Am I too touchy?

[jennyaxe]

I have several cow-orkers. One of them is a person I don't much like - I find him arrogant and overbearing. Also unable to accept that he might be wrong, and unwilling to clean up his own messes.

We're currently working on a project together. We have to work together, because our boss thinks we're both very competent and she needs people who have different approaches to stuff. I'd find this reason more compelling if I actually thought cow-orker M was competent and that his approach held any sense... but I digress.

One of my jobs in the project is to configure a webserver in a certain somewhat complicated way. I worked on it, got it mostly right in testing, and we started a test run yesterday. I had to go home early due to the endo acting up, so cow-orker M watched the test run. He reported a failure; I replied that I'd deal with it.

Today I got an email laying out exactly what config changes he thought should be made. And when I got to work he'd already made the changes.

This pissed me off mightily. I have this silly idea that if I'm actively working on something, it'd be corteous of others to not tear it out of my hands and start "fixing" it themselves. I feel that if I leave something half-done and plan to continue with it the next morning, I should find it in the same condition I left it. To add insult to injury, the changes he'd done won't work - which I know because I'd already tried it that way. Which he'd know if he'd read the versioning systems history of the file, where I kept noting what I tried.

M couldn't at all understand why I was angry. He'd had some time on his hands, and obviously doing stuff like documenting his own systems or patching them or something silly like that, he'd been kind to me and fixed my problems. Without talking to me first, of course. And if I had any problems with that, it was obviously just my being territorial and uncooperative and unwilling to work with others and unwilling to accept help, yada yada yada...

So - am I being too touchy? Should I just smile thankfully when someone does my job for me - and takes the credit, of course, showing once again that he's Da King[TM] of Unix operations and nothing would work unless he's there to fix it? Not that I'm accusing him of megalomania and manipulation or anything... or, wait, I am, I guess. The question is, am I right?

Comments

[geek-kitten.livejournal.com]

Argh! That would definitely piss me off too.

Yes, I think you're right.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

The fact that he fucked it up is a big neon sign that he shouldn't be playing with other people's projects. He's clearly competent to tell you if the test succeeded or failed, but he has shown all by his lonesome that he didn't know the specifics of what you're doing, so now he's wasted his time and yours. This is not efficient.

[artela.livejournal.com]

Given that
1) you'd already tried it
2) documented that you'd tried it
3) he just jumped in on your work without even clearing it with you

I'd say that not only are you entitled to be teed off, but also to be in a position where you can let your manager know how much time it has set you back to undo his "corrections"

[jennyaxe.livejournal.com]

(un?)fortunately - no time at all, since the little twerp hadn't bothered to check the file out of the versioning system before editing it - so I just did a forced refresh on it. But I think I'll add it to the list of "M's fuckups" I'm keeping...

[mikewd]

The best approach for dealing with arrogant idiots of this type is to be extremely patronising (but still polite) about incidents like this and endeavour to make him feel as small as possible whithout actually losing your temper or getting into an argument.

That way you maintain the high ground and don't give him an opportunity to make out your being unreasonable or uncooperative.

[jennyaxe.livejournal.com]

I didn't manage the patronising bit, but I did keep my temper. Most important - I stood my ground and I didn't start crying... I just wish my boss had been at her desk and heard it - it feels sort of sneaky to start talking about it afterwards, at least unless/until it happens again.

I'll make sure I get a chance to mention the part about actually *using* the versioning software we've got, though. Manipulative? Moi? I never!

[ailbhe]

I'd email someone to say "He did this, but luckily he didn't even check it out properly so it had no effect. Should I teach him to do things properly so that his next corrections will take effect, or is it safer not to?"

I dunno who I'd email, but I'd enjoy it.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

If by "too touchy" you mean that you "strongly touched his neck with your fingertips with the goal of restricting his breathing"... well, maybe.