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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?
If they've been there for decades then it's considered acceptable behavior and nothing will change. Time to move on.
The submission adds that "Raising things through the official channels is out of the question, as is confronting the colleague in question directly
If you're not willing to use official channels and you're not willing to confront the person directly then you need to leave. That's it.
...is to be a bigger bully. Or call on someone to be a bully for you. So figure it out, beat them back down, or cry out for someone to do it.
If the person truly feels under threat it's because they are not as good as everyone else thinks.
Write every. single. thing. down.
in these situations is murder them. I'll sneak into their house at night, while they are sleeping, and first I cut out their tongue. Then I stab them in the eyes, then I take two icepicks, and I jam them in their ears. With all of that complete, the next step involves me raping them in the mouth, butt, and/or vagina (if they have one). I leave them lying on the floor, and I steal all their valuables.
I haven't been caught yet.
beat their ass after work in the parking lot
... How do I deal with this outside the normal and accepted channels modern humans are expected to go through?
Presuming you don't wish to do violence to his person or property... are you okay with marching into his office and beating the shit out of yourself?
Nothing posted to
Two cups of wine, with a dash (or two) of Iocane powder.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Raise hell with him/her and with management about him/her. Be ANGRY. Say you'll walk.
And then, if you have to, do it.
I speak from experience in my past. You do NOT want to go down the road of trying to "make it better in a non-confrontational way." Do you know what that makes you? A weakling. A loser. Someone who has to tiptoe around. Someone who spends too much time thinking strategically about how to get from mundane point A to mundane point B without experiencing problems.
Your productivity will fall. Your self-esteem will collapse. And you will find that you also enable the behavior, and it gets worse, and then worse again.
You're already a victim, and you're letting yourself stay one. Don't make yourself a target, too.
I know the whole schtick about "it's not that easy," and finances and economic realities and justice and whatever else. Used to be there, too.
The fact is, you will regret it in the end. All of the consequences you are hoping to avoid will happen, because you will lose the respect of your co-workers, your bos(ses), and you will lose your own productivity. Long term, you have one choice: confront or not. And not confronting is a SURE loss (again, long term). If you don't confront, WILL be out of a job eventually, you WILL find that you have been made worse for it with respect to your ability to do the next job.
If you confront and raise hell, you have a CHANCE of coming out of things intact. A chance may seem like a risk you don't want to take. But the other way, losing is a certainty.
So accept the hard truth that someone has decided to fuck you over, accept the hard truth that unless you metaphorically punch them in the face they WILL continue to do it and will intensify the behavior, and then grow a backbone and take your best shot back. Even if you lose that way, at least you took a shot. You didn't sit there like a weenie (which I did for far too long) and take it, then whine like a little girl, lose your self respect, and then find out that that's what everyone thinks of you and that's why you got let go despite taking shit like a hero. You're nobody's hero if you take shit. Management does not want employees that take shit.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The problem with "gaslighting", as I wrote here, is that it tends to be used in two contexts, one legitimate (people lying about factual events) and one illegitimate (people disagreeing on interpretations of those events). Based on what I'm reading here, it looks like some of both: the unscheduling in particular seems like a red flag, but a lot of the other stuff is contextual and missing details. Furthermore, the fact that the author complains about coworkers' criticisms — and in particular, the criticism of someone they label as a "superstar" within the company, i.e. a person who has developed a sterling reputation — leads me to question the submitter's competence. So, I would advise,
Dog is my co-pilot.
and if not, leave. The check is to first talk to your manager and if that fails to take it if with HR. If that still fails, hand in your notice as soon as you economically can. That may mean staying on a few more months, or may mean leaving immediately. It is neither your expertise nor your responsibility to solve that kind of problem. It is your responsibility to escalate it though, as it harms the organization.
Do not get your hopes up too much for the organization to be able to resolve this, unless you are essential and the piece-of-shit doing this is not, it is pretty likely that they will not resolve the issue and you will have to leave.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It is amazing how powerful a dispassionate set of written text documenting every detail over a series of months can be.
Then you take the document to your to superiors and explain that because of this harassment you feel the work place is hostile and resign.
Plant ISIS literature on his PC and then call the feds.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We'd have department meetings and no matter what anyone else came up with, his idea was somehow always better. After a while we all just clammed up in the meetings, let him have his say, then we had our own, informal dept meetings without him over lunch. We eventually decided that the best way to get rid of him was to make him look good so he'd get promoted away. It took about 6 months but we made it happen. His boss saw what was going on and asked me about it and I told him the whole thing. My immediate boss ended up getting "promoted" to a position as an "individual contributor".
When they go low, you go high...
Quit. If you cite bullying harassment that management was unwilling to deal with as a reason for quitting when applying for EI, then the company will be investigated, and will probably at least ensure that the asshole who put you in this position doesn't do the same to anyone else. You may even be able to sue them for constructive dismissal.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Either he's really as bad as you say, and the management is oblivious, and the company is doomed. You're better out.
Or, as shown by the fact that you consider staying in such a bad environment, you know you can't find a better job, because you're shit yourself, and the company would really be better off without you.
In any case, you have to go.
Just go and ask for a raise. If they don't give it to you, leave. If they do give it to you, you will be considered more important than that sociopathic asshole and you will be able to tell them that that guy is a jerk and you want him fired or moved out of your department/team.
The rest of the sentence is "bullies unscheduling things you've scheduled, misplacing files and other items that you are working on and co-workers micro-managing you"
So "co-workers" there would imply more than one person...
One thing I've not seen addressed by others though; given how poorly this is written, is there not perhaps a good reason this person is micromanaged? The other passive aggressive stuff (like moving files) seems wrong, but possibly the unscheduling comes about from this person calling too many, or pointless meetings. I just have feeling this person may not be in the right the way he thinks he is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had someone do this to me while working in Wall Street.
Told me to do all sorts of things in private then days later in the team review started complaining and calling the idea dumb. Said he told me to do a different thing and bla bla you know the rest.
Started off little and got bigger until I started literally hating the job itself. He was all buddy-buddy with the boss too so all that could be done was to leave for another team. To drive the point home I worked even harder at impressing the new team and got my name out there. Shows that I wasn't just an idiot or difficult to work with.
After that I left the company and just decided to start outing these people. The guy that gave me grief was Rich Kershaw. Basically a talented C/C++ coder who couldn't handle meeting anyone else with talent. Only works well with those below his skill level. I encourage others to do the same and out these people.
This. We had an employee we had to hand hold and scrutinize everything. One team even went so far to create a special branch just for them. They were convinced they were perfect and everyone else was racist/sexist/egotistical/out to get them. They were absolutely convinced they walked on water and the problem with everyone else.
Truth was, their work sucked. They didn't listen to instructions. They didn't do what they were told to do and instead always did something "better".
Gaslighting isn't just being a douchebag.
Watch the original film. It's all about one person doing a spectrum of things to make the second person question their own judgement, their own recollection of facts, and even their own sanity. It's about undermining someone's OWN sense of their worth, abilities, and memory - not trying to make them look bad in front of other people. If they CAN make their victim so full of self-doubt that they won't even try to get a third party to weigh in, it's just that much better. But, as in the movie, the whole point was for a villain to throw his victim off the trail while he spent time searching the house for something valuable - to make her doubt her own judgement and soundness of mind that she wouldn't trust herself to question what he was up to.
The OP is completely mis-using the term.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I've experienced gaslighting. Many of us in IT have experienced hostile work environments. There are many options for dealing with it. By far the easiest, fastest way is to simply leave. You're not leaving just for your own mental well being. Another reason to leave is to take their power away, gives them less room to maneuver when abusing your former colleagues.
Unfortunately, many employees don't position themselves to be able to do that without prohibitive loss. And employers encourage that! Ever have your boss suggest you should buy a new car and house? I have, more than once. I didn't understand why that was any of their business the 1st time. Now I know that's why. They think of you as a "flight risk", and like the idea of you feeling chained to your job by debt up to your eyeballs. Lose that job and your life blows up. You lose your house, spouse, car, the respect of your friends, your credit rating, etc. They have code phrases for this, stuff like "showing team spirit" and "commitment". There are sick managers out there who enjoy bullying and abusing hapless underlings.
If you are determined to hang on for financial reasons, pride in your successes, don't want to leave under a cloud of failure, don't want to be labeled a quitter and a wimp, feel like there are still worthy people you can help, or the environment isn't completely horrible and has its redeeming qualities, and whatever other reasons, there's still much else you can do. There will always be some crap to handle at any job, and it is impractical to walk out on every employer unless you're independently wealthy and can retire at the age of 30 or some such. Still improve your financial situation. Next, keeping records is huge. Get all the gaslighters' crap down in writing. Ask them to email or text you, not just give you verbal instructions which can be denied later. Do it smoothly too, don't be verbally demanding, just be firm and put your time to use on other duties until they give you written instruction. What may very well happen is that they get cold feet. They don't want a paper trail showing what scumbags they really are. They'll foam at the mouth with rage and frustration, but they will back down if they have any brains. They may not, they may indeed give it to you in writing. They may try to weasel around with their written instructions. If they threaten to fire you, call them on that. Tell them you're waiting, hurry up and fire you already. It usually is a bluff, but it may not be, and if so, that's okay too. Being fired is not the end of the world.
A big problem is assessing management demands. It can sometimes be very hard to tell if they really are asking for too much. Asking for perpetual motion is too much. Asking for the moon might not be. Likely they have no idea either. It's their job to work that out, not come up with a schedule out of thin air but get input from their experts and work it out. But sometimes managers are lazy on that and try to compensate by bullying their underlings. Ask you for a schedule, then behind your back alter it to cut the time way down, and throw in a few simple little extras that aren't so simple or little. In any case, it's not good to declare some demand is impossible and unreasonable and walk out, if it wasn't.
So there it is. Free yourself from your own desperation. Whichever way things work out, years later you'd like to be proud of the decisions you made and the manner you handled yourself. No job is worth breaking laws you respect and treacherously throwing colleagues under the bus. There are bigger things in life than that. No job is worth your self respect. Being unemployed is hard, but it is not The End.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
If he's as paranoid as he sounds then indirectly give him the idea that a superior or peer of equal tenure is gunning for him. I just spent the last two years dealing with an incompetent manager who everyone knew was incompetent but his boss was too proud to admit he had made a mistake in hiring him. Less than a month after he started one of his employees quit and sited him as the reason she quit. HR followed up and seven other people myself included filed formal complaints. HR found no grounds for dismissal. Over the last two years he's been filed on over twelve times. Last month he made the mistake of pulling his passive aggressive crap on one of the directors and *poof* his ass was gone. Sometimes it's not what they are doing as much as who they are doing it to.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They are a bully, but NOT gaslighting. If they where, you wouldn't ever know it. The idea behind gaslighting is to make someone question their own sanity or "efforts to manipulate someone's sense of reality" This is a funny version of gaslighting. If someone is that much of an asshole, I'd be looking for another job ASAP.
They should probably try to find out if other people have had these issues with this employee. Talk to HR, as that's supposed to be "confidential". Don't mention names at first, just tell them the situation at first. Make sure THEY are documenting it. But, yeah, it sounds like it's time to move on. Make sure you update your resume.
Most organizations have difficult people. Some pairs of people just get on each other's nerves. Often it comes down to circumstances -- did you meet at the beginning of a stressful period? Others who remember the "good old days" may have fond memories that help them through the present. etc.
In order to build a healthy career, you have to learn how to manage these situations productively. People who master the skill get promoted.
Some advice: Don't take it personally. Don't let the problem fester. Don't be overly aggressive. Do your homework. Proceed with caution. Scout out how your peers feel about this individual. Do others have strategies for working with him? Calmly approach the other individual, talk about the issues, and make sure they understand what you perceive as inappropriate actions. Sometimes people lose track and appreciate the wake-up call (especially introverted engineers). If it is intentional, try to find out why -- maybe you can call a truce or forge an alliance. Walking away over one person sounds extreme. Can you find a new project or role that reduces your interaction with this one individual? If you have issues with numerous people than walking might be more appropriate.
I would also recommend the book "Win-Win Negotiating" by Jandt and Gillette.
It depends. Sometimes people higher up the management chain don't know what's going on. Impressing those people can work. Calling the gaslighter on it can work. Accounting for the time you've had to spend dealing with him and showing how much that has cost the company can work. It's very dependent on the politics of the situation.
Real lawyers write in C++
I see the term gaslighting being thrown around so much in the last year, but most people really don't seem to understand what it means. This is not gaslighting. Gaslighting is *literally* trying to convince the *victim* that they are insane or misremembering real incidents or facts.
In this case their point is not to make the victim think they are crazy or wrong, it's to convince others that they are screwing things up. That's just basic bullying, undermining, or backstabbing. Not gaslighting.
The term Gaslighting does not mean, what the submitter believes it means:
The question itself remains valid, but the misuse of the term is so annoying, I'm not going to give my (very valuable) advice on the subject.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I worked for a company that was doing some MSP work for a client. It started when a co-worker kept asking about a long configuration I did, I sent a reply, and he sent a reply to managers with what I said changed which didn't help me look good. I quietly turned on message signatures via S/MIME, problem solved there.
It really came to a head when I was doing some work on a broken web server. I had some backups saved of config files. I made a modification, it didn't work, went to back out changes... and my backups were gone. I then looked to see who was on, and the only other person was this co-worker. A quick look at .sh_history in his homedir showed he blew away each file one by one, with typos. I popped screenshots of this.
The code approval system used URL links to an internal code repository as well for fetching and testing. Normally, developers were supposed to put different dates and keep every rev and URL of releases unique, so there is a history of artifacts that eventually get archived off. Well, the co-worker had some working code which passed QA tests. I went to move the file from testing to production, checked the hashes... the file was changed. Even though he swore up and down that no files were changed, the hashes and dates were different. I let management know with my screenshots and documentation. They told me to STFU and deal with him. However, because the guy was from another group, he had no repercussions for his actions.
Things went on like this for a while. Thankfully the co-worker was too stupid to understand what RCS and etckeeper were. He decided to play games of deleting config files while stuff was running, after excluding them from the backups.
Management would not do a single thing, because his manager was well away from IT and didn't give a rats's ass what IT's problems were. I couldn't yank his access because it was explicitly granted from much higher on.
Had a production machine seize up during business hours. Found /boot empty. Looked at the logs I had remotely hidden away, found the machine went down just after someone ssh-ed in from the IP address belonging to this co-workers name. Went to HR and management, got told to stop whining and "lrn 2 deal with other departments" [sic], so I handed them my badge, a special piece of paper with all passwords and such, told them that I would be letting myself out the back door, and that I took an Uber to work (I had a feeling it would come to a head that day, so didn't drive), so you don't have to worry about my car in their parking garage.
Now here is the ironic thing:
It has been a long time since I've left that company. The job description for the position I left is still there on job boards and is constantly renewed.
Number one rule of not being bullied is to be part of a pack. Don't be singled out. Form a pack with your other colleagues.
So, either drum up the popular support and find a way to change the gaslighter. This option will take a lot of energy and it will take away from your work and life.
Or, leave and find somewhere else.
You're trying to be a team player with an Antagonist; DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING THIS PERSON DOES OR SAYS! STOP! Communicate everything using eMail, Twitter, what ever. Create a communications trail. When someone asks what's going on, simply state, "I think X is having a bad day." Always be freindly, SMILE, ask how that person's day is going. If that person pops off, then pop off with that status on their part of the project. Make communications public. After awhile, and some well documented failures that will occur because the bully can't be both a bully and good at their job. Personal will contact the bully. Your problem is solved.
If this is a systemic problem in the company, then your best option is to get out as soon as possible because you aren't going to fix it.
A lot of people who are responding are assuming a bad work environment is systemic when it may not be. It is surprising how many dillholes manage to build themselves empires inside of bigger corporations without getting caught. I have faced this exact scenario at a prior job (manager was exactly like this, and she also had a weird sexual thing for me. Tried to use the whole gas lighting thing as a power play). Company wasn't bad, just her section. I managed to win an ultimately get her fired. The trick in this situation is to find ways to document their behavior and the fact that you were on the right side of the issue, then "inadvertently" expose them when they try to screw you over. If it looks like you are gunning for them, you look like the bad guy. These guys pride themselves on always sucking up to management and looking like the good guy. Your job, if you think it is worth fighting the battle, is to reveal their skullduggery, but make it look innocent. An example from my experience. This manager told me to make a bunch of bad design choices on a client's product. I knew they were wrong, and I told her as much, but she cut me down in front of my colleagues and the client (by misrepresenting the choices). Later I emailed her and said, I must have misunderstood what she was asking, and would she please clarify (thus appearing to submit and getting her to document her explanation, while subtly documenting why I thought it was wrong and that I had explained it to her). Of course the project turned into a train wreck. Manager summoned me to her office, and frankly propositioned me or threatened to get me fired over it if I didn't go along. I refused. Then, when we were presenting, the now horribly screwed up project to the client, as well as upper management in our company, I made sure to print off those emails and take them with me. Of course the meeting was a disaster, the client was mad, as was our upper management. As soon as they started questioning why we'd made all of these stupid decisions, and ignored some of the their direct requests and needs, my manager immediately started to turn on me and the rest of the team. She tried to make it sound like she was blameless and couldn't understand why we'd gone against her direct orders. After letting her dig herself in deep for a minute or two, I pulled our her emails that I had printed off, and said, "You're right! I don't know why things got so out of hand. When I emailed you for clarification, I thought I was very clear on these client needs. Let's use this meeting to do some constructive, 'lessons-learned'. I figured you probably had a superior picture of the requirements, and so that's why I followed your directions to the best of my ability. It must have been my misunderstanding."
Here I looked like I was just doing my job, and thought I'd made a mistake, but actually I exposed what a lying, piece of shit she was. A few days later, the rest of the team and I were each interviewed by upper management on how things had been going. Again, I didn't frame it as personal, or like I was trying to throw her under the bus, I just explained and showed email after email where I had tried to get clarification, after clearly explaining what she was demanding and why that wasn't a good choice, but each time I showed upper management the email, I pretended to be a bit naive on what could have gone wrong. Since I wasn't being "vindictive" it was pretty obvious where the problem was. The rest of my coworkers were only too happy to throw this lady under the bus because these types of jerks rarely screw with only one person. Next thing I knew, she got a forced "lateral promotion" to a dead-end position with no under-staff and shortly there-after got "laid-off".
And in the letter of resignation (perhaps a separate one to management, rather than one to your colleagues), document in great detail the actual reason for your departure.
DO NOT DO THIS.
Such a letter will come back to haunt you in some way. Either messing with some future job prospects or retaliation of some kind.
Instead, there will be an exit interview, use that time to lay out, calmly and without emotion, the problems you have had. Then it's up to them to react to it or not. If they get combative just give up. But at least they will not have a paper trail to potentially harm you with later. Remember the whole reason you are even telling them is to help THEM, so if they are not receptive why would you push?
Words of discontent and anger can always be made to make you look bad to someone who lacks context, or is provided a different context in which your words are placed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The entire software development industry is rife with this sort of thing. Why? Because we're not doing what it takes to fix the problem.
If you just up and leave, all you've earned is a reprieve. You'll run into it all over again somewhere else. You need to punish the gaslighters and their enablers, or else nothing will change.
First, document everything. Every damn thing. Be prepared to prove things to any available objective third party you might happen across. Then, get a lawyer. Then, and only then... line up your next job.
Use your documentation to cause as much pain and embarrassment as possible as you go out the door. Burn the place down. Cause them legal problems if you can. Mess with their politics. Learn who hates whom and turn them against each other. Cause the worst offenders to lose face. If it's publicly traded, cause investor relations problems.
You owe it to the world to destroy these bastards. No mercy.
The trouble is, the system rewards the incompetent. The skills needed to do a good job are not at all the same skills that are needed to get and keep a good job. Just look at Congress. Most of those clowns have been there for years.
I'll shut up and learn from anyone with a proven track record of technical success. I won't trust anyone with a lengthy, proven track record of failure. I'm very much in the minority that way.
by my manager. After getting my morale seriously pummelled for several months, I sent the CTO of our organization git blame logs that showing I was being beaten up for trivial things that my manager's most senior reports had in fact taught me to do and that they had coded and shipped out to clients on other projects my manager was overseeIng.
Needless to say...I was shown the door a few months later. This would have happened anyways, but at least by confronting the gaslighter with hard evidence I can look at myself in the mirror and I'm not the emotional wreck I'd be if I sat back and did nothing. I don't regret it in the least.
And just maybe I made small dent in that jerk's ability to gaslight others in the future.
I've spent a lifetime on the left and I'm seeing a lot of young people that have never had to do anything hard claiming that to do anything hard is either (a) mentally abusive, (b) impossible, or (c) unjustified and unfair.
Older generations went thousands of miles overseas to engage in trench warfare. Older feminists scored women's rights without having patron saints above them that would protect them from harassment. This idea that you're incapable of doing anything hard because prejudice, because anger, because abuse, etc. is bullshit. Sorry, it is.
You grow a backbone by growing a backbone. It is hard. It is scary. You may be beaten down. You may have had your ego destroyed. Oh well. There is still a moment at which you have to stand up and be counted, or face the consequences. Life is hard, get a helmet.
People left abusive situations in their home and married lives for thousands of years before you heard about "gaslighting." It was hard. It was scary. They were beaten down.
You may well want to make it easier for them, and that could in some ways be laudable, but the fact is that it is nonsense to claim that it can't be done or it wasn't ever done, and the last thing that's going to work in most workplaces (nor should we necessarily want it to) is to go in and claim that you are the victim of such catastrophic-marriage-style-abuse that you can't mentally function any longer. Your boss is not going to want someone who has literally become unable to function due to the nonphysical, merely "head games" actions of a fellow, non-position-of-authority co-worker.
This is the workplace. It's not your home life. Your "abuser" is just another schmo with a job three desks over. They are not your spouse, your abusive parent, etc. You are basically going in with an admission that you are socially stunted, emotionally vulnerable, etc. Even if your boss tries to be noble about it themselves, he/she is going to have a particular impression of you as an employee that precludes giving you future responsibilities or promoting you when the time comes because the risk/reward proposition for the company does not safely include giving a person who can be "gaslighted" at work any more responsibilities.
I'm not saying that the questioner shouldn't take this up the chain. Note my original comment. I'm saying that they shouldn't claim the language of domestic abuse to do it. They should state what is happening and state that it is affecting their world. Period. It's bad advice to suggest that they do anything but avoid "gaslighting" that language entirely, unless they are positive that their boss is a progressive-left-leaning SJW who is an anti-domestic-abuse activist in their off hours.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW