Day in the Life of an Idiot

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/03/ive-run-out-of-a-patience-with-a-rude-coworker-i-forgive-you-in-a-professional-situation-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=36563

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I’ve run out of a patience with a rude coworker

I’ve run out of patience with a difficult coworker, Mary. I’m one of the few people who has to deal with Mary in person, and my work is closely tied with hers. She’s entry-level while I’m mid-level, but I’m not her manager or supervisor.

She has difficulty completing her work, which causes many problems for her. I have tried mightily to be her friend and mentor for the past few years, but her struggles continue. We’re locked in a difficult dynamic where I have to sit back and watch her flail, and I bear the brunt of her complaints. On a personal level, most people find her to be entitled, high maintenance, and impossible to please. She lashes out at people frequently, and today she stormed into my office following a completely normal interaction to call me rude, offensive, and dismissive. This is very common.

I’m not a confrontational person so I just take it on the chin and try to get on with my day. Over time, I’ve worked on being direct with her, setting boundaries, and learning how she wants to be communicated with. I’ve reported her to her manager and to HR multiple times, and she’s been put on performance improvement plans. Things improve for a time, then we’re right back in the same place.

Any advice to improve this situation? It’s impacting my work and my mental health. I’m worried that one day I’m going to snap and unleash years of frustration on her.

The biggest issue here is Mary’s manager, who apparently isn’t willing to deal with the situation in a way that gets it resolved. Putting someone on multiple performance improvement plans is ridiculous; the first one should have come with a clear statement that the improvement needed to be permanently sustained and if she backslid once it was over, they wouldn’t start the process all over again.

You’re limited in what you can do yourself, but at a minimum you can cut Mary off from constantly complaining to you and can leave the room if she’s being rude to you — and you should give up on trying to be her friend and mentor, because that’s not working and apparently just gets you more exposure to her rudeness (along with storming into your office). Stop trying to help someone who doesn’t appreciate it and is abusive to you.

You can also continue to report the issues you encounter with her to her boss and HR; make it less comfortable for them to keep ignoring the situation. And transfer the unpleasantness of dealing with Mary over to her manager as much as possible — meaning that if she’s not doing her work, rather than talking to her about it, take it to her manager (“I need X from Mary and don’t have it; can you please ensure I get it?”) and if she sends you rude messages, forward them to her boss with a note like, “Can you please address?” If you transfer the burden of dealing with Mary more to Mary’s boss, she might eventually be moved to act more decisively.

Related:
how to deal with a coworker who’s rude to you

2. “I forgive you” in a professional situation

I teach part-time at a university with ties to a Christian denomination, although I’m not Christian. The administration is pretty laid back, but the students are required to attend religious instruction/events weekly.

I made a remark in class within the context of the lesson that a student interpreted as meaning that I was applauding the fact that a police officer has been killed. In fact, I was indicating that the assailant had been caught.

The student walked out of class but did not make an issue of it. He came back and after class, he spoke with me alone and said he was very upset by what he thought he’d heard me say because his father was a police officer. I explained what I had meant and apologized that it came out incorrectly and that he had been upset by it. He responded, “I forgive you.”

I was taken aback by that and just thanked him. During the next class meeting, I apologized to the whole class and clarified what I had meant. No one else seemed to have noticed.

Part of what we teach in the classroom is professionalism. If the student had said he forgave me in a work context, I would have felt that was out of line. At a Christian university, I still didn’t think it was appropriate, but should I have told him not to say that in a workplace?

I talked with someone afterward who pointed out that “I forgive you” was heaps better than some other things the student could have said, which is true. He could done or said any number of other things that would have been problematic. Should I have instructed him — or the whole class without calling him out specifically — about how to accept an apology professionally?

I’d let it go. “I forgive you” would be weird in a professional setting, but you’re better off leaving the entire incident in the past rather than reopening it and risking him making a bigger deal out of it. This incident is just not well suited for turning it into a teachable moment, because it could backfire on you in ways you don’t intend.

For what it’s worth, I’m also not a fan of turning every small thing into a lesson about professionalism; sometimes the better part of professionalism is just giving people grace for not getting something quite right. You didn’t speak perfectly (it sounds like), he didn’t speak perfectly, and you can both allow for the other being a human who doesn’t always get things exactly right and just move on.

3. My old colleague recruited me for a job, then rejected me

Last summer I had lunch with a former colleague with whom I worked successfully for many years. She revealed that a) she’d been promoted to vice president of my former division and b) she wanted me to come back. I agreed, contingent upon the conditions of the return.

Months passed before she could create a position — this company is very bureaucratic — and when she did, it turned out the hiring manager was another former colleague with whom I worked successfully. He met with me privately to sell me on taking this new position, but there was a catch: I had to interview just like anyone else. I agreed.

Four interviews later, I was rejected for the job, the reason being that it was felt I was not quite ready for the position. I felt a little blindsided, yes, but my husband was furious and wondered why I was not. He said, “They asked you to return, they persuaded you to take the job, then they rejected you? They knew your abilities when they asked — what is wrong with them?” He thinks I have been ill used, and I might agree. Is my husband right, or is this just a normal, unfortunate situation?

I understand why you’re frustrated — they wooed you for the position — but it does sound like the hiring manager was straightforward with you that you’d need to compete for it and it wouldn’t just be handed to you.

That said, their reasoning of “you’re not quite ready for the role” is pretty aggravating since that’s something they should have been able to figure out earlier on in the process or — if it really didn’t become apparent until a specific role was created and you were interviewing for it, which is possible — they should have given you different feedback, more along the lines of “we were hoping this position would be a good match because of ABC but as we went through the process, we realized that it’s going to require someone with more XYZ.” And ideally the vice president who originally said she wanted you to come back should have reached back out to you to say something like, “This turned out not to be the right role, but I’d still really love to get you over here so let’s talk about what could be a stronger match.”

So I think fury is excessive, but it’s reasonable to be extremely irritated at how they handled it.

4. Applying for on-site jobs when I can’t drive at night

What are your thoughts on applying for hybrid jobs or jobs that don’t advertise as being remote when the commute could be an issue? I can legally drive at night, but I won’t because my vision is so poor that I am no longer comfortable doing it. In my mid-sized city, public transit is awful, so I can’t easily get anywhere with it.

The Job Accommodation Network seems to say the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would cover the interactive process for your commute if you were already hired, but I’m not even 100% on that.

I can find places I’d like to work that are across the city (and I own a house, so moving isn’t an option), and I don’t want people to think I’m ignoring the rules just to ignore their return-to-office mandate (even though I do think it is dumb), but for example, a 40-minute drive to cross the city takes 2.5 hours via two buses and an hour walk to a corporate location that I’ve heard is awesome to work for, and I can name a lot of places like that. Otherwise I’m stuck to the downtown corridor which is fine, but that’s all banking (yuck … been there, done it, and no). I’m currently fully remote for a local downtown law firm but trying to stomach working for the next 30 years and unsure how to handle it.

Employers are required to make the same accommodations for potential hires that they’d make for existing employees; there’s no category of “yes, we have to do it if you’re already working here, but we don’t have to offer it before you start.” It’s something that would be appropriate to raise and negotiate as part of your offer. (And yes, the ADA does require them try to find an accommodation if it can be done without undue hardship; in this case, that might be a schedule that allows you to commute home before nightfall.)

5. Should I include union organizing work on my resume?

I am looking to move out of my current organization and maybe make a bit of a career shift. A lot of the skills and experience that would make me a strong candidate for many of the jobs I’m looking at are not from my current job itself, but from the work I do here as a union organizer and steward. I was a lead organizer in the union effort and then, once the union was authorized, a part of the bargaining committee for our first contract — so I developed and exhibited lots of communication skills, leadership, project management, negotiation skills, you name it.

I’m really proud of this work and would love to include it on my resume, but I imagine that most hiring managers wouldn’t be too keen on hiring a union organizer, especially if they thought I might try to also unionize my next workplace (and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to assume that). Is there a way to include this experience in my job applications? Maybe I save it for an in person interview, or mention just the bargaining committee work but not the organizing work, or somehow talk about the experience without mentioning that it was for my union…? Or is it safer to just leave it all off entirely, even if it means I may not appear as a of strong candidate?

Yeah, the organizing work in particular will hurt you with some managers, who won’t want to invite a union organizer on to their staff. Others won’t care and will see the value in the leadership skills involved. All else being equal, I’d leave the organizing work off; the bargaining committee work is safer to include, especially if you can frame it as working collaboratively with management rather than adversarially.

The other way to look at this is that maybe you’d be happy to screen out employers who’d have a problem with the organizing work … but that depends a lot on how in-demand you expect to be as a candidate.

The post I’ve run out of a patience with a rude coworker, “I forgive you” in a professional situation, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/03/ive-run-out-of-a-patience-with-a-rude-coworker-i-forgive-you-in-a-professional-situation-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=36563