How do you all cope with the rejection that you go through in the workplace? I’ve largely only ever been socially successful among groups where I share an interest, and even then, I still struggle socially quite a bit and tend to be somewhat disliked in any sort of group setting. Among the general public (so classes, and now work for many years) I’ve never really been able to make friends, and people range from being neutral to me but not liking me, to disliking me, to hating me in a way that feels like it should really only be reserved for people who actually brought you significant harm, to trying to be ‘friendly’ and then making fun of me when I’m still in earshot, and such. But I still have to work, which means that I have to just go to work and deal with hearing my coworkers talk about me negatively when I’m within earshot, noticing the difference in the demeanor when they interact with anyone else versus interact with me, notice when they actively try to do things to make my job harder (thankfully this is somewhat rare but it happens unfortunately).
If I try to bring it up to anyone who’s allistic then they don’t even believe me and will only take the most overt examples of extreme bullying as a sign that my coworkers don’t like / dislike me, but it’s hard when I have to deal with what can possibly be over a hundred micro-rejections just in a given day, and then I just have to wake up and do the same thing tomorrow, and every job’s been like this so even if I felt like I deserved better and went somewhere else, then I’d just get treated the same way anyways (and this has been true for all of my work experiences and was the case in all of my grade-collegiate schooling as well, so I think that it’s just something I’m always going to have to deal with). So how do you all deal with it? I can’t just simply ignore it forever, since it still affects me even if I pretend that it doesn’t. Rejection still hurts even if it’s from people who I don’t even really like anyways, and no matter how I act, whether I try to act friendly or whether I just try to keep my distance, it doesn’t seem to change things. I don’t think that there’s any way to not be rejected, so what can I do to ease the pain from it?
Your coworkers are socially inept assholes.
It’s not so hard to treat people at work with respect. They clearly haven’t earned yours.
I have had to deal with plenty of difficult and or diverse people at work and, if it’s necessary, I make an effort to find common ground to make our relationship easier.
But this social aspect should not be this big an issue, we shouldn’t do our jobs better or worse because it involves any specific coworker.
You also don’t need to be friends with people at work. You’ve already come to this realization, now it’s time to figure out how to emotionally manage this.
Also (and you’ve seem to have realized this too), their micro rejections are more of a reflection of them than of you. They’re not able to manage their emotions.
I face a good amount of rejection in my life and I’ve developed a number of coping mechanisms that ultimately sum up to “it’s their loss, not mine”. Just focus on being competent and do the best job you can. Don’t point out anyone’s mistakes or shortcomings, they’ll do they to themselves eventually.