How to cope with difficult people?

Any options other than not associating with them? But what if you have to, as in a work, or where you are living, or something like that.

Be polite, but not weak. I deal with difficult people at work. The people I arrest can be a problem, too.

Don't insult, don't argue, don't threaten, don't complain. If you act like the reasonable normal person, others will think the difficult person is a jerk.

I have had coworkers congratulate me on my cool responses to a------ coworkers or supervisors. I sometimes make semi sarcastic comments that sound like sincere responses. "Yes, sir. I was already working on that, but had to stop when you called me." Those are popular on the radio.

Sometimes, the a-------- will get the clue and apologize. It's better than escalating. But don't give anything except ego. If you reward the bad behavior with something real, you only encourage future bad behavior.

it's the most difficult game in the world I suppose. best to keep your ego out of it and your objective in mind, which in my case was keeping a messhall serving 500 Cuban refugees meals 3 x a day running smoothly.

only one or two incidents in two months, one involved my removing a (large) person (who had thrown his hot dog on the floor and refused to pick it up) from the messhall by grabbing and twisting his ear, (to the laughter of everyone else) no need for excessive force..the rest were quite cooperative.

etc said:

Any options other than not associating with them? But what if you have to, as in a work, or where you are living, or something like that.

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I have to deal with a few difficult people at work... my solution was to write their retirement dates on a post-it note, and stick it to my computer monitor. Makes me feel good every time I look at it.

A difficult person could be anyone, from someone that doesn't share a particular piece of philosophy, to someone bent on destroying the world. It would be difficult to try formulizing a means of dealing with such a broad range of potentials.

I don't think we've anything more than an overly simplified riddle here. The answer could be anything from "give them a smile" to "remove them from society".

Edit: Maybe I'm just being too difficult here.

It depends on the situation. Usually not associating and avoiding with them works best. Do they bother you certain times of the day, events, when a fax comes in, customer, etc. Try to watch and not be around when that happens.

Second is to absorebe their stuff and make it look as if it does not effect you. If they cant push your buttons or get a rise out of you, they will move on.

thanks...

You know it seems like some people are miserable and instead of improving their own status, they have a mission in life to make everyone else miserable too. Sometimes with aggressive behavior, and often with passive-aggressive behavior.

If you are stuck with someone like that, who you cannot just leave very easily, for example:

1. A family member
2. A coworker, a worse a supervisor.
3. Your housing complex manager (as is the case with me)

and so on. Then you suffer. They are beyond reason, these miserable people and they enjoy causing pain to others, or being micro-managing control freaks, like in my situation.

I am already making plans to move. Just getting to be too much. I pay them $9,000 a year to be humiliated, and they treat the tenants like delinquent 9th-graders.

At my last job, I had a difficult supervisor. Nothing I did was every right, and he would time my lunch brakes, and call me on cell to make sure I wasn't late when I got off site. He would also go check up on me when I took short 10 min brakes in the brake room.

I also have real difficult people in family. Their behavior alternates between anal-agressive, passive-agressive, and also a lot of guilt-tripping. If you have a christmas party, they will do their best to ruin it, making themselves the center of attention.

Have you seen the movie Misery. I have a family person like that. I try to console myself that I am more happy than they are.

Walking away is ideally the best solution, but sometimes you are forced to be with that person, which can make you feel like you've been dunked in a bucket full of excrement. Typically it's work or family related I would think.

I've been in that situation many times. One time I had a particularly nasty boss who delighted in pulling power trips, insulting and threatening co-workers in front of their peers, and generally making everyone miserable. After a couple of years of this secretive abuse, this individual had finally taken things too far and wound up getting written up by nearly everyone in the department.

It eventually caught up with this person, who is now working for another company in another state.

I wish I could help but being a difficult person myself I'm afraid I'm really clueless.

One thing I try to practice is, don't answer a fool in kind... helps me somewhat.

I know in the good ol' days, a lobotomy usually cured difficult people...

One thing that's helped me deal with such people is the knowledge that it's usually a self confidence issue. They have to build themselves up by knocking others down. If they had better self-confidence, they probably wouldn't do so. For some reason knowing this has really taken most of the sting out of their barbs, for me anyway. A couple of times I've said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you have such a self confidence problem. Does insulting me make you feel better? Would you like some help? Let's see, I'm fat, lazy, greedy, imcompetent, and stupid(none of which is true, though I do reserve the right to be lazy and/or stupid on occasion)." The first time it totally pissed the person off and nearly caused a fistfight, but they left me alone after that. The second time it really made the person think, and I do believe it changed their attitude a bit. They left me alone too. Hope this helps, and good luck.


:buddies:

What I usually do with know-it-alls (a subset of difficult people) is I just let them spout off a bunch of inaccurate info. If they do this long enough around the right people, they just look like idiots. If they keep doing it around me, eventually I'll point out the obvious flaw in what they're saying and that usually shuts them up for a while.

Remember that FedEx commercial, re: "We don't get French benefits???" Yeah...something like that...

JM-99

After many, many years of working with customers/patrons, all I can say is that you hopefully learn to categorize them. You learn which ones are just having a bad day and really need your help, which are capable of taking a joke and mellowing out, and which are gonna have a rotten life and take as many others spiralling down with them as they can. You can help two out of three almost anytime.

The last group is a tiny bit harder to deal with and are sometimes well worth torturing mercilessly by being very pleasant and upbeat, no matter what.

Actually, I just tell my boss that I usually wear his name tag for those customers and then tell the complete and total jerks to look me up anytime they come in. My boss always likes it when I tell him that.