I realize I’ve spent over a year in an organization where things kept falling apart because, ultimately, people in the organization just plain didn’t like me.
It started, perhaps, when I brought up that HR’s onboarding process made me uncomfortable because it involved a third-party sending out a third-party email to go to a third-party website to entire our personal information. Since this was a training by the larger corporate IT department, and we had just finished talking about the dangers of phishing, I thought it was a good time to mention it.
Mistake.
The next week I was visited by someone who took issue with, “not what I said, but the way I said it”. Lesson: don’t embarass HR in company-wide trainings.
Anyway, after a few similar call outs by me, I was labelled a trouble-maker, sidelined, ignored, and mistreated. This is an organization, I note, that assiduously avoids contradicting or discomfiting superiors in ANY way. That is deffos not my style.
Anyway, my question really isn’t about my toxic workplace, but what you learned about YOURSELF by working in a place that didn’t like you.
I’ll give you two more stories:
1
When I just graduated from school, I started working with a team model. I was paired with someone with fewer certifications, and I was to lead us boldly on our mission. The person I was assigned was a very beaten-down older, brown woman in a field dominated by young white women (seemingly universally with long, straight hair). She seemed to be universally disliked and disrespected by everyone. Because I was incompetent both at my job and my Spanish (sabo kid in denial), this woman essentially did my job and HERS and still got treated like absolute shit.
She invited me to an event that had nothing to do with work, an event for an organization she volunteered for where she was on the board. People treated her with respect and, in return, she was bright and bubbly. I saw a completely different side of her that night.
Lesson: Where we are beaten down, we get small. Where we are supported, we flourish.
(Kind of an aside, she was from a small country, and when I told her I was visiting, she INSISTED I go see one of her family members; he turned out to be an extremely well placed person in the government; she wasn’t royalty, exactly, but she had a social prestige in her country that was unsustainable as a middle-aged brown woman with an accent in the USA.)
2
I was working retail at one store. I’d been there for maybe two years. I always lived in fear of being fired, and when I made mistakes that I worried about getting me fired, nothing happened. I learned that, ultimately, what mattered is if people liked you, and, there, people liked me.
I eventually had to leave because of some restructuring but the manager found me the EXACT SAME POSITION at a nearby store. After a few weeks, I noticed people did NOT like me. Conversations were kept short, nobody ever volunteered to talk to me,. I got along with exactly one cashier, who was an awesome dude. It wasn’t a horrible experience, I was allowed to do my job and I did, but there was always an empty, hollow feeling.
Then the original store invited me back and it was like night and day. “Oh, so this is how people act when they like you.” I’d almost forgotten. I loved going into to work to see my work buddies and I loved shooting the shit with them during downtime.
I learned that being autistic and working for large employers does work well at all. Although I have only worked for one big company but they probably all suck anyways.
My first ever job was at Walmart, which was an absolutely miserable experience. I didn’t last long there cause no one liked me and the managers hated my guts for no reason. I was always on time, did my work, and never complained but I was consistently treated like I was lazy and a troublemaker. I remember getting yelled at by management and having absolutely zero idea what I even did that was wrong.
All my other jobs have been at small businesses and they have always been infinitely nicer and kinder than Walmart ever was. Small businesses are much quieter and they feel more human cause they don’t have many employees. I think they did realize that I’m a little bit off (didn’t tell them I’m autistic) but they were cool with it cause I did my work, just like I did at Walmart, but Walmart just fucking hates me for no good reason.
There are layers to being liked:
- Are you nice and pleasant around people? Always do this.
- Are you agreeable and easy to work with? It really depends on you and the job, but here you have to be smart.
- Do people respect you? You have to be honest and good at what you do, while keeping a careful balance of the second point.
Balance is hard and sometimes you may just find out that the issue might be that workplace do not deserve you and you need to move on.
I haven’t been the disliked person (surely not universally liked but widely liked so far) but I have sort of disliked a couple of reasonably competent coworkers - so not disliked because they sucked or dragged us down - just personality clash - and I have learned to ignore it because it’s not predictive of how well their work will get done.
Our IT department would listen to any ideas BTW, it’s getting more corporate (I joined when it was a start up but it’s been a dozen years) but not to the point of being heirarchish yet. I am sort of outspoken too and have found the wild west chaos of a startup to be my best fit, may have time to do it once more before retirement if this place gets too beaurocratic.
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Never give ideas or suggest them. If they are good your immediate boss either steals the idea or fires you and suggests the idea to management.
I just recently had this happen and have started looking for new jobs as a result. Our company fired someone and a VP sent an all staff email and was publicly telling everyone that the now fired employee couldn’t be trusted etc. Rather than responding to the email so everyone could see, I sent a private text that information like that didn’t need to go to everyone and if someone needs to know that the individual was fired, it should be explained that “They were no longer able to uphold company standards.” And leave it at that, because anything more opens you up to a libel lawsuit. The VP’s apparently didn’t like that I was trying to protect the company, and hold to HR’s standards. So now I’m looking and realized I should have started looking 4 years ago because I can get a 40-50% raise by jumping ship.
My time at this company is coming to an end.
I’ve had a pretty easy time getting along with people for most of my adult life, and I’ve learned to not take coworkers who are in a bad mood or always rude too seriously, so I can’t say I’ve had the experience of being actively disliked.
But I’ve always seen people as friends pretty fast and I’ve realized that a lot of my coworkers don’t see me the same way, which has made me realize that if I didn’t work in the same place of them, most of them would probably forget me pretty fast. I don’t really have a lot of friends who live nearby outside of work so it’s always kind of stung that my coworkers who I get along with great at work don’t really want to keep in touch at all outside of work. So I guess what I’ve learned is that I should expect that the people I like, respect, and even admire at work probably don’t see me the same way and that I shouldn’t expect friendships from coworkers.
my coworkers who I get along with great at work don’t really want to keep in touch at all outside of work
This could be a time-of-life kind of thing. Before I had kids, I had all kinds of time for socialising, once I had kids pretty much all my spare time was for my wife and daughters. If your coworkers have kids, they’re prioritising their family time above other things.
That it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job, if someone above you doesn’t like you they’ll fuck you over sooner or later.
So, now I play politics and use gentle language to handle fragile men.
Turns out being autistic in a society designed against autistic people made me apparently the bad person because I wasn’t “normal”. Like I have a fucking choice.
Did you ever find a workplace that works for/with you?
I’m considering autism a little more than I used to for myself, but my problem is that I know what people are feeling most of the time, it’s just that I don’t particularly care. Like, I feel like you’re at work and you should be professional and competent and accept feedback when its given.
I was just on a job interview where I didn’t realize that the person I would be working who was in the interview with was ADAMANTLY AGAINST the position I was applying for. When I turned to her in the interviw and asked her directly, “So how is this arrangement going to work?” because it seems very amorphous and undefined, she just shot daggers at me until SOMEONE ELSE answered. She stonewalled the entire interview.
Maybe a savvier person would have picked up on the hositility and gone out of their way to butter her up, but it was just a little bit outside my thinking that someone would be so incompetent as to not be able to even be willing to entertain the question.
Never got called back for a second interview, and I’m pretty sure she picked a candidate that was much less curious about the arrangement.
The onboarding processes at most companies is broken. The bigger the company, the more likely it’s terrible.
The big companies I’ve worked for tend to keep you in their weird bloated and labyrynthine propietary HR systems.
Here it was some random site I’ve never heard of before with an e-mail like, “Bro, we heard you got a new job. Enter all your bank account info on our awesome website.”
Among the MANY HR e-mails (directly from HR) was one saying that I would receive an email from this site, so they made SOME kind of effort to not make it completely blind, but, really, all they’re doing is training employees to be phished.
Two jobs ago, we got an email out of the blue from our “new payroll provider” telling us to log in and provide our banking details. It was so obviously a phishing attempt I thought no one would fall for it.
Except it was correct and finance emailed us all a day later to tell us to click the link in the email and follow the instructions. Heads up, guys, heads up.
That I brought it on myself. I discovered I was a bit anti-social and relished the quiet times without people yakking at me.
I don’t think a normal amount of introversion should be enough to make you actively disliked by your organization.
I recently saw a stand up comic talk about her autism in the workplace.
Boss: You’re not very social.
Comic: What do you mean?
Boss: Well, for instance, today, I said hi and you didn’t engage with me.
Comic: Today is Thursday. I said hi to you on Monday, after I hadn’t seen you all weekend. And I think I said hi to you on Tuesday. But today is Thursday and I just saw you all day yesterday for the third day in a row and all you did was go home, eat dinner, and go to sleep, wake up shower and come here again. What do we have to talk about?True enough. Though, even at lunch time, everyone broke bread together and I was across the street in a park eating a sandwich and reading a book. So, even the social times at work were avoided. When this happens you eventually get “Who does he think he is? He thinks he’s better than us” thoughts.
Knew that before but it reinforces that: unions matter, you owe your company nothing
Which union are you talking about? There isn’t a single union in my entire industry as far as I know.
There always is a workers union. Just because your workplace hasnt fully unionized doesnt mean YOU cant join one
I mean, that sounds fine, I guess, but what’s the point of joining a union when you’re the only person in the union at your job, other than to paint a target on your back?
That’s not how unions work. You as one person don’t join a union. You unionize your workplace. Is it hard? Yes. But whining is pointless.
Unions also give you an insurance. They have lawyer experts for work and social policy matters, for example.
Besides the whole chicken and egg thing.
I have never been the center of dislike at the company i have worked for. I have been disliked by singular people, and it has hurt personally, but not affected me professionally.
I have however worked for 2 companies where i disliked the majority of my co workers. I have found that how much i look back at the time i have spent working, my enjoyment at the places i have worked is more about how much i liked my co workers and less to do with the work itself. Even in places where the work was hard and long hours, if they were with people i enjoyed, i still look back fondly.
I learned that people are overrated but also needed to make things much easier to be in the know about certain things. Yeah, it’s great being your own person and outside of the influence, but when you know shit, you know the real shit, the drama, what’s going to happen. You’re interested as well.
I, uh, kind of don’t understand what you’re saying.
Hawkeye Pierce has always sort of been my ideal hero–someone able to speak his mind freely because he was indispensable. Unfortunately, I’m not an ace surgeon in a theater of war; I’m highly replacable.
Basically, when you’re well-liked, you get the perks of a community.
But if you’re not-well-liked, you get the cons of being an outcast. And sometimes, the managerial might have a heatseeker for you to be removed.
It takes time to become the Hawkeye of any workplace. For me, I feel like I currently am, but it was probably the first 2 of now 5 years of keeping my head down, listening but not contributing to gossip, apologising and correcting “mistakes” that were pointed out, saying yes to extra shifts, etc. But after a while I became someone relied on by all as a truth teller and a solid employee. I sometimes even tell people when explaining my workflow/training, “but I do what I want”. I can always justify my actions even if there is another or zero policy, and my opinion is generally valued. A blessing and a curse, as now the expectations on me are simply higher than for others in similar roles. But, I do what I want.
Have you considered the possibility that you are in any part culpable for this? I’m not at all saying you are, but I have a few times worked with people that thought they were beyond reproach but were actually just insufferable. Even when they were sometimes correct, they did harm the group by not being able to read the room and work together.
Again, no blame. May not be the case at all here. Just wondering if it had crossed your mind.
I don’t want this whole thread to be about me and my situation, but, yes, I do consider my role in things, absolutely. I also consider the whole context, too, and sometimes I’m reacting in a way that seems bad in isolation, but looked at in context makes TOTAL sense.
A good workplace will work through things with you and listen.
Three weeks ago, I had an issue with a boss making an emotionally-charged and urgent demand on me that was a total reversal of previous policy. I told him I didn’t appreciate it, and he got mad, basically threatening to fire me if I continued the conversation, “be very careful what you say next.” He’s also said the phrase, “You work for me,” more than once to end conversations.
This week he called me into his office to say, “I sense there is something personal between us. Would you like to talk about it?”
And I said, honestly, “No, I’m not comfortable talking with you alone about it.”
And he said, “OK,” with a sense of relief.
So basically, I said “You’ve created a work environment so hostile I am uncomfortable criticizing you in any way for fear of getting fired.” And his response was basically, “Well, thank G*d I don’t have to do anything more about that.”
I mean, ok, I get it, I can be a little rough around the edges, and I’m autistic enough to have been evaluated for autism but not autistic enough to have gotten the diagnosis, but toxic work environments DO exist, and I suspect I am in one.
Edit: I can also add today’s story, where I had a bad reaction to a coworker from another department telling me to do something against policy. She was very rude about it and dismissive and refused to give me an even minimal exception that would justify me violating the policy. I stormed out (autistically?) while my supervisor observed the whole thing.
Later, I asked why my supervisor why she didn’t back me up; she said I overreacted and asked her what exactly I expected of her. I told her I expected her to not let someone from another department harass one of her workers into violating policy. My supervisor just ended the conversation, literally refusing to hear my side of it.
So, like, I’m totally willing to look at my side of things. I shouldn’t have stormed off. But what really irked me more than the disrespect I got from the co-worker was the placid non-defense I got from my supervisor. It just reinforces that people don’t like me there and are perfectly fine treating me like garbage.
Anyway, I also reached out to someone else involved and apparently there WAS a reason behind the request; I don’t think it rose to an exception and I would have refused just the same, but it’s just yet another example of the total lack of respect I get at this workplace that I was expected to violate policy just because someone was telling me to.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
That’s a very thoughtful reply, and I just want to apologize for implying you are a problem at all. Good that this crosses your mind. I’ve definitely been in similar situations, and sometimes I come away thinking, “maybe I was wrong here,” where other times it’s more, “they’re so wrong.” So it goes both ways. I really didn’t mean to make it about you.
But my actual key learning in decades of work is about my own introspection. Recognizing one’s own biases and considering one’s own role in bad vibes is very helpful. Sounds like you do that too.
As an aside, I’ve also found sometimes a situation gets ahead of its own skiis and it is very difficult to change course. I’ve been in workplaces where a group really hates me, and it bums me out because I can sometimes see where it went of the rails… but there is just no putting the train back on the track sometimes and it sucks.
I remember hearing a story about a kid that was getting bullied. The mom tried everything and nothing worked. Was the kid somehow manifesting the bullying? Was it just something about him? They moved the kid to a different school, and, voila, everything was solved.
Sometimes you’re just the scapegoat, the outsider, and there ain’t shit you can do about that. Scapegoating is a powerful social glue.
When I started where I am, there was a woman who was being treated like trash. She was treated with such contempt that she chose to ghost us rather than quit, so HR dragged out her firing for months. Well, guess what happened once she was gone? I became the new scapegoat. It’s just how things work there.
