this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
75 points (92.1% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35868 readers
1415 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

read right as polite, because they get offended easily.

I’m a male nurse in a predominantly female unit.

How I see a job: I'm there to work and go home and don't want to socialize. Each of my coworkers is welcomed to talk about work with me, but I don’t disclose my personal life, age or life goals with them. Work and let me work. If you need help, call me, we’ll work together.

How my unit works: there is a group that’s childish and gossipy, don’t know boundaries and act like a clique, but maybe 50% of the unit are people that work and let me work, help me and I help them (with the gossip clique this is not always the case).

I was sick for 4 weeks and I’ve decided this is a good opportunity to establish boundaries, something I’ve never done at my current unit. Why now? Being sick I had time to think what I don’t want in my life: faking interest in the sexual life or my coworkers, knowing who started dating who or what they think of Biden or the second amendment ain’t things I care about. I’ve had a coworker trying to find me a girlfriend a week after knowing me. No thanks.

I'm entertaining other job prospects and I still don’t know if I’m gonna jump ship, so for the time being, I'm here. Where I work I’m forced to eat with the rest of the team, including the gossips, so I’m trapped (because if I don’t eat with them they’ll start asking why I’m so unfriendly or if I’m angry at them and feel offended, they simply cannot understand that sometimes I want time to unwind without them).

What I think I could tell them, next time they start with their inquisitive questions:

‘I’ve worked here for a year already. It should be clear by now that I’m not a talkative person. This is a question I don’t want to answer. And I hope that you respect that.’

‘that I don’t talk doesn’t mean I hate you, it means I have nothing to say’ < I find it ludicrous even having to explain this.

‘I don’t see what that has to do with the job’

‘I don’t talk about religion, politics or my private life with coworkers and I hope you respect that’

should they keep pestering:

‘all right, I need time to unwind, which means today I’ll spend my pause somewhere else.’ and proceed to eat alone somewhere else.

And if they pester yet again:

‘leave me alone’

if by this point some of them start giving me the evil eye and afterwards start ignoring me or treat me differently, time to accelerate my transfer to another unit.

If you like keeping boundaries with your coworkers, what do you tell them that works?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Some people need socialising

Great, so find some people who want to socialise. Having that need does not give them the right to force OP to socialise if he doesn't want to. He's not stopping them from doing it, he just doesn't want to partake in it himself, and he has every right not to.

OP owes exactly nothing to his co-workers other than doing his job and being polite. If you think he does, then you're the problem.

Why do you think it's OK to force someone else into interacting with the world the same way you do, just to please you? That's not what OP is doing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah and being polite includes making small talk when people want to engage with you, not be a dude that says "don't talk to me we just work together". Work consists of 1/3rd of your life, even more for a nurse where doing a 24hr shift is normal. Not engaging with anyone during that time is being rude, even if you don't like to talk to people. It's like the minimum of a social contract.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

OP proposed many ways to let his co-workers know he doesn't like chatting and none of them are what you quoted. In fact, he expressly created this thread to figure out how not to be rude to them

People are allowed to keep to themselves. Why does it bother you so much? Why are you so personally offended by this? I've never understood why extroverts feel as if the world owes them attention.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Stop assuming things about people after reading a single comment. I am not an extravert. The reality of it is - completely ignoring and not talking to your coworkers is weird. Even if you don't like socializing to a fault, it doesn't mean you behave like a weirdo when someone engages you in simple conversation. Also, since they are a nurse, they'll be the same towards their patients? Where is the limit? Bedside manner is important and so is interacting with the people you work with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Your entire post is a series of straw man arguments that are completely fabricated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sure buddy, lock yourself up in a basement and don't interact with anyone, see how quickly you get fired.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Sure buddy, force people to do what you want, see how quickly you get fired.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

thank you for defending me, but as you can see, being a minority is not easy: a neutrally worded and genuine question is met by animosity because people like maalus simply don't understand or don't want to understand. And he get's upvoted. Even worse, he and his followers assume malevolence.

Just wanted you to know that I appreciate the feeling, but they are more and talk waaay more.

But still, I don't know what to tell my delicate coworkers.

And make no mistake, this post will also be downvoted...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah I know. It still annoys me though, I don't want this place to turn into Reddit.

I understand your frustration, I'm an introvert and I work in education which is about 75% women, so I have run across groups like what you describe.

The easiest fix is to find a better work place, but in the meantime the only thing I've found that works is to become boring to them; listen politely but give short, non-committal answers. Shrug and say "I don't know" as much as you can. Don't say anything that they can use to ask a follow up question. If you get a hardcore talker, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I can't agree with this more, thinking coworkers are owed your attention especially during breaks reeks of narcissism. My job doesn't include or train me for providing therapy to old men who exclusively watch Fox News in the break room and debate which minority is to blame for the world scaring them. Which is why after trying to add reason to these conversations a few times eating lunch in your car can be a healthy option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. And if you believe that people need to owe you something before you can engage with them, your obviously not being serious. Ignoring social interaction in a group is not a great way of going about life.

Especially not when you're able and your only excuse is that you don't want to. That's how a 5 year old navigates life.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

The commenter I replied to wants to force OP to interact above and beyond what he wants to.

That's how 5 year olds navigate life. Adults understand that everyone is allowed to make their own choices.