‘Good morning! How are you doing?’ I smiled. It was quiet in the office. I was the second person to arrive. Rosie* did not respond.
I paused for a moment, feeling foolish, my coat folded over my right arm, the heat of the coffee burning my palm through the paper cup. I waited for ten long seconds, until I realised that my colleague was not going to acknowledge me. Then I slunk back to my desk, feeling very, very low indeed.
Rosie and I had started working in the same magazine office on the same day. I had been giddy with excitement from the moment I was offered an interview. I’d fantasised about working for this prestigious magazine ever since I was a teenager. Just after I turned 30, I had been offered a glamorous, grown up opportunity of a lifetime. Finally, all of my dreams were coming true.
Before starting the role, I had been freelancing, mostly working from home, and occasionally doing shifts in different offices. I loved meeting new people through work, and I usually bonded with them quickly. I couldn’t wait to meet my new colleagues. I was so excited to learn from them. Naively, I thought that Rosie and I would become good friends because we were new girls together.
But, from the first day, Rosie was different. We were both taken on a tour of the building, and I noticed that she seemed a little reserved. I asked her questions about her old job, her new role, and which part of London she lived in – she was reticent in her replies and did not seem curious about me. Perhaps she was shy. I know that whenever I’m feeling anxious or nervous, I have a tendency to talk too much, so I bit my tongue and tried to give her a bit of space.
By the end of the first month, Rosie had not thawed. Not only would she never respond to my morning greetings – I noticed that whenever we were in the same meetings, she was the one who would interrupt me, talk over me, and systematically dismiss every single one of my ideas. We both reported to the same manager, but Rosie would micromanage me. When I was asked to start working on a big trend piece, I was thrilled to have a chance to prove myself to my bosses, and to myself. It was an opportunity to build my confidence back up. But Rosie was watching. ‘Helen’s really busy, she’s asked me to edit this, send the stuff over to me,’ she said. My piece never saw the light of day.
It doesn’t matter what the job is, our bosses and colleagues have an enormous impact on the way we work, and how we feel about it. Over the last two years, many of us have changed our working pattern entirely, and we’ve had a chance to assess how we feel about the people we work with when we’re away from the office.
For some of us, it’s been a relief to escape day to day interactions with our coworkers. Most of us can list a litany of professional complaints. ‘Anna types too loudly.’ ‘When Ben comes in with a bad mood, he brings everyone down.’ ‘Chris makes a mess in the kitchen and never cleans out the microwave.’ Offices can be claustrophobic places, and I suspect many of us didn’t realise how many minor annoyances we had been trying to tolerate before we started working from home.
But those of us with truly toxic colleagues have had a really difficult time. If someone in your office is making your nine to five miserable, at least you can look forward to going home. If you work from home, a bad boss or a mean manager has the power to make you feel as though you live at work. According to a Californian recruitment firm, only 46 per cent of workers felt that their managers respected their personal time. That’s more than half of all bosses potentially bothering their staff during weekends and holidays.
2021 was dubbed ‘the year of the Great Resignation’ with a quarter of all workers planning to leave or change jobs, despite economic uncertainty. In a different study, a bad manager or bad colleagues were the reasons for 39 per cent of employees quitting their jobs. In contrast, ‘low salary’ was a reason given by just six per cent of respondents.
Behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings explains, “Toxic colleagues can be just like school bullies. We’re forced to spend so much time with them, that “just ignore them” is useless advice. Like bullies, they make us feel like frightened children when we’re qualified, capable adults. Dealing with them is difficult but admitting the way they truly make you feel is a powerful first step. Lots of people think they simply hate their jobs – when it’s a case of one difficult individual making them unhappy. In a work setting, toxic colleagues make us doubt ourselves and our abilities. Usually, the toxic individual is behaving badly because of their own professional anxieties and insecurities.”
My friend Elena*, a 38 year old copywriter, decided to go freelance this summer because her relationship with her boss reached breaking point. “For my first year with the company, I loved my job, and my boss. Then it felt as though she’d become bored with me. She’d break promises, she would undermine me and she’d lie, telling me I hadn’t completed tasks she had never assigned me.”
Elena said this had a hugely detrimental effect on her mental health. “I stopped trusting myself, and my instincts. I felt heartbroken – I had lost a good friend. Looking back, I suspect my boss realised that our personal and professional relationship had become blurred and she wanted to take back a bit of power.”
Like Elena, I struggled badly with my mental health at work, and my toxic colleague triggered a major relapse of my anxiety disorder. I’d cry in Sainsburys on a Saturday afternoon because I could not stop worrying about what would happen at work on Monday. I had panic attacks in the shower. When I went to see my doctor, she said I could be signed off work – and that was when I realised that some time away wasn’t the answer. I needed to quit.
Rosie crushed my self esteem and made me question my self-worth. I was desperate to prove myself, and I never felt good enough. But as soon as I handed in my notice, I felt calm enough to realise that the problem was bigger than Rosie. The role itself wasn’t right for me. It was someone’s dream job, just not mine. If I hadn’t felt so unhappy, I might have coasted along comfortably for months, or years.
Rosie had unwittingly given me a strange gift. I realised my health and happiness were much more important than impressing someone who did not like me and was never going to like me. I’d never be able to change her mind. But I could change mine. I needed to redefine my relationship with work and success. I decided that my biggest ambition had to be for my own happiness – and not linked to a job title that I hoped would impress other people.
My novel Careering is based on my own emotional relationship with work and ambition, and the impact our colleagues have across our lives. Like me, Imogen gets her ‘dream job’ and thinks her life is finally starting – but her confidence and happiness is constantly threatened and undermined by a toxic colleague. Imogen’s boss Harri is dealing with her own set of toxic colleagues, and their negativity takes the shine off her achievements and success. The characters are fictional, but their journey is inspired by true stories of people across a variety of industries, and their experience of toxic colleagues.
But is there a way of turning a toxic colleague situation to your advantage, and making sure they don’t make you quit? Jo explains, “Because toxic colleagues have the power to make us so unhappy, the first mistake we make is to overestimate the power they have in the workplace. They are usually acting out because they feel powerless, too. One strategy is to give them what they want. Try asking them for advice or recommending them for new projects – ideally ones that don’t involve you. Bullies want attention, and they want to pick fights.
“Responding to their negativity with positivity can neutralise them – and it’s empowering for you too. If this doesn’t work, you need to make sure someone senior is aware of the situation. Don’t whine or complain. Be neutral. Say something like “this person has a problem with me, I’ve done what I can to fix it. I want to perform to the best of my abilities, but their behaviour is making it very difficult.’
No colleague should have the power to poison your professional life
The workplace is changing, and ultimately, I believe it’s up to our employers to change the structure of the office and create a positive culture if they don’t want us to quit in droves. No colleague should have the power to poison your professional life. But no matter how dreamy a job might seem, working with a toxic colleague can be a wake up call.
It might force you out of your comfort zone, and make sure you take responsibility for your own happiness. My toxic colleague made me realise my role wasn’t right for me. Yours might force you to fight back and work out how to work on your terms.
Your toxic colleague might make you feel worthless, but they’re probably picking on you because they feel insecure and unhappy. These people feel powerless, and that’s why they want to make us feel powerless too. They deserve our pity, not our fear. As soon as we understand that we can shrink them down to size in our heads. They are annoyances to be dealt with during the day. They don’t get to come home with us, and they don’t deserve to appear in our nightmares.
Dealing with a toxic colleague is one of the hardest things any of us will face in the workplace. If we can stop allowing them to take up mental space, we’ll become strong enough to take on anything in the office – and beyond.
How to turn a toxic colleague into a superpower
5 ways to fight back at work (that don’t include spitting in their tea…)
1. Practise delivering your big presentations to your toxic colleague – whether or not they’re actually going to attend. If you can win them over, you can win any account or argument.
2. You don’t need a suit of armour – but you can choose to wear something that boosts your confidence and makes you feel prepared for battle, whether it’s a pair of killer shoes or a secret Superman vest.
3. Find something positive to praise about your toxic colleague. You could even tell their boss or manager that you’re impressed by them. It’s worth it to diffuse them and confuse them.
4. Use their annual leave to conduct your own performance evaluation. How do you feel about your job when they’re out of the picture? Is work working for you? When they’re not around to undermine your confidence, you’ll have the headspace to decide whether you like the other parts of your current role, or whether it’s time to move on.
5. Set up a secret savings account or piggy bank. Every time they say something mean, and you smile serenely, pay yourself £5. At the end of the month, treat yourself. (You could even send yourself flowers at work. ‘Oh, these? From the Paris office, because they think I’m fantastique…’)
