There’s this woman I work with who seems to have her accent change randomly.
Some days she sounds like a typical American accent, then others she sounds like she has a Caribbean accent and others she sounds like she has a French accent, and others she sounds like she has an Arabic accent. Other days her voice is super messed up, like she’s been screaming.
Beyond her voice changing, she is an odd person to work with. She’s gotten into public, loud vocal spats with other coworkers even in meetings. She was very nice and sweet with me when I first had to interact with her but that all changed when I made an honest mistake one time and she went off on me and wouldn’t stop until I ignored her and now I just keep my distance unless I have to. Others have said similar things about her as well.
I’ve wondered if maybe she has a personality disorder, but I would think that would also cause her to not do her job correctly?
I don’t know, I’m just curious. This is something I’ve never experienced before and wondering what this could be.
Sounds like a disorder relating to MPD, but it could be any number of things. My advice is to be supportive as much as you can be, when ones own mind is the issue it just feels impossible to deal with.
Not all disorders are ones that will affect work in “predictable” ways, everyone is different. They might just like practicing dialects and not have particularly strong social and coping skills.
As difficult as it can be to interact with people like that, keep in mind their perspective: it might feel like everyone wants to alienate them which makes it difficult to interact without that assumption tainting the experience.
Yeah that’s how I feel about it. Despite the nasty way she responded to me personally, I just try to imagine she may be in pain and leave it alone. Thankfully she did back off eventually.
I didn’t push back on her, but I had apologized for my mistake and she took the opportunity to reply with more unpleasant messages to each apology that I just decided to not say anything else which led to her stopping.
Whilst I agree with the above, remember to look out for number one. It’s important that you prioritise your own mental, physical, social, and financial wellbeing over that of a coworker you don’t seem to know all that well.
It’s important to give the benefit of the doubt and be charitable when you can, but not at any significant expense to yourself
Thank you for saying that. I agree.
I do have my limits that I was and am aware of that would make me want to pursue reporting her if it got that far. I felt uncomfortable and uneasy and still do a bit to this day, but don’t feel it warrants any official reports at this time. Thankfully we don’t interact in person which helps with a lot of that.