I work in a toxic workplace, and despite there being a number of coworkers who behave in healthy and sane ways, there are plenty of other coworkers who behave as if healthiness and saneness are positive traits. I grow exasperated at times with all the toxicity of these negative behaving coworkers. They often make the workplace an undesirable place to be. The way they work is not only insanity, it’s not smart. They’d rather work harder than smarter, as if the two characteristics should never mix.
For instance, if there are ways to do a job easily, they would rather complain than institute easier measures to do the job. They believe their ideas of creating more work for us to do as a team makes us look like we are working harder, when in reality, they only create more work for us to do, slowing down the process of completing the actual job, and making the tasks of completing the job on time more difficult.
If any changes are instituted while they are away – like on their days off – they return and complain most of the workday about the changes. They complain about management to anyone who will listen to them, and they literally sulk and refuse to work. They behave as children would behave who are not getting their way. It’s as if they are delusional to the idea of working smarter. At times I just don’t understand their madness in this regard.
Who wants to work so hard that they create additional work for their team to do? These lousy coworkers … that’s who. They’d rather create more work, as if that’s going to make the team look better in the eyes of management. It’s to the point that even some of the team leads, coaches, and managers will stop by the work area and question why our team is doing things the way we are doing them, when the tasks could be done in more efficient ways.
The main narcissistic bully (who’d been leading the charge of narcissistic flying monkeys against me) will often defer to me with how we handle tasks. It’s the “I’ll follow your lead” kind of thing as a way to not take any responsibility for the outcome, unless the outcome is good enough for this main narcissistic bully to take all the credit. When I institute easier measures to help the work flow more efficiently and smoothly in an effort to lessen the insanity of doing the unnecessary, the main narcissistic bully will actually follow along with my ideas, but when a flying monkey or two come around, this main narcissistic bully will then immediately behave as if my ideas are not sound.
In fact, the main narcissistic bully often defers decisions that I make to another teammate who’s a lazy, whining and covertly manipulative narcissistic flimflammer. This narcissistic coworker behaves as a flying monkey at times, but sometimes it’s hard for me to tell which of the two narcissistic coworkers is the main bully because they are equally just as conniving and evil in delving out their narcissistic shenanigans. It’s as if there are times when both narcissistic coworkers intertwine in personalities, and the power dynamics of who’s in charge changes based on what is happening within the workplace.
However, I have taken note that the one I refer to as the main narcissistic bully is more overt in their behaviors, which makes them appear as the more dominant of the group of narcissistic teammates. It’s their outward anger that sets everything ablaze and in motion when it comes to who will be a target of narcissistic abuse. The other coworkers will fall in line and play the game. When they think that I’m not paying attention, I will see them look at each other in code or whisper to each other to lock in on their silent treatment, stonewalling, and gaslighting against me.
Nevertheless, these toxic coworkers have proven to me that they do not like working efficiently or smarter in terms of getting the job done. They especially don’t like when I institute measures to get the work done in less physically demanding ways either. They’d rather take harder steps to do a job that doesn’t have to be necessarily difficult than take my directions or suggestions about anything. They’d rather grunt, suffer, and sweat through tasks that don’t have to be difficult because they believe that doing so will garner them attention from superiors, who’ve shown they don’t even care.
I’ve even noticed that team leads who agree with my more efficient manner of doing things will deflect to the narcissistic bullies’/flying monkeys’ whining and complaints instead of setting these toxic coworkers on the proper course of correction. It would appear, in actuality, that the team leads would rather not deal with the narcissistic bullies/flying monkeys than do their own jobs as leaders because they will even backtrack on what they’ve set as directions for us to do. This is all crazy to me, and I don’t get their logic in terms of work even though I know that they’d rather go along and get along with toxic employees.
The team leads, coaches, and managers make the rules that narcissistic coworkers will often provoke them to change because the narcissistic coworkers want to do things their way even though their way is often the hardest and dumbest way of completing tasks. Factually, their way makes for a much longer and more difficult working day to the point that I grow more and more agitated working around them. Frankly, this is among one of the types of reasons that a work environment remains toxic – having employees work harder but not smarter.
My Voice Unchained 