their work, eventually pay for it down the road. And the bigger fakes they are, the further they’ll fall. So Jake will get his comeuppance someday.
posted by sallybrown at 12:15 PM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Your management sucks. Jake is not only an underperformer and sucker-upper, he also regularly undermines you and throws you under a bus. Talking to management didn't work. Metrics are meaningless in your company.

This situation is going to keep on sucking until you leave.

Brush up your resumé and see what other jobs are out there. Start applying. At the very least, it will remind you that you have value as an employee beyond your shitty workplace, and it will keep your resumé fresh for the inevitable time in the future when you find it so unbearable that you will end up leaving anyway. I think it will also give you something productive to do with your anger.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:47 PM on June 14, 2020