Why the hostility? I'm only doing my job

Toronto city worker Donna Smith expects haters back on the job.

While he may have been able to move on easily, not everyone can work in an environment where they are despised, regardless of how much they might be told to simply knuckle down.

“There are personality types who simply couldn't do that without suffering some ill consequences physically and emotionally," says Linda Schnabel, principal of Career Works, a human resources consulting company in Toronto. “It would almost be impossible for them to work in that kind of environment."

And encountering dislike at work is more common than some might think, says Franke James, founder of Office-Politics.com, an advice site for people with work woes.

“We hear from all sorts of people that have run into issues with being disliked," she says. “People can kind of shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Well, what difference does it make if I'm not liked?' But the fact is it's always accompanied by nasty and often demeaning behaviour."

Still, defusing hatred at work is no easy task. Go too far out of your way to win people over and chances are you will be further vilified. Do too little and that can be just as dangerous. The worst possible course of action, experts say, is to ignore the problem in the hope it will eventually go away.

“If you're ignoring everybody, what you're doing is allowing them to imagine the worst," says Randall Craig, author of the career-planning book Personal Balance Sheet . “You don't want to reinforce what's going on in other people's minds if those things are negative."

Amid all the worrying about whether you are doing too little or too much, one can lose sight of an important fact. “You have to remember that you're hired to do a job, so you've got to do it to the best of your ability. Sometimes when you try and fit in, in a situation of disdain, you spend your time worrying about that rather than just getting the job done," Mr. Craig says.

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