Conflict of Interest Pt 2: The Cocky Coworker

In my previous post I described the blue collar Hispanic man who is low key obsessed with me. So if I ever go missing, he should definitely be considered Prime Suspect #1 or, at the very least, a person of interest. This time I’m going to describe the other half of this coin, the ones who can’t seem to stand me after awhile. In particular the white collar man, a coworker of mine who is a team leader in another department.

Things with this guy started off oddly. He was transferred to his team to replace someone who had flaked on the job. As a result, he had minimal experience with the specific job role, but he met with me and my counterpart to discuss a partnership to gain more exposure and see what he could bring to the table to collaborate on future projects.

It all started out fine.

It just so happens, he is also Mexican, and married, so at least I’m not fending off unwanted workplace attention. However, the first conversation I recall having with him that wasn’t specifically work related was when I asked a group of people for male input on the weakass handshake I had received from the lawnmower man. He said it was a Mexican thing, that the men didn’t firmly grasp a woman’s hand as a sign of respect. Ew.

That’s gross, and apparently that’s how this coworker shakes the hands of women. I was not impressed and I believe I may have voiced that opinion outloud, so perhaps that wasn’t a point in my favor, by outright calling him a limp loser, even if indirectly.

Fast forward a few months, and now he’s been in his role a little while and is feeling comfortable. One of the responsibilities of my position is to point out areas of opportunities when people in his department are fucking up. Then I give specific examples so the leaders can then follow up with the individual. Either they retrain or expand to include more of the team if it’s not an isolated incident.

It just so happens that all of a sudden, multiple members on his team, and in his department, were fucking up and costing the company money, one after another, after another. So several times over each of several days in a row I was blasting his department with emails for each incident. Clearly there was some massive miscommunication in their routines for this many people to fuck up so many times in a row.

What was I to do? They had requested this notification, and given the directive to send them as soon as possible so they could be addressed in a timely manner.

So maybe the tone of the emails grew more succinct with each subsequent missive that by the end someone’s feelings must have gotten hurt. The following day he was throwing a literal hissy fit over the phone when I questioned his rationale for a compensation that went against the fiscal direction we had been given for the coming year. Hey, don’t flip out on me for doing my job. Get your life straight.

So, no, we aren’t the best of friends, and once he got his ass reamed by the head of operations for basically going rogue and knowing I was the one who called him out on it first, let’s just say he’s given me the stink eye ever since. I guess he feels that as a woman I am not to be trusted.

But frankly if he just did his job and stopped being such a cocky fucker he would realize that he could learn something from me if he just stopped to ask questions instead of assuming he knows everything right off the bat.

Either way I am plagued with unhealthy interpersonal relationships with the men I interact with, in particular the heterosexual males of particular nationalities, or at least those who seem to have deep seated misogynistic issues and only see women as a means to an end, or a receptacle for their bodily fluids. WTF.