avatarChris Burgess

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The Narcissistic Coworker

When your luck turns bad, it may be on purpose

Photo by Yawer Waani on Unsplash

There is a specific recipe that makes a particular type of narcissist very toxic in the workplace. They are particularly dangerous because of the unique way that their traits interact which distorts reality and puts them on a collision course with anyone that has to work closely with them.

They have a unique blend of cognitive distortions, shame, sensitivity, and sadism which provides a perfect opportunity for them to inflict a maximum amount of damage to you in a way that you won’t see coming. If you find that you’re on an incredible run of bad luck at work, you might want to start considering the notion that you’ve been targeted.

First, the particular subtype in questions is the vulnerable or the closet narcissist. These folks tend to feel special by associating with other people that they view as high class. They don’t like the spotlight however, as they feel very scared of being publicly humiliated, so they tend to keep quiet and operate in the shadows.

They essentially have two narratives that are running at all times. There is the pleasant outward presentation that they are showing you which may be super friendly and extremely helpful, along with a secret inner narrative that when activated will be putting things into alignment covertly with the purpose of causing you a maximum amount of pain, while at the same time keeping their role in things anonymous.

So, they will be nice to your face while planning your downfall in secret.

The following narrative is an example of how someone can be under attack and not have a clue about it:

Say you send a newsletter to the entire floor. In the newsletter you talk about Stacy the girl from law coming back from maternity leave, you talk about the renovations that start next week that properties will be doing to improve the ventilation during the summer, and you talk about the ongoing water cooler problem where someone is emptying the water and not putting a new bottle on.

You gently remind everyone that they need to refill the water or get some help to refill it if it’s too heavy for them.

The narcissist in question reads the newsletter and takes a great insult from it. He ‘knows’ you had seen that he emptied the cooler a month ago and now here you are announcing it to the entire floor just to humiliate the narcissist. He knew you had it out for him and this just proved it. Now you are resorting to public humiliation the narcissist thinks.

He plays the last month in detail of everything that had happened to the narcissist. There was the water cooler day and then a week later you emptied out all of their staples on one of your reports— why would there need to be eight staples in one report? Clearly you were just wasting the staples and it made the narcissist late getting in an assignment as he later had to go to the store to pick up these special nonstandard office staples which you had used them excessively.

Then a few days later you played that horrible prank by turning off the mouse for his computer — it had to have been you, you’re the only one that has it out for him. Then, two days ago you kicked over his garbage on purpose.

It was only sticking out behind his desk only a few inches and you purposefully must have kicked it forcing it to spill out the contents revealing a package for hemorrhoid cream into the middle floor where the girl that the narcissist likes was standing. He was so embarrassed by this that he had to go home claiming to be sick.

Now this newsletter is the final straw. You are going to pay for it. It’s time you get some of your own medicine the narcissist thinks.

He goes over each event that occurred and he knows that each of those things happen — so the facts support his belief, and his cognitive distortion tells him that all of these things were done by you with intent.

The truth of the matter is you don’t recall seeing him empty the water tank, you had no idea you used the last staples or you would have pulled some of the spares from your desk and gave them to him, the mouse was turned off because IT had come in while he was away and IT had replaced his mouse and keyboard, and finally, the garbage shouldn’t have been sticking out the back of his desk at all — it should have been attached to the hanger on the inside wall.

That isn’t what the narcissist believes though, he ‘knows’ each of these acts were purposefully done.

Next, you run into him in the hall and have a pleasant chat with him. You think he’s such a happy guy all the time, you wish you were more like him.

You get to your desk and your boss is standing there. He halls you into his office and tears you a new one. Apparently, you emailed a couple of the guys a blonde joke and somehow that joke was printed and left on the photocopy machine where Glenda the feminist found it.

Then, somehow the office found out that you had bought a stripper for your buddy's stag and she gave ‘quality time’ according to her business card that you had left buried in your desk but it had somehow found its way out onto the floor where Glenda the feminist found it. Now you're known as the misogynist female exploiter on at least 3 floors.

Incident after incident happens where it’s crazy bad luck but the nastiest fact taken in the nastiest context possibly, gets spun and within a month you are the most hated man in the building.

Finally, your boss puts a letter on your file for respectful workplace language when you swore up a blue streak when your coworker told everyone that the two of you were planning on going to Vegas next month.

You didn’t need that added to exploiter reputation and you lost it. Glenda the feminist then reported you becuase you called your buddy a stupid c$%# and she works two cubes over from him and she overheard you.

Shocked at how things have gone downhill so fast you’re on your way back to your desk where you run into the narcissist, and he gives you the biggest sympathy show you have ever seen, and he seems to really get it.

He asks if it's okay if he goes and smoothens things over by talking to Glenda about the stripper and painting a realistic watered-down version of events for you. You tell the narcissist ‘Please do, I need some slack here or I’m going to get fired.’

So, the narcissist goes and explains to Glenda that the stripper wasn’t all that bad no one had sex with her she didn’t give any blow jobs or anything like that - besides, she had said that she turned eighteen in two more days, and you didn’t know that she wasn’t yet eighteen. There was no way you could have known.

Now the best part of it all is that you gave the narcissist permission to talk to Glenda the feminist who now knows that you had a 17-year-old stripper at your friend's party.

By the end of the day, you’re fired, and you gave permission for him to tell the story and you know that the detail was unnecessary but with Glenda going off on how you must have put the narcissist up to talking to her as he was watering down the whole affair so much that he almost made the minor sound reasonable.

So, you’re fired, and you gave the narcissist permission to tell the story and you aren’t even sure if you should be mad at him because he did what he said he would do which was water down the story and make it sound better.

When you sum it all up — you just got fired for sending a newsletter requesting that people fill the water up on the water cooler when they empty it. Only, you don’t know that — you just know that the world's worst luck hit you all in the same month.

This is a very realistic type of event that occurs in the workplace, and they will operate in such a way that you have no idea that they are responsible for your pain.

Narcissism
Workplace
Abuse
Psychology
Workplace Toxicity
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