my coworker is awful to his wife, who also works here

A reader writes:

I’m having trouble figuring out how to navigate a situation with a coworker, John. When I first started at this company a year ago, John was the one who trained me, and he was courteous and communicative throughout the process. I wound up as casual work friends with him, but over the year I’ve seen him do and say things that have given me a very bad gut feeling.

Most of these things involve his wife, Gladys, who works here in a different department but who eats lunch with us occasionally. Although John is usually thoughtful and respectful to me and his other coworkers, everything he says to Gladys is some sort of subtle put down or disagreement with what she is doing, sometimes to the point of outright yelling at her.

No one else in our coworker friend circle takes outward issue, I suspect in part because John is the oldest and has been here the longest, but it makes me incredibly uncomfortable, and frankly I have strong suspicious that he is an abusive spouse — perhaps not through physical violence, but he puts a lot of pressure on what she eats and how much. The first time it happened, since it was out of line with the rest of his work presence, I figured it might be one bad moment, but it’s an established pattern at this point and even if he is not outright abusive, the best case scenario is still that he’s a huge jerk. I no longer want anything to do with this guy outside of the times we need to be in the same room or otherwise cooperate for work reasons. I do feel as though I can remain professional and polite in these situations, but further friendly interactions between us make my skin crawl now.

I’m having trouble figuring out how to navigate this for a few reasons. First, I only ever see Gladys during these lunches; she works in a separate building I don’t have access to. We don’t have a close enough relationship where I could talk to her about any of this, and I can’t try to change that without getting closer to John. Second, even if I did have specific and actionable evidence I could take to HR, I wouldn’t want to start anything official unless Gladys asked me to — I do not want to put her in a worse position by making John angry. For similar reasons, it seems like a very bad idea to tell John outright that I no longer want to be friends with him because I don’t like how he treats his wife.

I’ve been trying to gradually and amicably spend less time with him outside of necessary interactions, and am hoping I can accomplish this in a way that feels like a natural drift apart. In the event he notices and asks me about it, though, I have absolutely no idea how to respond. I do suspect he will notice eventually since there was a past situation where he was upset for weeks when another coworker similarly stopped friendly contact with him (the way he handled that situation was another red flag for me, and I wonder now if that coworker had the same reasons I do).

Is there a better way to exit this situation that wouldn’t risk endangering Gladys? And beyond that, is any of this something I should try to speak up about to supervisors or HR? None of this has ever happened when they’ve been present.

I think you’re handling it the best way available to you, given the constraints of not really knowing Gladys, having limited info about their relationship, and needing to work with John.

John is a jerk, so it makes sense to minimize the amount of interaction you have with him and back away from a social relationship.

If he ever asks you about it, you can employ the bland responses that are time-honored traditions when you don’t want to spend time with someone but also don’t want to get into a big Feelings talk about it:
* “No, just busy with work!”
* “Hmmm, I haven’t realized that, just busy I guess.”
* “I’m good, just have my hands full with the X project.”
… and so forth.

In some situations — and especially if he’s pushing about why you’re not joining him for lunch anymore, in particular — I think it would be fine to say, “Frankly, the way you talk to your wife makes me really uncomfortable and I don’t want to be around that.” And there’s an argument for saying it here, as a method of demonstrating that there are social consequences to his behavior. But if you believe that risks making things worse for Gladys, then that gets a lot muddier. That calculation can be very difficult; on one hand, if there is abuse, her safety matters more than the principle of Something Must Be Said. On the other hand, no one saying anything can reinforce some of the ways abusers keep their victims trapped, like by telling them that no one would believe there’s a problem / people think they deserve the abuse / etc. Of course, in this situation, we don’t know much about what’s going on and John may just be an enormous jerk but not an abusive one, so this is mostly a theoretical leap … but if you’re concerned about abuse, the National Domestic Violence Hotline (800-799-7233) can talk to you about what you’re seeing and give you more tailored advice.

Otherwise, though, if you do find yourself stuck at a lunch table with John again and he yells at Gladys again (!), you should feel feel to respond to that the same way you would if he were yelling at any other colleague: tell him to knock it off, tell him to leave the table … whatever you’d do if he were yelling at anyone else.

I don’t know exactly what John said about Gladys’s food intake, but depending on the specifics you might be able to say anything from “Can we not diet-police, please?” to “That’s really disrespectful” to “Wow, leave her alone.”

If you ever had contact with Gladys away from John — or can orchestrate a reason to — you could also say to her, “Are you doing alright? The way John talked to you at lunch earlier wasn’t okay.”

But if John yells at Gladys on work grounds (or at work events, or when colleagues are around), I do think that’s something you can share with your boss or HR. That’s different than “this guy doesn’t seem very nice to his wife” (which is a problem but not a work problem) and has moved into the realm of “something not okay is happening in our workplace.”

The post my coworker is awful to his wife, who also works here appeared first on Ask a Manager.

View the full article