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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Deal With A 'Gaslighting' Colleague?
An anonymous reader writes:
What's the best unofficial way to deal with a gaslighting colleague? For those not familiar, I mean "bullies unscheduling things you've scheduled, misplacing files and other items that you are working on and co-workers micro-managing you and being particularly critical of what you do and keeping it under their surveillance. They are watching you too much, implying or blatantly saying that you are doing things wrong when, in fact, you are not...a competitive maneuver, a way of making you look bad so that they look good." I'd add poring over every source-code commit, and then criticizing it even if the criticism is contradictory to what he previously said.
The submission adds that "Raising things through the official channels is out of the question, as is confronting the colleague in question directly as he is considered something of a superstar engineer who has been in the company for decades and has much more influence than any ordinary engineer." So leave your best suggestions in the comments. How would you deal with a gaslighting colleague?
The submission adds that "Raising things through the official channels is out of the question, as is confronting the colleague in question directly as he is considered something of a superstar engineer who has been in the company for decades and has much more influence than any ordinary engineer." So leave your best suggestions in the comments. How would you deal with a gaslighting colleague?
Carry voice activated recorder at all times, for those Orders that never quite jib when the review starts
Order from Amazon "Getting even, the handbook of dirty tricks", use it, but leave out the juvenile superglue gags
DO use the lemon juice chair spring squeek enhancer trick, really, REALLY gets under the skin of any Type "A"
A good old fashioned degausser can do wonders with their latest project, and leave no trail even if they have surveillance in the office itself (note, max range for an obfuscated hard drive is about 15 feet)
Fun things to do with their email, assuming you put in the time to break their sign-in.
Remember, old age and guile beats youth and capability EVERY time!
I've worked in software sales for years. I've dealt with IT folks like you now and then. I'm going to let you guys in on a few secrets.
Most of my colleagues and managers have dealt with your type before, too. We know that your kind suffer from a lack of power in and over your lives. We know that your type is often physically unhealthy, weak, and overweight. We know that your type often doesn't have any sort of meaningful relationships or family. We kind of feel sorry for you sorts. So we do understand why such people lash out. Your kind feels helpless, and so you try to act aggressively to overcome this weakness.
So when your kind deny our simple and polite IT-related requests, we just let our managers know. They'll roll their eyes, being all too familiar with your kind's pointless shenanigans. Then we'll quickly figure out some way to work around your kind's nonsense. After all, we've got real business to do.
Suppose your kind won't fix the email server problems. We'll just make a call to the customer instead. We'll use our cell phones, since the office phones are all buggered and your department hasn't gotten around to fixing them. Sometimes we'll just contract out the work. Regardless, we get our work done without your sorts.
The entire management hierarchy is aware of your kind's petty games. They keep your types around because while they do feel sorry for you, they do also find your kind amusing. Your kind are basically like jesters of the corporate world, except without the insight and intelligence of real jesters.
When your kind think that you've "seriously fucked over some majorly big people", what's typically happened is that they've been promoted because they succeeded in spite of whatever childish games your kind were playing. The people your kind has "fucked over" who are no longer in the office? They didn't get fired. They got promoted to the regional headquarters, if not the main headquarters, with a nice salary boost to boot. Some actually choose to retire early. After all, we're making big commissions on all of our sales, while you're clicking your mouse and acting all tough for peanuts.
Simply put, your kind is a joke to the rest of us in the office. Your type is an amusement, at best. At worst, your kind are a mild annoyance that we swiftly work around. To be honest, we've typically forgotten about your kind a minute or so after any interaction with your kind ends. When we do come to your kind, sometimes we're just bored while waiting for the legal team to finish writing up some sales contracts, and we're looking for some brief amusement. If there's one thing your kind should feel proud of, it's that your kind often give the rest of us something to laugh at!
If the "gaslighter" has been around for decades, and is considered a "superstar engineer", then he is probably right, and the submitter is just an incompetent whiner, and management will be glad to be rid of him. If someone with decades more experience than you points out problems with your code, you should shutup, listen, and learn.