How do you handle passive aggression? I find it so annoying to deal with because the person is usually dismissive of my annoyance, which then compounds the issue (for me, anyway).
I'll give you an example of something that happened, not in a hospital but in a work setting, but something like this could easily happen in a hospital. I'll say what I did....but "what would you do?" (I feel like John Quiñones say that! LOL!)
So - I used to manage a department in a store. I was hardly ever in my department because I was always given other tasks/jobs. Anyway - I went on vacation. On my return, the store manager had allowed one of the passive aggressive people to change things around in my department. Not only had he allowed it, but he'd given her the time to do it. Plus, I found out, she'd spent 4-5 hours off the clock working in it.
I had left for vacation just after a major re-model of the entire dept, so of course it is a
mess. So this other worker says to me, "oh when you left I had to work
your dept on delivery day and it was a complete mess. The next week this
other person worked it, and she did a "beeeeeeeautiful job".
So I said, "What do you mean by that?" and she said "Oh nothing". So I took it into
the office and said, "do you understand why what you just said would upset
me?", well, she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "I didn't mean anything by it". Yeah, right-oh, totally loaded statement.
Then she walks out saying "He's (the store manager) got me coming up behind you to pick up the mess".
So, I blame all 3 of them - the 2 P.A. employees and the manager for buying into the game. I've looked very carefully at my role in this, and I have my suspicions as to why they were like this, but it's nothing I actually did. I think they found out I was on a higher wage for one thing.
But - that's really by-the-by - my main question is - how do you confront such behavior? Especially if you feel it truly isn't warranted.
As you can see, I did confront it, and was met with a dismissive shrug and a sarcastic comment as she walked off...agh!
