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those of you with good skills to defuse a tense situation at the workplace, what advice can you give me? (linux.community)

submitted 1 day ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/3626563

with people with good skills to defuse a tense situation at the workplace I mean everyone of you, because I suck at this and I'm sure anyone here is better than I am with this kind of stuff.

Tense situation is a karen yelling at one of my colleagues because her father's operation was postponed because I kid you not 4 doctors called in sick today. Rumor has it they're striking for better pay.

My instinctive response if someone starts behaving like a childish, snippy, entitled karen and acts passive-aggressively is to leave and ignore the person. In this case, the karen started ranting to my coworker, getting all snippy and wouldn't shut up. A rational conversation with people that irrational is impossible, so I kept doing my job, transferring a patient to another ward.

I never expected this colleague to tell me she felt let down because I didn't help her to deal with said karen. She said simply staying next to her would have sufficed. I told her I'd do that next time someone yells at her.

I consider myself lucky because I can leave to do my job but my colleague was trapped with this person.

My questions to you people with good social skills:

does it really help to simply stay next to my colleague, letting her do the talking while I do nothing but looking at the karen in the eye?

what if, each time the karen opens her mouth I repeat 'calm down' ad nauseam till she either tires, shuts up or walks away?

what do you say or do to support your coworkers while they're being verbally abused that somewhat defuses the situation?

what if avoiding conflict is a trait of mine to the point that I let people walk all over me?

how do you resist the urge to walk away? Situations like this trigger my fight or flight response.

what if I have to do this with a man and it gets physical? If somebody strikes me and I strike back, and I can guarantee you I'm striking back, I'm as guilty as the first aggressor.

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[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 5 points 23 hours ago

Making small talk, humor, lying, empathy all work, but here I would suggest blaming something that mutually fucks you over. In this case insurance companies. And learn to lie in ways they couldn't verify, and never offer unnecessary information that would fuck you over. (I.e. DO NOT mention the doctors)

So I would say something like "this is supposed to be a routine procedure, but insuranc3 needs to verify it is necessary. My grandma died from shit like that. Fuck them. I'm going to do everything I can to help you "

ALWAYS learn people's names. Fuck you if you "are bad at learning names" you are just lazy. Try until you can do it, even if you have to ask more than once. People actually appreciate it. Here, it personalizes the bullshit you are slinging and gets the person to believe you