Rude people at work are inescapable—those frustrating, annoying, and obnoxious people who may insult, verbally attack, curse, mock, threaten, or use subtle gestures like rolling eyes, raised eyebrows, tense jaw, crossed arms, pointing fingers, or a sarcastic tone to convey their displeasure.
From being passive-aggressive to being openly dismissive, their remarks can make you feel small or irrelevant. Their words are often coated with a hint of sarcasm. They may appear to be helpful on the surface while trying to dominate or assert superiority.
That’s cute, but let’s be realistic.
Must be nice to have that kind of free time.
Interesting choice.
You’re overreacting, just calm down.
I’ll explain it slowly so it’s clear.
Oh, you’re still on that?
It’s not that complicated.
This form of rudeness can mess with your head, making you respond in kind. You may turn defensive or become confrontational. You may give them a taste of rudeness by passing mean remarks, expressing disdain, or raising your voice. But, reciprocating negative behavior only escalates the situation. Responding to rude people with rudeness or getting into a debate with them does not make them change—if anything, it makes them more likely to repeat this behavior.
Crazy, rude people who say and do mean things will always be present in your life—people who will try to blame you, those who’ll stare at you in contempt, or the ones who nickname and tease you without regard for how it makes you feel. The solution to deal with their rudeness isn’t to get mad, lose your calm, or indulge in self-pity—these behaviors will only worsen the conflict and your mood.
Don’t act as a victim—don’t blame, complain, or sob. Don’t form an agenda to make them feel bad. Instead, calmly and carefully analyze their behavior, take control of the situation, and act in ways that will challenge the rude person to reconsider their response. Managing your reaction to rudeness can develop emotional resilience and build personal strength.
We need to become different people in our responses to others, building character traits that allow us to handle their craziness without becoming victims. When we become different, people will respond to us differently. But most important, we’ll have the strength of character and the boundaries that allow us to be emotionally healthy, no matter what others do.
― Mike Bechtle
Follow these 5 practices to handle a rude person without stooping to their level:
Analyze their behavior.
Our mind, which is a meaning-making machine, likes to make sense of things, which makes it attach meaning to conversations, situations, and anything else that gets our attention. But our judgments about others are faulty most of the time—we may jump to the conclusion that others are out to get us for even minor inconveniences, small variations in expectations, or slight digressions from what we believe to be polite.
Colleague didn’t invite you to the meeting. Rude!
Someone called out that your idea was no good. Rude!
Your manager cancelled the meeting at the last minute. Rude!
Some people’s honest and direct communication can be perceived as rude, especially if it makes you uncomfortable. What another person considers to be forthright can mean an insult to you. People may also appear cruel because they lack the communication skills or emotional maturity to handle difficult situations well.
Rude people exist, but not every instance where your expectations aren’t met deserves to be tagged as offensive or disrespectful. Some people are rude out of habit—they undermine, belittle, and interrupt others constantly. Others may occasionally be impolite or lose their calm because they’re simply having a bad day.
Understanding the difference between these two sets of people is important to manage and adjust your response instead of putting everyone into the same bucket. Instead of labeling people as good or bad, right or wrong, rude or kind, step back and take a moment to analyze their response:
- What did they say or do that frustrated, annoyed, or put you off?
- Are they always this way, or is it a one-off instance?
- What can cause them to behave this way?
- Under what circumstances can you see yourself or others behaving in a similar manner?
- What situational factors could have contributed to it? Consider different circumstances, pressures, and constraints that might be influencing them.
One of the easiest things in life is to judge others. One of the simplest things we can ever do is to tell how wrong people are. One of the most thoughtless things we can ever do is to show people their faults unconstructively. It is always so easy and common to do such things but, before you do that, find the uncommon reasons for the faulty life.Yes! before you do that, identify how to correct a faulty life and before you do that, think of what drives and invokes the joy, slothfulness or the melancholy in people. Until you go through what people have been through, until you experience what has become a part of people, until you understand what drives the real interest of people and until you become fully aware of the real vision, aspirations, desires and the needs of others, ponder before you criticize!
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Judging others does not change anything—it only prevents you from seeing the truth and creating space for better understanding. Don’t rush to shut down people you perceive to be rude. Analyze their behavior and consciously choose a response.
Feel in control, don’t react.
Rudeness or perceived rudeness can evoke strong negative emotions and make you reactive instead of a more thoughtful and considered response. You may lash out, silently disengage, or make it your mission to fix and correct them.
But reacting instead of responding with clear intent turns an already bad situation into an unproductive one. Displaying anger in your voice or body language can make rude people more likely to turn aggressive or act in an unfriendly way. Trying to fix them and not being able to do so can make you feel more helpless, powerless, and out of control. Silently disengaging can take away the opportunity to collaborate and achieve shared goals.
Controlling emotions does not mean denying or ignoring them. It means acceptance without exaggeration or letting them rule your life. Whenever you feel ridiculed by a rude person, connect with your emotions to understand what they’re trying to tell:
- What emotions are you feeling right now—
anger , frustration, rejection, discouraged, insecure, humiliated, insignificant? Name them. - What about their behavior or action triggered this feeling? What specifically did they say or do that made you feel this way?
- How can this emotion be unhelpful if you decide to act on it? What can go wrong, or how can it make the situation worse?
- Can you choose another response that will allow you to express your feelings without provoking or causing the rude person to turn hostile?
What the other person says or does cannot really annoy or irritate you except you permit him to disturb you. The only way he can annoy you is through your own thought. For example, if you get angry, you have to go through four stages in your mind: You begin to think about what he said. You decide to get angry and generate an emotion of rage. Then, you decide to act. Perhaps, you talk back and react in kind. You see that the thought, emotion, reaction, and action all take place in your mind. When you become emotionally mature, you do not respond negatively to the criticism and resentment of others.
— Joseph Murphy
Emotions are powerful signals that can help you connect with your deepest desires, fears, and insecurities and turn negative reactions into constructive possibilities. Rudeness evokes strong negative emotions—learning to control them can enable you to handle the situation with calm and poise without appearing distressed, agitated, or unsettled.
Don’t take it personally.
We take things personally all the time, assuming other people’s response is a direct measure of our worth or their words reflect what they think about us. We assume a central role in their story, even when what they’re conveying or projecting has nothing to do with us.
A team member makes fun of your mistake. She thinks I’m incompetent.
A colleague snobbishly refuses to help out. They must not like me.
Your manager keeps looking at their phone while talking to you. He’s not interested in what I have to say.
Rudeness is often a sign of insecurity, and it has more to do with the person and less about you—their fears, their failures, their hopes and dreams. How they think and feel about themselves is how they show up to others. Mocking you may imply they’re scared to make mistakes. Using a condescending tone to say “no” can mean they don’t trust themselves, or constantly looking at the phone while talking to you can stem from their desire to micromanage.
Others rarely do or say things because of you—most of the time, they’re projecting their own insecurities or internal dissatisfaction onto you. Their aggressive or impolite behavior can be a cover-up for their feelings of powerlessness. Their habitually cynical or sarcastic tone can imply they’re jealous of your success.
Even if it seems personal, taking things personally rarely helps. It evokes a strong negative emotional response—you may feel hurt, rejected, insulted, disappointed, and let down. Left unhandled, these emotions create a downward spiral of negativity and rumination, which can take a toll on your mental health and personal well-being. When dealing with a rude person:
- Keep ego out of the equation. Ego plays a big role in determining what you make of any situation. When the ego gets involved, you exaggerate, blow things out of proportion, and start taking everything personally. Removing ego from the frame is the first step to thinking clearly.
- Don’t assume bad intent without exploring alternative views, constraints, and situations that might contribute to someone’s behavior. Show curiosity to explore a different perspective than your brain’s default wiring.
- What goes on in your head is not apparent to others. Explicitly state your feelings and emotions, understand their viewpoint, and reset expectations.
- When things appear personal because it wasn’t a creation of your mind but indeed an attempt to hurt you, stop wasting time on things you can’t change—their behavior, their actions. Identify what you can change or do and act on it.
Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.” During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me, always me! Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world. Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds.
― Miguel Ruiz
It’s easy to lose your cool when the rude person’s thoughtless behavior or hurtful comments seem to attack your sense of self or who you think you are. But their mean, irrational, and insensitive behavior reveals who they are, not who you are. Stop taking their rudeness personally. Tackle the situation with a clear head.
Pick your battles carefully.
A rude person’s remarks can feel like a sting, making you instantly bite back. But, confronting them, challenging them, or trying to make them feel bad may not be the best use of your time. You aren’t obliged to deal with the rude person unless their behavior or action impacts your work directly. Every moment spent dealing with them keeps you from working on tasks and projects that will help you accomplish your goals. Every angry debate consumes your energy that may be better spent elsewhere.
You can choose to engage or ignore, based on who the person is and how it impacts your work. Not every situation is worth fighting, and not every instance of rudeness demands your attention.
As the saying goes in poker, know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Sun Tzu also expressed the idea in The Art of War: “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence.” Sometimes, it’s important for you to speak up and express your discontent with their behavior, while at other times it’s best to keep quiet and let them have their way. Pick your battles carefully.
Refuse to let your life and choices be controlled by the attitudes of others. Instead of dealing with every instance of rudeness in the same way, pick the right battles to fight. Let go of small issues that don’t matter as much.
- Determine how harmful their behavior is to your future.
- If they don’t matter much, choose to disengage and walk away. It’s better to limit interactions with such people.
Stay away from the drama and refuse to engage with it. - If you can’t avoid them, practice the art of war first. Disarm them by refusing to react to their negativity. Rude people may instantly switch gears and shift from a threatening demeanor to being nice when they see that you refuse to pick up a fight.
- If nothing works and their rudeness only intensifies, you can no longer keep quiet.
You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it.
— Robert Greene
Every time you choose to turn away and not engage with a rude person is an opportunity to look in a better direction. Every fight that you refuse to pick up is an opportunity to channel your energy into something constructive. Fight only the most important fights; let the rest go.
Set boundaries
You’ve done your best to avoid rude people. You have tried to give them the silent treatment. But, what if these tactics don’t work on certain people? What if they turn more and more annoying, more cynical, more intrusive, or more delusional with each conversation? What if they intentionally try to hurt you by saying mean things? What if they purposefully try to stir up a conflict? What if they try to make you feel small by highlighting your mistakes and criticizing your work?
These people will not shut up unless you speak up. They may take your silence for weakness and try to assert authority, throw tantrums, or manipulate you into doing things their way. Letting these people have their way for too long can turn them even more hostile—it gives them permission to meddle, judge, and lead with strong opinions.
To deny them this power over you, you need to be outright in what you will and will not tolerate. You need to clearly state the impact of their words and actions. You need to tell them to stay away from making jokes, being sarcastic, or crossing a personal boundary. Rude people are also good at exploiting boundaries—don’t let them overstep them. Reinforce it by communicating it often.
Here are some statements you can use to communicate your limits while staying respectful and protecting your emotional space:
- Let’s pause this conversation until we can both be respectful.
- I don’t respond well to that kind of language.
- I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that and give you another chance.
- I value clear communication. Could we avoid personal comments?
- Please don’t joke about that. It’s not funny to me.
- I’d appreciate it if we could speak calmly.
- That comment wasn’t necessary. Can we stay focused on the issue?
- I don’t think that tone is helping either of us.
- This isn’t an appropriate way to talk to me.
- That’s not something I’m comfortable with.
When you give yourself permission to communicate what matters to you in every situation you will have peace despite rejection or disapproval. Putting a voice to your soul helps you to let go of the negative energy of fear and regret.
— Shannon L. Alder
When you can’t avoid a rude person and when nothing else works, you can’t continue being mistreated. Address their behavior and hold them accountable by setting boundaries. Communicate what you won’t tolerate, and don’t let them take it for granted.
Summary
- Rude people exist, but not everything that frustrates and annoys you could be another person’s fault. Some people are rude out of habit, and others may be simply having a bad day. Analyzing others’ behavior that you perceive to be rude is critical to respond thoughtfully instead of turning defensive or attacking them to set them straight.
- Rudeness floods your brain with strong negative emotions, which makes you more likely to react instead of responding calmly. Learning to control your emotions can enable you to stay constructive and undisturbed without exaggerating or worsening the situation.
- Attaching other people's rude remarks to your identity or self-worth can get ego involved, making it hard for you to see that their behavior and actions often reveal a lot about them—their desires, fears, and insecurities—and have little to do with who you are or your worth.
- Not every rude person matters. You can choose to disengage and walk away if they don’t impact your work or the goals you wish to accomplish. You can also disarm them by staying silent and refusing to pick a fight. In the end, if nothing else works, you need to speak up.
- Kindness does not always work, especially with people who say and do mean things to hurt others purposefully. Shut them down and deny them this power by clearly communicating what you will and will not tolerate.
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