The Unlikeable Coworker

Try Not To Be One

Sometimes you have to walk a fine line between thinking of your coworkers and thinking of yourself. Usually it’s not too fine. Think of yourself. You can always get new coworkers. You only have one you. Do you work an extra four hours and help out the team or do you do yourself a favor and get some much-needed rest? There’s really only one way to answer that.

You have to calculate how much extra money is involved.

See? It’s about you.

Then there are the coworkers who complain all of the time. They think everything the company does is stupid. Everything is negative, right down to loud opinions on the type of paper towels in the break room. If the employee who is like that happens to be yourself then you might have a chance at doing something about it. You can speak to a counselor, meditate, take one of the fifty million medications available to cheer you up that have sixty million side effects, or, I don’t know, look for another job.

That brings me to Shelby, my most unliked character if the comments about her are accurate. Shelby is based on an actual person that I actually helped hire and I actually was very happy not to be around anymore when I left for another store. Making an unlikeable employee wasn’t something I set out to do, but it winds up that simply reporting the facts gets the job done.

Shelby’s not a bad person and she has likable qualities. She’s just young and dramatic. I’m sure over the years things will change and because of life experience and self examination she will become old and dramatic.

Every job has a Shelby.

Self-inflicted crises are her specialty. A sudden need to have the next day off doesn’t happen as often as the sudden need for the present day off, but they’re more annoying. A sudden need for the next day off is discussed with increasing alarm during an entire work day.

Eventually, whoever the Shelby is at your workplace will run out of suckers to help her. The trick to avoid helping someone like this is to invent your own crisis. An important doctor appointment, a sick child, or two expensive tickets to a concert in another time zone are good go-to reasons for being unable to offer help.

Someone like Shelby may or may not accept your reason, but that’s on them.

It really helps to think of the drama as entertainment.

Always try to call somebody’s bluff if they act like they don’t know enough to help you, unless it’s a doctor. Or a mechanic. You might make sure the parachute repairperson knows what they’re doing, too.

Do people repair parachutes? Frankly, I’d just buy a new one.

At the library, I once had a patron who clearly had two accounts. One was for 104 North Meridian Street. The other was for 104 1/2 North Meridian Street. His social security number wasn’t on either account. The address for 104 1/2 had charges on it for $150.00 worth of unreturned books. He said that account wasn’t his. His account was the one at 104 North Meridian Street, the one that had no charges on it. He claimed that somebody lived at the other address, the one next door, who happened to have his exact name.

Library stories always sound made up and they are always the weirdest ones.

Never bluntly tell a complainer to stop complaining. It’s like telling a fish to stop swimming.

Corporate can get really cocky when the job market is tight.

This is one of those instances where I say something and it immediately goes into the strip. My brain is also closed! Do not ask me any questions because the synapses needed to perform that function have gone home.

This is also from real life. If it’s so easy, just hop back here and do it yourself. Honestly, a lot of things are very easy in all kinds of professions. Doing it eight hours a day or more week after week is the hard part.

This is the problem with someone who complains too much. What are they upset about today? Who cares? They’re always upset! You can be upset a lot, just chose your complaints wisely. If you don’t watch it, eventually complaints turn into a steady hum and they become background noise.

The real-life Shelby eventually quit after finding a job that paid less, but it was one she could allegedly tolerate more capably . She didn’t give notice, but left a resignation note at the end of her shift. She left the building while crying and telling a long-suffering coworker that things would never change at that place.

She was wrong. Things did change. There was a drastic reduction in drama after she left.

Poor Shelby. I wonder if she liked her new job.