Katherine McClintic

Katherine McClintic

Software Engineer

Conflict in the Workplace

8/11/2014

A brief case study.

Coworker Fight

Emotional conflict can be difficult to think about until long after the incident (and sometimes not even then), but getting to the root of the conflict and thinking about how you handled it can help the next time a similar situation arises.

The Setup

For about a year after finishing my undergraduate degree I worked at a movie theater that showed independent films. Our clientele were not the easiest to handle and it was certainly not a glamorous job, but there were a couple of my coworkers who tried to get along by doing the least amount of work possible. This was especially irritating when cleaning the theaters after sold out shows and when trying to close, when all of us wanted to get home but one or two people were holding us up with their laziness. After repeated non-action by one particular individual, and no seeming intervention from management, I decided to speak to the person about it.

The Escalation

I confronted the individual in the back room, away from other coworkers and lingering customers. She didn't seem receptive to what I was saying, but I tried to keep things simple and as non-attacking as possible. I explained that none of us particularly enjoyed all of the cleaning up, but that if everyone fully pitched in then we would get out sooner. She looked pretty bored and disinterested the whole time, but she didn't start yelling or attacking me. On the next couple of closing shifts I had with her, I noticed a slight increase in her involvement with cleanup. However, she quit shortly after that so I'm not sure what the long term effect would have been.

Perspective

Looking back on it, I'm pretty happy with how I handled it. I think that approaching her first was a good decision as going above her to one of the managers or supervisors might have been seen as tattling and made her even less receptive. I could have stayed silent altogether, but that would have allowed the problem to fester into something with a potentially bigger explosion to come. While the effect that her lack of involvement had on the rest of us was pretty apparent to us, she might not have realized the effect of her (in)actions, so telling her how it made the rest of us feel was a good approach. Calmly laying out the facts probably helped to turn her non-responsiveness into at least a few days of understanding. I am not a person who naturally enjoys confrontation, even when it is as calm as possible, but this experience gave me greater confidence in my ability to judge when confrontation is necessary and to handle it in an appropriate manner.