Young Adult and post-apocalyptic? I'm there!
Check out the guest post written by the author on how to work with people you don't like. I think we've all been there, right?
Title: Evacuation
Series: The Seamus Chronicles #2
Author: K.D. McAdams
Publication Date: March 7th 2014
Genre: Young Adult, Post-Apocalyptic
Add: Goodreads
Synopsis
They have only one chance for survival, leave...the planet.
The virus that wiped out most of the human race is adapting to defeat the vaccine and kill the survivors. There is a government response protocol but it will kill them too, it involves a nuclear winter. The NASA scientists believe they can leave Earth and achieve faster than light travel, but Seamus doesn't want to slog through space. He knows that to survive they have to go somewhere fast. To save them all he needs to invent a warp drive and evacuate the planet.
Guest Post
How to Work with People You Don't Like
Focus on helping them and you might be surprised
by K.D. McAdams
Most of us are lucky that we don't face life or death situations daily. Still there are times in our lives that are a big deal where we have no choice but to work with someone we don't like. When walking away, or running, is not an option how do you deal with an annoying person and still create something good?
I can remember being assigned a lab partner in high school who grated my last nerve. This person had an older sibling and every assignment brought up the fact that he should 'Just get this from my brother.' I would have been fine with that except it never happened. He was too cool for me, for school, for everything. There was no way I was going to let him get the 'B' I was working towards.
It happened in my first job too, and I really needed that paycheck. One of my co-workers seemed to do anything she could to annoy the rest of us. After a call she would critique us even though she consistently received the worst customer feedback. She also complained constantly about call volume and the length of calls for the team, though she rarely answered her phone. The first one hundred times I heard the word headcount it was spoken by her claiming that we needed more. These are just two of many things that made her hard to work with.
In both cases I didn't have a choice, the people in charge didn't really care if we liked each other, I was getting compensated on results.
The high school lab work didn't go so well. Too many 'whatever's' and 'I don't cares' helped the two of us to a low C and a threat of no sports from my parents. Letting the person I didn't like do all the work, or not do the work in our case, wound up punishing me twice. First I had to sit with them three times a week and second I got a crappy grade.
With my early co-worker things turned out much better because of some advice I got from my boss. He said, "She just wants to feel needed. Find a way to help her and she'll either leave you alone or start being nice to you." Helping her turned out to be easy. She loved to run reports and roll a bunch of data into spreadsheets. Instead of arguing with her about the value of her reports, they were pointless; I spent five minutes once a week sending her my data.
Blindly helping annoying people is not the answer. It's your responsibility to know whom you have to work with and whom you can ignore. But the truth is, whether you work in corporate America, own a business or perform volunteer work you'll have to work with others. When someone bothers you think about how you can help them and you may see some of the following benefits.
- A new idea when looking from their perspective
- An easy fix like a daily compliment or saying thank you
- Increased productivity as you spend less time debating and more time on your areas of interest
Do you have any tricks for working with people you don't like?
K.D. McAdams writes stories about young people who make choices with their heart and not their head. 'Don't talk to strangers' is the most common phrase in our house, I have failed several art classes and I can't remember what I ate for breakfast. I have a son that loves to talk to strangers, my daughter is an incredible artist and I have another son that is a stickler for details with a near eidetic memory.
We nurture our kids everyday with advice and information but deep down they all have an element of nature that overrides our nurturing and influences their choices. Kids who have the courage to follow their instinct and make their own choices are the ones who make life memorable.
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I don't think I've made the best of bad situations when it comes to working with people I don't like. In high school and college I just told the person I didn't like them. Yikes! That is not on the list. Great guest post and best of luck to K.D. McAdams on Evacuation!
ReplyDeleteMaybe that should be on the list, lol! ;) There's not a lot you can do, and that makes it worse, especially at a job. I remember working at Kroger, and this woman who was like THIRTY years older than me didn't like me so she kept marking out the weekends I had off and scheduled me to work though she had no authority to do so. She's schedule herself off on the weekends. I immediately was like, "Oh hell no!" and told my supervisor. He took care of it immediately. :)
DeleteI remember in high school thinking all that immature behavior was going to end and that I'd finally be away from it. Wrong! At the different jobs I've had over the years, it actually got worse. I wish I would've had the kahones to tell someone I didn't like her. Would've made my life easier, lol.
I can't believe that woman scheduling herself off on the weekends! You did good! My mom used to make me join her for parent/teacher conferences. Total hell. There was one time in high school when my Spanish teacher said to my mom, "Your daughter has this gang in my classroom. I do no like Robyn." Just like that! "I'm sure the feeling is mutual," my mom said. That was so awesome. And the feeling was so very mutual. The first day of school, she had chased me down on the road until I pulled over, then she yanked her 9 or 10 year old daughter out of her car and told me to take her to school! I had never even met the woman before, but she recognized my school uniform and her daughter's school was right next to mine. On Guam you do as you're told and I took the girl to school, but she had scared me so much tailgating me and honking and nearly hitting my car and then she was just mean. Later that day, she walked into my Spanish class. I leaned over to my good friend and told her I was going to be such an asshole. She agreed to help me. We were terrible! But I promise I was like Robin Hood when it came to my jerk ways. I only acted up with those who didn't treat others right. Totally altruistic!
DeleteYeah, that woman was awful. I was like, "Oh hell to the no you aren't taking my weekends." I was in college at the time and weekends were like gold to me.
DeleteI always thought kids weren't supposed to go to conferences, and then Janie's teacher this year wanted all the kids to go to their conference with their parents. I thought it'd be total hell. Your Spanish teacher said that??? What a b! Your mom rocks hardcore! Your teacher made you take her daughter to school?? Some wild stuff has happened to you. I don't even know what I'd say if that happened to me! I'd do it in Guam since you have to, but I still don't know what I'd say, lol. I think her daughter was safer with you driving than her own mom. 0.0