My problem is I’ve got a clear job description that management and some coworkers who feel entitled to boss me around oftentimes forget because it suits them to offload what they don’t want to do on me. What infuriates me is, it lasts way longer to argue with them than simply getting the job done, but if I don’t establish a boundary I feel like an idiot, because I feel they offloaded their shit on me, meaning they’ll keep doing that in the future, because I didn’t establish a boundary.
Establishing a boundary sometimes means they badmouth me, complain about me to my superior or yell at me, but I’m in a union.
I’m also not a patient person and arguing with a coworker about job duties when those are clearly written is not my strong suit. I just want to do my job and get paid.
When management offloads like this, I comply the first time, but then I start half assing it, working slower, not doing the job as good as I could.
This is not sustainable and feels like bullying. How do you deal with this?
Don’t argue. No is a complete sentence. Talk to your boss about it if your coworkers have a problem with “no.” Perhaps express mild interest with appropriate additional compensation?
If you don’t enforce your boundaries, then no one will.
Double plus good talking to your boss. One of my people had this exact same thing happen to her. I went to the other dude and told him any requests for my people to do work outside my department had to come though me, end of story.
Nobody pulls that shit on my people.
This is great, sometimes you need to have those solid, clear boundaries.
If you want to be somewhat “diplomatic,” what I’ll do is give a response depending from whom it comes from.
Not my boss: “please check with my boss to see if he wants me to drop anything to help you.”
my boss: “I’m doing x, y, and z. Which do you want me to drop so I can do this new task?”
This is a much better response. In business you have to speak business-speak. This is the business-speak way of saying no.
You don’t sound thin skinned.
Having a thick skin doesn’t mean being unbothered by people trying to walk over you, and thereby letting them.
I get accused of being thinskinned sometimes because of starting a confrontation over a problem or behaviour I’ve noticed, but that makes no sense. Being sensitive to issues is not a weakness, and being numb to them is certainly not a strength.
I can push for change precisely because I’m unbothered by the stress of working against the status quo.
But like others said, you don’t always need to convince. If you say you won’t cover a task because it’s not your responsibility, then there is nothing to discuss. If they expect a task to be done even when you said it won’t, that is not your problem.
It’s theirs.
I think there’s two distinct concepts at play, thin skin and thick skin. I do not consider them interchangeable concepts, even if they sound like it
I think of them as on the same spectrum.
A thin skinned person, is someone when you stab verbally or try to otherwise harm them in a non-physical manner, it goes straight through, and they are hurt by it. It affects their confidence, behaviour and health.
A thick skinned person, is someone you can insult, and they can dismiss the meaning of the words, and be unaffected by the intended harm.
But that is not mutually exclusive with going “wtf, did you just try to stab me?”. They are opposites, in the sense that the word describes whether malicious words or actions can “pass through” and have the intended effect.
But if someone tries to shoot me, and I’m wearing armor that means it won’t kill me, that still leaves the fact that they tried to shoot me. That I was able to survive it does not make the attempt on my life ok. Being thick skinned, or “wearing armor”, doesn’t mean you react to attacks with inaction.
It describes whether you suffer harm when under fire. Not how you behave in reaction to it.
A lot of people think of being thick skinned as synonymous with turning the other cheek. But being able to take BS doesn’t mean you have to passively allow it.
You’re in a union, talk to your union rep, bring documentation of the incidents and see what they think and if they can help. If they agree and help, great.
If they can’t help, then anytime anyone outside your management chain asks you to do something, you can say something to the effect of I’d love to help, can you just ask my manager for permission to prioritize your task over their normal priorities for me. If your manager/management chain asks you to do something, make sure you tell them what won’t get done properly or timely if you comply with their task “If I do XYZ tasks, then I won’t have time to finish ABC priority today”, if they’re ok it, then you document it and suck it up.
The keys here are: always act as if you’re willing and happy to help, you only do work authorized by the people who can give you work, the people who give you work are the bad guys if they say no and they become aware of all the extra requests of your time, don’t overload your trying to carry your own work and someone else’s, document as much as possible in case someone in your management chain has an issue with you not having done something that a manager agreed to.
That’s what’s worked for me in the corporate world at least, not sure what your environment is, so YMMV.
I dealt with it by becoming unemployed and living off of social security.
