Being an older person now and having been somewhat semi-retired for sometime, I find myself discussing work related issues with younger people.

Most of the time, just hearing yourself talk it out is all one needs to find answers to problems. It is also helpful to bounce ideas and emotions off others just as a release.

What ever the case may be, I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread on the subject.

Work is necessary and should not be easily discarded because of personal conflicts or unease in the work place.

If you have problems at work, and you KNOW you are in the right, document everything. Dates, names, what was said by who - everything. Develop a paper trail.

If you are the one in the wrong, get your shit together. Someone is probably documenting everything you are doing wrong.

I find that most of my problems at work are not true right/wrong situations, but simply frustrations. There is quite a large language barrier between me and my boss, and sometimes I find it difficult to get through that, especially in the morning before I've had coffee.

I know what you mean. Been there, done that.

I agree with what rasczak has said when a situation warrants official documentation. Hopefully disputes can be resolved before that has to happen.

Have him put his tasking or whatever in an email. That way there is no disputing later what he told you to do. Failing that, repeat everything he tells you back to him for confirmation. Politely of course.

Propriety and understanding ones position and abilities with it will get you far.

Understanding the nuances of your particular job and job culture and the known proprieties are very important. In some job settings the social order may suggest that you ask around to find out how others are coping with or why others don’t have to cope with these problems. In other situation that may get you in trouble.

And the same goes for dictating back your orders to your boss, many superiors will find that action condescending while some will find it helpful and still others may just not even notice or understand what you are doing. You have to be able to read into some of the proprieties of your position or find them through the support system of the position and hopefully there is one or more that you can find.

I find that if a person is to the point of documenting EVERYTHING as a way of protecting oneself, than things are way out of hand already and everyone involved has handled the situation badly. Or there is simply a practiced deviousness afoot. Discretion is key in learning what the work place demand what you already know. But again, I don’t know any of the particulars of anyone plight here.

Like RJ said, find people willing to listen outside of work and that want to get a clear and complete picture of what is happening so you can then have a better perspective of how to proceed with your relationships at work.

It's all relationships.

Great quote, Iam.

Most of the time in any type of relationship there are misunderstandings from a particular mood or emotion one may be carrying around on any given day. Missing one word, or misinterpreting a look can lead to so much unnecessary discomfort.

In america we get so stuck on believing others are responsible for our feelings. It happens in marriage so often it is scarry. School teaches us this error because in america, we cannot be wrong, and we are taught to deny our feelings.

Great points rj, and as this inability to examine oneself for the source of social frictions is consistently externalized onto each other as an irresponsibility we each become either victim or victimizer.
Which can lead to people becoming skilled as either of those two rather than skilled at introspection and understanding.

Which as a tool for remaining more appropriate to extroverted concerns and relationships would lead to a compound action of aggregated social intelligence that would grow according to naturalized systems of humanity rather than being stunted by authorizing institutions and governing structures of religiosities like "the winning political perspectives as the right ones to believe"

I know sentence length…

Back to your comments, feelings are one of many aspects of our intelligences that we ignore or pit against others for basically political reasonings and theologic and social loyalties

My grandfather once said that if a person had trouble getting along with a co-worker, to let the air out of the person's car tires. Then after work, hang around a little longer and help the person get a ride home, or air up the tires.

I'm not sure if he was joking about the first part, but I have found it's a good to offer favors when there's tension, or to help someone out of a jam.

lol.
Come on. There's no polite way to do that. Weren't you ever in middle school? That's bloody well annoying.

There are so many ways of making situations better than having a standoff attitude. I would rather leave a job instead of letting that job give me a paranoid feeling all the time. Life is too short and most people are most capable of doing better on their own anyway. For those who need to mark their territory and fight all the time, I assume let them have it because it is they who can't survive without someone else providing the work for them. Most of them are just a different kind of welfare recipient. I think many like to call them parasites.

Your grandfathers idea is a pretty good one.

That is a good observation for the most part. However, someone who had worked in a government job, or maybe a union type of job where you build seniority, that might be too much to give up on account of one asshat who is a lousey leader. In my particular field, just putting in your two weeks notice is virtually never an option, so I've learned how to deal with difficult situations that inevitably come up sooner or later.

And besides, if someone is showing up for a job they like, and doing what is expected of them, why should they feel they have to put themself back on the street looking for a job when its someone else who is in the wrong?

There's a polite way to do everything. Being polite doesn't mean the other guy won't like what you are saying or doing. But if you're boss doesn't like you repeating back your instructions, what's his complaint? That you're trying too hard to get his instructions right?

Personally, I love it when my guys repeat back my orders. It tells me they are invested in making sure they get the job done right. It's good communication. Likewise, if one of my seniors is giving me instructions or whatever, I repeat it back to make sure I understood correctly. With some of my people, I make them repeat back what I tell them to do.

In a perfect world all bosses would love to take the time to do that and all employees would be that diligent. I've experienced everything from the boss that can't hold on to a single thought from the beginning of a sentence to the end, the one who tells you one thing but actually means another and the one who offers no instruction but expects you to read his mind. Repeating back instructions to these types is an exercise in futility. My current boss has no time to make it all the way through a whole sentence much less, let me repeat anything.

Now, I really love working for my boss. Don't really like what I'm doing, but I love the people I work with. But no matter how polite I am it's not going to change the fact that he's a stress puppy and loves to create chaos so he can fix it. One of the ways he does that is by not listening, handing out simplistic solutions to complex problems and ignoring avoidable issues until they become a crisis. It's just the way he operates. Basically, if my project isn't on fire, he doesn't have time to give instructions, much less listen to me repeat him.

@scarlett, in that case, go back to my original suggestion: document everything. You might also want to send him some correspondence outlining where you see a problem. Be positive and constructive about it. If he's worth a shit, he'll welcome some constructive suggestions on process improvement.

Remember to use "I" statements.

Heh. I probably should have mentioned that the company I work for has all of 7 employees. My boss is the president of our little LLC and there's no heirachy or levels of corporate bureaucracy. That probably makes a huge difference.

One of the many things I respect about him is that he really knows that it's his name on the door and he's the one ultimately liable for anything that goes out that door. I figure I get paid to use my brain and keep my projects from getting on fire in the first place and I'm given a lot of latitude to do just that. Sometimes more than I'm really comfortable with. But on the rare occasion that I have a project blow up on me, I've found that with him, as long as I'm honest about where I've messed up, he's got my back and will help fix everything.

To give a really quick example one of the first projects he gave me seemed to be an easy thing. And to him, everything really is this simple, or at least is should be. Find a vendor who could supply and install a specific system for our client. Easy enough, right? (If you're thinking at this point that you need more information in order to asses a situation, that's about the level I'm becoming used to operating at with this job.) After getting the vendor into a contract with our client it became apparent that a few more parties were going to have to be involved. There were state and municipal codes to consider, engineering that needed to happen, upgrading their current building, fire marshal inspections, deputy inspections and city inspections. I knew I was over my head in what seemed to be very technical discussions on subjects I knew nothing about. At each step, I told him (or tried to, as his schedule allowed) what was going on as far as I could understand and that I wasn't sure how to proceed. He would "helpfully" tell me to call someone else about whatever, but I still didn't really understand how everything needed to be coordinated, in what order, and how to it was all going to come together. Eventually it got to the point where the client is wondering when they're going to get their system and they start calling him. So he finally got involved, because now it's a fire. Now client is happy because they know he's personally involved, (it's also a very long-term, repeat client and they know how he works), and he's not at all unhappy with me because I tried my best and was honest with him about the progress, or lack thereof.

Still... sometimes I wish it didn't have to come to that. But with him, it's either adapt to his style or find employment elsewhere and overall my job has far more positives than negatives.