Personality Goes A Long Way

The problem with co-workers doing the bare minimum -- not just work-wise, but from a soft-skill, part-of-the-work-environment point-of-view -- is that they in fact are taking from other people, namely energy and morale.

The problem with This Guy isn't that he's quiet.  He is, but that is not the defining trait of This Guy.  There is more to him, and more accurate ways to describe him.  He is not just quiet, but he's also insular, incurious, inflexible, and inert.  Again, those aren't things that impact a work environment to the point where it violates policy.  But while it's not yelling or manipulation or backstabbing, it is a level of toxicity that infects the workplace.  And, yes, it's his fault.

I'm not going to get into details because if I get found out, I'll have to defend myself, and I prefer it happen when I just go off on him.  But the incidents that happened with This Guy today are passive-aggressive, non-verbal cues that accumulate my distrust of him.  The common theme among all these things is that he wants things done his way.  Again, there's nothing I know of that is forbidden in my company to do things your way, so long as the work gets done.  But it's inevitable when you're working in the same department that you either physically cross each other, or your work crosses each other's work, and I have noticed that he does something in reaction to something I have done, and he does it precisely because he didn't like the way I did it, and so he's going to correct it.  Most other people, including the others in this room, would let it go and let it flow.  Not him.  Because even though it really isn't any skin off his ass, he would much, uh, prefer his workspace (which inevitably overlaps with my workspace) just so.

Such persnickety behavior kind of led me to kind of blow up today -- not directly over what he said, and I hope that is how he took it, but maybe he took like I was blowing up on him, and maybe I shouldn't care.  Anyway, upon further reflection it would make sense not to do what I was going to do.  But first of all, he nor anyone else never told me not to do this.  Second of all, what I was about to do was something I was, in fact, trained to do, and I am at work to work.  And finally, even if it makes sense not to do this, This Guy clearly stopped me just because he wanted shit his way.  Most of his micro-aggressions stem from him wanting things his way, and believing that his way is the right way.  And honestly, I would be OK with that ... if he were not insular, incurious, inflexible, and inert.  Like Jules Winnfield said in Pulp Fiction when asked by Vincent Vega if dogs are as filthy as pigs, personality goes a long way.  This Guy?  He's got none.  It would help my cause, and his cause, a lot if he were to engage in small talk, or even a cordial conversation about his day.  But he won't.  I get nothing from him except, "No, this is how it should be done."  It's frustrating.  And he's insufferable.

And it is taking all my willpower not to troll him by continuing to do things to which he needs to correct.  As pissed as I get when I witness his micro-aggressions after what I do, he is doing these things only because he cannot let it go and let it flow, that he can't stand it when things aren't done the way he likes them.  Should I continue to piss him off, just so I can shatter his perfect world where everything's all about him?  I think I will. ...