My Co-Worker’s Annoying Habit Is Making My Life Hell

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Mariia Vitkovska/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Nenad Cavoski/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, I have a co-worker who scream sneezes and it enrages me to no end every time it happens. I’ve joked about it with her that it scares me so much, and asked, does she have to scream? She says she can’t help it. Do you have any mindset shifts for me to practice acceptance of an incredibly performative and annoying habit? —I’m Jumpy! Dear I’m Jumpy, This sounds really distracting! I’m so curious how this habit of hers developed, but in terms of the more immediate issue, I think you have two options. You could start wearing noise-cancelling headphones, although I’m not sure how feasible that is at your workplace (and will also mean that you’re blocking out everyone else, which may not be ideal). The other option is to start practicing radical acceptance, and for this I actually think that meditation could help because it forces you to block out everything around you and really focus for a certain amount of time. If you’re able to start doing meditating, say, every morning, I’m confident that the practice will help you redirect some of your anger over the sneezing and, hopefully, come to just block it out. Semi-related, I often play tennis in a public park that always has a ton of other stuff going on—from kickball games to dogs barking to helicopters flying overhead to the occasional fight. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even notice the chaos anymore while I’m playing because I need to be so focused, but when players from private clubs play against our team, they inevitably complain about how loud and distracting our park is, and I just smile inwardly and use it against them. I tell you this because I think just generally, learning how to focus and not getting flustered by distractions is a really important skill in many aspects of life, not just sneezing co-workers or tennis matches. I’m confident you will be able to learn to tune her out! Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, I have a very stressful job at a non-profit that supports people living in poverty. I work directly with our clients. Our organization can help directly with one aspect of what our clients need and only provide information for resources about other aspects. I am very good at my job. Where I can help, I do help, and in that sense my job is fulfilling. But I feel powerless to do anything about the many other areas where they need help besides give them information and encourage them to contact the other agencies. This has made me depressed and I feel pretty defeated a lot of the time. Recently a friend of mine asked why I didn’t just make the calls to other agencies on behalf of my clients. It would be against the rules of our organization, where I’m paid to do a certain kind of work only. We also cannot share personal information with clients, so I can’t follow-up with them on my own. But my friend’s comment did make me start to wonder if maybe I could set up something “off books” with a burner email address and a Google phone number to follow-up and check-in with clients to remind them to contact these other agencies. I would ask them if they wanted me to do this first. I don’t think this would break any rules. What do you think?—Want to Help More Dear Want to Help More, Uh, please do not do this. Let me be more clear: DO NOT DO THIS. I think I’ve made my point, but I also want to say that I know you are coming from a good place here! So this is not in any way meant to make you feel bad. I know it’s because you care so much about your clients that you want to help them in any way you can, but your solution to go “off books,” followed by “I don’t think this would break any rules,” is a huge red flag. If you have to go off books, you are, by definition, breaking rules! This could have catastrophic consequences for your clients, and yourself. I know it’s really hard to focus only on the area that you’re supposed to be helping them in, but for their sake, and for yours, I think you need to be able to compartmentalize a bit. You’re helping them in this specific way, and there are other people, and agencies, that can help them with other aspects of their lives. Your getting involved, off the books no less, will likely cause more harm than good. I also worry that you are going to end up depleting your own well of empathy by trying to solve all of their problems. You can’t solve everyone’s problems, and you can’t solve all the problems of any one person. That’s a lesson that’s worth learning both on and off the job. —Doree Classic Prudie I lost my husband when I was six months pregnant. Whatever good will my in-laws had for me evaporated when I decided to move back home and have my baby with my family around. My mother-in-law accused me of being a coward and “stealing” her only grandson. It got worse when I met and married an old high school friend the next year. He was raising his daughter and her half-sister alone because the mother was unstable and the other father was in prison. We found solace and support in each other. My in-laws couldn’t understand or forgive that. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. 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