4 Tips For When You Can’t Stand Your Coworker

When you can’t stand your coworker, it makes your job much more frustrating and draining. Unfortunately, you can’t change your coworker, but you can change how you respond to them.

If you have an unpleasant or difficult colleague at work, you’re in the right place. We’ll go over tips on how to deal with coworkers you can’t stand, the different types of disagreements you may have and how to handle them, and what, if any, role you might be playing in the unpleasantness.

Key Takeaways:

• When you can’t stand your coworker, you need to determine what the issue is, handle the situation, and then identify if you are contributing to the problem.

• It’s your responsibility to reach out to the coworker that you can’t stand and address the issue.

• It’s normal to get frustrated with your coworkers at some point, so make sure you know how to respond when this happens.

4 tips for when you can’t stand your coworker

When you can’t stand your coworker, start with empathy, confront the problem directly, connect with them, and reflect on what upsets you.

1. Start with some empathy. Think about what might be making your coworker act the way that they do — even if the behavior annoys you, you might find you can stomach it a little better if you understand it more.

2. Confront the problem directly. Some people respond well to people being upfront with them, and you won’t know if that’s true of this person until you try. Just be sure to do this respectfully and tactfully.

3. Connect with them. If you and some coworkers go for beers sometimes, invite this coworker along. Maybe just look for opportunities to ask this person about their day and how they’re feeling a little connection can go a long way in curbing frustration.

4. Think about what’s really upsetting you. You might find that much of your dislike of this person is in your head and stems from you associating them with someone or something else that you already dislike.

   If you can separate them from what’s actually upsetting you, you might be surprised at how quickly they become bearable.

Long-term strategies for handling difficult coworkers

Sometimes, people are just jerks or stuck in their ways, and there is nothing you can do to change it. If the frustrating person or people aren’t responding to your attempts to try to smooth things over, there are a few things you can do to survive:

• If it’s just one person, make friends with everyone else. It’s tougher for someone to hate on you when you have the support of the entire office — particularly if you have the support of your hater’s direct superior.

• Make new work connections. Invite coworkers you enjoy to take a painting class or learn Zumba with you. Developing connections outside of the ones that upset you can help make work more enjoyable — just make sure you aren’t obviously excluding the people you find frustrating, as that won’t help anything.

• Wait and see. If it somehow feels like the whole office is against you, well, then it’s more of just a waiting game. What’s the turnover rate like for your work? More than likely someone will leave and change up the dynamics.

• Make an exit plan. If it’s likely that you’ll be dealing with these workers for your entire tenure at your job, the only real thing to do at that point is to decide how long you’re comfortable staying.

• Try to view this person as a mirror. Identify what behaviors or personality traits you find unbearable. Move away from “he’s a conceited jerk” toward “I don’t like how he disrespects people by talking over them.”

  By juxtaposing our annoying coworker’s traits with our own, we can see how not to be at work and gain clarity on how we’d like office relationships to function

• Use these qualities to form “I” statements when you confront the person. People have a much easier time making adjustments when you don’t attack or accuse them from the start of the conversation.

  For example:

  “I feel upset when you speak over me at meetings,” is far less harsh than, “You always speak over me.”

• Report them. Tread carefully with this one, as reporting a coworker at the wrong time could create more problems for you, but if their behavior is truly abusive or even just harming the organization’s productivity, it might be time to take the issue to HR. You might not see many immediate results, but at least the individual will be on their radar for the future.

  Keep as much of a paper trail as you can to strengthen your case as well.

Types of disagreements with coworkers

There are many different types of disagreements with coworkers, from a temporary conflict to a long-standing mutual dislike.

As everyone knows, there are many popular varieties of office beef, including (but not limited to):

• Temporary beef. You’re both mad now, but you know it’ll pass.

  If you’ve just dealt with an intense situation with a coworker and tempers are flaring, give yourself some time and distance to decompress and understand the circumstances. Throw on some headphones and keep your head down while you get work done for a day or two.

  While it’s admirable that you want to handle the situation quickly, some situations require a bit of space to handle professionally.

• Sneaky beef. You hate someone else, and they have no idea.

  The key to dealing with this kind of beef is to either adjust your own attitude or bring your frustrations to the person in a productive way. You can’t walk around saying, “I can’t stand my coworker,” while acting like nothing is wrong to their face and expect things to change.

• Unrequited beef. Someone else appears to hate you — you have no idea why and don’t currently feel the same way, but they constantly work to undermine you or take credit for your work.

  To deal with this type of disagreement, try calmly and respectfully talking to the coworker about how you feel. You can even politely ask them to stop a certain behavior, if appropriate and reasonable. Not everyone will respond well to this, but some will, so it’s important to at least give it a try.

• Mutual beef, or beef squared. You hate someone and they also hate you. This is the stuff that showstopping dance battles are made of.

  When you hate your coworkers and they hate you back, it’s important that you don’t act on those feelings. You won’t get along with everyone you encounter, and that’s fine, but it’s not okay to start acting on those feelings.

  Not only is it unkind and unprofessional, but when you both dislike each other, the attacks and retaliation can escalate until they start damaging the rest of the team and your organization.

  Avoid this by being the bigger person and remaining professional no matter what your feelings may be.

• Beef unlimited, aka “The Potluck.” When there’s plenty of beef to go around. You indiscriminately dislike everyone in your entire office and regularly tell your friends, “I hate my coworkers.”

  When this happens, it’s usually time for a change. Whether that change comes in the form of your attitude or a job, it’s up to you, but this is not a sustainable way to live, even if your dislike is for a good reason.

How to tell if you are the problem

To tell if you’re the problem in your relationship with your coworkers — or are at least contributing to it — take a look at yourself and see if you’re being lazy, long-winded, loud, or negative.

Here are a few signs you’re the annoying coworker, even if you aren’t meaning to:

• You don’t work hard. Are you content to put in the minimum amount of effort, all the time, no matter how busy the rest of your team is? If you’re a lazy or unqualified worker, you might be holding up the success of everyone in the office, or at least making them resent you for doing so little and still collecting a paycheck.

  Look around and see what you can do to help your coworkers, whether that’s doing a better job on your work so they don’t have to make as many corrections, or finishing up your tasks quickly so you can help them with theirs.

• You’re long-winded. Do you tend to overshare, or have stories that never end? While people do love a good storyteller, they don’t usually love people who trap them with 45-minute tales of their cats’ medical ailments every time they walk by their desk.

  Practice sticking to the topic at hand when talking to coworkers about business, and when you’re just chatting, try to focus on asking them questions rather than telling your story.

• You’re loud. Is your music always too loud while you obliviously drum your fingers along your desk? If you aren’t aware of how your actions are impacting others around you, your coworkers will more than likely get frustrated with you.

  Take a day and pay attention to the sounds and smells you produce and try to neutralize them as much as possible.

• You’re always negative. Do you always make cynical, snarky comments without ever providing any positive support or feedback to your coworkers? Even if you’re doing it in a funny way, people get tired of always getting torn down.

  Try mixing in a few compliments for every joke you make or just keep your comments to yourself.

Problems with coworkers FAQs

1. What to do if you don’t like your coworkers?

   Even if you don’t like your coworkers, it is important that you remain professional. Try to be empathetic and at least learn to work alongside your corworker. Your priority at your job should always be to serve your professional needs and goals.

   In this light, a coworker who you don’t like will distract you if you let them get to you. That isn’t to say you cannot take action. If you have legitimate issues with your coworker that interfere with your professional life, then you should work with your supervisor, or fellow coworkers, to address them.

2. What is a toxic co-worker?

   A toxic coworker is someone who does not respect you, has a negative effect on your self-worth, and interferes with your ability to work professionally. Toxic coworkers can be loud, aggressive, confrontational, and rude. They can also be less obvious. They can be passive-aggressive, false, corrupting, and conspiratorial against you.

   Identifying toxic behaviors is the important first step to rectifying the problem. Without understanding exactly what you are facing, you will have difficulties finding solutions.

3. How do you stand up to a toxic coworker?

   To stand up to a toxic coworker, first make sure you are objective as possible about the situation. This is a key element to remaining professional. A toxic coworker will prevent you from doing your job, so focus on those issues.

   Then, do your best to manage your emotions, and work with others to deal with this person. Ideally, you should have a supervisor or someone in leadership who can help you. Present to them the facts and explaining to them why you need their help.

4. Can you be fired for not getting along with coworkers?

   Depending on your profession and circumstances, you may be fired for not “fitting in” to the company culture. However, this is more likely to manifest in other forms. Employers will not do anything that can get them in trouble for discriminatory practices. It is possible, if your contract clearly states it, that they might terminate your employment without even giving a reason.

5. How do you politely avoid coworkers?

   You politely avoid coworkers by:

   • Minimizing the opening to have a conversation (e.g. Say “hi” and keep walking when you pass them in the hallway.)

   • Shutting your office door or put on large headphones and look busy.

   • Changing up your lunch break time or location.

   • Asking your boss for a schedule change.

Final thoughts

We want to stress that if you’re being harassed or abused at work, you should come forward and tell someone as soon as you feel comfortable doing so. No one should have to deal with that at their place of work, and there ought to be a process in place for handling those kinds of complaints.

But a lot of times, office disagreements are much more mundane than this. It’s petty sibling kind of stuff, like someone taking up too much space or accidentally eating your food a few too many times.

And, as with siblings, the best tactic to take in cases like this is just to let it all go.

If you can find it within yourself to let go of the past and let bygones be whatever the heck bygones are, then you’ll find everything slipping off you like water off a duck’s butt.

And if that’s not enough to keep you calm at the office, just remember that work relationships aren’t everything and you don’t need to be BFFs with everyone at your office.

Anyhow, best of luck with the whole “evil coworker” thing! Remember to keep the lines of communication open and be flexible in addressing workplace issues. As long as both parties make an effort to improve the situation, you should be able to get along just fine with that coworker you can’t stand.

References

1. U.S. Office of Personnel Management – Employee Relations

2. Harvard Law School – Coping with Difficult Coworkers

Author

Ryan Morris

Ryan Morris was a writer for the Zippia Advice blog who tried to make the job process a little more entertaining for all those involved. He obtained his BA and Masters from Appalachian State University.