I have this coworker. He’s an asshole. He is NOT the guy I despise and hate, that’s a different guy in my department. Mr asshole is generally an okay guy but he has these really assholish tendencies that occasionally force us to look at him and say “Stop being such a prick!”.
Actually, I’m the only one who says ‘prick’ and ‘asshole’, everyone else tries to be more diplomatic about it.
He broke up with his girlfriend of a couple of years about 6 or 8 weeks ago and things have gotten quite a bit worse since then. Obviously, we understand that people get cranky and stressed and pissed off during a time like this, but he’s reached the end of his grace period. He’s spent the last few weeks trying to pick fights with people and that’s not cool. It’s especially not cool to try to pick fights with me.
His other issue is that he complains incessantly about his ex. Now, granted, this is no different from when they were together, he complained about her incessantly then and I was always telling him to break up with her so they could both be happy. Now that they have broken up I get to hear all about how he’s POSITIVE she’s dating again. He’s just positive and don’t I think there’s something wrong with that? Don’t I think it’s weird that she’s dating already??
Actually, no, I don’t think it’s weird. I think nothing gets the nasty aftertaste of the end of a bad relationship out of your mouth like a good blow job, but that’s just my opinion. More importantly, it’s none of his business. They’re not together anymore, she’s not beholden to him, she owes him nothing and he needs to let this go. This isn’t a trial seperation or just some time apart, their relationship has ended. They are both free to embark on whatever adventures they choose.
He’s a little obsessed about this.
The other thing, though, is that he just needs some friends. Even he’s admitted he doesn’t really have any friends. There’s no one he knows that he wants to hang out with. I told him to go make friends, but I don’t really know how one goes about making friends. I can think about each and every one of my friends and I can think about how we came to know each other and how we came to be friends. Every case is different. I honestly don’t know how one goes about making friends. I have a pile of friends in varying degrees of closeness and each one feels like a completely special circumstance. Perhaps that’s why I hold my friends so dearly, because I see each one as coming from some completely special moment?
Anyway, how does one go about making friends? How do you meet people to turn into your friends? Keeping the friends is going to be a much different task for him, but we’ll go in baby steps here.