My Co-Worker’s Annoying Habit Is Making My Life Hell

Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here . (It’s anonymous!)

I have a co-worker who scream sneezes and it enrages me to no end every time it happens. I’ve joked about it with her that it scares me so much, and asked, does she have to scream? She says she can’t help it. Do you have any mindset shifts for me to practice acceptance of an incredibly performative and annoying habit?

This sounds really distracting! I’m so curious how this habit of hers developed, but in terms of the more immediate issue, I think you have two options. You could start wearing noise-cancelling headphones, although I’m not sure how feasible that is at your workplace (and will also mean that you’re blocking out everyone else, which may not be ideal). The other option is to start practicing radical acceptance, and for this I actually think that meditation could help because it forces you to block out everything around you and really focus for a certain amount of time. If you’re able to start doing meditating, say, every morning, I’m confident that the practice will help you redirect some of your anger over the sneezing and, hopefully, come to just block it out.

Semi-related, I often play tennis in a public park that always has a ton of other stuff going on—from kickball games to dogs barking to helicopters flying overhead to the occasional fight. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even notice the chaos anymore while I’m playing because I need to be so focused, but when players from private clubs play against our team, they inevitably complain about how loud and distracting our park is, and I just smile inwardly and use it against them. I tell you this because I think just generally, learning how to focus and not getting flustered by distractions is a really important skill in many aspects of life, not just sneezing co-workers or tennis matches. I’m confident you will be able to learn to tune her out!

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I have a very stressful job at a non-profit that supports people living in poverty. I work directly with our clients. Our organization can help directly with one aspect of what our clients need and only provide information for resources about other aspects. I am very good at my job. Where I can help, I do help, and in that sense my job is fulfilling. But I feel powerless to do anything about the many other areas where they need help besides give them information and encourage them to contact the other agencies. This has made me depressed and I feel pretty defeated a lot of the time. Recently a friend of mine asked why I didn’t just make the calls to other agencies on behalf of my clients. It would be against the rules of our organization, where I’m paid to do a certain kind of work only. We also cannot share personal information with clients, so I can’t follow-up with them on my own.