Everyone’s different, you sound like you may loathe this person, but regardless work is not recreation. If needless social interactions are impacting your ability to work, consider talking to your supervisor. Speaking directly to your coworker may offend, exacerbating the issue for you. Give your supervisor an opportunity to resolve it, who should have more experience and/or training in dealing with conflict.
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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These sound like bread and butter small talk type work interactions.
Just gonna be blunt... meditating at work and adopting a yoga like position is going to attract attention and will invite co-workers to enquire after your well being.
If this guy is your biggest problem at work then you have a pretty great job.
That depends on the type of work OP does and when exactly are they adopting the yoga stance. People can do whatever they want during breaks.
But ultimately I agree with your last sentence.
Why do people seem to have such a hard time with being direct? Just tell him to leave you alone, if you hurt his feelings it's not your problem.
It's the simple things in life... always the simple things. Have you ever said the simple things to him?
"Be quiet now."
"Leave me alone."
(and after his response, whatever it is, you be quiet yourself)
What?? Imagine telling anyone to "be quiet now". That's plainly rude and won't help
It's important to be honest and polite. "I really need to focus on my work and be silent for a few hours a day. I'd be happy to chat on a coffee break, but I need to have some quiet time please"
That's plainly rude and won't help
If it is rude in your culture, you should find the appropriate way of expression
"I really need to focus on my work and be silent for a few hours a day. I'd be happy to chat on a coffee break, but I need to have some quiet time please"
But that won't help either, because it makes too many words. By far.
It is essential to stay absolutely focused in such cases. You want something, so you say what you want, and nothing else. And then silence.
Silence is your goal.
Nothing about what you yourself are doing, only what you want the other one to do. Nothing about coffee and nothing about last year's vacation on that beautiful island in the sun with the bowling club and how drunk they all were... The barest minimum is the right amount of politeness.
But what if they aren't happy to chat on their coffee breaks either?
What you're suggesting is basically just hitting the snooze button. "I'm sorry but I'm just the type of person who don't do small talk." in a polite but firm manner have worked wonders for me before.
"I am focused on task x and cannot talk to you".
Does he have a job to do or is he just there to pester people with smalltalk?
Tell him you have trouble focusing on your work if you stop to talk too often. Tell him you’re trying to finish x, y, z, etc, and after doing that enough hopefully he gets the message.
Best to be direct. Fake responses just dog deeper paths.
What are you working on. Oh I'll help you. Sure I'll be back on ten. Yeah I'm busy too buy you gotta take breaks. Hey did you catch thst movie.
If the person is so dense they dont know there bothering somone there not the type of person to get subtle hints.
I have ADHD, so this is something I genuinely use. It usually works, but I’ve only dealt with this type of person once.
I had to keep reinforcing it and it was never perfect, but it did get better.
Happy cake day!
He’s an energy vampire. Tread carefully.
Colin Robinson
Needs some updog.
Dang, all I got is this cowbell...
What's cowbell?
Unspoken expectations are pre-meditated resentments.
I once had a co-worker like this named Andrew. One morning, while he scrambled to fill any moments of silence, I told him “Andrew, silence is ok sometimes” and went back to my work. He was significantly less annoying to work with afterwards.
I probably came off as a bit of a dick, though it wasn’t my intention.
I’m torn because I want to tell him to leave me alone, that I don’t care about his life, but considering the ‘offense’ this seems too much and knowing me I’d immediately regret it and feel bad about it.
Imagine someone has a huge booger hanging out of their nose. It might be embarassing that you point it out to them, but it's a lot more embarassing if they walk around with the booger hanging there. It's the same with this. If you're polite but direct, there's nothing to feel bad about, you're helping the guy learn where the line is.
Are you lactose intolerant? Can you fighter or the ideal amount of milk to drink such that you get the death toots but not the vanilla sharts? Next time he stops by, send him a stinky. A really foul one.
Headphones. Headphones are an excellent tool for isolation in a workplace because they don't raise objections or cause friction like saying you're uninterested but they tend to be very effective at deflection.
Just get a nice big obvious pair of headphones and put them on when he might come by and, if he waves or something just immediately respond with "Sorry, I'm in the middle of this can you message me?"
And if they have the feature you could leave them in Tranparency mode, allowing you still hear everything going on as if you weren’t wearing them.
Half the time when I'm wearing headphones they aren't even turned on.
me: (with my headphones put on)
colleague: what are you listening to?
me: (speechless)
16 hours of silence.
16 hours of brown noise
I did this and when he’d talk I acted like I didn’t hear him. Worked for me
You are this way because you are maintaining professionalism. Your coworker is being unprofessional by over sharing. Set your boundaries fast and firm.
I don't think there's any need to be rude. Just tell him you appreciate that he wants to make sure you're alright, but that you're just not a very talkative person and you quite enjoy silence. You can say it's nothing personal, but that's just who you are and you'll let him know if one day for whatever reason you are not fine. If you're feeling generous you can ask him to do the same, but that is a potential commitment.
Show him your Warhammer figurines
Gotta be careful with this; I showed a coworker some models I painted once and he loved them and now makes me feel bad because he’ll ask what I’ve done recently and it’s always nothing haha
They sound a lot like an ex colleague of mine who had aspergers. They latched on to me because they got promoted to a different team in the same office as me when i got promoted and they would not stop talking to me, and about the most inane and mundane shit. Stuff i didnt gove a fuck about
I would be polite i would answer and engage in the conversation but if it had been too long and i felt managers eyes in the back of my head i would just fizzle out and start to turn back to my screen and say something like "ok, well, i need to get on" and they would go away.
I believe they were this way because of aspergers. They could never tell when i was uninterested or when i was busy with something. They didn't pick up on social cues. They just kept talking.
I wonder if it's a similar reason with your colleague?
Take up skiing and make that your entire personality
Oh yes! Talk to him about MULTILEVEL MARKETING! Hell, OP might even be able to sell him garbage and make some money on the side if he's stupid and desperate enough!!!
Hello coworker, have I told you about our Lord and savior, Xenu?
Xenu? Warrior Princess?
NO! Warrior EMPEROR! of the galactic empire! (very space opera!)
..it's Scientology, isn't it? It's so sad I can barely tell the difference
I'd recommend practicing being direct, polite, and consistent. In the end you can't control his actions but you can control yours. If you need help then get help from a capable coworker or manager. Don't waste any time or energy feeling bad about it.
Why am I like this?
Because different people are different. I am the same. I could not give 2 shits about my coworkers personal lives.
Us dudes are thick as bricks, put him on the backdoor by using some of these.
I'm in the middle of something, I wish you would stop interrupting me.
Dude, stop interrupting me.
No seriously, if you keep interrupting me I will have to talk to management about it.
Just tell him you don't talk a lot because you need to concentrate at work and you always keep it professional because you wanna separate work and private life.
Small chance it might be awkward for a bit but he will respect it. Unless he is an asshole then you don't owe friendliness.
You're not responsible for meeting this man's needs. You don't need to trick him. "Please leave me alone." If he does not do this simple thing, then you have not committed any offence and you can train yourself not to feel bad about it. You already meditate, so you might make your tendency to feel bad about this into an object of meditation.
Unfortunately, you can't control his behavior. He might still try to sit down next to you and talk to you about things that don't interest you. I don't know what more you can do than ask him to stop doing this and hope he complies. "Please stop doing this. I'm just not interested. I prefer to be alone." It is compassionate to say nothing more than this.
As for why you're like this, that's very likely because someone taught to you to care about other people's feelings and didn't teach you that their feelings are not your fault. This seems pretty common.
The stories you tell yourself about why he does this and the stories you tell yourself to explain your own behavior... they probably don't help you much, do they?
Peace.
Have you tried telling him.. to leave you alone?
I’m torn because I want to tell him to leave me alone, that I don’t care about his life,
Tell them to leave you alone, that you don't care about their life.
I'm 100% serious. Just be honest if thats the way you feel. It sets up boundaries and if they are a sane person, they'll respect you for your honesty.
Well, sometimes people just don't ever get it and they need to be told to fuck off in very blunt words. I think that usually poisons the well and dries up further conversation, permanently. But I'm not sure if this is the case here. And that strategy possibly comes with other severe consequences. So I won't recommend it. The mild version of it is to just be direct and honest, skipping any overly kind phrasing.
Another strategy would be to have someone else talk to him... You yourself seem to be getting nowhere. But maybe he listens to other people, or they're somehow more gifted to get through to people like him.
What also sometimes works (depending on circumstances) are large headphones. They might be part of your work anyways, if you're doing online-meetings in the office, or you are allowed to listen to music... Either do that and you can't hear him anyways, or just put them on all day and say "Huh?" 200 times a day and see if he picks up on it. Though, this might not work if he's stupid, as well. Or he might start tapping you on the shoulder and invade your privacy even more... Idk. But headphones have worked for me in various situations. Especially if they're big and noticeable.
There’s something called “The Grey Rock Method” you may want to check out. This link is just from a quick search, there may be better sources out there:
This is what OP has been doing.
"Excuse me"?
"Pardon"?
Blank look. Shrug, turn around, go back to reading.
first you tell him you don't like to exchange more than a few sentences per person. then you tell him, he exceeded his limit for years, so you will not talk to him any more, except if it's a real business matter. then you don't reply, unless it's a real business matter, for the next few years.
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