THE TOOLKIT
No one woke up this morning thinking, “How can I screw you over?”
It may feel this way, but no one deliberately plotted to make your life difficult today. It just requires way too much effort. Are there times when others do things and it affects us negatively? Of course there are. However, 99 times out of 100 when you ask these people why they did it, there is an unintentional, logical explanation.
There are numerous examples of this that happen all day at the office. Why did she take my stapler? What was he thinking when he vetoed my proposal to the client? She just doesn’t like me; otherwise, she would have asked me to go to lunch. He is such a jerk always cutting me off.
She took your stapler because Dave, your boss, asked for the afternoon presentation to be stapled to the sales report, and your desk was right outside his office. It’s not as if she intended to forget to put it back. And, he vetoed your proposal because he heard in this morning’s executive meeting that all marketing per diems for new products could only be 10% (reduced from 20%) of the total budget in an effort to encourage clients to begin creating marketing efforts on their own. It’s just that he hasn’t had the time to tell you about this new organizational strategy. And, she didn’t ask you to go to lunch because she is having interpersonal performance issues with your other three co-workers who are involved in a potentially sensitive HR dilemma. She needs to maintain confidentiality in her conversations with them and feels bad for excluding you, but she can’t exactly tell you. Finally, he cuts you off because you have a tendency to give too much detail in your update and when you answer questions. He’s asked you to keep things short. He’s said, “Be brief.” Perhaps, he should be more direct and provide more specific examples, but since you two used to work together as peers, he’s a bit hesitant in pulling the “boss” card because he doesn’t want to seem like a jerk.
Do others’ actions frustrate us? Sure. Do we sometimes feel annoyed, upset, or even downright pissed off? Absolutely. However to assume that others intend to make us feel this way is offensive. That’s right. To take offense is offensive. This implies that you think of yourself so highly, you think you’re so important, that others have nothing else on their plate but to set time aside in their busy schedule to deliberately make your life difficult. This is a bit egotistical to think that your life is so important, it supersedes other peoples’ desires to finish tasks, manage projects, build teams, launch products, or any of the other 186 items on their to do list. Most of the time when someone does something to us that makes our jobs a bit more difficult, it is a side affect of something else. It is not the intention. People just don’t wake up thinking, “How can I piss you off today?”