Poll of the Day > I have a suspicion that I'm becoming toxic at work.

(+) Yeah! (+)

A co-worker of mine recently quit for reasons that she did not make known, to me at least. I generally have a tendency to tune people out by putting in earplugs all the time. Lately though, my health has gotten so bad that I've begun to feel claustrophobic and vulnerable while doing so. I get agitated. I tend to sigh overoften. Just two Fridays ago, I dumped my lunch into a nearby trashbin; she turned around and glared at me.

Sorry that this is about the forty-seventh topic I've made complaining about work, besides.

I get it. I feel like I'm constantly complaining at work but I guess when you spend forty hours a week for a decade at once place you start to notice things that annoy you, and then you bring them up to anyone that can help fix said issues and they say they hear you and they continue to be issues years later.... Yeah I've gotten pretty toxic in our work meetings too. Not personally to my teammates, I like them all except one and they all mostly like me I think. But as far as being a positive team player, no way

I'm not sure what you've described is toxic.

Judgmenl posted...

I'm not sure what you've described is toxic.

Yeah. I'm too sleepy to describe everything that's been going on. But I still feel guilty about being annoying enough for her to leave.

Do you know that she left because of you or are you assuming that?

Judgmenl posted...

assuming that

Yes.

I dont know how else to say this

but you probably dont matter all that much to your coworkers

that is just how it is usually everyone has their own internal struggles and most people dont share about it

Sometimes I feel the same way, then remember a good chunk of my coworkers are assholes and I don't feel bad about potentially annoying them

NephalimTechno posted...

I dont know how else to say this

but you probably dont matter all that much to your coworkers

that is just how it is usually everyone has their own internal struggles and most people dont share about it

This. Even I don't really care about my coworkers and know they don't care about me. We just come together to make a product that barely functions so we can keep our jobs.

Muscles posted...

Sometimes I feel the same way, then remember a good chunk of my coworkers are assholes and I don't feel bad about potentially annoying them

Im glad you carry this over to the board as well

EclairReturns posted...

But I still feel guilty about being annoying enough for her to leave.

By and large, people don't leave jobs because they have an at-level coworker that keeps to themselves and has a couple of annoying tics. They leave jobs because a coworker is actively making them miserable (harassment, not pulling their weight, etc.), because of poor management, because they dislike something about the work enough to choose unemployment over tolerating it further, for personal reasons (to move closer to an ailing family member, for example), or because they simply found a better opportunity elsewhere.

While I doubt you're particularly popular at your office, from what you've described, I don't think anyone actually cares about you the way you think they do. They certainly don't care to enough of an extent to outright quit without you hearing anything about how you're causing problems for them.