Today’s Prompt: Who’s the most interesting person (or people) you’ve met this year? Turn the post into a character study.

It was only about 1.5 years ago when I got acquainted to Miss Negative-Nitpicker, a rather “interesting” character I have to deal with in the course of my work.

Prior to that, I have heard plenty of not-so-nice comments and feedback about her, and those who deal with her labelled her as “difficult”, “unreasonable”, “passive-aggressive” and a “chronic complainer” to name a few. Overall, she’s just not a very nice person to deal with.

Miss Negative-Nitpicker is in her forties. She has no visible wrinkle on her face, doesn’t put on any make-up and hardly ever wear a smile on her face. She pulls her hair back in a pony-tail and dresses very conservatively. With her metallic frame glasses on, she looks very prim and proper as she projects an image of a very industrious student who would never go against the law. She looks meek yet behaves like the authoritarian school teacher who should never ever be questioned.

In meetings where she’s the only representative from her organisation, her word is the rule. Otherwise, she prefers to blend in with the furniture and would hardly ever voice out her opinions in front of her own colleagues or bosses. If she did get asked a question in a big meeting, she would answer it in a quivering voice. She would hardly defend the people who are working for her, and would never take the blame if shit hits the roof.

She nitpicks everything. By everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Up to the decimal points! Once when one of my team members sent her some data she needed that was churned out from our system, she sent it back to us complaining that it was WRONG because when 39+ 46 + 15 do not add up to exactly 100. She made such a big fuss out of it.

We then realised that she had actually expanded the numbers to 2 decimal points and when she added everything up, it totaled to only 99.94. I suppose she probably does not particularly like round offs!

Nothing goes right by her. Woe be her if she were to compliment on a job well-done. Instead, she focused on tiny, little things that don’t matter and quick to point out mistakes if spotted them. She demands perfection and she requires work to be done at a great speed, often calling the team up at 10 minutes intervals to check if her requests are being worked on, demanding them to send to her ASAP.

She has no respect for other people’s weekends and hardly ever mutters a word of thanks if the team has gone over and beyond what’s required of them.  Even so, she would find something that “is just not good enough” or plain WRONG because they don’t fit her ideals. Her tone is usually condescending and her words are delivered in contempt. In her mind, no work is good enough, and no one can be good enough for her.

Whenever I have to deal with her to take up some of the complaints (and adding new ones,) she’s dished out on my team, I often find  that she drains my energy. Her body language is always on the defensive – arms folded with no eye contact and even though she understands English and could speak it to a reasonable level, she would often speak in Thai for someone else to translate it back to me.

She could never give me specifics if I asked about the nature of her complaints or what transpired it, preferring to tell me that “I should already know because as the lead, I should know everything.” She then clams up, turns her face away and refused to further elaborate. Never mind if she’s the one to send the wrong information, because if she sent us the wrong info which we could not have possibly known about, she would turn it around and chide us for not realising that it was all wrong.

It’s hard not to get frustrated when dealing with such a character, but I have come to  conclusion that it not worth my time or sanity in trying to psycho-analyse her just to please her, because she would always, always find fault in everything that we do.

My take is that, she’s probably just a bitter, lonely person who probably has got a huge chip on her shoulders. She’s probably just trying to find a “safe” place to justify her existence and enjoy the upper-hand she gets when dealing with those who dare not speak for themselves.

From what I heard, she doesn’t have that many friends and don’t socialise. She often refused to take part in social gatherings, and seems awkward in a social situations. Changes and the unfamiliar scares her; she is being difficult because perhaps, that’s the only way she knows how to function and that it makes her feel better.

In a way, I feel sorry for her and her existence in entirety. Dealing with somebody like her is a constant reminder to myself of the person I would not want to be, and at the same time, giving myself a good practice on how to handle such a person with a calm head.

She is, underneath it all, just insecure and what’s even sadder to think is that she probably does not have anyone who cares about her enough to give her feedback on how her behaviour is pushing people away from her.

Or maybe some kind soul did, and she has just refused to listen because everyone else is just not good enough to give her advice. After all, she took nitpicking to a whole new level!

 

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