if you're offered a position you can use to advance your career but it involves people without boundaries, do you tell your maybe-future-to-be manager you don't want to work with those people?
if you're offered a position you can use to advance your career but it involves people without boundaries, do you tell your maybe-future-to-be manager you don't want to work with those people?
I get it, I’m the introvert too, but it helps to understand where they are coming from…
For them, these inane conversations are likely their pressure/stress release. Medical gigs can be pretty high pressure and everyone reacts to that differently.
I’ve only witnessed it from the patient side, but I get where it’s coming from.
When I had my first heart attack, it was just after Thanksgiving and the cardiac ward was decorated for Thanksgiving. They had these “Guess the heart rythm” charts made out of tinsel, and I got to see them all as I walked the ward after surgery.
(Bonus, immediately after open heart surgery they make you get up and walk around multiple times a day.)
The chart right by the nurses station? I wish I had taken a photo of it… tinsel flatline ending in an angel. LOL.
So right up front, you want to inform your supervisors that you won’t work with two of the long-established members of your new department because they don’t meet your personal interaction standards? And you think that’s going to go well for you?
If someone came to me with that demand before even starting the job, I’d breathe a sigh of relief that we discovered their weirdness before it was too late, and choose another candidate for the job.
Welcome to the working world! You don’t get to choose who you work with, you just have to make the best of it. If you need this job for advancement, then focus on that, and put up with whatever else goes with it, like EVERYBODY ELSE. Who told you that you could go through life without the minor inconvenience of having to deal with conflicting personalities? This is Real Life, you don’t get some protective bubble from the icky, inconvenient parts.
So right up front, you want to inform your supervisors
they’re not my supervisors, they MIGHT be, though.
And you think that’s going to go well for you?
I don’t know how it’s going to go. What I don’t want is to work with those 2. Peace of mind is more important than advancing a career.
You call me weird for not wanting to work with people who drain me… well, all power to you.
Are you angry at me because I actually get to choose the people I work with? My actual gig is very light on the drama side. If somebody pesters me I get to leave that place.
and choose another candidate for the job.
good luck with that. You clearly don’t work healthcare. Are you a manager btw?
You don’t get to choose who you work with
actually I do, everybody does, you can quit, you can work part time, you can start looking for a job that better fits you and then either 2 week notice it or quit on the spot. You mean you’ve never met people who quit not the job itself but a manager, a charge or certain coworkers? I don’t know if YOU cannot choose the people you work with or you’re convinced you cannot do that, but everyone has a choice: in my case, either advance my career now accepting I have to deal with those 2 moronic gossips or either keep my current job and look for the next opportunity. A third option would be to fake give them the attention so desperately need for a minute and then go back to learning and ignore them. And a fourth one, do nothing, stay where I am without thinking about advancing my career. I’m sure you can choose as well, it’s only you’re convinced you cannot. Maybe you think it’s easier for you to stay where you are or you think changing might be too much of a hassle. Doing nothing is also a choice.
Who told you that you could go through life without the minor inconvenience of having to deal with conflicting personalities?
Now you sound like a granddad or a mother who didn’t have it too good fully convinced everyone must have it as bad as you. Ironically, this happens way too often in nursing: you remind me of how old nurses act with the new grads.
Are you calling me entitled for wanting a quiet life? knock yourself out, but, are you implying you don’t want that? why?
you don’t get some protective bubble from the icky, inconvenient parts.
You’re being conformist. If everyone thought like you nobody would have changed jobs ever.
You sound angry. Are you angry?
You sound angry
You sound confused. You should show this chat to your boss, ask their opinion.
Just FYI, you’re the one who sounds angry.
Also, as someone who works in healthcare…. The other guy is right
My dude, we’ve butted heads multiple times. Thatsbnote even really relevant to your fundamental misconception of what work should looks like.
Your post history is full of blaming others.
If everyone else is always the problem, sometimes you need to look at the common denominator
I’m glad that putting up with not-so-smart people works for you, and I’m glad that you can give attention to people who are so in need of it. I’ll pass.
you still didn’t write what you do in healthcare though.
This is gen z in a nutshell. Telling management how they will be managed.
I’m all for tearing down walls and rebuilding institutions, but wait your turn. Wait until you understand something of it. It’s unlikely a business can run only on the people you like.
This is gen z…
ok boomer
You sound angry. Are you angry?
I have a history degree and I live in MAGA America. Damn right I’m angry.
But this isn’t about me, and it doesn’t have anything to do with your ridiculously entitled attitude, and your hilarious defense of it.
You? You think you are important enough to make me angry in life over YOU?
THAT is your entire problem - you think you are important. YOU. ARE. NOT. You were raised to be a princess, with everyone kissing your ass. in your little bubble universe, everything revolves around you.
Now you are in the real world, and finding out that NOBODY cares about you. In fact, most will see a person like you as in their way. The first rule of life is to either learn how to get along, or you will be trampled by many, many people who will not indulge your narcissistic nonsense at all.
Grow Up.
This.
In an ideal world everyone could have a sit down and talk about how to interact with each other so that everyone’s happy. In the real world yes it would be “you aren’t even working here yet and you’re already causing me problems? No thanks”
As a business owner, I can even predict the immediate outcome of rejecting OP. They would come to me, and say “Why did they get the job? I thought it was mine.”
“Well, you indicated that if you took the job, you wouldn’t be able to work with members of the team, so we chose someone who could. Maybe you’ll be a better fit for the next one.” And then they’d never be offered another promotion.
Ultimatums like “It’s them or me,” seldom work out well for the issuer.
Are you considerimg turning down a promotion (with more pay or progression to more pay?) because a couple of coworkers talk too much?
I would rather space out while they gossip and daydream about all the extra money I’m going to make.
I would absolutely not raise this concern with my boss. Since my job includes needing to work well with all kinds of people, raising your concern would be career limiting, for me.
Some extroverts assume quiet people are “weird and creepy”. They gossip and pry into your business to test you, to see if you’re “safe” to work with. It’s a common form of hazing. They are filtering for who they think they can trust.
If you want the job: try to “gray rock” them until they get bored with you. They’ll never trust you, but they might leave you alone or assume you’re a harmless boring weirdo. Or they might decide to make your job a living hell until you transfer out. Depends on how vicious they are.
You can’t control them, but you can refuse to engage at their jr high level.
It’s a common form of hazing.
jesus chirst, I just read the wikipedia article on hazing and now I’m scared.
You can’t control them, but you can refuse to engage at their jr high level.
they’ll badmouth me all the way to management.
better to stay where I am. Holy crap.
Why do people have to be like this?
There’s no scenario where I would bring this to a manager. If you aren’t capable of (politely!) setting your own boundaries with your coworkers, you’re going to struggle no matter what team you land on.
I suspect, given this is a medical setting, the hiring manager has more important things to worry about than “are people taking near the new person again?”
If you came to me with that demand before hiring I would thank you for your time and wish you luck finding a position that meets your needs. I have my own shit to deal with, training new team members is already an additional load to take on, and having to manage personalities full-time is not in my bandwidth
and having to manage personalities full-time is not in my bandwidth
precisely, neither mine.
If you absolutely demand change you need to have an answer to allay the manager’s fears that the changes you require will be a net negative for the group; that unserious gossipy annoying group that is setting the current bar for success.
From the inane gossipper’s perspective you could appear easily distracted, argumentative, and unserious. You’ve declared that their stress management rituals may be such a hindrance that you’d reject a promotion to avoid participating. That answer could gain you enemies even if you don’t even interview if it’s not kept confidential.
I hope this is received as contingency planning and not an insult. I don’t think those things and I also hate work gossip, but in this scenario you’re the out-group until you get in. It behooves you to become a quiet friend instead of gossip fodder. I hope you can play this field successfully and good luck!
That answer could gain you enemies even if you don’t even interview if it’s not kept confidential.
for sure. nurses can be this vicious
Why don’t you tell these two “experts” to shut up and leave me alone? Do you really need a boss for that?
It’s the company’s duty to provide you a workplace.
It’s not the company’s duty to provide you a workplace where all people are perfect.
So you are trying to play the entitled one here. And I am sure that is not going to be successful.
Why don’t you tell these two “experts” to shut up and leave me alone?
I don’t know if each workplace is like this, but at my hospital people are very, extremely thin skinned and if somebody feels offended because I prefer to keep to myself and to learn instead of talking about their boring lives they start acting like teenagers: he is unfriendly, he doesn’t talk to me, he thinks he is better than me, can you believe that? and much worse stuff. It’s usually a minority but this minority is large enough so most of the neutral ones within the group are cowed into saying nothing, because otherwise they’re the ones being talked about and suddenly considered not a team player, not a good employee…
very sad but true.
It doesn’t make sense to work in a group that behaves like this, not worth my peace of mind.
he thinks he is better than me, can you believe that?
Yes, absolutely. Quiet people often give this impression.
they start acting like teenagers
No, they are reacting in a normal way (one of many normal ways).
You’re the nurse who couldn’t deal with extroverted coworkers and had to leave your job, right?
Respectfully, you should learn from that experience that your hardline introversion doesn’t serve you well in the workplace. Any manager will be more interested in preserving team dynamics than coddling a brittle individual. I don’t mean to be harsh but you need to learn a little flexibility or you’re going to run into the same problems again and again. You picked a people-facing career and chances are high that most of your colleagues will be on the extroverted side.
It’s fine to be introverted but you need to communicate your needs in a way that doesn’t alienate or offend your colleagues. It sounds like you want them to meet you where you are, rather than compromising somewhere in the middle. It won’t kill you to make a couple minutes of small talk, followed by a polite excuse as you remove yourself to be alone. You can even say something direct, like “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not huge on chitchat, and I have some studying I need to catch up on.” People prefer honesty to just being iced out.
You can’t expect them to respect your feelings and preferences if you’re not willing to do the same for theirs.
A few words in and I could already tell who it was
no, it’s because several users did that before you
Based on your posting history, you need to find a different line of work, one that doesn’t involve people.
And if you find one, please let me know so I can do it too.
I remember you. How many accounts have you made in the past two months to ask basically the same question? You sound like a complete asshole dude. How many threads full of people telling you to get a grip do you need to read before you figure out that you are, in fact, the problem?
Long post I’m a nurse working ER. I’m also introverted and like keeping to myself. I also may be on the spectrum (haven’t been diagnosed, but I find social cues and when people are being sincere, joking or lying very difficult to understand. I understand what people say literally. Why would they otherwise speak?) I also separate my job from my personal life, as my job is not my identity. I don’t care about my coworkers’ life but ask the ones who know more than me about anything job related, to learn, to be a better nurse, to have more opportunities. Today I had a conversation with 2 managers where I was fired. Not from the hospital due to my union but from the ER. In a nutshell, as they put it: they (whoever they might be) see that I’m motivated and want to learn but they find my way of speaking demanding. I have absolutely no idea what they mean. They didn’t provide any example. They however provided an example where somebody claims I told a student to put a line. I never did such a thing, but I have the feeling they don’t believe me. The never put anything on writing, or gave me anything to sign. I won’t be signing anything from them. Then one of the managers started a monologue about he’s been working 30 years there, that communication is important. True, communication here is extremely relevant, but about procedures, patients and who does what, not about why Americans are idiots or how many children you have, not to the point of ignoring alarms, not to the point where I am the only one entering patient’s data in the computer while my coworkers speak about what to cook for dinner. Oftentimes I was the only one noticing how we’re under supplied or that some ECG cables don’t work while the chatty ones did they thing and ignored I was working while they lazy around. I didn’t get to say all of this because they interrupted. It’s like they believe the talkative ones over me. Why would I want to work for people like that? After this both sides talked but didn’t listen to what the other side had to say. I felt they weren’t listening to me. Why should I listen to them? Before I left I told them I’m looking for a unit where I can learn. That’s ALL I need from the workplace to be better. To them this is not good enough. To me it looks like this: you don’t mingle with us (us being coworkers and management), therefore you are worse than us and deserve to be ignored, but I’m not at a workplace to socialize, but to learn and to earn money. Am I the only person on earth to think like this? Why can’t people keep their opinions to themselves? I leave them alone and only talk about work. If I have nothing to say, I say nothing and learn. I don’t understand why people are so needy for conversation and thin skinned. I didn’t say this out loud because in my past people have bullied me for being me. I was also accused of not being polite. I’ll miss working that ER because in the 8 weeks I was there I learned stuff you don’t learn on other units. To me this unit was a good one because I learned new things and people left me alone during downtime to figure out how procedures and machines work, people didn’t complain when I looked the internet for instruction manuals or asked coworkers if we give sodium bicarbonate by metabolic acidosis or alkalosis. I was an motivated coworker, even when people who were supposed to train me sat and did nothing while I was taking samples. I always asked what I didn’t know. I’ll also miss working with most doctors, because they were always ready to teach me stuff, so I really don’t understand why managers say my way of speaking is demanding. My managers don’t see or don’t want to see that people treat you better and forgive your mistakes if you give them attention, if you’re likable. I’m not likable. They also don’t see that they say a lot of stupid crap if a coworker prefers to keep to himself. I also find this sad. I feel they think I’m doing this on purpose. If you’re an extrovert and have read so far: I don’t think you understand how taxing is to care about things that are simply, irrelevant. It’s like my managers expect me to make theatrics and give attention to everyone I work with. I already did this on a previous job and it was ridiculous: fake smiling to a secretary and asking her stupid stuff for 5 minutes straight, smiling like a clown because otherwise she would feel offended. Why is that my job? Sometimes I work with 8 coworkers. Am I supposed to be a sucker with all of them? I find that childish. I feel they presented an ultimatum: either give us and coworkers attention or be fired. I didn’t bulge because they didn’t listen. And I still don’t know if this is a good outcome, because I’m not going to change what I am to conform to some extroverted standards of what a good coworkers is supposed to be, because I can’t and I don’t understand them (extroverts). I don’t know if this puts me on the spectrum and I find it unfair being treated so differently because I like to keep to myself and learn during downtime. I’ve always have such issues working for other employers. It’s clear this is who I am and trying to change me it’s like expecting a gay to like women. But if this means I’m alone in the universe, that I’m always the loner people always talk shit about and marginalize, how am I supposed to live my life and work life then? ETA: I inquired the union about protections for people on the spectrum and I’m waiting for an answer but even if I get a diagnosis I don’t want to expose myself to more bullying by disclosing it to my employer: the hospital I work at is full of gossips. So what do I do?
you sound like a complete asshole dude
right back at you
Reading through this post, it really seems like you’re looking for people to just agree with a decision you’ve already made. Anyone contradicting your idea is immediately shot down, “angry”, or wrong.
So honestly just do whatever you want. It really seems like you’re going to anyway, which raises the question on why you even made this post to begin with.