How can I have sympathy for someone that should get it but is extremely irritating?

Question

I work with a woman who I percieve has had a rough life from the way she tells it. I also think that she might be a pathological liar, and is one of those personalities constantly needing attention and praise for things the do, almost in a childlike way. She clearly seems to have been abused at some point in her life and she says her husband was murdered years ago. But, because she is extremely two-faced, feeds on the mistakes of others, and is an absolute, busy body, it's tough for me to act nice or kind or even feel sorry for her. I know I should be the bigger person but she makes it tough. She is extremely unpleasant and her social skills are horrible, she is unable to approach you with a greeting, and instead starts griping about something. She loves to get people in trouble and she basically makes me dread going into work. She is not a superior but is extremely bossy. How should I handle her short of not recognizing her existence, which just makes me feel mean?!

Answer 1

She has extremely low self-esteem. Barrage her with compliments (make them genuine). She is obviously in need of them. What she needs from others is a parent-like concern. I'm not saying this is normal or fair to you, but if you are really stuck working with her, you have to give her what she needs in order to get better behavior from her. What is good about her? Start there, and tell her about it the next time you see her. When you see her, picture in your head, her walking around the office as a 7-year old...this will give you the perspective you need.

Answer 2

i have a co worker who is like that as well. ever since she began working here i noticed that she was kind of lazy and a slacker. fast forward a couple of months and she gets diagnosed with an awful chronic desease. i become irritated with her slacking off and not completing assignments because it affected me. i told my manager about it who talked to her and she blamed her slacking off on her illness and she got away with it. i had trouble sympathizing because i knew that she was taken advantage of the situation. i know this because she was slacking off before the diagnosis. she worked in the the 2-10 shift so i found it funny that she needed to take days off to go to the dr for an MRI.

my advice to u is she sounds like a liar go with ur instinct, give her no sympathy but don't give her crap either. just avoid her and let her be.

Answer 3

Ignore. try looking like a bad listener and worst memory.
make sure not to share a concern.get past taking around. get her tired of self hypnotistic optimism. she will have no zeal left but will prove to be a burnt out flicker pulling a chin to the chest, crest fallen.

Answer 4

Perhaps ignoring her bad behavior is the best way to go, even if it feels mean to you. But don't isolate her, try changing subjects or making her happier to be around. By ignoring her controlling personality traits, she should get the message that they are not welcome when they behave like that.

Answer 5

Somanyquestions notes that the Nazi (and that i'm not calling you a Nazi) collector is enjoying the "Jews could recover from it" card. via the way, the type of Jews killed in the Holocaust is envisioned to be 5-6 million. you may in positive condition many wars in that quantity.

Answer 6

ignore her until her behaviour improves, otherwise she is just feeding off your bad energy.

Answer 7

do something to get her fired...set her up...you'll be an office hero, unless your coworkers feel the same about you and they really think she is the better one of the two of you.

Answer 8

Her past misfortunes (real or otherwise) don't give her the right to mistreat others.

Answer 9

The first thing that you need to do if you're interested in ameliorating your relationship with her - which you do; otherwise you wouldn't have bothered with asking this question - is to drop the holier than thou attitude. You say, you know you should be "the bigger person..." This is a bad attitude to have going into an attempt to connect with anyone. If you're the "bigger" person, then how can you connect? You can only dominate. This will only continue your feeling mean, as you said you do when you just try to ignore her, or fighting outright with her. Or, like, rolling over and dying when she's imperious.

She sounds locked into her place. People do this. Its natural to take any distinctive, individual spot in a social hirearcy at a young age and to attempt to keep it, as we see our identities in reference to this position. This will not change. I think you already recognize this.

What you want to do is engage some of the fundamental socially unconcious click whirr mechanisms. Click whirr are mechanisms that we use in regular social interactions which work as follows: we are provided with an outside stimulus, and we react in a predictable manner. Here are my suggestions:

A) Reciprocity - Sometime buy her a coke or something. Its just a dollar, but most of the time, she will feel obliged to have your back (which if she's terrible, will only be not bothering you till she can come up with what she considers a good reason) for far above the actual price; we feel obliged to reciprocate. If she asks why you got it, say cause you knew she liked that flavor, if she keeps on then say I didn't see it in terms of why, it just seemed like the thing to do (don't say nice, its patronizing).

B)Consistancy - If you can get yourself into the situation somehow when speaking with her (ask her about something boring going on in her life, maybe) about this topic, like.... Say you have another co worker, worker X. Say to her, worker X really was annoyed when you said this, huh? Then she says her defence, probably, or maybe accuses you of agreeing with X, in either case say you didn't care much one way or another, except it makes it hard on everyone when X is mad. Say you wouldn't have done it so X wouldn't give you a hard time later. This is probably not going to do much, as she's stuck in a funk. But now, ask her, explicitly, wouldn't she try her best to not irritate someone if she knew a comment or behavior might make things hard on everyone? She'll almost undoubtedly say yes if you stick with it; I can't predict what she'll say exactly but it shouldn't be hard. Get her to say she wouldn't officially to you. Immediately after, say you're glad, and that you're also glad that she's not the type to not realise if someone's sensitive enough. You've just got her to commit to a type of action, and with any luck, with the last comment, you "gave" her a role. She's now the "bigger" person who spares those around her of annoyance that she could cause. Plus, its a compliment; if she tries to claim later she didn't realise that it would be taken so badly, then she'll feel ashamed, since you already covered that base. She's probably not used to being fortified like this; she'll work to keep the status you've "given" her (this may not protect others terribly well or long, but she'll be very unlikely to bug you since she knows you remember what she said personally.)

C) Similarity - Try to suggest that she's the same as you in some way. "Oh, I think the same thing/way." "You and I have the same type of hair don't we? Its such a pain!" "We're both trying to get the same thing out of life, I think." Load these up as much as possible. Enough of these will make you seem more like her to her, and that makes it hard to annoy you. Don't be complimentary with these - you don't want to seem arrogant to her by saying, "We're both smart!" or whatever, because A)This makes it seem like SHE has the good thing, and you're just trying to "be on the side that's winning," by attaching yourself to HER, lol and B) She won't believe you if she has low self esteem. Stick to things that are neutral like we have the same taste or like, we women know guys are gullible and only think of one thing (of course you don't mean that last one, heh) (double wammy, cause its hard to ever deny that she and you are both women...)

D) Authority - make it seem like you know the bosses well. Tell her about EVERY time that you speak with the boss in a familiar way such that she thinks you're only telling her a fraction of the times you speak with him/her this closely. Being associated with authority is NEVER a bad thing. If you can, pick a superior that she likes; if you can't do that go as high up as you can. Just be casual about it all. You don't want it to sound like you're trying to just brownnose about the boss or whatever - this will just get you in trouble. Don't give a lot of details. PS-regarding the last 2 suggestions - don't do it when others can hear or are likely to find out about it. Other people will dislike you if THEY begin to associate her with you, ironically. And don't let anyone else know you're trying to act like you're one with the boss. They'll either be uncomfortable with you then or think that you're overly ambitious in a parasitic way.

E) Get small, inexpensive, but thoughtful gifts for people on non-schedualed times. Makes everyone happy and once again engages that reciprocity rule. Don't make it near a holiday, just be the one in the office that does that sometimes. Everyone will like you for it. But here's the catch - its got to be something that really relates to the person. Or expensive, I find the former easier to do, unless you've got more money than brains. Then, give her a lot of stuff. More than most people. Make sure you get everyone sometimes - but give her more. She'll have the personality to keep track of the number of things people get and she'll notice she's favored (most likely unconciously.) Get her things that she can display on her cubicle or whatever. Picture frames, cute little stuffed animals with suction cups on them that are like her animal back home, calanders with her type of humor, pencils with her name on it, whatever. Just don't give her the first thing and don't give her A LOT more than others - if it becomes concious what you're doing she'll resent it cause she'll realise that you're trying to buy her off. Vary what she gets with her behavior to you or your friends. She gets cute little things when she's working your way. Not if she's annoying you. Don't start this till you do some of the other things and she already has shown positive results. Otherwise she'll catch on immediately; you need her to think that you were thinking well of her because she treated you as you wanted to and that's why you got the thingy.

In general: Ask her where she got her clothes. Ask her where she is from, or her mother or whatever, say what a coincidience, my aunt is from there, but I haven't been there since I was young, so I don't really remember it well. But that you loved your aunt, invent some story that the aunt gave you expensive chocolates when the rest of your family wasn't watching or something. Get her to commit to as many statements to you verbally (its best on paper but I don't see how you'd ever get this in writing) as you can that she will or will not do whatever. Make it something that makes it hard to do something you wouldn't like without appearing completely inconsistent. While these things are positive, DO NOT do them if she's being a pain at the moment, that will only encourage her undesirable behavior. For a nice twist on the office gift giver (which by the way, its just supposed to be cute. Don't make it a big deal and its just a nice way of getting people to like you. Everyone wants to think that people are thinking of them even when they're not around. It works wonders, believe me I hate shopping but I do this - you'll see what I mean if you start.) tell someone else that you got something for them, such that a couple of people are watching (including the woman in question,) then look in the bag or whatever (DON'T leave things in a wal-mart bag or whatever though...) and stop short... Turn and look embarrassed, and say, oops, I'm real sorry, I thought I got something else... Alright, you're all onto me, I don't alwayse give the thing the day after I buy it, and this was a mixup.. Give it to the one you don't like, and have it be something that CLEARLY relates to her... Tell the one that thought it was for her that you'll get her her gift, but not immediately, because that would ruin the spontenaity (make the first lady here a friend of yours, particularly if they already think of you as a goof. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings!) If you have a compliment for her that is from the heart and is a RARE compliment, one she wouldn't expect not because its not true but because its just not something you would usually complement people on, "Wait wait slow down.... You're too fast at the math for me to keep up.. Sorry" type of thing. DON'T complement her in any way that encourages her negative behavior, "GRIPE GRIPE - you:You're totally right. Why didn't I ever see it that way?......" Bad idea. If you can, try to get her to recognize that her griping is bringing you down, but only after initial progress.

Luckily, you don't have to have the right attitude as long as you do all this. You can still look at her as inferior and manipulate her. But the truth is, she acts like she does because experience has taught her that its the best way to get what she wants, which is to fit into her own percieved identity. You do the same thing. It sucks much more for those who fit into an identity that is disagreeable - I speak from experience when I say I wish at a previous point someone had acted like this to me. So in the end, you really are helping her out. You've got to show her a new way of looking at herself. It will take time, but believe it or not, if you do these kinds of things with the right tone (of voice and sortof, mind....) you may improve her into someone you feel a bond with. Its happened in tougher cases.

Good luck with this issue, and please, E-mail me back with your results, I find them interesting to no end. And of course, any questions too.

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