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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 22 hours 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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[–] SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 5 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

You asked how to defuse the tension, I'm telling you how to defuse the tension. If that's not what you want to do then I can't help you.

EDIT: That was kinda glib on my part so I'll expand some more.

If my coworker gives in to every entitled relative who yells at her and treats her this way, either my coworker will resign or take leave due to depression, a coworker who was simply doing her job to the best of her abilities managing the 20 something operations that had to be readied for Monday next week. And she gets abused for that? And you condone the karen? This part of your post seems very tone deaf. My coworker didn’t even do her pause. It is her the one who deserves empathy, respect and my support, not the karen.

What you're asking me to do right now is acknowledge the legitimacy of your grievance. And I do, of course. Nobody deserves to be abused.

The goal here is to make the abuse stop happening, though, right? So the best course of action is the course of action that stops it. If you discount the possibility that she can behave reasonably, there's no possibility of talking her down from her current state of aggression. Essentially, you both want the same thing: not to feel upset, not to feel hurt. If you can make her stop feeling that, she will stop causing you to feel that. It's not fair but you didn't ask for fairness. You asked for how you can produce results.

She has framed this as her on one side versus you (you being a proxy for the hospital) on the other. Option A is you accept her framing and remain in conflict and both of you continue to cause each other pain, option B is you influence her to change her framing into one side being both you and her and the other side being the situation. If you succeed at option B, both of you stop causing each other pain. So you acknowledge the legitimacy of her grievance. Her father was supposed to get an operation that day and he didn't. Nobody deserves to have their medical treatment withheld, even temporarily, even if it was an elective procedure.