
Ask HN: How do you deal with abrasive personalities? - grafelic
Hi,<p>How do you deal with people who has a know-it-all attitude, a condescending tone, and generally utilize http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mnei.nl&#x2F;schopenhauer&#x2F;38-stratagems.htm , interjected with emoticons to &quot;tone down&quot; the hostile parts when writing e-mails?<p>My strategy is to step away for some time to cool down and write a reply in neutral tone, ignoring the hostile parts of the mail, offering solutions and explaining my positions.<p>This often feels quite unsatisfying, though, and it seems that some part of me longs to write a similarly abrasive retort.
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davismwfl
This happens in the workplace with co-workers and with clients and vendors. It
is nice to say oh, you fire those people, but the reality is many times you
are not in a position to do that. Many times the person may work in another
group, division, company etc and you have to deal with them.

Overall, the response is situational. If it is a supervisor or executive that
is acting this way and they have been there a while and are known to be
abrasive, guess what? That person isn't going anywhere because management is
well aware of their behavior and are tolerating it for some reason. In those
cases, you can only control you and your decisions. Same thing goes for that
one guy in the corner that no one can touch but who is abrasive as hell. If
he's been there for a while and management is tolerating it, you can't do
anything about it (at least not quickly). All the complaints and HR filings in
the world won't help you if the company has made a decision to keep that
person around. In fact, it will work against you as you will be seen as a
liability, so best answer is to control yourself, and make your decision about
what to do.

As for dealing with those people. If I can't change the situation and I have
to work with this person then I will generally ignore the insults, moronic
statements and stupidity and just answer their real points calmly and without
getting excited. Doing it with a smile usually is fun because you have full
control over your emotions and responses while others just flip out and get
pissed.

Also, where I can't directly influence the other persons attitude or
employment. I will instead start pushing them up, building them up, putting
them so high on a pedestal and giving them credit for everything to anyone in
a position of authority who will listen. It is simple, those on the highest
perch fall the hardest. This is a bit underhanded and devious, but ironically
it works quite well, especially in enterprises where sometimes these type of
people are accepted by their supervisor but unnoticed by say the next level of
management. If you build them up they will get exposed to higher levels and
they will fall, assuming the company isn't just shitty all around.

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Zelmor
By firing. Toxic people should not be tolerated in the workplace. File a
complaint if coworker, fire if subordinate. I have seen this happen multiple
times. Nothing of value was lost in the process.

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brudgers
A few strategies:

1\. Ignore the email. Crap emails don't deserve any response, let alone an
angry one. Many emails are just someone trying to build a documentation trail
to cover their ass.

2\. Move the information exchange to a better channel, e.g. voice.

3\. Reply asymmetrically with something short. The less a person writes, the
less there is for an asshat to pick apart, argue against, or criticize. A
simple "OK" followed by complete inaction is often a workable strategy. Brief
questions are also a workable asymmetric strategy...type a little that
requires a long response.

4\. Don't feed the trolls. Sure it can be an interesting writing exercise to
see who can be most insulting. In the end, the worst thing that can happen to
a person engaged in asshattery is to be ignored.

Good luck.

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hoodoof
It depends if you are the boss, a peer or subordinate.

