Accidentally in Code

Tag: passive aggressive

  • Being Dispensable

    Maple tree sculpture
    Credit: flickr / pixn8tr

    I heard a horrible story the other day – someone had been off work because they were seriously ill, and a week before they returned to work one of their colleagues called all her clients and said she was never coming back.

    Shocking, right? Bitchy! Horrifying. Disgusting behavior. Hurtful. The last thing you need. If my friend hadn’t come back and her clients had needed to find someone else… surely that is the last person they would have chosen, right?

    You’d hope so. It’s hard to be sure though, and I too have been on the receiving end of something bitchy lately. Disparaging comments behind my back – to my friends! So of course they made their way back to me. And then this person decides that she wants something that I would be in a position to help her with, but instead of suggesting coffee and straightening out these “misunderstandings”… a passive aggressive strategy was employed.

    I hate feeling like I’ve been backed into a corner and if I go one way I compromise my values, and if I go the other I get cast as the bad guy. I hate it. And so I debate what my strategy will be, discuss it with a friend, and go for passive aggressive in return (I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the only way to deal with a passive aggressive, but I still hate myself for it). But something else happens, and it seems like she’s getting what she wanted and I’m annoyed. And frustrated – because when you could get everything you wanted by being nice why, why, why would someone choose the route of the passive aggressive?

    And then – I relax. Good things are happening, and anyway, I’m leaving. And really, I can dislike this person’s strategy, I can question her integrity, but – I have to acknowledge, that if I abstract to a higher level – we have the same goal. I want X to continue when I’m gone and that means someone to keep pushing it along. She is clearly interested enough to be that person – probably resents that I was doing it in the first place. Fine. I’m not going to be on her side here, but nor am I going to obstruct. So it’s likely that she will get what she wants.

    Really what it comes down to is that I’m dispensable, and I’m OK with that. I handed over WISE to someone and I know that she’s committed, but she has a different skill set than me, and maybe she’ll come to have a different vision. That’s OK – I can mentor her, I can encourage, I can advise. But now – it’s her call, not mine. I give up control, but that means I get to move on to different projects.

    Maggie and I just launched CompSci Woman. We have an initial strategy, we have some ideas, but the long term success of it means that we will be dispensable. We will need other people to help us, and we will welcome that as an opportunity to learn, and grow. We don’t want to build a small, steel and concrete structure that we can have complete control over! We want to build something organic that will grow. That means accepting a certain amount of chaos, it means accepting that the path might diverge from what we intended – it’s a compromise people make in order to be able to move onto the next project, the next adventure.

    My manager, a while ago, asked me “how did you come to be you?” – at the time, I wasn’t sure if this was a complement or not. I’ve come to think that it was genuine interest from someone who’s had to learn to be an extrovert. At the time, I answered slightly flippantly, “I don’t know? Two years of boarding school?” – but here is the truth. I am the sum of the people I’ve known, the places I’ve been, and the experiences I’ve had. I have many more people to meet. More places to go. More experiences to have. The freedom of being dispensable allows be to go chasing them.

    I think you can apply this to other things too – as a programmer, you can create job security by building something so complex and poorly documented that no-one else can maintain it (here’s how). Or – you can document, explain, write simple-as-possible, beautiful code and create – if not job security – career security through being visible, and awesome and having learned as much as possible along the way. Doing this properly, you become a multiplier – your effectiveness makes other people effective, and you’re responsive to being multiplied by others, as well. Of course, there may be a risk that you become a sequential prototyper – and I’m aware of that for myself – so as much as industrial research appealed to me when I looked for a job one of my criteria was, working somewhere where something I build will be deployed.

    I don’t have a goal in mind, I’m not trying to build a solid structure – I’m trying to create a path. This blog is my trail of breadcrumbs, if you will. Disappointments are just obstacles, and so I find an alternative route.

    I’m not an expert, rather an explorer. I don’t aim to control, I attempt to instigate. I don’t construct, I assemble and add water.

    And then – I move on. Being indispensable is a cage that I don’t want to live in.

    STAHLBAU LAMPARTER
    Credit: flickr / Stahl und Glas – steel and glass

  • Passive Aggressive

    I went to therapy today. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit that in a public forum, but I hope those of you that read this don’t think that seeking help when you’re struggling is something to be ashamed of. I’m not going to go into the details of what caused me to end up going to see a stranger and declaring “I feel like I’m loosing my mind”, suffice to say that I was entangled in the web of a passive aggressive.

    Passive aggressive behavior is really hard to deal with. It’s acts of manipulation, done quietly so that you barely realize you’re being manipulated at all – until you notice that things that mattered to you have disappeared from the agenda, your social circle has shrunk and why is it that you’re living your life at someone else’s beck and call? I woke up to this, but some of the people around me hadn’t – they were still being manipulated. And so I started to doubt myself, was it me that had the problem? Was I being unreasonable? Therapy reassured me I wasn’t. In effect, I’m paying $100 every six weeks for someone to listen to my complaining and give me impartial advice. Here’s some of what I’ve learned.

    Identify

    Before I found myself in therapy, I didn’t know what passive-aggressive meant. If you don’t either, Wikipedia is a good place to start. Sound like anyone you know?

    Avoid

    Obviously if your boss is passive aggressive, you’re going to either have to find a new job or learn how to deal. If it’s someone who won’t modify their behavior, for instance a “friend” who as a result isn’t their passive aggressiveness isn’t really, your lab partner, or a coworker… it’s different. Dealing with a passive aggressive is exhausting, so if you can avoid them – do.

    Manage

    A passive aggressive might seek to “Divide and Conquer”, so if you hear something from a passive aggressive about someone else, it’s worth speaking to that someone to find out what’s going on there. Why would they do that? Because the bigger the group, the harder it is to manipulate. By splitting you up, the passive aggressive makes you vulnerable to their manipulation. For this reason, it’s best to avoid being alone with a passive aggressive. I lost count of the times when I agreed to or offered something when alone or on the phone to the passive aggressive and my boyfriend said, “why would you agree to / offer that?” and I didn’t really know.

    Passive aggressives often can’t believe they’re at fault; it’s always someone else behaving unfairly or putting on them in some way. This makes it hard to present a more balanced world-view to them. In my case, I know I’ve been cast as the bad guy and been complained about. The fact that I would admit some fault where she surely doesn’t has no doubt worked against me. That has been very upsetting, however I hope my integrity, intentions and the strength of my other relationships speaks for me. If someone’s never at fault, never in the wrong – but frequently wronged – doubt them. No-one is that perfect.

    Ironically, the best way to deal with a passive aggressive is to be passive aggressive in return. I don’t enjoy that, but it can be a useful skill to have. For instance, when you passive aggressive lab partner tries to get you to do the bulk of your joint report be passive aggressive back; tell them you could but you’d have to work on it at 12pm because that’s when you usually do, or that you’re really busy this week and won’t do a good job.

    Note – passive aggressiveness can be a healthy behavior in some situations – what I’m talking about here is when it’s taken to excess and becomes a way of life.