NO IDEA WHY OFFICE GIRL DISLIKES ME

Dear Coleen

I’m a guy in my mid-20s and have a weird situation going on at work. The office assistant, who everyone loves and has lots of banter with daily, absolutely hates my guts and I’ve no idea why.

I started work there a few months ago and was friendly to her from the start, but she doesn’t treat me like she treats the rest of my colleagues – she can’t do enough for them.

If I have to ask her to do something (always politely and respectfully), she takes an age to do it or “forgets”. The other week she “forgot” to book my plane ticket, which caused a lot of grief and I had to rearrange meetings.

I have no idea what I could have done to make her behave like this.

Coleen says

It’s very frustrating when a person takes against us for no apparent reason, and I think most of us have experienced that to some degree. Sometimes personalities just clash.

Rather than drive yourself mad, accept that it’s her issue and not yours, and just approach her about it in a calm way?

Why not say, “I just wondered if I’d done anything to offend you because you don’t seem that keen to work with me and I thought that maybe we can improve things?” Approach it positively.

It might be a case that she’s unhappy and frustrated at work, and feels put upon, and while she won’t risk acting up with more senior people, she feels she can unleash it on you!

But at the end of the day, she’s there to do a job and to support all the staff in the team.

Don’t let it affect your job, which is still pretty new, but if it continues then have a word with your manager.