The 6 types of colleagues you don’t want to meet at the workplace
Survival guide for your first job and how to preserve your mental health
Getting a new job is not easy and it may get even worse if you are not prepared to deal with any sort of people all at once.
University helps with that but there you are not obliged to deal with people you don’t like and often get to choose your teammates. Unfortunately, it is not so easy when it comes to work since you may be assigned to a team according to the workload and it may be difficult to change it for a while.
So you need to be prepared to deal with any types of personalities that are not always good for your mental health at the workplace.
Following you find a list of the 6 most common traits you may encounter and how you can handle them.
1. The “bipolar”
You must be very careful with this type because at the very beginning it may look like he could become your best friend, while he is only gaining time to know your weakest spots and turn his back at the most convenient time.
He will welcome you at the workplace like it was his nest and happy place, making you feel safe and understood. As long as you are just a beginner and eager to learn from his advice, you will be his favorite and he will even say nice things about you to the team in order to gain your trust and devotion. Everything would be fine if you keep this balance in which he thinks you would never get to his level since you still need a lot of experience.
Unfortunately the “bipolar” doesn’t like fast learners and gets easily scared if he realizes that you may become independent and so don’t need his help anymore.
So it happens that he begins to close up in his shell and begins to treat you in a cold way or looking like he is suddenly indifferent.
This is his weapon to make you feel bad about something you didn’t do while blaming you for being yourself.
The only way to save yourself at this point is to ask your boss to move you to another department or teamwork so that he has no power over you anymore and will have to deal with his problems alone.
2. The “I know it all”
This type is not that harmful but he will surely bother you at least once a day with his savvy apparent knowledge about absolutely everything!
He is the one that has always an argument over any possible topic but mostly he things to be always right. It is pointless to discuss with him because he will always have a backup theory to demonstrate his beliefs and even if he hasn’t experienced something he’s sure he will know better than you that have years of knowledge behind.
The best you can do in order not to get irritated is to just make him believe he is right and don’t argue unless you don’t want to get some random spam e-mail with a google link about the topic you’ve discussed previously at lunch!
3. The pessimist
Again another type of colleague you will eventually meet at the workplace that will make you regret to ask people “how are you” just to be polite.
They go around the office trying to spot anyone who would listen to then throw them up all his negativity while complaining about anything that has happened to him and playing the victim. These are the old souls that think that the way they do things is right and they hate any tiny change in the working methods because they are too lazy to adapt and update their knowledge.
Depending on the importance of the role they have in the company, they could be more or less harmful since they could be responsible for the delay of new technology getting in or slowing down the work of others who find the new methods or techniques way faster to get the job done.
Imagine then if one of them is your boss! In this case, I suggest you to look for another job unless you want to end up like one of them.
4. The silent
He will be the only one you never know if you should say hello to first or not. You can spot him easily because he never talks or he just does it to those that he knows already from at least 5 to 10 years.
This type likes to be anonymous and in fact, will never be present at the lunch breaks or informal gatherings among colleagues. He just doesn’t want to participate in the social aspects of the workplace and the earlier he can leave the office, the better it is to avoid crossing any other person around.
You may discover later on the reason why most of the people respect this creature: he was completely different a long time ago but then since he …. He changed. That’s enough to hear for you that just entered the firm: it is definitely not of your business and you surely don’t want to engage with someone who is not going to help you learning either is an interesting person to hang out with.
Never mind him and be grateful if you have more than one like that in your office: at least they will never try to compete with you because they basically don’t care about the job and just want to pay their bills.
5. The fake nerd
We will all meet this type at least once in our work lives.
He is the “not handsome” type that will eventually secretly fall in love with you and then hate you because you obviously don’t reply to his attentions.
It may seem your best alley at the beginning because he will be there all the time to help you with the new software, the chair that doesn’t adjust properly, or any little issue you may encounter when you start a new job. You may begin even to like his personality even if you realize you cannot reply too much on his jokes or he would think you actually like him.
The best thing you can do is to be polite but distant and just ask his help if necessary or you will keep feeding his ego until he will at one point turn his back at you once he realizes that you see him just as a colleague and nothing more.
6. The “snake”
With this one, I should mention the best colleague I’ve had so far who helped me to stay sane because she used to call one of our colleagues “the Cobra”. The “snake” was one of the oldest at the firm but also a good friend of the boss. The result is that he was the one always on top with the last news and constantly criticizing anyone in the office while feeling absolutely entitled to treat anyone how he liked since it was almost impossible that he would get fired.
This type of colleague may be very dangerous not only for you but also for the health of the environment since anyone scared of this person may secretly report to them and so betray you any moment you may go against the flow.
The best way you can save yourself with this one is to avoid him the more you can and try not to confront him in order to not fall victim to his trap and be the topic of the daily gossips.
Everything comes from my personal experience and there’s a lot of sarcasm in it as well. I hope I made you laugh a little bit while I’ve helped you recognize some toxic traits on your current colleagues.
And if you feel like it is already too late for you to correct their toxicity towards you, then leave the job as soon as you can before you get a burn out!
If you have other types of colleagues you would like to suggest in the list, please feel free to leave a comment to help us all recognise them and save our inner peace…
