What If You Love Your Job, But Hate the People You Work With?
You got the job.
And actually, it's pretty bloody good.
The work is interesting. You've got flexibility. You're paid reasonably well. Maybe you've finally got some autonomy, you're doing something creative, or you've landed the kind of role you spent years trying to get.
There's just one problem.
The people are doing your head in.
Maybe your boss is unpredictable.
Maybe there's a colleague who seems to undermine everything you do.
Maybe the office is weirdly competitive.
Maybe communication is terrible.
Or perhaps there's just one particular person whose name appearing on your screen is enough to make you think:
Oh, for fuck's sake. What now?
And that can create a surprisingly difficult dilemma.
Because what are you supposed to do when you don't actually want to leave your job?
A good job can still have shitty parts
We have a tendency to evaluate jobs as though they're either good or bad.
Good job? Stay.
Bad job? Leave.
Real workplaces are rarely that tidy.
You can love your work and dislike your manager.
You can value the flexibility and dread team meetings.
You can be incredibly grateful for the opportunities you've been given and still think the workplace culture is dysfunctional.
You can even think:
This is probably the best job I've ever had.
and
These people are driving me fucking insane.
at exactly the same time.
Psychologically, we don't always enjoy holding two apparently contradictory ideas like this. We prefer things to make sense.
So when a “dream job” starts making us unhappy, we can end up questioning ourselves.
Why am I complaining?
Other people would love this job.
Maybe I'm the problem.
Shouldn't I be happier?
Not necessarily.
You don't need to decide whether your job is entirely good or entirely bad.
Two things can be true at once.
The job can be worth keeping.
And some parts of working there can still be really difficult.
Why one difficult person can take over an otherwise good job
One of the frustrating things about workplace relationships is how disproportionately powerful they can become.
You might spend seven hours doing work you genuinely enjoy and ten minutes dealing with one difficult colleague.
Guess which bit your brain wants to think about on the drive home?
This is partly because our brains are particularly sensitive to social threat.
For most of human history, getting along with the group mattered enormously. Being rejected, excluded or pushed out wasn't simply unpleasant. It potentially affected your survival.
Your workplace isn't a prehistoric village, obviously.
But your brain hasn't entirely received the memo.
So when somebody criticises you, undermines you, excludes you or behaves unpredictably towards you, your attention tends to lock onto it.
You replay the conversation.
You think about what you should have said.
You try to work out what they meant.
You prepare for the next interaction.
And suddenly one difficult person is occupying an absolutely ridiculous amount of psychological real estate.
Stop trying to work out what's wrong with them
This is a particularly tempting workplace hobby.
She's threatened by me.
He's insecure.
She's jealous.
He's a narcissist.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
The problem is that you don't actually have access to somebody else's internal world.
And spending hours analysing why they behave the way they do usually doesn't help you decide what to do next.
A much more useful question is:
What are they actually doing, and how does it affect my ability to do my job?
That's something you can work with.
Instead of:
The CFO feels threatened by me.
you've got:
She repeatedly challenges decisions we've already agreed on in front of other people.
Instead of:
My boss doesn't respect me.
you've got:
My boss gives me conflicting instructions and then criticises me for following the earlier instruction.
Now we've moved from mind-reading to observable behaviour.
And observable behaviour gives you options.
You can clarify.
You can document.
You can set a boundary.
You can ask for expectations in writing.
You can address a specific behaviour.
You can escalate something if it becomes serious enough.
You don't need to understand someone's childhood to decide that their behaviour at Tuesday's meeting wasn't okay.
Protect the part of the job you actually love
This is especially important if you do creative, meaningful or highly skilled work.
Difficult workplace dynamics have a nasty habit of contaminating the actual work.
You start off loving what you do.
Then gradually you're not thinking about the work anymore.
You're thinking about them.
What will they say?
Will they criticise it?
Are they going to interfere?
Why haven't they responded?
Did they like it?
Suddenly the work itself has become tangled up with somebody else's approval.
This is where it can help to reconnect with your intrinsic motivation, which is essentially the motivation that comes from the activity itself rather than from external rewards or approval.
Ask yourself:
What do I actually like about this work?
What am I proud of?
What skills am I developing?
What makes a piece of work good according to my professional standards?
What would I still enjoy about this job if this particular person disappeared tomorrow?
You're trying to reclaim some psychological territory.
Because the difficult person might work there.
They don't need to own the whole bloody job.
Decide what needs action and what needs less attention
Not every annoying workplace behaviour needs confronting.
And not every workplace behaviour should be ignored.
The trick is working out which one you're dealing with.
Sometimes the most useful response is:
That's annoying. I'm going back to work.
Other times, something needs addressing.
If a colleague repeatedly undermines you, you might need to name the behaviour.
If instructions are inconsistent, you might need to confirm decisions in writing.
If feedback is unclear, you might need to ask specifically what needs changing.
If someone is bullying, harassing or discriminating against you, that's no longer simply a “difficult personality”. That's a workplace issue that may need formal action.
The goal isn't to become so psychologically resilient that nothing anybody does ever bothers you.
It's to get better at distinguishing between:
This person annoys the shit out of me.
and
This behaviour is actually interfering with my work or my wellbeing and needs to be addressed.
Those require different responses.
Your dream job doesn't have to be perfect
Maybe this job is still worth it.
Maybe the flexibility matters enormously to you.
Maybe you love the actual work.
Maybe you're learning heaps.
Maybe it fits around your family.
Maybe it pays for a life outside work that you really value.
You don't have to throw all of that away because Craig from Business Development makes you want to launch your laptop through a window.
But you also don't have to pretend Craig isn't affecting you because you're “lucky to have this job”.
A good job can have shitty parts.
You can appreciate what you've got while still putting boundaries around the parts that aren't working.
And sometimes that's enough to stop one difficult personality from ruining a job you otherwise genuinely love.
Are the people at work getting inside your head?
I've put together The Workday Rescue Mini Guide... a free, practical guide with psychological tools to help you manage difficult workdays and stop workplace stress following you home.