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?

Comments

Leave.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they've been there for decades then it's considered acceptable behavior and nothing will change. Time to move on.

Re:Leave.

[BillNickless]

Exactly right. It's time to go. Gaslighting makes the victim depressed and stupid, so you won't be able to perform at your best. Eventually you will be fired for cause, and it's because you really will have failed to do a good job.

Now that you're aware of being gaslighting, it's absolutely critical for you to take care of your on your mental health and decision making as you plan and execute exit strategy. Establish, nurture, and rely on relationships outside of work; preferably with people you know and trust to give you honest feedback.

To quote a neuroscientist:

"The effects of gaslighting on normal individuals can be extraordinarily unsettling and can contribute to confused behavior and scattered thinking patterns in those who have been subjected to the phenomenon. [....] Could it be that, by sending conflicting signals as with the difference between reality and what [the gaslighter] falsely insists is reality, desynchronization might occur in neural structures that normally work together? Such desynchronization might account for the confused short-term reaction and the depressed long-term reaction to gaslighting behavior."

Source: Barbara Oakley, Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and Why My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend

Re:Leave.

[Anonymous Coward]

While airing your complaints on exit may feel good, it is almost never in your best interest to do so.

If the company cared about this problem, the OP could bring it up now and get it resolved without having to leave. Even if someone does fire the problem guy - who's winning? The OP is already out the door. And, he'll likely put two and two together and figure out the OP was the reason, possibly causing him problems down the road.

A best case scenario is that the company tosses his resignation letter in the garbage without reading it. More likely, one or more of his former colleagues will read it, take offense, and possibly also cause the OP problems in the future.

Re:Leave.

[Jane Q. Public]

This can't be stressed enough.

EVERYTHING, even the little things, should be documented, with evidence where possible. Because that's the only possible way to defend yourself.

Carry your phone around in a pocket or something at work. Take pictures. Copy documents.

Re:Leave.

[Deathlizard]

It's not worth it. period. There are better jobs out there.

My previous job I was at was micromanaged severely, which isn't exactly the same thing as Gaslighting, but it screws with your job performance and sanity in similar ways. It was so bad I had to make an app out of Google forms on my phone to literally log everything I do every minute of every day on the job. And then get bitched at because I missed 10-15 minutes or so on the report it generated (or missed logging the ticket in one of the three different ticketing systems and the calendar we had) cause of unexpected things turning up, like climbing a scissor-lift at 3 in the morning on a Sunday at one of our clients cause a UPS three stories up in the ceiling decided to shit the bed and then not get paid for half of it cause I had to wait an hour and a half for the skeleton maintenance crew to actually find it.

The other thing you need to understand is that you come first. Everybody, and I mean Everybody that worked at this place had something that I could only describe as Stockholm Syndrome. Everyone under management hated the way the company was managed and how they were treated but they were real close to their coworkers and nobody wanted to leave because they knew it would screw the rest of the team or the company would go under if they left. We thought we could get management to see the light but got nowhere. This kept me there for almost a year longer than I should of stayed.

I finally got out, and was willing to give them two weeks to transition my duties, but my new employer wanted a reference from my current employer, Which they refused to give positive or negative because it "was their choice to do so". When I called them on it they literally called me and my coworkers into a meeting and wanted me to repeat the question to everybody so that they could 1) divide the coworkers up and turn them against me. and 2) show them what will happen if they tried to leave. As the meeting was talking place my new employer called and would accept me without the reference if I would take a 6 month probationary period, Which I accepted over speakerphone, handed them my office keys and walked out of the meeting and the door. No way I was giving them two weeks either way and let the bosses screw my career over by making shit up about my performance after they pulled that stunt.

I am now working at a place where I am being Paid less (with better benefits that offset the loss however) and working twice as much but I'm not being micromanaged and that's good enough for me. I'm not as stressed out, I've lost weight and I'm not on call 24/7 (although I'm still on the old companies alert system. during Christmas break I would have got called out no less than 10-15 times) so I can sleep at night and actually take vacation time without worrying that all hell was going to break loose when I was away.

Re:Leave.

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a small company -exactly- like that. I not just had to log minutes on my phone, but the manager wanted to watch people's screens via some remote app, and if you made a single typo, he would demand you do your work in a conference room or an office, so he can come in and bellow at you more easily. I was doing 100+ hours a week as an IT person, and it wasn't IT work. It was conference bridge after conference bridge where all people did was bicker and try to get their pet project in.

The entire place had complete Stockholme syndrome. In fact, when I told the manager to fire me on the spot if he didn't like something, he went into the passive/aggressive, "nobody has ever spoken to me like that, there will be consequences to pay for that" mode. In a small company with people who were VERY intelligent and knew their stuff, they were all scared as shit of this guy. None of them planned a single weekend outing other than when on vacation, because they likely would be called in to work at anytime.

My doctor told me that I'd be dead by the end of the year if I continued to work there due to the stress alone.

Needless to say, a couple weeks later, an offer of employment came to me from another company. The manager at that place refused my two weeks notice, so I made it an effective immediately notice.

It was a big pay cut. Hurt like hell. The new job's commute blows goats as well. However, I actually look forward to go to work now.

This is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Document everything

[Anonymous Coward]

If the person truly feels under threat it's because they are not as good as everyone else thinks.

Write every. single. thing. down.

Re:Document everything

[blindseer]

Write every. single. thing. down.

This.

People might not see paper as the end-all documentation that it used to be but it can be very helpful. This is especially true for something difficult to fake, like many lines of code that were written but "lost", as opposed to something easier to fake, like a date or name on a file.

If policy allows then store electronic files in a way that cannot be easily accessed by even this "rock star". A SVN store where files are checked in could be manipulated by someone with the right access. A USB drive that you copy your files to, and kept in a locked drawer at your desk, is not so easily manipulated. Check your files in twice, once to the company store and again to your own SVN store on your USB drive.

If possible put things in e-mail. If the "gaslighter" tells you something by phone or face to face that you believe will be contradicted later then put it in an e-mail to him and/or another coworker that is on the project, just do an "I'm following up on our earlier conversation" e-mail. If the "rock star" is going so far as to manipulate the e-mail servers then save the e-mails to a disk somewhere and/or print them out.

Develop a backbone.

[aussersterne]

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.

Re:Develop a backbone.

[RuffMasterD]

Well said. I had a similar issue with my own manager last year. She decided to micro manage, moved the goal posts repeatedly, tried to blackmail me into doing her work, isolated me from colleagues by saying bad things about me, examining and criticising every piece of work I did, and generally being a bully.

I trained in the army, where pissing contests are the norm, so I have seen this before. I resisted immediately and consistently. This left my manager with two strategies to choose from. Either back off and lose status, or escalate. She chose to escalate. The more she escalated, the more I resisted. It is a risky strategy for her. On the one hand she is betting that I will relent sooner rather than later so she can have her way, and in return she will give me some peace. On the other hand, the more she escalates the more intrusive, abusive, unreasonable, and messy things get for both of us. The messier things get, the more people notice, and not in a "look how well she is managing" kind of way.

Meanwhile she made a friend at HR and told them all about this terribly unprofessional employee she had. Then I got a letter from HR requesting a meeting to discuss some concerns my manager had about my unprofessional behaviour. This is where documentation comes in handy. Try to get every decision in writing. My manager took great care to say verbally anything that I might use against her. The best I could do at that point is write her an email asking for clarification or confirmation. Then she either confirms it, sealing her fate, or refutes it, letting me off the hook, or she ignores it, implicitly accepting it. In any case, there is now a paper trail. Once she sees her request in writing, she usually tries to weasel out of it, implying I misunderstood and comes back with a much more reasonable request.

I succeeded to disprove most of my managers accusations by bringing up old emails. That took the wind out of the remaining accusations. Somewhere in this process my managers new friend at HR realised she had been hoodwinked and swap herself with someone impartial. Then things really started to improve. My manager couldn't conceal or undo some things she did while escalating. HR elevated some issues very high up the ranks. When busy important people have to fix underlings fuck-ups, they remember. They will fix things once, but not twice. My manager knows that if I am going to give up my job and get a shitty reference because of her, I will make it as difficult as possible for her and take her down with me. We have a much better understanding now.

Morel of the story:
- Get everything in writing. You might need it. In any case, written agreements tend to be self limiting and self enforcing.
- Resist firmly and consistently. If you waver once, you give them leverage.
- Things will get much worse before they get better. Find as much support as you can.
- Keep it clean. Let the other person lose their morel high ground if they choose, but don't follow them.

Finally, I would say do not give an ultimatum between X or leaving. I have seen people do that, and the response is generally "OK. Leave. Bye". Your company might start preparing for it, leaving yourself little room to negotiate. You can always leave after trying all other avenues, and finding another job first, but don't let them see it coming.

Depends on what you mean by "gaslighting"

[Scareduck]

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,

• If you know from prior work experience that you are competent and the work environment is toxic, leave, knowing you can find a better employment situation elsewhere.
• But also be open to the idea that you may have your own "crisis of competence" here.

I had a micromanaging boss at HP once.

[mark_reh]

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...

Not 'Gaslighting'

[ScentCone]

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.

Not really gaslighting

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

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.

Semantics...

[mi]

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.

The term Gaslighting does not mean, what the submitter believes it means:

The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation by the main character of a victim in the 1938 stage play Gas Light, known as Angel Street in the United States, and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944. In the story, a husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes. The original title stems from the dimming of the gas lights in the house that happened when the husband was using the gas lights in the attic while searching for hidden treasure. The wife accurately notices the dimming lights and discusses the phenomenon, but the husband insists she just imagined a change in the level of illumination.

The term "gaslighting" has been used colloquially since the 1960s[5] to describe efforts to manipulate someone's sense of reality. In a 1980 book on child sexual abuse, Florence Rush summarized George Cukor's 1944 film version of Gas Light, and writes, "even today the word gaslighting is used to describe an attempt to destroy another's perception of reality."

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.