When a New Hire Gets the Cold Shoulder

Suzanne is giving you very good advice.

This is the bottom line: Your social skills are weak and can attempt improvement. But at least you've identified the problem (you are the problem) and can work on "improving" things, but it's a HARD COLD REALITY that some people will never be liked in a group setting. AT LEAST YOU DO A GOOD JOB AND THE BOSS LIKES YOU.

A note to Suzanne Lucas. Shame on you for blasting jr. high behavior. Actually, jr. high behavior is a critical time when young people start building the social skills they'll need later in life. Many of the social skills you learn and develop in jr high and high school are the same skills you'll need to navigate in the office.

Your first priority on any new job is to make yourself like, then it's it earn the confidence and respect of the boss. See, in many offices, the boss will rely heavily on others to form their opinion of you and your work.

There's a lot more to it, but I'm certainly not an expert and beyond the scope of a reader comment.

Good luck, and use your current job to touch-up on social skills and learn more about yourself and then move on so you can start over in a better position.

(Also - it sounds like you're just an annoying-type person. You probably don't emote well, say the wrong things, or have minor perceptual issues. Learn to minimize your annoying personality traits. Accept that sometimes you might have to be passive to be accepted.)

(OK, I lied, there's a little more. Employees seek out coworkers to relax them, because they're stressed out most days. If you can't relax people socially in the office, people will NOT want to talk to you when they have free time - cause afterall you're not relaxing them!)

Tim Jones of NY 7:13PM November 06, 2008