Just My Life In General

I consider my self a nice guy. I am shy, easy going, and consider myself kind most of the time.  People are always telling me that I am more of a hermit type of person. This is mainly because I don’t really talk much to people who I don’t already know.  It takes me a while to really open up to people.

When me and my wife have something bad happen, like an over draft in the bank account, she often gets really mad and then she gets even madder at me when I don’t get angry with with her. I never really understood why some people are like that.   Just because you get worked up over something, does not mean that I should get equally mad just because of something that was not under my direct control or something really equally as simple.  I tend to say, “Ok, what have we learned from this and how can we control it next time?“, then I have nothing more to say on that topic.  My wife is more likely to rant and rave and apologize later.

There are three types of personalities:

1. Type A - People who fit into this group are , impatient, insecure about their status, highly competitive, hostile and aggressive, and not really able to relax.
2. Type B - People who are easy going and have a generally relaxed in nature.
3. Type AB - These people don’t really fall either category. They can be extremely hostile then really timid depending on the situation. This is the category to classify those people who does not fall into type A or type categories.

I have a fellow soldier named “Shaun” that I have been working with together for about 10 months. He always seems to confuse me.  Let me give you some background information for the predicament that I am in.

I have been in the National Guard for about 13 years at a pay grade level of SGT (E-5).  Now, Shaun has been serving for about 6 years and is also the pay grade level of SGT (E-5).  We started working together on November 2007 during a state train up.

When we started training, he was  quick to do more work than was required.  He was the one who wanted to do every thing his way or no way, and if you did not agree with him, he would just talk you to death until you sided with him.  He would volunteer for just about every job you could possibly imagine.

Shawn was also a great planer,  It seems when we was doing the initial training, he would always volunteer way in advance to do something to support the training instead of actually doing the training like everyone else.  When it pretained to duties, some how I always got the short end of the stick and this guy seemed to get the credit for thinking of it.

Now after this went on for about 2 months, one night I pulled him aside and told him that there were others on the same team.  His response was that this was “His Team” and he would always refer to it as his team, no matter what anyone else said.  Well as you can image each time he did a job or snuggled up to the leaders, he would call it “His Team” meaning that everyone else was following him. (Even if they were not.)

I should have realized it then that I was dealing with a person who has always gotten their way.  I felt that if I contested in any way, that it would resulted in a fight.  He would possibly be so pissed off, that he would have done everything in his power to sabotage jobs.  He could even target your image and attempt to make you look bad.

But being the way I am, I just asked to be included as part of team. That was because, I wanted to be a part of the team instead of him trying to do everything by himself.  This worked out; however, I think it worked partly against me.  This put me into a position where I either got along with my Co-Worker, by giving him all the control, or we would have been always butting heads and nothing would have gotten done.  Also, in thinking that a good leader also had to be good follower and I decided to keep the peace and work with my Co-Worker.

After the initial training was over, we got to where we were stationed (IRAQ). We had another train up for 3 weeks to relieve the people that were stationed there before us.  I had a family emergency, (My Father was on Life Support) and had to leave. When I got back to the duty station (2 weeks later), all the equipment was signed over into his name.  The platoon leader asked if I wanted to still be the team leader and I said,  “No”.  I made that decision because it would have been too much trouble to re-inventory all the equipment from my Co-worker’s name back to mine.  Even if I did say, “Yes”, I would have had to put up with the endless hassle of my Co-Worker being pissed off at me and I know he would have sabotaged me. In the past, he has told me jokingly that “If I can make someone look bad, I am going to do it!“  These are some of things that made me say “No”.

Ever since then, I somehow slowly went from being an equal co-worker to this guy’s flunky.  I found out later on the he had told people that he was in charge because nobody else took charge.  Now, I love my job and like getting things done. However, the things he had said made me sound like I was just lazy.  I confronted him about it and he made some excuse that he did not mean it to sound the way it was interpreted.

Now, here is the part I don’t quite understand. When I am with him, since we are also roommates, he has nothing to say but good things about me and that he wants to learn some of the skills that I have. I would teach him how to do those things and the next thing I knew he was getting some kind of credit for work that I showed him how to do.

Let’s take for example, a project we did recently.  I grabbed my cheat sheet diagram on how to build cat 5 cables and placed it on my PSP (Play Station Portable).  And I started putting the cables on the connectors, he asked me how I was wiring up the connectors and I showed him using this diagram.

Internet Cable Connection Diagram

I was showing him the 56B Cable End.  It took us a good half day to run the cable and then place the ends on the cables.  Two days went by before we noticed what had happened.  All the connections that Shaun had placed were incorrect. Yet before figuring out what had happened, Shaun told 3 people that I messed it up. Claiming that I did know what I was talking about.  I confronted him about this, and he told me that it was my fault for not wiring it the same way he had done it, because if both our ends were the same then it would not have mattered what colored ends matched up. Needless to say, he did not win this fight and I helped him fix his mistake.

I would like to hear your suggestions on how to deal with people of this nature.  I know it’s too late to actually confront this guy, but I have recently took another deployment and I am actually in a supervisor position. Since I will have to deal with more people like this, all opinions are appreciated.  What would you have done if you were in my shoes ?