Lovefraud recently received an e-mail from a reader. Her company had hired a new guy and she was tasked with helping him learn his job. The guy immediately made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Here’s what she wrote:
I can’t look him in the eye or even stand to talk with him. He is very “nice” and has never shown any angry tendencies. I can’t explain my feelings but my intuition tells me to be wary and afraid of him. He exhibits self-important behavior and is glib and overly polite. Just the thought of him makes me shudder.
He’s never given me any concrete reason to dislike him. However when I very first met him, he was too familiar and presumptuous, calling me by my nickname on the first day, which only close friends and family do. He also pestered me to go to lunch with him every single day or would manipulate it so that he’d be alone in the office with me at lunchtime. He never made any type of sexual advances to me, but would ask me off the wall questions that were not work related and that I couldn’t possibly have an answer to; and once offered me $20 to buy myself lunch because I wouldn’t go with him. I reported him to HR twice to get that harassment on record and had his desk moved away from mine. Everyone who comes in contact with him describes him as creepy.
He has a wife and three kids and his wife is rumored to be well off. He is at work on time every day and doesn’t take time off. On the surface he seems to excel in his work but if you look deeper, you’ll see that it’s all shell with not much substance. He appears to excel at his job but some of us have caught him in borderline deceptions at work but I firmly believe he is manipulative and knows exactly what he’s up to. Others don’t detect that; they think he’s a really nice guy who just doesn’t fit in. He acts kind of like the dumb Southern nice guy next door but my intuition screams that there’s a sinister quality about him. Some of us joke about the target on our backs, don’t piss him off, that sort of thing. Dane Cook’s “Creepy Guy at Work” comes to mind.
I’ve done some minimal Internet investigation on him and extensive investigation into the behavior itself but can’t seem to pinpoint it. I have read so many books, including Robert Hare, Martha Stout and Gavin De Becker. A lot of things fit from the sociopath’s profile and your Red Flags page, though some really don’t; he doesn’t exhibit aggressiveness, hatred of authority or anger at work.
The presence and mere thought of this person causes me tremendous physical and mental stress. So I avoid him and his gaze at all costs. But why is this? I’m so curious to know what quality or element he possesses that repels me. I’ve never in my life felt this guarded around another person. Is there a textbook explanation? The experience has caused me to have a deeper look inside myself as I don’t like feeling this way about anyone.
Intuition at work
I congratulated this woman for listening to her intuition. She was receiving abundant warning signs, by her own physical reactions, that there was something wrong with her co-worker.
Read the symptoms she describes: She can’t look him in the eye. She can’t talk to him. She shudders. Her body knows that she is in the presence of evil. Her intuition is telling her that the guy is a predator, and if she is not careful, she will be road kill. The woman’s co-workers even joke about having targets on their backs.
And that gaze that she avoids? It’s probably a predatory stare.
Yet he hasn’t done anything to cause problems. He is not overtly hostile or aggressive. In fact, he is overly polite.
So she asks, is there a textbook explanation?
Range of behaviors
The answer is yes. The explanation is that psychopaths exhibit a range of behaviors, and some are worse than others. If this woman’s co-worker was tested with the Hare PCL-R, his score might be too low to be officially considered a psychopath. That doesn’t mean he is not dangerous.
The common perception of a psychopath, popularized by the media, is a violent, manic-looking serial killer. In a few cases—very few—this is an accurate portrayal. But the vast majority of psychopaths never kill anyone.
Instead, they do things like create problems on the job. As our Lovefraud reader noted, the guy “seems to excel in his work but if you look deeper, you’ll see that it’s all shell with not much substance.”
Psychopaths at work typically get other people to do the work and then take credit, figure out whom they need to brownnose in order to get ahead, and sabotage anyone who gets in their way.
Executive psychopaths
Some psychopaths, ruthless and cutthroat, claw their way to the top, and then turn into tyrants. Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Paul Babiak wrote a book called Snakes in Suits about psychopaths in the workplace.
Here’s a statistic that knocked my socks off:
Dr. Hare believes that psychopaths make up one percent of the population of North America. (Other people, using different criteria, believe the number is higher.) However, Dr. Hare writes in Snakes in Suits that three percent of corporate executives are psychopaths.
Did you get that? There are three times as many psychopaths among corporate executives as there are in the general population.
So that’s what happens to psychopaths in the workplace. They move into the corner office.
Listening to vibes
The Lovefraud reader was not comfortable with how she felt about this guy. I think she should be grateful to her intuition for being so vigilant. I also think she should acknowledge herself for listening to the vibes she was picking up.
I feel sorry for the people at her company who “think he’s a really nice guy who just doesn’t fit in.” They will probably find themselves as either victims, or unwitting accomplices, of workplace treachery.
By the way, chapters three and four of Snakes in Suits explains how psychopaths manipulate their victims. It is chilling.
Dear Holywatersalt,
Thanks for posting those links to the studies…good stuff.
It was only in retrospect that I could look back and see the first signs of psychopathic behavior in my P-son. The first episode that I observed, and thought was “strange” at the time (actually out of character for him) was he got caught stealing from my purse (money and some uncashed checks) at age 11, which he “traded” with another kid at school who had a radio that my son wanted and we couldn’t afford.
When the other child’s parents questioned him about what had happened to the radio they had bought him, he confessed and they called me, and them and their son, my son and I met at my house to “solve the matter”–though they had the check, and the money, and my son had the radio, my son totally DENIED that he had taken the money from my purse or the check, etc. He became very sullen and definant.
That night he ran away from home and got several miles before the search party turned out and found him…he looked me in the eye and told me (still very definant) “You can’t watch me 24 hours a day, I will do it again.” I realized he was right–which scared the heck out of me.
I put him in a private school, and managed to almost get him supervised 24/7–and his behavior improved and I really didn’t have much trouble out of him or “attitude” until he hit puberty at which time he started overt definance, lies, sneaking out at night, etc. without any show of remorse or understanding of the danger he was putting himself and our family in.
By age 17 he was totally out of control, stealing, joyriding, etc. you name it. By 18 he was in prison, by 20 back in prison for murder. He is still in prison. He still NEEDS to be in prison.
His biological brother is ADHD (diagnosed at age 6) but though he was a “challenge” to raise, he has finished college and I am very proud of the man he has become. He is a very caring and empathetic man, totally unlike his brother.
Those articles were very interesting to me. Thanks.
I work with my S – and in the early months when he was doing the cat and mouse game with me -he came across as a very witty, slightly shy/quiet, intelligent, successful man who’d later I found out, had had a bad 22 year marriage and was looking for the right woman to have a long term relationship with now that he was done doing the dating thing for a bit. It took 2 months of his ever so softly – nudging me towards him. Witty little emails, the little looks my way, pulling back and letting me ponder him, and then the subtle ways of luring me in and to my finally consenting to dinner.
The first dinner was a beautiful December evening, dinner out on the town, then to come back to his place for a glass of wine and viewing the Christmas ship parade on the lake below. He’d even rigged up a heater to turn on out on the patio for me to stay warm. He was a gentleman – and I went home after the parade.
Its still a shock for me to think back on this quiet man I met at work, yet see the escalating power and control he took over me while all his lies, cheating and manipulations went on behind my back. He played it all out from Night #1 to work in his direction. I knew there were red flags all along, but his carefully worded reasons and promises pulled me back in time and time again. No more dating at work – Rule #1 and No more ignoring my own intuition. Always operate in the Yellow Zone… cautious.
This is very interesting.
At the last job I had for the County, we inherited a man who transfered over from another department into ours, The Department of Family and Child Service. We heard that our Boss was warned about hiring him but since he was the only person that applied for this internal transfer, he took him.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the office had an immediate bodily reaction to this man, who was overly nice. He has completely alienated himself from the entire staff but seems to be completely clueless as to how to fit in. And of course, he is the UNION Rep there as well. He is totally and completely inappropriate in the sensitive environment in which we work and makes our clients very uncomfortable as well. His questions during a training on Sexual Abuse cases were so inappropriate that I saw people visually cringe and shrink in their seats. He took it upon himself to take “notes” which he later distributed to the entire staff and they were also VERY inappropriate with misquotes of people that made them look very bad… quotes taken out of context. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. YECH!!! Since his tenure there, very kind people have said, “I HATE this man.” He is terrorizing an entire staff of about 30 people. He is definately a Sociopath.
About that sense we can get in our bodies… I had a job right after I moved back from Maui. I was hired to do sales for a local wellness company. I had known about their products for years and thought it was right up my alley. After I started, I noticed that I got a “hit” off the owner that reminded me of the Bad Man. Then, later, after I found out that the history of this company was that she fired people left and right… the poor lady that was fired right before me (I got the ax too), did a little research and found out that this woman was asked to leave her former employment as a Nurse… (I am wondering if this the same Nurse as the one in the story above) because her colleuges thought she had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
I remember when I recieved this information, I had an instand and powerful anxiety attack and felt like I would vomit. I figured I must have attracted this woman into my life because I still had not resolved what happened with the Bad Man. By the way.. her initials were J.D. Is she the same nurse as above?
The end of the story… she fired me not too long after on the day that a call came in for my sales territory that would have made me a very large commission. Naturally, she wanted to handle that sale herself.
And lastly, a friend of mine is a preschool teacher and yesterday she atarted telling me she had a child that she didn’t know what to do with. His self portrait was a stick figure like all the other kids which he then scribbled out and wanted the teacher to write, “I HATE MYSELF.” He shows no empathy. (her words.. she described this to me without knowing what a Sociopath is.) She wrote to the parents, who are both therapists, and their response was indignation. This child, younger than 4 years old, has already been kicked out of a PRE-SCHOOL. Now this, I find sad. And my friend is worried because the other children are trying to relate to him by saying, ‘I hate myself too. Wanna play?”
If there is a chance of rehabilitation, a child this young needs massive intervention. Still, I feel bad hating on a small child but my friend said this child’s energy dominates the room.
I know that a diagnosis of Sociopath is not supposed to be applied until the child is 18 or more, at least I think… but don’t they need to get a clue and do something?
OXDOVER,
Does the nurse you speak of have the initials, J.D.?
Wouldn’t that be a trip?
Aloha….. E.R.
My father met my socio step mother at work. He had worked hard to become the manager and she was just another worker. I’m sure she used him for his influence and later so that she could stop working altogether, which she did soon after the marriage. I do not know what other people thought about her at work but I know many of the people who have worked there for a long time and none of them mention her around me.
I really am curious about why she was working there at the time. She was living alone in a different state than her whole family. I would just love to know what she was running from. . .
Reading Galvin Debecker’s The Gift of Fear has changed my life. The book helped me get out of a relationship with a man who exhibited sociopathic tendencies.
I firmly believe in trusting vibes. I had bad vibes about this man running a meditation group at a UU church. I quit giong to the group. Almost a year later I read an article in a church publication about some conflict regarding a registered sex offender attending the church. I went home and checked out the SC Sex offender registry. Guess who was on there?
Even before I knew anything about that man’s history, something about him gave me the creeps. When he was talking about how our society is too symphathetic towards victims, i sensed a lot of anger in his voice. This man had a ph.d and was a member of Mensa.
Aloha, no, she wasn’t the same nurse, but you know I think the “healing professionals” have a higher rate of psychopaths than the general population. I would bet that a study would bear this out.
Metachosis, the “Gift of Fear” is a great book!
OxDrover –
I worked for hospitals and doctors for years – I am very interested to hear your perspective. I couldn’t help but have an immediate light-bulb go on that A. Nurses are supposed to have an empathetic nature. Leading to B. So does this explain the nurses that end up in administrative positions and no longer do patient care? (UM nurses at both insurance companies and Discharge planning nurses = no empathy = ‘get the hell out of this/that hospital’ to me)
PS – I am not a nurse, nor was I involved in patient care…I was administrative, and I have only had one decent job with one compassionate manager in 20 years. Everything else I did, I worked for some heartless people…which always amazed me and I never understood it.
Righteous woman,
I wasn’t just referring to nurses, but to “healthcare professionals” in general, therapists, doctors, nurses, social workers, case managers etc.
The enablers who are health care professionals, as well as the psychopaths and narcissists who are health care professionals seem to be at a higher rate than just about any other profession I can think of unless it was lawyers and legal people, or cops. LOL
Cops and laywers seem more in the “persecutor” roles, and nurses in the “enabling” roles, but also in persecution.
Maybe it is just because I am “looking for it” and studies would not bear me out, but at least it is an opinon, even if it is wrong. LOL
I have come upon my share and more than my share of physicans wh owere into power and control, and administrators as well, and known but not worked with judges and lawyers who were also into the N and P modes, as well as N and P psychiatrists and PhDs…the damage these people are able to do from these positions is unbelieveable.
After my husband was killed I had to retire because I no longer had the emotional strength and reserve to deal effectively with fighting this battle daily at work. To see patients disabled and die because of heartless Ps at administration level, or because of physicians who should never have been allowed to practice veterinary medicine much less human medicine.
It was vital to my own recovery from my husband’s death that I get away from extra stress at work. I am just glad that I had the option to do that and still keep the lights burning in my house. I know that others don’t have that luxuary andhave to keep going to work some way to support their kids and still deal with their P X. My “cross” might have been heavy, but I didn’t also have a P on my back, stabbing me, and a kid on each hip weighting me down as I tried to struggle to work each day.
The mothers and fathers who struggle to work, deal with a Psychopathic x, and take care of their children, protect the children from abuse of the X and the courts and social workers, and still try to make a life—THOSE are my heroes! God bless them, and I pray for those brave souls every night!