--- title: Working with Conflicting Personalities date: 2023-01-31T05:30:00-05:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-5/working-with-conflicting-personalities/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 06 Episode 5 – Jan 31, 2023 33:41 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Working with Conflicting Personalities  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-06/S06-E05-Working-With-Conflicting-Personalities.mp3) In this episode of the Website 101 Podcast, Amanda presents the topic, “working with conflicting personalities.” We’ll discuss sexism, failing upward, swoop-and-poop feedback, and tactics to avoid Chatty Kathys. ### Show Notes - My life is work Person - Set Boundaries and realistic expectations - Old school views - it's always been done this way - A person who doesn't know what is going on or doesn't have a clue - Bubble boy - a person who lives in a bubble not realizaing what they don't know. - Promoted to their level of incompetency. - Swoop and Poop feedback. - The Know-It-All - Logical fallacy - Appeal to Authority - Distractions in the workplace - people who interrupt you while working to chat - Two stories of extreme workplace conflict - Final advice - [Watch this episode on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmMmVIJDRtw). ### Show Links - [REESE'S Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Family Size Candy Bar](https://www.hersheyland.ca/en_ca/products/reeses-milk-chocolate-peanut-butter-family-size-candy-bar-120-g.html) - [Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Amanda:** Today, on the website 101 Podcast, Amanda presents the topic, Working with Conflicting Personalities. We'll discuss sexism, failing upward, swoop-and-poop feedback, and tactics to avoid chatty-cathies. **\[00:17\]** **Sean:** Listener, welcome back to another episode of the website 101 Podcasts. This is the podcast for people who want to learn more about building and or managing websites. I am one of your hosts, Mike Mella, and with me, as always, is Amanda Loots. Amanda, let's start with you. What was your favorite Halloween candy to get when you were a trick or treating as a kid? **\[00:39\]** **Amanda:** Even now, anything chocolate and peanut butter, those Reese peanut butter cups, those Reese's pieces, you know what, even generic off brand, I'm eating them, and I'm stealing them from my kid. **\[00:53\]** **Sean:** The Reese cups are good, but they're very messy, and they now made a bar **\[00:56\]** **Amanda:** That's a Reese bar. Have you seen that? I have of it's that I'm OG. Oh, I'm intrigued. It's good. I like the original. Okay. **\[01:05\]** **Amanda:** I'll accept that answer. I'll eat it, but I like the. I like the cups as well, but I gotta try those. The the bar. **\[01:12\]** **Sean:** Speaking now, that's Sean Smith. He's with us here. Sean, coffee crisp, overrated, underrated, we're rated just right. Oh, completely underrated. **\[01:21\]** **Amanda:** It is the chocolate bar of chocolate bars. It is the king of chocolate bars, the emperor of chocolate bars. There is nothing better than a coffee cruse. **\[01:30\]** **Amanda:** I would give it a dukedum, maybe. Like, it's a good chocolate, it's a good candy bar, but... **\[01:36\]** **Amanda:** Amanda, you are dead to me. **\[01:40\]** **Amanda:** We will physically fight later. **\[01:42\]** **Amanda:** The Reese's cups are cups, they're not chocolate bars. We asked about a chocolate bar. It's the king of chocolate bars. The emperor of chocolate bars. This is Mr. Podantic. **\[01:51\]** **Sean:** Don't forget me to talk to him. So, yeah. **\[01:53\]** **Amanda:** But why? What is your then and now favorite Halloween candy? **\[01:59\]** **Sean:** You know, I have to say, coffee crisp is eye up there. It's hard to beat. I'd also like the Reese ones, though. I'm a huge fan of that. I get them, people give them to me all the time. Whenever they give me chocolate. **\[02:11\]** **Amanda:** Do you have your own opinion? Or are you just going to piggyback off of me and Sean? **\[02:15\]** **Sean:** I swear to God, those are my, I do like, I also like Kit Kat. I am now these days in my adult life. I'm more of a dark chocolate guy. I'm into dark chocolate. So very, very high, you know, 90% and higher. **\[02:28\]** **Amanda:** I gotta say, of the three chocolate bars that were mentioned, those are the three that I impulse at the supermarket when I'm in checkout and feeling hungry. The Reese and the KitKat and the CoffeeCrisp. Yeah, those are the three that, **\[02:41\]** **Sean:** oh, occasionally I'll get a bounty to you. And by the way, this episode sponsored by Nestle. I don't want Nestle as his sponsor, I don't know who to do I. **\[02:53\]** **Amanda:** Remember when we were planning this episode and we were like, yeah, it'd be awesome **\[02:58\]** **Sean:** to keep it a tight 30, good job, I know, I know, I know, like 90% of our audiences rolling their eyes going, don't do this waffly stuff at the beginning, just get to the interesting web. **\[03:09\]** **Amanda:** So Amanda, what are we talking about today? **\[03:12\]** **Amanda:** Right. an extra fun surprise, I thought that I would come up with the topic on my own and I'm super excited to hear what the two of you have to say about it. I want to talk about different workplace personalities but not all of them, just the ones that you could be potentially conflicting with and then maybe how you can like get around that and resolve it or at at least like work with it. **\[03:42\]** **Amanda:** Right, man. So how to handle conflicting personalities in the workplace. Sounds good to me. **\[03:46\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. So what I've done is I've like, I'm sure you do. You conflict with everybody. I've broken it down into a couple of generic categories that I've come up with. And I'm sure we can all come up with a couple of examples of each of these categories. So are you ready to go? **\[04:08\]** **Sean:** Yep, far away. **\[04:09\]** **Amanda:** I am ready to go. Good, I got four categories. Here we go. The first one is what I like to call my life is work. This is the type of person on the team where you wake up in the morning and there's already like three emails from them that they sent overnight. And you think to yourself, what are you doing? Can you not make a friend? **\[04:36\]** **Sean:** Maybe they're just really passionate about their job. I guess that's possible, but that is a little over the top for sure. **\[04:44\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, it's the kind of person who doesn't know how to set boundaries and limits within their own life. And they just let their job define who they are. Yes. Yes. I feel like I'm the opposite. My motto, as I've mentioned previously, is I want to work as little as possible. **\[05:05\]** **Amanda:** for any listeners who want to have help with their website, maybe don't contact Sean, he's lazy, **\[05:12\]** **Amanda:** but I didn't say a no word as little as possible. **\[05:18\]** **Amanda:** So then if you've got someone on your team who's like that, how do you work with them? How do you continue to have like a positive work environment? **\[05:30\]** **Amanda:** Well, I think that the key here is what I said earlier is setting boundaries, setting limits, don't check your email after work hours. And if you do check it, don't respond. And at least in Ontario, there are now laws that about being forced to work outside of normal working hours. And I know in other regions of the world there are, so you could, I don't know how realistic it is to try and enforce that. I mean, you still got to deal with company culture, but just avoid answering until you're at the office. **\[06:09\]** **Amanda:** Do you think that these new, I don't even know if they're government rules, I definitely don't want to call them laws, but do you think that they would apply the same to contractors such as us or do you think that they're really mostly just geared towards employees? **\[06:26\]** **Amanda:** I think they're geared towards employees, but contractors should take the advice to heart as well, because that's part of my, I wanna work as a law as possible as I set limits with my clients. Like, they get emails, they send the emails. Occasionally I see them come in, but I don't read them, and I 100% I'm not responding, unless the headline is clearly like, oh, my site is exploded. Ooh, Sean better get on that. But if it's just like updates to what We're an ongoing project. Nah, so I'm not responding to you at 10 at night. **\[07:01\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I don't think we'd be as protected by any laws like that as contractors for sure, but it's a matter of just explaining what your personal practices are. Maybe you want to send emails at four in the morning, whatever, just so you know, I check at this time of the day. I have a friend who works in our industry who, back when Blackberries were a thing, She was working with someone and they said, if I recall correctly, they said, okay, what's your availability? And she said nine to five. And then they said, what's your blackberry availability? And she laughed, apparently, and said nine to five, because they were expecting, you know. That is an awesome way to set boundaries. **\[07:43\]** **Amanda:** Well, and I think it's about setting those realistic expectations, you know, and do it like right from the beginning. **\[07:51\]** **Sean:** Yeah, definitely. **\[07:52\]** **Amanda:** Oh, yeah, 100% at the beginning, because it's hard to reign in behavior that you've just like, go on. You're just gonna have trouble with that. **\[08:00\]** **Amanda:** Get a set of precedent, yeah. Okay, so the next personality that you might have a conflict with is what I like to call those old school views. Now this could be a person who has been working at the company for a very long time and their opinion is always, Oh, well, it's always been done this way. Or maybe even a new employee that's come in or a new person to the project or whatever. And what you hear most from them is, oh, well, at the last place I was at, we used to do it this way. And they just like expect all of that to just be like moved over with them. Have you ever experienced anything like that? **\[08:39\]** **Sean:** Boy, howdy, howdy. **\[08:41\]** **Amanda:** I think I might have been that person. **\[08:43\]** **Sean:** Really? Oh, I wanna hear that story. **\[08:46\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. No, it's just sometimes it's just easier to do it way you've always done it. Sure. And it's hard to be flexible. I mean, I do pride myself on being open to new ideas, but I know that sometimes I'm not. I find that it's very common in IT **\[09:04\]** **Sean:** departments. Oh, 100%. At least in my experience, because IT departments are often bound by contracts with Microsoft or whatever providers, and they really can't in a lot of ways deviate from that too much. So I've had a lot of conflicts where I've come into organizations and, you know, there might be some plug-in that will achieve some feature very quickly, but they're like, no, we have to, we're going to assign a team on our here at the organization, they're going to work on this for a few weeks, they'll build something for you. And meanwhile, I could, in 30 minutes, I could have this up and running with a plug-in or with whatever CMS, and that can sometimes be an issue for sure. So yeah, look out for that type of person in terms of how to deal with them. I guess that's not so clear cut. **\[09:51\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I think it's hard to deal with a situation in a tech-related job where people are not willing or able to try out new technologies. Yeah, I think this, in this case, it's tough to find some make a decision about how to deal with someone stuck in their ways because there might be a good reason that you're not aware of. **\[10:14\]** **Sean:** It would be very common in our industry for sure to have that kind of thing. **\[10:17\]** **Amanda:** It's someone else's problem to deal with. If you are a worker bee at a company, low person on the totem pole. If you are a contractor who has been brought in to work on this project, it's not up to us to make those decisions about whose technology wins, who gets to make the final decisions. That's someone else's pay grade needs to make that decision. And yeah, maybe you have a conversation with them, especially if you've been brought in as an expert, so that you can say, listen, here is my opinion, and that's all I'm gonna say about it, and then just let someone else make the decisions, and I think also maybe let someone else be the person who talks to the person set in their ways, to just be like, listen, we've heard what you're saying, we're not doing it, stop pushing it. **\[11:02\]** **Amanda:** Yep, good advice, absolutely, 100% agree. **\[11:05\]** **Amanda:** Okay, the next category of conflicting personality that you might have encountered is just a person who just doesn't know what they're doing. **\[11:16\]** **Sean:** They just do not know what is going on. **\[11:19\]** **Amanda:** I'm sure of my students who are listening, you have been stuck with this person on a class project. We've all been stuck with that person on any other number of projects. So Mike, how do you deal with them? **\[11:35\]** **Sean:** Okay, first of all, I want to, this is something that I refer to as the bubble boy I want to bring this up. I'm not referring to a Seinfeld episode about the bubble boy, but I am referring to a 30-rock episode called The Bubble. It was featured John Hamm from Mad Men and his character was dating Liz Lemon and the whole premise was John Hamm is so handsome that he's lived in a bubble his whole life where people give them free stuff. They let them off the hook with parking tickets, telling them he's good at things that he's not good at. I think there's even a scene where he says something like, as they say in France, blib, blib, blib, blib, blub, and he thinks they can speak French because people always tell them you speak French really well and he was just saying gibberish. I've worked with people who are really, really attractive and you're just like, they probably just coasted through their life and no one wants to bother telling them they're not Very good at what they're doing not every attractive person is bad at their job. That's for sure. I'm sure also the bubble effect could be applied to people who come from a wealthy family with connections where you can get ahead just by who you know yeah, I guess that's another way it can happen yet and yeah, I can think of specific people that I would say why are they in this role they're not really qualified to be doing what they're doing in terms of dealing with them. I mean try not to do the work for them. That's for sure. If it's something that you're able to do and they're not don't just like pick up the slack, maybe mention it to them in a polite way that you look, you know, I'm not comfortable with the way this is going, could we talk about, you know, just to kind of light the fire under them that kind of thing. Hopefully something like that would work and you wouldn't have to go over their head. That would be very awkward. What do you guys think? **\[13:22\]** **Amanda:** I think that it's a very tough one to deal with, without going over their head. And adjacent to the bubble boy is the person who gets promoted to their level of incompetency. **\[13:39\]** **Amanda:** The failing upward. **\[13:41\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, well, you get promoted until you cannot do the job and then you just stay there forever because they're not going to fire you. You do great, great, great. right? And then you get to that last level and is like, well, you suck now, but we'll just keep you there. And so all their underlings have to deal with the suck. Been there or done that. Didn't know how to deal with it except to change jobs. Yeah. And I think **\[14:06\]** **Amanda:** eventually when you get up to, when you have somebody, when you're dealing with them that have gotten up to that level, especially if they're like the manager or the boss or whatever, I read, I read, I was googling for this episode and somebody described it as swoop and poop, feedback. So they'll just like, they'll come in, they don't know what's going on, but they just look around and they're like, mm, no, and then they just leave. And then you're stuck, cleaning up. Like without any guidance, without any, how to make it better. Oh, swoop, poop, poop. That is awesome. **\[14:39\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Yeah, that's often, in my experience, something that happens from senior management. If you're like going through some redesign or whatever, they need sign off from the boss. They come in and the one thing they say is, can you change the colors to blue? I don't like that green. And then they take off. And then they don't realize there was a whole process that led to the development of that, was it green, which I won the one that I said it was originally. And they're not aware of that whole process. They just swoop in, make their changes, that you have to deal with with all that. So that's a problem for sure. **\[15:14\]** **Amanda:** Well, and they don't even make the changes, they just tell you. **\[15:17\]** **Sean:** Yeah. And not a reason, no reason. They just their own personal opinion, and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. **\[15:26\]** **Amanda:** Hi, Sean here. Hope you're enjoying this episode of The Website 101 Podcast. We'd love it if you'd give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. These kind of reviews help new listeners find out **\[15:40\]** **Amanda:** us and allow us to keep doing the show. Thanks. So this is this is the last specific category that I came up with invented whatever you want to call it. **\[15:50\]** **Sean:** That I know everything. Do it my way. The know it all. The know it all. Narcissism I guess would be a way to describe that. Someone who's like, I want you to work for me to make my life better. That kind of thing. So Amanda, how about you start this one **\[16:08\]** **Amanda:** off and tell us how you would deal with it. **\[16:12\]** **Amanda:** Oh, I have had to deal with this. I think there was a little bit of sexism involved with this, too. But I was working on a project. And there was a project manager with some guy. I think a younger guy than I was at the time. And he decided that just any bit of code that I wrote, it wasn't good enough. And so he started like sending me code snippets. And I would reply back and be like, it's thanks, but this isn't what the project's asking for. This isn't, you know, what the client wanted. I'm not gonna put it in. And then he would reply and just be like, do it. And finally, I was like, I was like, okay, here. And I like put this stuff in the project. And when we reviewed with the client and the client was like, no, I don't know. I don't know what is going on with any of this. I actually had to go and talk to like, I had to go above this head to the person who had like hired this project manager and just be like, or was it? No, actually, I think he went to go talk to them and he was like, so who wins? Who wins? Is it going to be me or Amanda? And both of the owners were like, Amanda's the tech person, if she says it's not good, what are you doing? Like, let Amanda do her job. **\[17:32\]** **Amanda:** Good. Nice. **\[17:34\]** **Amanda:** The head's your back. Yeah, they did. **\[17:36\]** **Sean:** And when it's a sexism issue, going over people's heads is perfectly warranted, of course. I know you said you didn't do that, they did, but I was about to. Yeah. How often do you think people who are sort of the know it all and do things my way? How often do you think it's based on their own insecurity that they know that they're not very qualified about something and they're just trying to compensate in some way? **\[18:02\]** **Amanda:** I mean, I know exactly what you mean. I'm sure that there's a lot of people who are like that, but I think that, and again, it could be sexism, but I think that whenever I have experienced it, all of the examples I can think of off the top of my head have always been guys, yes granted, that's the industry that we're in, but they, it's almost, the vibe that I get from it is that they're trying to want up me. They're trying to show me that they know what they're talking about. I have a student, one semester, who would like keep interrupting me as I was teaching to like tell like to tell the whole class stuff and I'd be like that's that's great input thank you and I would go to the next slide and it was literally everything he had like just been talking about so like eventually I had to tell him I'm like you know what can you just like I want to hear what you've got to say but can you just wait until I like get through the stuff that I want to say and like literally every single time for the next five times he put his hand up like I had just beaten him to the punch so I don't know if he was trying to show off or he was trying to one-up me or maybe prove to me that he was better than the class? Like, I have no idea what was going on. **\[19:11\]** **Amanda:** A question and interruption once. Okay, you're a little bit keen twice. You're a little bit keen, but more than that, now you're a pain in the ass. Yeah, no, for sure. **\[19:21\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I'm sure you have much more, you know, experience, I assume, dealing with this kind of stuff than either of us just because of the industry, as you say. **\[19:30\]** **Amanda:** with that. But yeah, let's stick to the, let's stick to the, uh, that I know everything. Yeah. Do things my way. Type of, uh, type of personality. You must have experienced that as well. **\[19:42\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. How did you deal with it? You have to show that you're correct. It's like, they're trying to do like what you, what happened with you is that the higher ups came down and said, well, look, she's the expert. You need to demonstrate your expertise and that you are actually correct. And without doing it in a way that you come off as an a so you know you need to be humble or polite and just maybe humble is the wrong approach with somebody's being like that but it's like look here's the proof **\[20:13\]** **Sean:** this is the evidence that I am right yeah and if they still denying it then it's **\[20:18\]** **Amanda:** just a power trip or you know maybe they're mansplaining or being sexist or Typically, I just feel like it's somebody who wants to exert their power or feel powerful over somebody. They're basically a bully in the workplace. **\[20:35\]** **Sean:** What you said, Sean, about evidence, that's the key. It's not even about proving that I'm right. It's more proving that this approach is the correct way to go. Let's say if you're, again, just to keep in our industry here, you're going through a rebuild and going back to the blue and green buttons, maybe you've done testing and you've identified that the blue resonates or whatever, let's say blue. Blue resonates better with the audience and if he prefers the green and was like, do it my way, if you show them, look, this is the testing, this is what it, you know, the results from it, what it showed us, that the other color works better. Then it's really difficult to argue against that because everyone now knows, oh, we have actual evidence that that way is going to work, where's your evidence, and yet you want us to do it your way, you know, it won't make sense at that point. So I think that's a good way to go about it, just get the evidence. **\[21:27\]** **Amanda:** I have one more thought about this as well as you could, somebody who's, say, do it my way, my way is correct, ask them to explain why their way is better. If they can't explain it, if they go back to the, well, I've always done it, which is kind of back at the top of the show, or some other, what is it? **\[21:51\]** **Amanda:** to authority. This way over here. Do you have a list of personality traits over there? **\[21:57\]** **Amanda:** What is that? Oh, apparently it does. I would try not to commit logical fallacies, **\[22:02\]** **Sean:** poster. Wow, that's great. I love that poster. I've never seen that. Yeah, you can find it online **\[22:07\]** **Amanda:** for free. I printed it up and framed it. So appeal to authority. Sure. Explain yourself and if they can't or they just say, hey, I'm your boss. Do it this way. Then they're doing an appeal to authority without any evidence, you're probably not going to win, but at least you know what's going on. **\[22:26\]** **Sean:** If they are the authority, yeah, that's right. So yeah, I do look at that from time to time. **\[22:31\]** **Amanda:** That's great. Okay, so, um, oh, I will include a link to it in the show notes so you can print it **\[22:36\]** **Amanda:** ...I had to like where like even if I wasn't listening to music I would still have to wear like headphones so that they would just like not bother me. I heard an entire like soap opera saga that was going on with her neighbor's cat being sick because the neighbor was giving the cat like human vitamins like I just like I just did not want to deal with it. I did not want to hear it. I did not want to be a part of any of it. And all I could really do was just smile and nod and be like, you know, non-committal. Ah, like, ah, can you imagine? And then, okay, I've got some work to do now and then put my headphones back on and you know, bob a little bit until they left to pretend I was listening to music. Right, exactly, yeah. Yeah, so if you picture, I don't work in an office with all kinds of people, thank goodness, but when I did, frequently what would happen people would come over to my desk and sometimes sit on the desk, you know, like a cubicle and start talking. And I just drove me crazy because it breaks my workflow and I don't want interactions in that way, send me an email, all that kind of thing... **\[23:40\]** **Sean:** Right, exactly, yeah. Yeah, so if you picture, I don't work in an office with all kinds of people, thank goodness, but when I did, frequently what would happen people would come over to my desk and sometimes sit on the desk, you know, like a cubicle and start talking. And I just drove me crazy because it breaks my workflow and I don't want interactions in that way, send me an email, all that kind of thing. I've actually heard of an approach some people do, I've heard the headphones thing, some people wear headphones, even if they're not listening just to make it look like. But I've heard you can get a, you can get a, like a post-it note, not a post-it note, like some kind of a sign, and it actually says something like, I don't know, if this sign is up, it means I am working hard. Please do not disturb. And yeah, and they put it like on the back of their chair or something, and apparently that's affected for some people, but I don't know, I think there's still be some people who would come over and be like, oh, what a funny sign. Anyway, and then get into the, yeah. Oh, you know those people like that, yeah, yeah. **\[24:40\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, Sean, do you know any other personality types that you conflict with? **\[24:46\]** **Amanda:** ...And I walked into the office to ask something or whatever of the receptionist. And my new boss was there. And for some reason he didn't like me. I don't know why it was never explained to me, but this guy went on a 20-minute temper tantrum. Literally jumping up and down, yelling and screaming at you... In it like this is not the way you treat a human being yeah yeah 100% agree with Mike I don't know I I was just shocked. It was my, normally, I kind of an aggressive person in situations like this. So my reaction might have actually been better to have been shell shocked and overreact, which leads me to the situation where I did react... **\[25:52\]** **Amanda:** Did you eat his sandwich? **\[25:54\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, what was the issue exactly? It happened within a minute of walking in and I think I disagreed with him on something or I said, no, I can't do that. And it's been 20 years so I don't remember all the details. What I do remember is leaving the office, going into the teacher's office and letting loose. I just vented for 15 minutes. All the other teachers are like holy f\*\*k. What, what, whoops, sorry, f-bomb. You can take care of that. Uh, you know what I mean? **\[26:28\]** **Sean:** And now those teachers are on their podcast saying, this guy one time named Sean, he said he had to be **\[26:33\]** **Amanda:** probably rage fit. I don't know what it was. In any case, I didn't do anything except sit there and take it and then go and vent in front of my other teachers and then afterwards we went out for drinks that night and got over it. So how did I deal with it? I didn't. I just sat there **\[26:55\]** **Sean:** and sucked it up and then left and vented. Now, this is not a judgment on you, Sean. I know there's 20 years ago and I don't know what you we're going through or whatever and you can do with your your own thing but personally for me to our listener I would say if you encounter this at a job don't do not accept that that that is not appropriate no one should be treating you like that go to HR or quit or something yeah don't don't fight them or yell back but you know deal with it **\[27:24\]** **Amanda:** in it like this is not the way you treat a human being yeah yeah 100% agree with Mike I don't know I I was just shocked. It was my, normally, I kind of an aggressive person in situations like this. So my reaction might have actually been better to have been shell shocked and overreact, which leads me to the situation where I did react. And that happened at a job. The only job I had here in Toronto, so I moved back to Canada. And the job for the most part was good, except for the project manager. And I'm gonna call the project manager, John, not his real name. John was a condescending douchebag who acted like he was superior to everybody in every single way possible. He was the classic greasy car salesman, like a sleaze. A sleaze bag, yeah. And he's like pretending to be your friend and whatever, anyways. After dealing with this guy forever and forever, he came in and just got right in my face, literally inches from my face, and being the sleazeback, I stood up and I let loose on him. Verbaly. Almost can do, like, yeah, I turned into the guy I just told the story about. Yeah, yeah, got it. After that, no more problems with him. John turned out to leave me alone. **\[28:58\]** **Sean:** Good, and that was your golf buddy. **\[29:00\]** **Amanda:** I also got the next day off of work. **\[29:04\]** **Amanda:** Because they were scared of you, man. **\[29:06\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, well, it was a small company. There was like 10 people there and the boss called me into his office afterwards. I expected to get fired and he's like, listen, I know John can be difficult. Take the day off tomorrow. Wow. It's like why don't you fire John? Everybody hates him. Wouldn't do that. I don't know why. All I know is I got the day off and I got John off my back. Nice. Well, that's good. Still, not the greatest story because I did completely overreact. **\[29:38\]** **Sean:** I bet you're even more glad than I am that you're not working in an office with lots of people. This is the kind of experience you go through. **\[29:47\]** **Amanda:** Well, look, over working for 30 years, over the 30 years of working that I've had, I've had two major conflicts, which I guess is a lot in the grand scheme or thing, but it's only two. Most of my work in life has been good. Yeah, right. Those are definitely memorable though. **\[30:04\]** **Amanda:** So to wrap it up, do you have any high level information for our listeners? Mike, you keep saying listeners singular. We have more than one. I promise you. **\[30:17\]** **Sean:** OK, I won't get into it. There's a story behind it. **\[30:20\]** **Amanda:** Anyway, so yeah, so do you have any high level information for listeners that maybe they could just carry around in the back of their head. Mine would be, for example, you don't have to be best friends. You don't have to get along with everyone that you're working with and dealing with. But you still need to be respectful. You still need to be kind of open-minded. And then at the end of the day, cover your butt, and make sure you get your work done. And then that's what's going to show you **\[30:51\]** **Sean:** to be the shining star. Yeah, that's good advice I think. I also think just going back to what we said earlier about the evidence, having evidence if there's a conflict, evidence for your position being the correct one or the most appropriate one. Yeah, I think it all comes down to just do your work and do your work as best as you can. And if there's other reasons, like conflicts like this, that prevent you from delivering the best product. I mean, it's kind of out of your hand sometimes, so just do the best you can do. and accept that there are other people involved that are going to impact the website or whatever it is you're doing. And it's only a job, you know? You have the life outside of that. **\[31:34\]** **Amanda:** Absolutely, so yeah, you know, it's like sometimes you meet someone and they rub you the wrong way. It's just kind of like there's a feeling there's something about them you don't like. Well, the best thing to do is just pretend that you like them when you're at work and be civil and talk to them, do what you want and do what needs to be done to get the job done. Don't create this conflict because of some weird feeling. That weird feeling is just probably warning you to not be their friend outside of work. There's, but you can be friendly with somebody and not be their friend. That's all. The core job you need to be. **\[32:11\]** **Amanda:** Maybe. Yeah, yeah. **\[32:12\]** **Sean:** Right, professional, sure. **\[32:14\]** **Amanda:** So listeners, either the one or plural, Mike, I'm very excited to hear this reason off air. If you have what I think would be cool is to maybe do a follow up episode with the personality types that you like working with, like just the sort of the stereotypical, really great people in every work environment. So listeners, if you have any stories or any like categories, or even better tips on how to keep your eyes open for those types of people, let us know either in the YouTube comments, or we're gonna put this episode on YouTube for a, or drop us a line on the contact form. website 101podcast.com slash contact. **\[32:51\]** **Amanda:** Yes, looking forward to hearing from everyone. Thank you for listening. Bye. Bye. **\[33:00\]** **Sean:** Hey, thanks for listening today. This is Mike Mella. You can find me online at BeLikeWater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella. **\[33:08\]** **Amanda:** Posted in part today by me, Sean Smith. You can find me at my website, caffeinecreations.ca or on LinkedIn at caffeinecreations. **\[33:19\]** **Amanda:** One-third of the website 101 Podcast Talent is provided by me, Amanda Loots. You can find me online at my website, AmandaLoots.com. I also hang out on Twitter sometimes, you can find me at Amanda Loots Tio. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 06 - 1 [ Tools of the Trade](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-1/tools-of-the-trade/) - 2 [ Website Contract Advice From an Actual Lawyer](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-2/website-contract-advice-from-an-actual-lawyer/) - 3 [ Choosing a CMS](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-3/choosing-a-cms/) - 4 [ Tips for Website Maintenance](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-4/tips-for-website-maintenance/) - 5 [ Working with Conflicting Personalities](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-5/working-with-conflicting-personalities/) - 6 [ Building an Online Course with Jane Atkinson](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-6/building-an-online-course-with-jane-atkinson/) - 7 [ PodCamp Toronto 2023 Recap](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-7/podcamp-toronto-2023-recap/) - 8 [ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly about RFPs](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-8/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-about-rfps/) - 9 [ Here's how to work from paradise](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-9/heres-how-to-work-from-paradise/) - 10 [ Rebroadcast: Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-10/rebroadcast-pimp-your-typography/) - 11 [ Internet Privacy with Michael Geist](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-11/internet-privacy/) - 12 [ Lessons from a plugin developer with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-12/lessons-from-a-plugin-developer-with-ben-croker/) - 13 [ Stand Out on Social Media with Jessica Perreault](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-13/social-media-with-jessica-perreault/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>