my supervisor is an extrovert, whereas I’m an introvert. She feels insulted if I don’t share my personal life with her and ridicules me before other coworkers because I separate private and work life and prefer to keep to myself.
I wrote mobbing because that’s what it feels to me: a ritual of hers is to always eat together, a time she uses to ask me questions I don’t want to answer. I usually answer very vaguely, which is not enough for her. If I eat alone, she’ll complaint about why am I being so unfriendly.
She doesn’t understand I need time alone to unwind.
She is convinced she is doing me a favor, but the opposite is true. It makes me dislike her even more.
I simply cannot win. It’s tiring being blamed and shamed for preferring to read a book instead of talking about dogs or sex.
It makes me want to quit.
I don’t know if I go to HR with an issue like this, because they may label me the odd one, the one who’s not a teamplayer and use it against me.
Most people are extroverted and react angrily to somebody who keeps to himself and I’ve been bullied several times for this. Extroverts don’t seem to understand that not showing interest in their sexual lives doesn’t mean disrespect, but simply that I don’t care about it.
Make it clear that your supervisor is trapped in your conversation, not the other way around. When you have to be professional, be professional. But the rest of the time, talk about the dirt between the planks of wood at home. Talk about the sedimentation process of your aquarium’s gravel. Basically the moste innate and boring topics that no normal human would bring up, repeated ad nauseam.
Make sure to take long pauses just to resume talking. Remember to take your time while monopolizing the conversation trying to find a word your forgot about.
Remember to mispronounce every word, especially if he corrects you but be sure to keep plausible deniability just in case he accuses you of doing it on purpose.
Remember to always blame everything on something that has no connection to it.
Remember to enrich your diet with garlic, to use terrible flavored candy or just skipping a meal for extra word flavor, if you can take the reputation hit.
Remember the magical phrase: “that reminds me of” and all variants of it.
Remember to look into his eyes, and to alternate between them and another part of his face as if something is wrong with it. Keep affirming that everything is alright while staring at that part.
Change the subject. All the time.
Have terribly strong inconsequential opinions and remind about them all the time.
Monopolize the conversation, but make him want to cut you off or talk. I
IMPORTANT : If the other party is silent, state how comfortable you are with this silent friendship.