my coworker accused of me of deliberately snoring to keep him awake on a work trip — Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I went on a work trip and thought it went well. On the last day, I woke up to hear my senior teammate bashing me. We shared a wall, and it was paper-thin. I snore, and it’s something I’m embarrassed by, but there’s nothing I can do to control it. My teammate said he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep for the whole trip and accused me of doing it on purpose so I could transfer off the team. I don’t know where that came from — I’ve never indicated I wanted to leave. He also called me weird and nasty.

I was shocked. Up until that point, he had been pleasant, engaging, and polite.

My concern isn’t with him; it’s with his influence on the team and senior leaders. I love my job. It’s complex, fast-paced, and I’m always learning something new. It feels like my sweet spot. But he has a lot of influence and more time in the company than I do, and I’m worried I’ll be blackballed or not invited on any more work trips.

This incident feels like the culmination of some insecurities I’ve been feeling. My personality doesn’t seem to be landing with the group. I’ve tried to make headway socially, but it feels like I’m hitting a wall. I also worry that certain things are being viewed in a bad light. For instance, I have a sensitive stomach that’s affected by stress and changes in schedule, so I didn’t hang out with the team every night — only two out of the four. This is new territory for me because, at my other jobs, it wasn’t expected. Everyone just did their own thing. But given my teammate’s strong reaction, I’m starting to think this may have added fuel to the fire.

I’m bummed. I love the job and the team, but I don’t see a way forward. I strongly believe I’ll be forced out or iced out.

Do you have any advice on how to interact with my teammate? We work together on a lot of programs, so I can’t avoid him. Usually, I don’t sit at tables where I’m the next topic when I get up, but in this case, it feels unavoidable.

FYI, I am not having any performance issues, which may be the only thing that saves me.

Well, wait — you’re giving way too much power to someone who sounds like an awful person.

The idea that a colleague would intentionally snore loudly as some sort of plot to be able to transfer off the team is Incredibly Weird. It’s really unlikely that other people would hear what he said and think, “Wow, Snorer is a real jerk to do that.” They’re far more likely to think, “WTF? No one snores as a strategy to bother someone in a neighboring room; what a bizarre thing to say.”

Truly, any sane person who heard your coworker accuse you of that is thinking there’s something wrong with him, not with you. Or, in the most generous reading, that he was just cranky after not sleeping well and was lashing out unreasonably. No one is going to think you were strategically snoring as an act of anti-social aggression.

I suspect you’re giving this so much weight because of the rest of the situation — that you feel you’re having trouble meshing with the group. But even there, it’s worth questioning what you’re basing that on. Did anyone actually respond poorly to you for only hanging out two nights out of the four (which was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, by the way)? Or are you feeling anxious about the situation in general and assuming that may have been one more way you aren’t fitting in with them?

It’s definitely possible that you’re not clicking well with the group. That’s really common! But it doesn’t usually mean the person who’s not fitting in gets pushed off the team. It just means things aren’t as socially comfortable — which isn’t ideal, but is a world away from being iced out or losing your job.

It’s possible there’s more going on that didn’t make it into your letter —  concrete signs that things aren’t going well in a way that could jeopardize your job. But it’s also possible that this is all an anxiety reaction — that your brain is catastrophizing in a way that doesn’t reflect anything that’s likely to happen.

Would you feel comfortable talking to your boss about how things are going overall? That will give you more data to put all of this in context — and you might hear that as far as your boss is concerned, everything is fine. As part of that conversation, you could also say that you’re not sure you’re meshing well with the group and ask if she has advice on that — but whether that’s useful to do will depend on your relationship with her and your sense of how skilled she is on picking up on things like that.

I’d also seriously consider talking to the coworker whose unkind remark you overheard. There’s no reason you can’t say to him, “I overheard you say my snoring kept you up, and I’m horrified — I had no idea that would be an issue, and I feel awful that you didn’t sleep well. For future work trips I’ll plan to ask for a room further away from the rest of the group so that doesn’t happen again.” Maybe that will jog him into realizing he was being a jerk, but if nothing else it’ll at least get you on the record as Not Snoring At Him … and also as someone who handles issues professionally and maturely, unlike what he’s chosen to do.