Firstly, Redcheerio, I love your mature tone and it's nice that you made this a thread asking to learn how to understand and get along with the ESFJs.
You might find
this thread helpful in some way. It just came to mind.
You seem like a reasonable and nice person to me. Do you have any idea whatsoever what might have pissed them off?
Thanks, Giggly! Thanks also for the link, and for being reasonable and nice about it yourself.
Wow, amazingdatagirl's situation is SO similar to mine!! I related to LotsOfHeart, too. Someone in that thread also mentioned the fact that because there are more ESFJs in the world, you're going to run into more ESFJ assholes, too. Not because there is a higher proportion of assholes of that type, but because there are more of them, period. (Gawd knows there are some asshole ENTPs out there, too.) I have also known some cool ESFJs, it's just that ESFJ happens to be the type I've had problems with in their unhealthy incarnations.
When I think back about the most recent situation, I think I pissed him off by showing off a bit. For example, when he gave me a math puzzle, I solved it in about 30 seconds, then smiled like this
![Biggrin :biggrin: :biggrin:](/data/vbsmilies/biggrin.gif)
and asked him to give me a "real" math puzzle. I was just joking around and deliberately being a brat to be funny, but I think it pissed him off because it took him a lot longer to solve it.
There were also other times when people came up to both of us to ask engineering questions, and I answered them quickly. I thought it would be OK for me to answer instead of waiting for him, since I had the relevant technical expertise and he didn't, but I think that pissed him off because he was worried it made him look stupid. I didn't realize at the time that he was insecure about his intelligence, especially since he is a manager in his late fifties, and had authority over me. I always thought older people didn't have these issues anymore. I had assumed that he was pretty smart, since I had previously worked with and gotten along with his son, who was very smart, and I had told him I thought his son was really smart.
I think ANOTHER problem was that I kept submitting my timesheets late when I was super busy with work, and I think he took it personally because that was the only part of my work that he really had authority over me with. He took a lot of weird things personally that took me by surprise, but at least now I'm more aware of how it happens.
With the work situation before that and the other ESFJ I referred to, I remember she seemed annoyed from the very first time we met. When the boss introduced us, she seemed disappointed that I was starting there. In that case, it was a really small company, she was pretty new herself, and was the only female engineer until I came along. So I might have been encroaching on her new territory. (That was foreign to me, because I'm used to female engineers being excited and happy to come across other female engineers, like I usually am, since we're not very common.)
Not only that, but I also remember her looking really angry when I played devil's advocate once when she was telling a story about how some guy had been so horrible to her, and I explained that he was just being logical. At that point, I didn't understand that with some people, it's a REALLY BAD IDEA to use logic to contradict someone when they are looking for emotional validation. I understand that better now.
But aside from a few gaffs like that, I sensed in both situations that they were annoyed with me, and continuously tried to be friendly to them. I alternated between trying to be friendly, and giving up and ignoring them. I also had interpreted their need to feel appreciated as a need to be worshipped and sucked up to, and had decided that kissing ass wasn't something I would do.
However, looking at it from a different angle, I think I can try expressing more thanks and appreciation when appropriate. I can also try talking to them from the very beginning if I sense it happening again with anyone else in the future, and be cautious of the things I learned from those 2 ESFJs. So, I think I'm a bit better equipped now to prevent this from happening in the future, but I'm still a bit worried.
I would also be interested in advice for the best way to talk to someone like this if I notice it happening again in the future.
It seems pretty common for NTPs to accidentally offend people or piss them off, so in case I do it again, I'd like to know how to win over an annoyed ESFJ.
![Thinking :thinking: :thinking:](/data/vbsmilies/thinking.gif)