Hi please be gentle if there are any typos I'm writing this at 2:00 a.m.
Because of my demeanor I just tend to have bully me energy.
And I'm a people pleaser, I care about if people accept me or not, and I'm genuinely interested in helping people if I can.
I'm a bit gullible and I tend to be straightforward and open on a surface level type of way.
I've been working at my job for months as a front desk person, but only recently have I realized how manipulative some of my co-workers are.
There was a complaint made about me that ended up being false and over exaggerated. And I speculate about who could have been the ones to complain who were trying to manipulate me.
And I've been trying to distance myself from them. One of them has been out of the office sick. And one of them did something so shitty recently that they have been leaving me alone because I haven't been talking to them. And I think he understands that he should just leave me alone because I saw what he did and I did not like okay him if that makes sense.
But I'm having difficult with the third guy. Like he was very nice to me for months. But then recently he started being very passive aggressive and of course it made me feel like I needed to search for what was happening and I wanted to fix the situation.
And then after realizing how manipulative people were I decided to just like stop being nicey nicey with him.
As soon as I started being basically limiting my emotions around him and only being professional, that's when you started being buddy buddy with me again. Coming to the front desk and touching things on my desk and saying little anecdotal things and trying to be funny and trying to force laughter.
This has been going on for a week and I've been trying to hold on to my boundaries but it's been really affecting me because I don't like having to face emotional challenges like this.
I've been venting about it to a co-worker and she just been telling me to stay strong and to keep being cold to him because while I need to communicate with him on a professional level I do not want to get wrapped into his emotional manipulative behavior anymore.
Do you have any tips on what I can do because in these type of situations people just want to run me over.
But I've had experience in the past where I get spicy and then I'm the person who gets reprimanded because I did too far or the person just manipulated the situation or something. So I don't want to be spicy at work these days because I don't want to be said to have done too much.
I just want him to leave me alone but I feel like he's going to keep trying and keep trying to get the upper hand on me and I really don't want to play this game but I have to keep communicating with him because of work things.
And I really don't need him being difficult with me for that professional communication because then I won't be able to get my job done.