: Office wild child being enabled by his victims
There’s this guy in his 40s at my office who is a bit of a wild child. I think the gen Z way to describe him would be “emotionally disregulated.” He likes to get pissed off and irritated for no reason, yell obscenities into the void, occasionally slam his fists down on his desk (or mine), share morbid memes, etc. Wild Child is not pissed off at anything in particular; certainly there are stressful aspects of our work, but only he responds to the stress by flying off the handle.
This is not an unusual story—man with bad coping mechanisms—but what is weirding me out is the gendered differences in how others in the office cope with Wild Child’s outbursts. Most of the guys in the office, including me, recognize that attempting to comfort Wild Child is a fool’s errand, so instead we greet him with neutral banter, exchange fatalistic jokes about the state of the world, let him vent for a minute, then get on with our days.
There are two women, though, who cannot seem to decide what to make of him. In private, both have told me separately that they think he is a menace and are surprised he is still employed. But in actual, real life they provide him with ample positive feedback for his misbehavior. I’m talking handwritten notes of encouragement on a bad day, out-of-the-blue compliments, unsolicited small talk about his family and weekend plans, exchanging personal phone numbers. I mean, I hate to be a bitch, but nobody goes out of their way to extend such niceties to me, and I think the fact that I don’t throw a daily tantrum and require pacification has to do with it. The incentives are not aligned!
How should I make sense of the way my female colleagues engage in such openly enabling behavior? Are they just … afraid? Wild Child is not their supervisor, so this isn’t a simple power dynamic; in fact, the sum of all his outbursts is more than enough leverage to get him disciplined if they want to go that route.
So more likely it is some kind of internalized misogyny. I find that believable—one of these women is a very status-driven, political type and I can see how this type of behavior might fit with her strategy. The other woman is the first woman’s protege; she is quite intelligent and self-aware, but sort of a “follower” and likes to have someone set the tone for her.
What frustrates me is like, I feel a vague sense of responsibility, as someone who recognizes Wild Child as an agent of the patriarchy or whatever, to
- Refrain from enabling him, and
- Protect others from being victimized by his antics
But 1 is a total flop, because he is getting positive reinforcement not from me, but from attractive young women (!), so what do my actions matter? And 2 is paternalistic—I’m neither of my colleagues’ dad, spouse, or therapist, so it’s not my job to call out their enabling behavior, nor can I speak on their behalf and confront Wild Child directly.
Instead, I have to just sit here and watch the world become less and less fair before my eyes.