Can a co-worker give you a nervous breakdown?
During my latter working years I had a co-worker who literally drove me crazy. I had to see a psychiatrist in order to cope. I told him I was suffering from job stress.
The psychiatrist asked me, "Could you please tell me in a few words what is the most stressful thing about your job?"
I answered, "I can tell you in TWO words: ______ _______." I then gave him the first and last name of my co-worker.
The psychiatrist said, "I've been counseling people about job stress for the last 25 years, and it amazes me how often people answer my question with a name!"
Here is just one example of the hell this colleague put me through. Although he was a body builder who was over 6 ft. tall, I seriously considered using my fists on him regardless of consequences.
We had a series of lesson plans we had to submit each Friday for the following week's classes. Plus other annoying paperwork. If we didn't submit it in time, we were in trouble with our school administrators. My colleague simply refused to do it. He said he didn't care if he got fired. He knew I DID care because I was only a short way from being retired. I didn't want to lose my retirement plus find it hard to get another teaching job. So I had to do all our work or get into trouble. The least that would happen to me would be losing my annual raise. He laughed at me and called me various nasty names ("coward" among them) for not being willing to accept trouble. If I wanted my job and my upcoming retirement, I would need to do all the work myself.
Sometimes I stayed in his classroom/office, right next to mine, and tried to persuade him to do his part or at least some of it. To discourage me, he told me rape stories (supposedly to encourage me to stay safe on the job which involved working with violent criminals). He clipped stories about rape from newspapers and magazines and handed them to me as I walked into his room. He loved to dwell on every detail of various extremely violent rapes. I had been a rape victim twice during my teens and had managed to, for the most part, put it behind me by my late middle years. Now it woke up in my mind and brought nightmares and depression. My memories now haunted me all over again. I wanted to kill him. I don't know how he knew he was getting to me in a very personal way but I'd swear he did. He really enjoyed seeing me squirm though I tried very hard not to show how much he upset me. I daydreamed about various ways of taking revenge on him, but I regard myself as an ethical and a civilized person and couldn't bring myself to carry out my revenge fantasies.
Eventually, he got fired, after I had been working late evenings and weekends for about a year to make up for his lack of diligence. During this time, just to add some more misery to my life, he stole some very legally important paperwork of mine and got me in trouble since I looked as if I had been careless and lost it. He did this so many times that I began to suspect him. Eventually, I set him up to get caught and they caught him at it. He said he did it as a prank. Nothing was done to him over it. But the supervisor who had repeatedly screamed at me over it, humiliating me in front of the whole school, did offer me a sincere sounding apology.
Yes, they eventually fired him; one of the happiest days of my life though I did feel a bit sorry for him when it happened. He had written an insulting (sexist) letter to the top boss and she ordered him fired. What a relief!
I recently heard he got a job teaching in another school. And was doing OK there. To be fair, he was actually a good teacher, cared about his students; it was his colleagues he didn't get along with. I believe they assigned me to work with him because I have a lot of patience and don't like to encourage conflict among colleagues. So I became his designated victim.
Have you ever had a co-worker from Hell? I'm proud that I survived this jerk, got my raise, and got my retirement (shortly after he was fired). I haven't seen him since the day he was fired and hope I never do.
Some people might wonder why I didn't just report him to our principal or an administrator for his lack of work or what amounted to sex harassment. It had to do with the politics of our workplace (a school inside a state hospital). I was not respected by many of the administrators due to some stuff that had happened very early in my career there (someone stole some very personal writing from my purse and passed it on to our principal saying it was a letter I had written to her! It was actually some fiction writing I had done in rough draft and it gave a very bad impression of me when taken as a real letter I'd written to my boss). So basically I did not think anyone with any power there would believe me. And my evil colleague was a very clever liar who knew how to sound believeable. I did not want to take the chance of it all turning against me somehow.
The psychiatrist asked me, "Could you please tell me in a few words what is the most stressful thing about your job?"
I answered, "I can tell you in TWO words: ______ _______." I then gave him the first and last name of my co-worker.
The psychiatrist said, "I've been counseling people about job stress for the last 25 years, and it amazes me how often people answer my question with a name!"
Here is just one example of the hell this colleague put me through. Although he was a body builder who was over 6 ft. tall, I seriously considered using my fists on him regardless of consequences.
We had a series of lesson plans we had to submit each Friday for the following week's classes. Plus other annoying paperwork. If we didn't submit it in time, we were in trouble with our school administrators. My colleague simply refused to do it. He said he didn't care if he got fired. He knew I DID care because I was only a short way from being retired. I didn't want to lose my retirement plus find it hard to get another teaching job. So I had to do all our work or get into trouble. The least that would happen to me would be losing my annual raise. He laughed at me and called me various nasty names ("coward" among them) for not being willing to accept trouble. If I wanted my job and my upcoming retirement, I would need to do all the work myself.
Sometimes I stayed in his classroom/office, right next to mine, and tried to persuade him to do his part or at least some of it. To discourage me, he told me rape stories (supposedly to encourage me to stay safe on the job which involved working with violent criminals). He clipped stories about rape from newspapers and magazines and handed them to me as I walked into his room. He loved to dwell on every detail of various extremely violent rapes. I had been a rape victim twice during my teens and had managed to, for the most part, put it behind me by my late middle years. Now it woke up in my mind and brought nightmares and depression. My memories now haunted me all over again. I wanted to kill him. I don't know how he knew he was getting to me in a very personal way but I'd swear he did. He really enjoyed seeing me squirm though I tried very hard not to show how much he upset me. I daydreamed about various ways of taking revenge on him, but I regard myself as an ethical and a civilized person and couldn't bring myself to carry out my revenge fantasies.
Eventually, he got fired, after I had been working late evenings and weekends for about a year to make up for his lack of diligence. During this time, just to add some more misery to my life, he stole some very legally important paperwork of mine and got me in trouble since I looked as if I had been careless and lost it. He did this so many times that I began to suspect him. Eventually, I set him up to get caught and they caught him at it. He said he did it as a prank. Nothing was done to him over it. But the supervisor who had repeatedly screamed at me over it, humiliating me in front of the whole school, did offer me a sincere sounding apology.
Yes, they eventually fired him; one of the happiest days of my life though I did feel a bit sorry for him when it happened. He had written an insulting (sexist) letter to the top boss and she ordered him fired. What a relief!
I recently heard he got a job teaching in another school. And was doing OK there. To be fair, he was actually a good teacher, cared about his students; it was his colleagues he didn't get along with. I believe they assigned me to work with him because I have a lot of patience and don't like to encourage conflict among colleagues. So I became his designated victim.
Have you ever had a co-worker from Hell? I'm proud that I survived this jerk, got my raise, and got my retirement (shortly after he was fired). I haven't seen him since the day he was fired and hope I never do.
Some people might wonder why I didn't just report him to our principal or an administrator for his lack of work or what amounted to sex harassment. It had to do with the politics of our workplace (a school inside a state hospital). I was not respected by many of the administrators due to some stuff that had happened very early in my career there (someone stole some very personal writing from my purse and passed it on to our principal saying it was a letter I had written to her! It was actually some fiction writing I had done in rough draft and it gave a very bad impression of me when taken as a real letter I'd written to my boss). So basically I did not think anyone with any power there would believe me. And my evil colleague was a very clever liar who knew how to sound believeable. I did not want to take the chance of it all turning against me somehow.
80-89, F
