Back Stabbing co Worker
Did that knife in the back hurt? While it didn't physically hurt, it likely caused a number of other pains, things like loss of credibility, getting passed over for a promotion, possibly counseled for your "poor performance." Make no mistake, a back stabber can ruin your career and make your job the most loathsome place for you to be for 8 hours a day. Left unchecked, a back-stabber can even cost you your job!
Chances are, the back-stabber is a peer who sees putting others down or making them look bad as a way to get ahead. In other words, that SOB wants the promotion so he or she can be one up on you. That is what the back-stabber lives for: Getting one up on anybody they can!
So what do you do about a back-stabber? First, don't play their game their way. A good back-stabber has been at it for a long time and knows how to do it better than the average decent person. Your job is to set them up over a long period of time for the ultimate come-uppance. In the mean time, you are going to kill them with kindness. This does not mean that you kiss up to them. Rather, it means that you never offer a cross word to anyone about anyone else and instead, you offer compliments about individuals to the one person who matters the most: The Boss!
This does three things:
1. It sends a message to the boss that you are a supportive person to the other employees and a real team player and not a "me, myself and I" kind of person.
2. It sends a message that you seek to make other people look good to the boss and since this benefits them, they will want it to happen more often. This means that the occasional back-stabber (a mostly decent sort of person) will hold themselves in check because they want you to continue to benefit from your praise.
3. The back-stabber will either see the light and not back-stab you so much because it doesn't look good to bad-mouth a good person who never has a cross word for anyone, or will look like even more of a jerk to the boss.
The next task, especially if the compliment track didn't work as well as possible, is to set the back-stabber up for a fall. Needless to say, this is pretty easy.
The next time you have a project with a deadline, do whatever it takes to finish ahead of time, and since you know what your boss expects, you can make it letter and picture perfect. Then, the day before you want to present it to the boss (best if this is before the deadline) do two things:
1. Make a comment in the presence of the back-stabber that you don't think there is any way you can get the project done on time.
2. Take a half day off or at least a few hours (as approved time off) and make a comment in front of the back-stabber to the effect that you are going to "slip away" for a few hours for some innocuous reason.
You already know what is going to happen. The back-stabber will go running to the boss and you will be called in first thing in the morning to explain why you were taking time off when you were behind on the project. At this time you produce the product, complete with visuals or other associated work, and explain that you took the time off to "peruse the finished product one more time" before you turned it in and felt that being off-site without interruption would be more helpful to you than trying to do it at your desk with the constant flow of interruptions.
Suddenly the back-stabber looks like a complete idiot and you come across as a hero. The great thing about doing it this way is that you don't even have to say anything to the back-stabber. They will know that they have been had and that their credibility has been shot by their own diarrhea of the mouth.
The great thing about this type of strategy is that a similar variation can be used with the office gossip types. Believe me when I tell you that it works wonders. I've used it in the Navy, as a civilian, and my sons have even used it to put people in their place. All the time you look like a really good person when you are really setting people up to get knocked down hard. Kind of like a bowling pin in a bowling alley!
Once you have done it a few times, nobody will cross you because they will say 'a really nice person as long as you don't cross them'.
So good luck and remember that the back-stabber can be anywhere, so watch that knife!
