How do you deal with office politics? Do they bother you, or are you able to shrug them off? Inquiring minds want to know.

2 words.

Spontaneous combustion.

Not office related but I sorta get a bit pissed with the union reps where I work. I believe in unions, but some of these guys are babies with their demands LOL. I dont dare get into those sorta politics.
[Edited 12/17/08 20:04pm]

Most of the time I was able to shrug it off.


I rarely ever brought work home in the sense that my work buddies were also my buddies in real life. And I sure as hell wouldn't date or sleep with someone from work... like ever. It's like a seperation of Church and state for me.

But in recent years, especially this last year, I started to go on kayak trips with a few folks from my work, and playing softball on Saturdays with them. As long as we weren't in the same group or department, I tended to be ok with it.

As far as the dynamics of my office group, I was always the soul representative in Tampa until last year. And the person who worked beside me was really really cool to work with.

I've been through mergers and acquisitions at least a half dozen times in 8 years, and through it all you end up with managers you think are douche-bags, and teams from the 'other company' that you merge with that leave you wondering if they were all lobotomized. But in the end, if you just do your job and go home, it goes away. I tended to treat it all like a game.

The part that I hated about my work was not the 'politics' but that sitting behind a cubical in front of a series of computers, and pecking away all day at abstract objects in a LDAP tree.... well, that's just not natural. It's soul destroying. If you're going to engage in something that unnatural, my philosophy was to spend at least half of that time on the org so it could also be unholy and round out the circle of wrong.

work for myself, that solved all the dramas.

back in 1999, I was pregnant, and happily working towards my maternity leave, and a co-worker accidentally fell pregnant and decided to terminate. Seeing me everyday was a horrible reminder to her of what she had done, and she did not speak to me for 6 months. My bosses talked to her about it 3 times, and nothing helped so they moved ME into the other office! Of course I'm so easy going, and my gift of not being able to smell farts only helped me put up with Stinky Steve in the other office. But really, she should have been asked to get take leave, get counselling and after 3 warnings, had her contract terminated. She was being rude to clients and slamming the phone down after every call and sighing dramatically all day long
I was so happy to get out of there for good!
Once I had to wear a 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitor to work (for the pregnancy), and when my boss talked to me about my co-worker, my pressure spiked up to 200/100 or something, when it was normally 120/70 very unhealthy environment.

i don't do well with subtleties and subtext in a work environment, so i tend not to get roped into office politics because people just assume (rightfully) that i'm too dim to take part in their reindeer games.

Flowers2 said:

my boss is jeckyll & hyde. i can make pleasant chit chat with jeckyll, and i usually tend to flip off hyde when she's not looking.

Flowers2 said:

I know managers who suck up to the boss so much, its hard to like them. But that is different to what your saying though.

My boss talks like a gangster, but is not intimidating oddly

Anxiety said:

lol... I once had a supervisor and she seemed to get annoyed when I'd chat with the higher management bosses... I guess her thinking they'd replace her with me lol.. but it wasn't like that

thesexofit said:

yeah, you have those too.. they agree with everything the boss says lol.. kissing up ..

JustErin said:

You're dangerous.....

psychodelicide said:

I tend to steer clear as much as possible....whenever I get to a new unit or section, I make it clear (since I'm normally in charge) that I won't stand for the BS...and I step in and squash it before things get out of hand.....