Having Fun At Work (With People Who Aren't Fun)

A few start ups ago, I had to work with a person that everyone in the building, to be blunt, dreaded. 

They were essential to the enterprise -- the way that everyone like this is. They knew way more about lots of things that other people didn't know. They didn't have people report to them directly, because of a number of reasons that everyone involved probably didn't want to admit, which may have contributed to their unprofessional attitude. And they dealt in 100% Candor and telling it like it is, and going into the details of how things worked, regardless of whether you had any interest in those details. 

Giving them feedback about how any of that came off was pointless. Either they accepted it with grace and then fell back into old habits, or they regarded the submission as a personal attack. To be fair, it's hard for adults, especially ones that have achieved some things in their lives, to change their ways. Especially when they have very good reasons to think they are right about something.

The overwhelming feeling that you got from working with them was, well, fatigue. Changing anything was going to be too hard, so what constitutional lawyers refer to as a cooling effect came into play. You either did as little as possible to limit your exposure to them, or you did new initiatives without their knowledge, and crossed your fingers that the land mine would stay buried. If you did have to interact with them, you did so with as much prep as possible, in the hope that they'd see your data or your work and just back off.

They have their reasons for being this way. Maybe even really good ones. I'm also sure that life was an unending slog of underperforming co-workers that aren't up to their standards. That also must suck. 

But if the only thing in life that is important is who gets to be right, and never ever doing the wrong thing... 

Well, you aren't going to learn very much. Or do very much, really.

 Or seem very happy about anything, because...

The human sensation of Fun comes from a twist in pattern recognition in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. If something seems like something you recognize but with a novel (but not threatening) variation, your hippocampus sends some dopamine along to the amygdala. Everyone loves that dopamine, and hey presto, Fun. For a little while.

If you find that you are having No Fun at work -- because no one is doing things your way, because your attempts at collaborating are either unsuccessful or unwanted, and everyone involved seems like they'd rather just do it themselves...

Well, there's a chance that you are becoming the problem co-worker for them.

And really may need need to try new things, or ways to work.

Because, well, changing yourself has a hell of a lot more chance to work than changing anyone else...