Name: Jerks at Work
Rating: 4.1 (258 reviews)
Author: Tessa West

What’s in it for me? Learn how to handle toxic coworkers.

In a world filled with uncertainty, one thing you can always count on is this: If you work, you will most definitely meet a jerk. You can work at Google, Netflix or Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, there’s basically no jerk-free zone out there. They can come in many shapes and sizes – a boss who’s always breathing down your neck, the guy who’s constantly interrupting you at meetings, the kitchen bandit who’s always steals bites of other people’s lunches or the colleague who’s trying to outright manipulate you.

We all have met our fair share of jerks at work. But here’s the deal: you don’t actually need to put up with them. There’s more you can do than venting to your friends about them after work. In fact, the author Tessa West provides researched-based strategies for how to constructively handle toxic coworkers – from the Kiss Up/Kick Downer to the dreaded Gaslighter.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how to avoid getting credit stolen for the work you do;
how to get a micromanager off your back; and
how to tell if a boss is gaslighting you.

Kiss Up/Kick Downer

Before Tessa West became a social psychologist, she was a salesperson at a high-end department store. There, she had the misfortune of working with another salesperson named Dave. Whenever the manager was around, Dave acted like a model employee. But the moment the manager left, Dave’s true colors came out. He was viciously competitive — not only stealing his colleagues’ customers, but rearranging and hiding the items they needed in the storage room, making it harder for them to complete their sales.

Dave is a classic example of the first type of jerk you might encounter at work: a kiss up/kick downer. He “kisses up” to those above him — acting polite, offering to do favors, charming their socks off, and trying to cozy up to them outside of work. In contrast, he “kicks down” people at the same level or below him in the workplace hierarchy — trying to undermine them and make them look bad in any way he can get away with.

If this sounds like something that’s happening to you at work, the first thing you should do is make sure you’re not just being oversensitive and confirm the person is actually being a jerk. To do this, find someone who is socially well-connected and knows “what’s up” at your workplace. Ask them a question like “Have you heard anything good or bad about Dave?”

If they confirm that you are indeed dealing with a jerk, try to find other victims and collect their testimonies about his behavior. To keep things professional, just ask your colleagues neutral questions, like “have you worked much with Dave? What’s that been like?”

Meanwhile, try to put as much space between you and the kiss up/kick downer as possible. Think about when and where you encounter him and how you can minimize contact. It could be something as simple as changing seats at a meeting or avoiding the coffee machine at a certain time.

When you’re ready to present your manager with your case against the jerk, remember: thanks to all that kissing up he does, your manager probably thinks highly of him, so you need to approach the issue diplomatically. Begin by acknowledging the jerk’s strengths, and then focus on his negative behaviors and how they’re impacting you and your colleagues.

Then, all that’s left to do is wait and be patient. It may take some time and behind-the-scenes action for your manager to deal with the jerk, so don’t expect an instant solution.

Bulldozers

The two jerks we’ve looked at so far often have one thing in common — they’re subtle. The kiss up/kick downer kisses up and kicks down at the right times and right places with the right people. And the credit stealer doesn’t try to steal credit when it would be too obvious what she’s doing; she waits for moments when there’s enough ambiguity over who did what (assuming she’s stealing credit on purpose).

Free Riders

He works hard when their boss is around, but slacks off the moment she’s out of sight. He was a high performer early in his career, but now he’s comfortably resting on his laurels. And he has a convenient tendency to “volunteer” for work that looks important but isn’t really that hard to do, like giving a presentation that someone else prepared.

Kernaussagen in Jerks at Work