‘Scheming’ coworker tries to undermine and paint colleagues as incompetent, their boss starts to see through it: ‘He was inclined to take my side over hers’

In the work world, you can never truly trust anyone. Your coworker "besties" are there for you to bond with over the same unfortunate happenings in the office, but that doesn't mean you can count on them to be trustworthy individuals who are looking out for your best interests. At the end of the day, the method of survival in any workplace is never to play all of your cards. You just might end up kicking yourself for all the times you told your coworker one too many crazy stories… Or, you can do nothing at all, and colleagues will still have it out for you. Your choice!

How do we win if, no matter what we do, we are promised coworker relationship dissonance? One-sided "beef" is one of the trickiest to navigate because you can't change what you are, and they can't change how they feel about you. Some people are simply miserable, and unfortunately, that makes for a rather unpleasant experience in a work setting.

Nothing hurts more than a colleague immediately taking a dislike toward you, even more so when they try to paint you as some incompetent fool who shouldn't have been hired in the first place. The proof is in the pudding (or, workplace output), so you're not necessarily in any work danger, but the passive knowing that someone believes you to be a terrible employee feels terrible. Do you tell your boss? Feign contentment until it all blows over, if it ever does? Such situations are tricky; a lot of the resolutions might be too emotionally expensive to afford.

After all is said and done, it's your word against your angry colleague's. Does your boss see what's going on, too? They might, and are just waiting for you to make the first complaint. Such is the case in this next story, where a coworker targets their colleagues and deems them incompetent, only to take credit for the work they've done. Scroll to read.