It helps to find ways you can successfully interact with this person. Or lower your expectations. If he does have communications issues, you can’t wish them away.
Well, the good news is that with behavior like that he is not likely to have a job there for much longer.
Really, who would just ignore a meeting called by someone you report to? Not sure how he is going to justify ignoring the request a second time when your boss sent you to retrieve him. Either he is totally clueless or he is looking to get fired.
Too funny, I can’t even imagine what your boss is thinking.
Not only that (i.e., ignoring a meeting called by someone you report to.) This boss once agreed to change his job with this company from a contractor job to a permanent employee job.
Usually, a person in his situation would appreciate what this boss has done for him in the past and would naturally pay more attention to what he has to say. It is even funnier that, about 15 minutes before the scheduled meeting, the boss actually passed by his office and said to him: let’s meet shortly. It is highly unlikely he would all of a sudden forget about this meeting (and later I was sent by my boss to ask him to join this meeting when he did not want to show up.)
I can only guess he likely does not value this job any more. For me, because of all the recent not-so-pleasant encounters, I hardly have any trust when having to deal with him.
Look up from the Internet about how the people from that person’s ethnic group may behave. (I know this could be just stereotype. I remove the reference to the ethnic group on purpose.)
“It is considered impolite to express strong (especially loud) emotions around strangers. (Of course, this all changes in private, but that’s a different story.) Their people are also very blunt and will not beat around the bush; they don’t tolerate small talk or niceties and much prefer to get to the point of a conversation. Except for young (Americanized) people, you will never hear their people exchanging “how are you?”s as they walk past each other on the street.”
This could partly explain that person’s behavior. For example, the lack of strong emotion expressions. Hmm…I could not remember that he has ever made jokes or has even laughed when other people made some jokes. Most of time, just quite serious.
He also thinks all project managers (not managers who actually manage people) at any company do not produce anything and they are just company’s “overhead”.
He does not like his parents and does not like his FIL/MIL who he and his wife live with on the long term basis (for free? Not sure.) He once complained that his in-laws are not willing to sell their house and use a part of the money to help with the education expenses (of their children). Also complained that in-laws yelled at each other all the time and had concerns that it will have a bad influence on their children. Also mentioned that his in-laws took a very low-status jobs when they were young. Complained about his own parents who raised him and complained about his only sibling also. Hmm…he has never complained about his kernel family members so he is pleased with this part of his life, I think. (He likely got his immigration status through this marriage since he had never studied at any college or graduate school here except for some trade one, and had not had any relevant industrial experience before coming to this country here, I think. So it is not easy to go the H1B route.)
See…he did have a lot of “small talks” with the rest of us in the past several years when he had an interest in talking about it, otherwise we would not know any of these. (I try to not to be too specific here, e.g., try not to mention his specific ethnic group.)
So he’s Russian. There are other posters here of Russian descent who might be able to help you with this. Sounds like a stereotype. But bottom line, if he doesn’t attend a meeting called by his boss, thats between him and the boss.
Yes, beginning to sound like more of a cultural thing than a communications issue. But, sometimes both are involved, and it can be difficult to figure out what is what.
We are hearing this through the filter of someone who does not seem to like and/or get along with the co-worker. Its hard to judge third hand what might be going on or how problematic it really is. The fact that the guy didn’t show for a meeting isn’t a “fiasco”. Its probably a bad decision, but not a “fiasco”.
^ that. And it’s getting to be an awful lot of complaints which boil down to personally disapproving of a coworker.
It’s up to the boss to manage the team. No one knows what the boss and this co-worker discussed before the meeting. The guy is employed, not fired. This reminds me of little kids playing tattletale.
So, why did this fellow tell your boss you “prevented him from being productive?”
Does he do good work? Is that how he manages to stay in his position?
It isn’t you. Knowing that should make you feel better.
I know nothing about Asperger’s, but didn’t the poster said that he can and will carry on a normal conversation complete with eye contact when he WANTS to. Is that normal for Asperger’s? If not, then my vote is that he is simply a self centered jerk. I wouldn’t go out of my way to communicate unless you need to. It might even be better to do it in writing, or at least always follow up in writing. His “ruthless” ways may lead to him saying he was never told this or that…when he was told. Sounds like he’s been here long enough to figure out proper behavior, but doesn’t want friends at work, so he can carry on his own plans.
It is true that is between him and the boss. But how about the occasional “silent treatment”? This morning, after we had received some results from the overseas member in yesterday’s meeting, I tried to discuss that received result with him. When I tried to get his attention to have a brief meet, he just raised his hand (“don’t stop me.”) the whole morning. Frankly, I have only met one other coworker who has ever acted so strangely as him before in my almost 35 years work life in this industry. (How come someone could speculate from this little information that he is Russian?! I do not want to confirm or deny this.)
On the other hand, another member in our group had a good, long discussion in a pleasant way with me next to the coffee machine in the break room this morning. A big difference is that the one who is motivated in having a (technical) discussion with me thinks I could contribute to his work on the technical front (due to our shared background in engineering) but I have relatively little common background with the other person who is seemingly unwilling to interact with me. Two years ago, it was not like this, when I helped him to do many of his homework assignment in a course he was taking. (Occasionally it was annoying that he would even request me to log into the class site to do the homework directly, rather than just asking me the questions offline – the reason was often that the time was running out and it was half an hour before the due day for the assignment. Oh…he also told me then that I shall not let our manager know that I am helping him on this because it is not work-related even when it is the manager who asks him to take the courses in the first place.)
Aren’t you in IT? When you copy something from the internet… ITS ON THE INTERNET.
You essentially colluded with him to cheat on an online test. That was a mistake, but it was 2 year ago. Stick with the present. If you have an issue that needs to be addressed and he won’t cooperate, perhaps you will need to email him with your concern and blind cc your boss. Stay focused on the present what problems need to be addressed. It sounds like it is not merely eye contact.
I am not in IT, and have never been.
I have been a programmer almost 90% of my work life.
It is not just the eye contact issue. It is the office etiquette that should be among coworkers who are not really friendly to each other but still have the need to communicate with each other due to the job.
Online homework: I actually declined to do that. It requires some special “class-related software” to be installed on my PC before I could do that (it is not just a browser.) I of course did not want to go to this level of efforts. My point is that he is not shy to ask something from others when he needs to but when others need something back, it might be another story (no easy to get it from him depending on his mode.)
Actually, my previous manager (not the current one) once asked me to supervise this person a while ago (but really did not grant me any management authority though.) There were some problems then but not so severe. (Maybe it was because I was still “useful” to him; he took classes then and these classes are like the classes I took in my sophomore year in college, usually with the course name like “introduction to …” It was then manager who asked him to take these classes.)
Thought you were in the computer industry. Regardless, its easy to find a quote on the internet.
If your coworker is causing a hostile workplace environment, you can take it to HR.
*But how about the occasional “silent treatment”? *
He’s not interested in dealing with you. That’s what most of us would read if it happened to us.
It sure seems you’re not picking up on this. You aren’t the office etiquette manager. It’s not your business whether or not he comes to a meeting. He’s not your little brother. He doesn’t want to answer all your ‘small things’ questions. He already told the boss you interfere.
And the boss has not fired him.
Can you let it go?
“If you aren’t part of the solution you may be part of the problem.”
I know from your posts it’s really beginning to feel like you are the problem not him. Something to consider.
Letting go is the correct way, as suggested here.
Among the group of N people here, all the other N-1 people are friendly to me. I definitely can live without interactions with one out of all the N persons here. As it is said, it is impossible that all people will like you. It is OK to live like that.
sorry for the threadjavk but why isn’t a programmer “someone in IT”? Isn’t IT just the catch- all fancy phrase for being in computers somehow?
I would think so, PG http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Information+Technology . If the OP is a programmer, that falls under the category of information technology.