I think it is a tactic to get others to do your work, and sometimes it's a conscious tactic. Sometimes it's unconscious. Those are the hardest for me to deal with. When I'm confident that a coworker is using that tactic consciously, I can just be angry with them, draw boundaries, and hold my ground. When they don't seem to be aware they're using that tactic, it's harder to set my sympathy aside... even though I still need to do so, at some point, or risk being stuck in the nanny role forever.
Once I snapped on a conference call. One of the conscious manipulators asked me, with several other coworkers on the line, "Can you tell us the steps for this process?" Before I could bite my tongue, I replied, "Do you promise to write it down this time?" Dead silence on the line before the learned-helplessness guy answered. Any of those colleagues could have complained to my boss, but I got lucky and they didn't.
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carisma_sensei
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Date: 2021-02-07 03:27 pm (UTC)Once I snapped on a conference call. One of the conscious manipulators asked me, with several other coworkers on the line, "Can you tell us the steps for this process?" Before I could bite my tongue, I replied, "Do you promise to write it down this time?" Dead silence on the line before the learned-helplessness guy answered. Any of those colleagues could have complained to my boss, but I got lucky and they didn't.