Why is my coworker mean to me?

Write it down. Date, time, who was there, what was said, in plain words with no comment added. Keep it somewhere that is not a work system.

Know your route before you need it. A manager you trust, human resources, or a union representative if you have one.

A tone kept for you. Being talked over. Questions answered with a look. Credit for your work given to someone else. A joke at your expense that nobody else seems to notice.

And it moves. Some days he is almost pleasant. Then a small thing gets a sharp reply. So you rehearse what you will say before you walk over.

Sharp words at work are often heat with nowhere else to go. Pressure, a bad week, a life outside the office. Heat lands where it can.

Sometimes it lands on the person who seems quietest, or who sits nearest. That is about position, not about your worth.

Being the target is not the same as being the cause.

It is not about you being too sensitive. Feeling stung by words meant to sting is the ordinary result.

And it is not yours to fix. You do not have to win him over, earn his respect, or become easier to like. You have tried that already.

Notice what happens in you when he walks into the meeting. Heat in the face. A tight chest. The sentence you planned starts to shrink.

Put work requests in writing. A short message is harder to sneer at than a question at a desk, and it leaves a record.

Name it once, plainly, and only about the work. "I'd like you to stop talking over me in meetings." Do not explain or soften it.

Do not laugh along with a joke about you. A flat face says enough. Then go back to your work.

Find one ally in the room who sees it too. And one thing is not in your control: his tone. That is his work.

Check what has changed. Whether you speak less in meetings. Whether you rewrite simple messages to him three times. Whether you have started to doubt your own work.

This page cannot see inside him, and it will not guess. It can say two things. Meanness that is far bigger than the moment is carrying something that started before you. And if his meanness is aimed at you because you are a woman, or comes with sexual comments, that is not a mood. It is a workplace legal matter. Write it down, and use the route in the box above.

Some people read this page about a coworker and recognize the sharp reply from the inside. The Rage Pattern is the pattern where anger arrives far bigger than the thing that set it off.

Do you snap at one colleague over small things, then replay it on the drive home? Then that file may be yours, and it is the one pattern here you can work on directly.