←back to thread

Are you stuck in movie logic?

(usefulfictions.substack.com)
239 points eatitraw | 1 comments | 17 Nov 25 12:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
Show context
duderific ◴[17 Nov 25 23:36 UTC] No.45959722[source]▶
I had a colleague who I sensed was giving me the cold shoulder. Just kind of cutting off attempts at friendly conversation, whereas before our relationship had been fine.

As the author suggests, instead of just letting it fester, I caught him at an opportune moment and asked him if I had done anything to upset him (I suspected maybe a not-tactful-enough code review may have been the culprit.) He just denied that anything was wrong, other than that he wasn't sure how to relate to me because our circumstances are so different (I'm quite a bit older than him and have a family, although it hadn't been a problem before.)

Unfortunately this interaction just made our relationship even more awkward, and it never recovered. He ended up leaving the company about six months later.

In summation, simply getting things out in the open is not necessarily the cure-all the author suggests it is.

replies(4): >>45959810 #>>45960045 #>>45960410 #>>45961439 #
WolfeReader ◴[17 Nov 25 23:48 UTC] No.45959810[source]▶
I had something similar happen at a prior job.

1: Befriend one of the front-end developers 3: The dev stops talking to me, becomes a lot less happy overall 4: The dev quits

In my case, what I didn't know about for a while was 2: The guy got put on a PIP for dubious reasons and got absolutely demoralized.

replies(1): >>45960324 #
1. georgeecollins ◴[18 Nov 25 01:17 UTC] No.45960324[source]▶
It's important to realize that other people may have something going on in their life that affects their mood and maybe their desire to be friends. If it is someone you know at work they may not be comfortable talking to you about the problem. I think you should always be friendly, but if someone isn't friendly back don't just assume its because of you.