Deal With a Nosy Co-Worker

The many hours spent in the workplace inevitably allow bonding with colleagues. However, not everyone is minded colleague to be your best friend.

Healthy relationships in the workplace are based on courtesy, mutual respect and adherence to the written and unwritten rules of conduct. Unfortunately, many people are accustomed to exceed the limits of others' privacy, so eager to peek in your private life.

The motivation of these curious nosy Co-Worker can be different and the consequences unpleasant.

Usually they crave information and they can (or can not pretend) to understand why you do not want to open the curtains of your privacy and to share what you are going outside the workplace and away from the office desk.

How to recognize nosy Co-Worker?

~ Insecur

Most of the people are faced with a complex of inferiority and get to grips with their own insecurities. Therefore they deem it necessary to have more information about the people who surround them in order to feel safer and sometimes even superior. Often they find comfort and pleasure in someone else's trouble.

~ Importunate

Some do not really know the difference between assertive and friendly interest in entering foreign private matters. These people are characterized by poor social skills, and this cheeky curious approach is the only way to get in touch with colleagues beyond the professional relationship.

~ Opportunists

Often have special hidden agenda: merciless sniffing in your private life in the hope of getting information and pikanterii, later skillfully exploit against you, for example at the time when both of you are faced with the possibility of promotion.

~ Jealous

They may envy you for your work success, but the last vacation, a new car, your clothes or harmonious love affair are reason plus to further their interest to you. Jealous enjoy to feed themselves with  information about the private life of colleagues, which   they  will use for comparison.

~ Lonely

Some really do not have a wide circle of friends and colleagues believe that the workplace are the closest to people for friendship in which they can confess their secrets and confidential personal information about yourself. But usually they require in return, which of course results in a curious interest and assertive insistence on being a guest in someone else's privacy.

How to deal with nosy co-workers effectively

~ Look busy 

When you see Mr. or Ms. Nosy headed toward your desk or workstation, make sure you appear as if you are very hard at work. Start typing an email, or stare at a pile of paperwork with an expression of extreme focus.

This may make them realize that it isn’t the ideal time to stop and chat, but if they stop anyway, offer up an exaggerated complaint about all the tasks you have to finish up in the next couple of hours. With that, they should take the hint that you have no time to talk, and carry on with their workplace walk-through.

However, if you have a nosy co-worker who is totally oblivious to subtle signs, you may have to resort to pretending to be on the phone when you see them coming, but only do this when you really need to avoid them. If you pull this trick too often, the Nosy One may catch on. 

~ Change the subject 

If you and a co-worker start talking about relationships, and he or she starts asking questions about your past or present ones that you feel are too personal, you can deflect the topic of conversation with a slight subject change.

~ Ask them about themselves instead 

Often, people who are nosy love talking about themselves, and ask others personal questions because they automatically assume that everyone else does, too! If you don’t feel like responding to their queries, turn their questions back on them. 

~ Keep personal possessions under wraps 

Nosy people have a talent for noticing everything in another person’s environment, including small, inconspicuous things that wouldn’t show up on the average person’s radar. While you’re talking to them, a nosy colleague likely will be trying to read the papers on your desk, or craning their neck in order to glance over your shoulder and inspect the pictures on your cubicle wall. 

~ Limit social media contact 

If a co-worker’s nosy in the office, be careful as to how many social networking platforms you add them to. People’s personalities outside of work usually aren’t that different from the ones they present there, so there’s a good chance that your co-worker will, at some point, be going through your Facebook and Twitter pages and looking at your YouTube history during their off time.

This will give them even more ideas when it comes to things to ask you about, if they haven’t already found out everything about you by scrolling through seven years’ worth of photos and creeping five of your best friends.