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Career Couch

I Find You Annoying, but I Can Cope

Q. Some of your co-workers are getting on your nerves. Is it you or is it them?

A. It may be a combination of the two, and the physical layout of your office may be a factor, too. Open offices — which intensify the noises and interruptions of others — increase the irritation factor in the workplace, says Jonathan Littman, co-author of a new book, “I Hate People.”

Consider, too, that workplaces are becoming more diverse, with people likely to have widely different habits, preferences and sensitivities, said Bruce M. Patton, deputy director of the Harvard Negotiation Project; it’s inevitable that these will intersect in ways that leave people frustrated and annoyed.

In a workplace, “you throw different people together, they don’t necessarily want to be there and they have different motivations,” said Robert I. Sutton, a professor and organizational psychologist at Stanford. Then create a situation of interdependence, and tensions erupt, he said.

Q. How can you can minimize the impact of co-workers who talk ad nauseam about their personal problems? Or who blather on and on at meetings? Or who are constantly late? Or who talk loudly on the phone, or whose cellphones ring constantly? Or who eat smelly food at their desks or slurp their coffee?

A. You could choose to seethe inwardly and complain bitterly to family members and friends after work, but this is not the best approach.

If you can’t bring yourself to talk to the person who’s annoying you, try to form a coping strategy, said Barbara Gray, a professor and director of the Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation at Penn State. She divides annoyances into two categories: “the ones you can put up with and the ones you can’t.”

In an open office, Mr. Littman said, you can send “both subtle and concrete signals so people will be less likely to annoy you.” For example, you can create a pseudo-door to your cubicle by blocking the entrance with a chair so people won’t interrupt you.

You can also set up escape hatches throughout your day so you aren’t continually exposed to irritations, Mr. Littman said.

He recommends “commandeering a meeting room to do unmeeting work” if possible. Or, when a co-worker starts to eat some odoriferous food, make a coffee run and maybe work at the coffee shop. These creative breaks are good for productivity anyway, Mr. Littman said.

Sometimes it’s best to cultivate “the art of emotional detachment and indifference,” Professor Sutton said.

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Credit...Chris Reed

“Don’t let it touch your soul,” he added. “That’s a very Zen type of thing, but there are times when you just have to learn not to care.”

That attitude, and a good set of noise-reduction headphones, just might do the trick, he said.

Q. One co-worker grates on your nerves, but you’ve found that he doesn’t have the same effect on others. What could this mean?

A. You may be meeting a kind of personal nemesis, Professor Gray said. This is someone who pushes your buttons because of a psychological issue not connected with work.

“It’s a subconscious reaction, so it’s very hard to catch this,” she said. One sign, she said, is that the same kind of behavior in others offends you outside of work, and that you continually overreact to it.

Q. It’s very hard to talk to someone about their annoying habits or behavior. How do you decide whether to have that talk, and how do you approach it?

A. You may need to talk to the person when your coping strategies have failed and the annoying person is interfering with your work, Professor Gray said.

Be as neutral and nonjudgmental as possible, and understand that people may be completely unaware that they are being annoying.

“Share what the behavior is and how it affects you,” Professor Gray said. It could be something like this: “When you interrupt me when I’m in the middle of thought, I feel annoyed because I’m not able to fully contribute to the meeting,” she said. Then you need to hear the other person’s side, she said.

During this conversation, you may come to an unpleasant realization: You, too, can annoy others.

For example, “It could be that you take up more than your share of the airtime and the only way they can get their time is to interrupt you,” Professor Gray said. “You have to be prepared to hear that.”

Emphasize that the person is not necessarily doing anything wrong, but that the behavior is distracting to you, said Mr. Patton, a co-author of “Difficult Conversations.” Say that you want a solution that accommodates the needs of both of you, because your working relationship is important, he said.

Q. At what point should a manager become involved?

A. If the behavior is damaging rather than annoying, or if it is affecting many people, a manager may need to intervene.

Professor Sutton said he knew of a situation involving chip designers with very poor social skills who refused to cooperate with other workers. Ultimately, he said, the management decided that it would be best to “slide their assignments under the door and run away.”

E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com.

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