[ad_1]
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove: I’ve been reading this blog for nearly a decade now and I never thought I’d be submitting a question. But here goes!
I have a work friend. I’ve known him for a few years, but I recently changed jobs at my organization and now work with him directly. We’ve always been chatty, and we have a similar sense of humor so we get along well. Recently he’s been getting more… clingy and demanding of my time. Asking to have impromptu meetings once or twice a day. Asking if we can take our breaks together. Texting me more outside of work.
This past week was a stressful week. I had a ton going on. Plus he was being needy. On Friday, he dropped the ball on something and then called me to complain about how it’s everyone’s fault but his. It was exhausting and stressful and I decided to give myself a much needed break over the weekend. I woke up sick the next day (because of poor sleep and anxiety). He texted me about something he saw on sale mid day. I ignored. He texted me a few hours later to ask if I was pissed at him. I told him I was sick and left it at that.
The next day he again asked if I was pissed at him, and I wasn’t originally, but that changed. I told him I was still sick and needed space. On Monday he texted me saying “Okay. Sick…i see what that really means.” To which I responded with a much more politely worded “what he actual fuck.” I explained “spoons” and told him I needed space (again).
I’m an anxious person. I’m on an SSRI, but even with that some situations will push me over the edge and just sort of shut me down. I’m usually pretty good at resolving those situations myself but this one makes me feel especially trapped. My partner has been incredibly supportive through this, but I dunno. I want some outside advice I guess.
My coworker is roughly 15 years older than me, and is a single, straight, white dude. He seems to consider himself a bit of a mentor for me (I do not consider him a mentor) and also seems like he has a bit of a crush on me. I’m conventionally attractive and have a bubbly personality at work (my at home self doesn’t put the extrovert face on). It wouldn’t be the first time a coworker has crushed on me, but it’s the most uncomfortable in a long time.
I know I need to set boundaries, but I also expect that he’s going to react poorly to that. He’s not someone I can avoid working with (at least for now, I have job apps out for unrelated reasons). I’m not sure how to broach this without making this all worse. And just thinking about it has been at the edge of a panic attack.
Advice would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Not Looking For A Work Husband
This sounds like an uncomfortable situation, NLFAWH, so I’m glad your partner’s been supportive. Having friends in your corner – both for moral support and someone to say “yeah, that sounds over the line” – can be important. Doubly so when this is the sort of situation where you have to work with them directly.
Now, I’m going to be honest: I’m not going to be the best person to come to for advice on dealing with this in the office. That would be Alison Green of Ask A Manager, and I recommend that you also reach out to her and ask for advice there, too. She’s going to be quite a bit of help on that end.
I do, however, have insight on dealing with someone who’s unilaterally decided that they’re not just your mentor, but that they’re an important figure in your life… regardless of your thoughts on the matter. I’ve had similar issues with folks like this in the past and it’s never a comfortable situation.
I can also tell you from experience that trying to ignore it, play it off or otherwise acting like it’s no big deal isn’t going to help.
I think you’re correct: you’re going to need to lay down some boundaries. This is very much a case where silence is going to be taken as consent. The fact that he’s decided he’s taking you ‘under his wing’, as it were, without asking or offering first is kind of a tell of where his head’s at. It’s a power play of sorts – a paternalistic (literally, in some cases) approach of declaring that he knows more than you and is going to generously allow you to benefit from his wisdom and experience. Not pushing back or giving any sort of resistance is going to be seen as tacit approval.
I think the other thing to keep in mind – and again, I’ve had similar experiences, though under different context – is that this sounds like someone who doesn’t have much else going on in their life. It’s certainly possible that he has a crush on you or is dealing with an attraction to you, but that may not necessarily be the whole story. I’ve found that people who act like this tend to be isolated and/or lonely. The “mentorship” is often less “I see potential in you and want you to achieve it” and more an attempt to fill that void in his life with someone else – often someone younger and at least somewhat compliant.
A few of the tells are in how he feels entitled to your time and attention – the texting at all hours, even when it’s not about work; the getting upset when you don’t respond immediately to his texts; even the passive-aggressive “oh I see how it is” response when you tell him (honestly) that you were ill. This can read like a Nice Guy with a crush, but it also has a ring of “I do all this for you and this is the gratitude I get” to me – a certain mix of “disappointed parent” and authority figure, even when those roles are self-appointed.
(Of course, there’s no reason this couldn’t be both; there’s plenty of room for all kinds of inappropriate behavior here.)
So what do you do about this at work? Well, as I said, I’m not the best for dealing with the office issues here – for that, I recommend checking out Alison Green of Ask A Manager. Since Green’s the expert on inter-office matters and I’m not, I reached out for her insight on what to do here, and she was kind enough to respond:
The easiest way [to establish boundaries] is probably to just pull way back on non-work contact — just by not responding to it, or taking days to respond to it and then being like “so busy lately, don’t have a lot of time” or even “I’m trying to set better boundaries between work and non-work life so I’m not really answering texts from anyone at work” (he will be offended by that because he considers himself more than a coworker, but that’s fine) and then hope/assume he’ll begrudgingly get the message after a few weeks.
There is always a risk that the guy in that situation will become more obnoxious but it could just be an extinction burst, after which he’ll make his peace with it … or he could escalate. Depending on your sense of how that’s likely to go with him, it could make sense to talk to HR now and just say, “Right now I feel like I can handle this on my own but I want you to be aware of it in case he becomes more problematic in response to me setting boundaries.” In other words, it’s not necessarily an official HR complaint NOW, but it could definitely go in that direction and there’s no reason you can’t give them a heads-up that it’s something you’re dealing with so you’re assured they’ll have your back (and also because it’s always possible that it’ll turn out this guy has already been warned about similar behavior with other women).
On the personal level, it’s going to be important to draw very clear lines and make it known that you’re at work and your work relationship is going to be contained within the bounds of what you will and won’t put up with. Right now, this dude is pushing at the edges of the work/life separation and making assumptions about the nature of your relationship that are decidedly not cool with you.
That would mean telling your coworker that you’d prefer to keep the conversation to the tasks at hand, that you’re not available for “meetings” at all hours of the day and that you prefer to leave work at work. You should also make it clear that while you appreciate that you’ve got a friendly relationship at work, that’s also where it ends; you’re not interested in connecting outside of work, and you’d prefer to keep things professional.
It’s also going to require making it clear that anything he does “for” you when you haven’t asked doesn’t obligate you to him, just because he did it in the first place. If you’re trading favors, then that’s one thing. But if he believes that you owe him in some way when he’s done something that you didn’t ask for? That’s something that should be shut down ASAP; you don’t get to impose obligations on others by doing something “nice” for them.
Now, there’re two things here that should be taken into consideration. The first is that, as you said: you’re an anxious person, and some stressful situations can cause you to shut down. The second is how he’ll respond to being told “no” by someone he clearly considers to be subordinate to him – in life, if not in the org chart. Again, speaking from experience: people like this often get upset when someone rejects their oh-so-generous strings-attached “mentorship”. It cuts into their self-identity, and people react badly when that’s threatened. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry that he’d blow up at you over it.
This is why I think that confronting him should be done at a safe distance – ideally via email. Write out what you need him to know – you’re not interested in being his mentor, you’re not interested in coordinating breaks, you don’t want to talk outside of work hours and you don’t have the time or the energy for unnecessary “meetings” and you would prefer that you both keep things professional and about the job. While this can be nervewracking, especially after you hit “send”, it’s still going to be far less stressful than trying to have this conversation face to face. Especially if he’s the sort of person who would try to exploit your anxiety by bowling you over with objections, deflections and derailments that may be only tangential to what you’re talking about.
Doing it by email – and possibly by your work email at that – also ensures that there’s a paper trail of your telling this dude to step off.
What happens next is where things get tricky. I don’t know if he’s likely to do more than blow up your phone with messages and texts or throw a tantrum at work, or if he is the sort of person who’d escalate things. You’re the one who deals with him on a daily basis; you, hopefully know him enough to make that call.
This is why I recommend looping others in – your partner, your supervisor, other co-workers you trust. Having more eyes on this and having people who know what’s going on is going to be part of your defense here. Other people knowing minimizes the likelihood that he’ll retaliate, either through getting upset at you or through work. Talking to your supervisor, HR and anyone else that would be appropriate also would mean you have options for how to handle your work obligations or if there’s a way the two of you could be assigned to different teams or projects.
I would also recommend that after you send that email, you filter anything from him into its own inbox. This includes texts – most smartphones have options for managing notifications and messages from individuals – DMs, and the rest.
Here’s the other thing to keep in mind: no matter what he may say, you don’t need to discuss this with him, give him room to explain himself or otherwise let him plead his case. Anything that needed to be said was in that email; that’s the end of the sentence, not the start of a negotiation. As the saying goes: “No” is a complete sentence. So are “leave me alone”, “I said all that there is to be said” and “fuck off”. If he has questions, he’s welcome to reread the email, period, end of discussion, buh-bye now, have a nice day.
I’d also recommend not spending time with him one-on-one until and unless he’s settled down and has demonstrated that he’s going to be cool. The likelihood of his trying to pivot a “work” meeting to an airing of grievances isn’t necessarily high, going by what you’ve written, but it’s not zero either. If he does try this, and he ignores that you’re at work to work, get up and leave; clearly the work part of the meeting is over. If he persists on trying to get you to talk about this with him – especially under the guise of work related issues – then it’s time for a much longer and more pointed talk with HR, possibly including the magic words “hostile work environment”.
Now, in my experience with a situation like this, when my erstwhile ‘mentor’ got to the point where I had to address things, the point was made very clear when I hung up on him in the middle of a tirade. No “sorry, got another call coming in”, no pretense that this was a polite “oh look, I have to go”, it was a “we’re done here, never call me again” and then cutting the connection. The worst I’ve dealt with were occasional voice mails from unknown numbers that alternated between aggrieved and angry and self-pitying, none of which I listened to longer than it took to recognize whose voice it was. But I’m also a cis, straight white male who’s pretty damn broad, so I wasn’t that worried about possible repercussions. I can’t say whether you are similarly insulated, so talk over the potential risks and worries with people whose judgement you can trust. Don’t worry about things seeming too overblown; get a temperature check from your crew, but in the end, go with your gut. You know the situation better than anyone in the end.
Hopefully this all works out well for you, with minimal drama and fuss. And please, write back to let us know how it’s going.
Good luck.
And a huge “thank you” to Alison and Ask A Manager for her wonderful advice and insight!
[ad_2]
www.doctornerdlove.com
