“If I don’t double my sales by the end of the month, Sasha will skewer me. She just gave this horrible speech to my team about how I am such a disappointment.”
Annie sat slumped over her happy hour cocktail, catching up her former colleague Calvin about what had gone down over the past two months. Shortly after she was hired, Annie’s boss, David, hastily left the Dar es Salaam office to address a supply chain issue in Asia. With little time to find a replacement, he put Sasha at the helm.
Sasha wasn’t particularly talented at any one thing but perfectly adequate at some things. She had spent ten years in the Dar es Salaam office, accumulating a wealth of institutional knowledge. Not very many people could tell you who in sales is the most socially suited for dinner with clients and how to fix the broken video projector. But above all else, she was clever with money. Sasha was a real detail sleuth, spending hours poring over budget sheets to cut a shilling here, a shilling there.
People griped about her cuts (“Where did the espresso machine go?”), But David didn’t care. He liked saving money. And with every additional month he stayed in Asia, Sasha sank her claws deeper into the company—first taking over all small-scale budget decisions, then inching her way into hiring and promotion. Once she started controlling the sales team, all hell broke loose.
In meetings, Sasha had an unpredictability that left everyone on edge, all smiles and compliments one moment, torturous acts of humiliation the next. She also wore so much perfume it left Annie with a low-grade headache anytime she spent more than ten minutes in a room with her.
Like a lot of jerks at work, Sasha started with small, public acts of criticism meant to damage Annie’s reputation. Each week, Annie would hold a meeting with her sales team. About a month into the job, she noticed Sasha sneaking in during the last five minutes.
“Hi Annie! Do you mind if I chat with your team for a few minutes?” she asked sheepishly.
Once Annie was out of earshot, Sasha would question Annie’s decisions (“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”) and undercut her expertise in front of her direct reports (“I know that client well—much better than Annie; he will never go for it”). Then she would spread weird and wrong gossip about her, which Annie figured was an attempt to build rapport with the team.
The micromanagement started with small, arbitrary changes to Annie’s budgets. Daily food allowances requested were changed many times, for no other reason than to remind Annie who was really in charge. Sometimes Sasha would increase Annie’s budgets, which made no sense at all.
Over time, Sasha oscillated between jealous and downright patronizing, sometimes within an hour. When Annie tried to make autonomous decisions, Sasha assured her that “David wants me to oversee everything and everyone.” Small changes to her budgets became massive overhauls. It became impossible for Annie to execute a sales contract without Sasha getting in the way.
Most of us have worked with someone who had an outsized effect on our emotional well-being. To cope, we’ve tried a few tactics: venting to friends, disengaging from the social scene at work, gossiping about the person in the hopes that our bosses will learn—via the grapevine—just how miserable we are.
The boldest among us try direct confrontation. But these interactions often end in more conflict, since most people don’t enjoy having their flaws spelled out to them in excruciating detail. When confrontations fail, we often go to the next person in charge and beg for help. But even the most sympathetic bosses are often ill-equipped to handle problem people at work.
Some—like David—are too dependent on your jerk to act against them. Others agree there’s a problem, but they feel helpless to stop it. Yet others are so averse to confrontation, the very thought of standing up to a jerk at work makes them weak in the knees.
The first place is to identify the types of jerks that include:
Kiss up/kick downers have a singular goal in mind: to climb to the top by any means necessary. To get there, they treat everyone who is at the same level or below them as competition. They reserve their good manners for the people in charge.
Credit stealers are wolves in sheep’s clothing—they are our teammates and mentors who look out only for themselves. Credit stealers seem like friends, but they will betray your trust if your idea is good enough to steal. They help with a project but undermine your contributions when presenting it to the boss. They help you work through half-baked ideas only to take credit for them later. They are the leaders who offer to help you thrive but are secretly jealous of your success. They tend to be good at covering their tracks.
Bulldozers are seasoned, well-connected employees who aren’t afraid to flex their muscles to get what they want. They have two trademark moves: they take over the process of group decision-making, and they render bosses powerless to stop them through fear and intimidation. Most know how to go over the boss’s head to get what they want—they know who, at a level or two above them, will take them seriously. Truth be told, a lot of workplaces value this type of “leadership behavior”—the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But for those of us stuck working with a bulldozer, decisions often grind to a halt until this person gets their way. These jerks have no interest in compromising.
Free riders are experts at doing nothing and getting rewarded for it. They often take on work that has the veneer of importance but requires very little effort. They thrive in well-functioning teams, such as those with conscientious people who pick up their slack and those with a strong sense of cohesion. Most of them are well-liked and friendly, making them difficult to call out.
Micromanagers are impatient taskmasters who disrespect your personal space and time. Some do it because they used to have your job and they’re having a hard time moving on, others because they’re under the false impression that more monitoring equals better performance. Micromanagement isn’t a scalable strategy, so micromanaging bosses often put people in rotation. When you’re out of rotation, don’t expect to hear from your boss for days, sometimes weeks on end. Micromanagers also tend to be neglectful bosses.
Neglectful bosses hate being out of the loop. But for lots of reasons (micromanaging is one), they often are. Most follow a three-step process: long periods of neglect, a buildup of anxiety from not having a handle on things, and finally a surge of control over you to alleviate their anxiety. If you have a neglectful boss, you live in a world of chronic uncertainty, making these jerks at work one of the most difficult to handle.
Gas lighters lie with the intent of deceiving on a grand scale. They isolate their victims first, then slowly build an alternative reality that suits their needs. Some gaslighters isolate by making victims feel like their position at work is precarious, others by making their victims feel special, like they are part of a secret club. Gaslighting is often a means to an end; it allows coworkers and bosses to get away with things such as cheating and stealing that they could not do alone.
Each of these categories of jerks has a special way to be dealt with. Which one are you dealing with?
