I am a very tolerant person and I usually do find common topics with anybody. For me doesn’t matter nationalities, religions or genders, as long as they don’t limit my personal rights and tolerate me as well as my opinions. Anyway I had been recently placed in new situation. How to deal with colleague who is pure derivation of characteristics, which I just cannot bear? How to deal, coexist and cooperate with someone who is making you angry only by his presence?

You got to believe me. I’ve been working in the same company for more than two years and during this time, I’ve been cooperating internally with more than thirty people. They’ve been thin and thick. Tall and short. Gooders and sinners. Some of them became my friends and some I would not almost recognize on the street. One of my former colleagues had issues because of her head. “I have a fat head, don’t you think Frank?” Once she asked me. Another one was drinking one bottle of vodka every evening. I do not judge them as long as they do their job properly, I’ve been tolerating their life and issues and we worked and lived in peace.

Based on my former experience I did my own small empiric research. I’ve evaluated all my former and current colleagues on the scale from 1 to 5 based on how much every one of them had been upsetting me. One means “not upsetting at all”, number five for “annoying as hell”. Results had been stunning. I did not evaluate single colleague by mark 5 nor 4. Worst mark was numbers three, which makes from me very tolerant person or make from my colleagues quite normal co-workers. This was true until I met Him.

I gave Him his chance, but within 14 days I found out, that I cannot stand this person from personal nor professional point of view. Now, how do I deal with this? When I am solving new situation, I am trying out multiple solutions based on the key criteria and main goal I want to achieve. Criteria were – fast solution, none internal damage caused within internal relations and work culture. Main goal – best internal working environment possible, without any disturbing effects.

Firstly I tried to understand Him. That was not a good idea… I got to know Him more and by that I was respecting Him even less. (I wasn’t able to bear someone so haughty.) Backup plan worked just from one half. I was availing Him as much as possible. I was sipping lunches with colleagues when He joined and I reduced our communication to the hello and good bye. Well, that would work if only we wouldn’t have to communicate about business issues. So I came up with the third model, which is stark naked professionalism. That means strait simple business only communication. When there is work issue we have to discuss together, I am totally ignoring Him as a person, I am filtering His personality out and only thing that’s left is issue itself. It is like reading text from the PC display and answering to it. That is only possible way how to get over unsympathetic colleague and get the work done.

Btw: Also helped, that He has been moved to the upper floor in our office building, so we are not meeting each other unless there is a meeting or something. It also taught me, that being on the first name terms is not a good idea with everybody.

Well that is all from my most recent struggles, hope it might help someone, some day.

Thanks for reading and see you soon,

Frank