I almost forgot to update on how the school volunteering thing is going. First of all, the comments on that post were SO HELPFUL. I find it so soothing to have a list of ANSWERS—I think partly because it makes me think “Other people go through this too” and “Other people need to think these things out too rather than just Naturally Handling It,” and partly because I feel like I have a Next Thing to Try, and then a Next Thing if that doesn’t work, and so on.
Anyway, I did my first official shift (so far I’d only done training), and there is one bad news and two good news. The bad news is that the woman in question is even worse than I thought. After I’d gone away from her the first time and calmed down a bit, I’d started to feel like she might be manageable after all, and/or that maybe I’d just had a bad first impression. But no.
I am tempted to say “She is awful” as if it were an objective fact—and that is certainly how I say it in my brain, with incredulity: “She’s awful! She’s AWFUL!” And I DO think a satisfying percentage of people would ALSO find her awful, if I could take a survey (*drifts into reverie, considering how fun that would be*).
And yet it seems clear to me that some of this is more like a chemical reaction. Do you get that, sometimes, with certain people? Like, it’s like EVERYTHING THEY DO hits you wrong, and if you tried to explain to someone else what the person in question had done it wouldn’t sound all that awful? That’s part of what’s going on here. I couldn’t even focus enough to give some of the Next Things to Try a fair shot, because it was like electrical interference. She’d say something and I’d want to burst into tears. It felt so hopeless to even attempt a reply—like, the FACT OF HER EXISTENCE was too much for me to cope with, let alone whatever she’d just said.
Fortunately this kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but when it does I’m curious what percentage of the time it’s a reciprocal feeling. Like, when I feel like I can’t tolerate the mere existence of another person, how often is that other person completely neutral about me and/or even favorably inclined toward me, and how often do I set their teeth equally on edge? It’s probably similar to the percentages with romantic sparks, where one person can be Really Feeling It and it seems like the other person MUST be feeling it too—and yet the other person is completely flat-line. Or sometimes the sparks are completely reciprocal, or sometimes the person likes the other person enough to be friends, but there are no romantic sparks, or WHATEVER. People don’t always feel the same way about each other, is I guess my Captain Obvious point here, and it would be interesting to have a chart of that.
So that’s the bad news. Do you know that song The Twelve Pains of Christmas, where the woman who mentions her in-laws is holding it together pretty well until she blurts out tearfully “She’s a witch I hate her!!” during the verse about the eleventh pain of Christmas? That is how I feel. It’s a panicked, tearful kind of dislike. Or maybe this video clip from Clue is a better way to describe it:
HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS. There are two. The first should probably count as more than one, because it’s “basically everything else”: I like all the other people I’ve met so far, and the job itself is good, and it went well, and it’s just the right level of work and flexible scheduling for my first crack at this. And also the first good news includes that I don’t think the other people there like this woman either, though they seem better able to handle her (but perhaps I seem that way to them, too), and they DO seem to like ME, and I felt like we were compatible and things were likely to go well. One of the other people there made a statement everyone else disagreed with, and she registered that from our awkward non-responsiveness, and so she changed the subject—unlike the awful woman, who in that scenario pushes harder and tries to force agreement.
The SECOND part is that I HAD THE WOMAN’S NAME WRONG. So when I’d thought I’d inadvertently signed up to work with her for five of the six days I started out with, I WAS LOOKING AT SOMEONE ELSE’S NAME. I THOUGHT it was the awful woman’s name, BUT IT IS NOT. So I will have to look again at the schedule to see if I’m just ALSO working with the same THIRD person every time—but it’s more likely I inadvertently avoided her almost completely. And of course now that I know her, I can try to avoid her, as long as she signs up first. And if I want to get bold about it, I can keep asking for the schedule as if I’ve had something come up, and I can keep scribbling out my name and putting it on different days or whatever.
Don’t you wish sometimes that you could access the hive mind and find out what percentage of other people dislike someone you dislike? Imagine how wrongfully delightful it would be to find out that no one else likes someone either! I suppose that would be more than counteracted by the horror and despair of the times when you’d find out that actually a majority found the person you disliked just wonderful. Plus I’d feel some pity for her if I found everyone agreed with me. Okay, so I don’t wish I could access the hive mind. I DO wish, however, for several other parents to make subtle remarks over the next few months that let me know (without it turning into back-biting, because that feels wonderful at the time but comes with a nauseating hangover) that they don’t like her either.
My mother called people like that “naturally annoying” and thought they had been born that way. I tend to agree.
It is interesting you mention finding out from the hive mind if everyone else finds her as awful as you do, because in the last 2 or 3 months I have discovered that someone I detest is actually pretty universally detested too!
I made acquaintance with this woman when our children were babies! And pretty much hated her from the get go. Fast forward to our “babies” now being 10 and in the fifth grade curriculum night where said woman raises a really annoying “question” (actually more of a diatribe) and the EYEROLLING! on the part of other parents. This on top of 3 conversations about her kid in which I gave benefit of doubt (Maybe he’s changed over the summer?!) and another parent says–Not likely with his parents. It is such a relief to feel like–Oh it isn’t just me.
I had a room mate at university who made me feel that I made her life misery by just being in the same room. I really thought that it was all my fault. Then she left to go home for two weeks and I went to the shared kitchen to make dinner. I could hear music and laughter all the way down the corridor. It turned out that every one was having a good riddance to her party!
While I understand completely, reading this makes me fearful that people could feel this way about ME. I am constantly agonizing over how I acted in certain situations. Did I interrupt? Did I say anything stupid? Did I talk too much? etc etc. Sometimes I worry that I am so nervous I maybe act more annoying than I intend and I am trying too hard. Or maybe I am fine. I don’t know. Maybe this woman is really nervous and when she senses that awkwardness, she just gets more over the top because she is silently freaking out and doing the wrong thing to try and fill in the silence. Maybe her nervousness is making her act in this awful way. I defend her only because I am imagining myself as the annoying person.
Oh, I know. I went into a huge fit after both encounters, thinking, “She’s so oblivious to her awful behavior—what if I’M this awful and oblivious??” But really, I think you’d feel better if you saw/heard her. It isn’t a matter of interrupting or saying something that comes out wrong or hogging the conversation or being awkward or babbling on about something regrettable—those are all ways MOST people act, especially in new situations. I tried to picture her behaving the way she did because she’s nervous, and it’s a total misfit—like trying to wonder if a lion is tearing apart a gazelle because he’s nervous in a new social situation.
I should have given more examples of her behavior in the post to make it clear the kind of thing I’m talking about, but I’m nervous about doing that. It’s more like, can you picture someone saying where their child goes to school, and someone else being so nervous they declare that school is for kids too stupid to get into a real school? Or can you picture someone so nervous at a volunteer-training session at the school library that they’d say, “The first thing that has to be done is all these books need to be rebound—ug, these are GROSS, and the CHEMICALS in all these library bindings!” Dear me, no, that’s a whole different category of behavior, and not one where you’d have to worry you were accidentally doing it without realizing.
Haha, ok! I feel better! I do wish you could tell all of the real examples, but I understand why not!
Heather R – I was doing the same thing!!!
You know that thing about incompetence? “Incompetent people lack the necessary skills to recognize incompetence”? So they always think they’re doing a good job? I started having that same thought as I read this post! EEEK! Self-esteem re-set!!! :)
Ha, yes: this is the “Aggressive and tactless people lack the necessary skills to recognize aggressive and tactless behavior” version! And I’d say we DEFINITELY recognize it!
I have no helpful advice here. But – I am DELIGHTED by your clip from CLUE. It is so very perfect, yes?
Hang in there!
You said “I should have given more examples of her behavior in the post to make it clear the kind of thing I’m talking about” but no, no. You should have given more examples of her behavior in the post because that kind of thing is delightful and I shamelessly eat it up.
I have found sometimes that if someone mentions “Mrs. X” in a conversation, I can just say, “I find her difficult” and an explosion of “ME TOO! ME TOO!” follows. if someone says something like really? I think she’s great! I can say, oh yes, she’s great, I’m sure it’s just me….
A milder version of this is “I don’t know her very well” which invites the other person to share their opinion of her without revealing how you feel. Of course, it only works if you can truthfully say you don’t know her well, otherwise it’s just weird.
I like that answer!
I”m so glad you had her name wrong! Phew! There are a few people who I have that experience with, where you just know that you aren’t going to get along right from the start. They set your teeth on edge.
I’m glad you aren’t stuck working with this difficult person as often as you thought. Whew! There is a similar woman at my daughter’s preschool where I work a few days per week. When I first started working there, I knew some of the teachers and aides but not all of them. During my first few days, I had a couple of awkward/uncomfortable encounters with this particular woman. She wasn’t as outwardly mean as what you describe but she called into question something I was doing and I immediately felt totally incompetent and wanted to cry…even though the something was an EXTREMELY minor detail and really, what I was doing was just fine. I work “lunch bunch” for heaven sakes–not much to screw up there! Anyway, I just sort of chalked it up to me being overly sensitive. I don’t have to interact with this woman all that much so it’s good. THEN, on this past Wednesday I was working with a new staff member who was helping me with lunch bunch and learning the process and she was GREAT. This woman came up to her out of nowhere to remind her of detail of our job– briefly, we use the bathroom in her classroom to have the kids wash their hands after lunch and when we are done we empty her trash can for the day. Well, this past week was a crazy lunch day and we didn’t do that job IMMEDIATELY after hand washing but it was certainly going to be done during our clean up period. The new staff member expressed how uncomfortable she felt while being corrected by this woman- because she gives off this vibe of irritation. I assured the new person that she was doing a great job and that the other person was just being nit-picky…and that I had a similar experience with her when I started. I felt so much better just knowing that someone else caught the same vibe and that I’m not completely nuts! A long, kind of boring (sorry!) story to simply tell you that I get it!
I think your last paragraph is the exact reason that GOMI exists and is popular. There is some satisfaction of finding out that other people don’t like the person you don’t like.
I am intrigued by the wondering about how she might feel about you. There is someone that I have the AWFUL, just AWFUL feeling about and I feel like I try to hide it as much as possible to meet social conventions but she keeps coming to talk to me. She can’t possibly like me, right? But maybe?
So, basically, yes to your post.
Yes, there are people about whom I feel exactly the same way. It’s bewildering, how AWFUL some people can be.
You know , I am also now thinking of sociopaths (as one does). Is this person in that camp, or just run of the mill awful?
HARD TO SAY. I THINK she’s the oblivious/over-confident/know-it-all type of awful, but time will tell. Certainly she isn’t spending any time thinking of other people as having thoughts and feelings.
Oh, my gosh! There is an assistant coach here at the college where I work, and he absolutely makes me CRAZY, because he is SO AWFUL, but when I try to describe to Husband the awfulness it comes out sounding like “He says ‘you know what I mean?’ after every sentence,” and “He shaves his head and really shouldn’t because it makes him look like a thumb.” Now why would you hate someone based on that? BUT I DO.
This THING happens where, if a person’s awful, I start to loathe everythingtheyeverdo. I’ve heard it described as “Bitch Eating Crackers syndrome”, where all Soandso’s doing is eating crackers, which is reasonable, but because it’s Soandso it’s AWFUL. Actually you might’ve been the one to say that.
I remember I had an experience in college with a terrible high-ranking college official. I’m not sure that he was a terrible human but he was a terrible official for this school. (Genuinely—he got fired despite it costing the college megabucks due to his wiley contract.) And after a meeting with him in which he was infuriating and slippery and turned the tables a lot, all I could say was “He squeezed out his teabag when he made tea! That makes it BITTER!” As if that was the problem.
THIS! I was totally going to post about BEC (bitch eating crackers) because it’s on baby center on the dealing with inlaws board. So funny. It’s from one of those funny ecards and it says “once you hate somebody everything they do annoys you like look at bitch eating crackers like she owns place” I laugh every time.