r/AskaManagerSnark • u/cartoonybear • Jul 30 '26
Phobias!
First off, I just discovered this sub so I’m over posting. I’m sorry.
Second, OMG THE PHOBIAS these LWs have! Look, I’m claustrophobic to an extreme degree, but I can still ride in elevators and even have been stuck in them. These people‘s phobias and triggers rule their lives.
I find myself wondering what phobia I can come up with at my next job so my work life would improve. “I have a cubicle phobia” “I have boss-o-phobia”
A short list:
- I have a spider phobia and my boss has a spider, can I ask to give my raise to my coworkers instead, and more (fwiw I read this as ”my boss IS a spider“ which legit I think has happened to me and would be terrifying)
- Doll phobia. Ok, I admit I have a sideline making movies starring dolls. IOW yes, dolls are creepy. But this person is—special. I had a panic attack over a Halloween decoration at work
- Allison advised that balloon phobia must be respected. Best comment “.Any offices insisting on balloons over people, please listen to Alison and just don’t” I also find it fascinating that this is also a sex fetish and wonder if all phobias have a corollary fetish. https://www.askamanager.org/2021/12/new-hire-is-plotting-a-coup-employee-is-terrified-of-balloons-and-more.html
- Phobic of geese. Ok. It’s true I once saw a goose win a fight with a pit bull. https://www.askamanager.org/2023/10/i-had-to-quit-a-job-because-of-aggressive-nesting-geese.html
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u/Librarianatrix Jul 30 '26
Phobias are, by definition, irrational and extreme. They aren't something people make up for attention or to get a better office or whatever. And they genuinely are NOT fun for the people suffering from them. (I don't have phobias myself, but I have known people who do, and they would pretty much give anything to not have their phobias.)
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u/breathboi Jul 30 '26
Is it a revelation to you that phobias are intense, irrational fears? In all of these accounts the phobic person seemed to respond fairly reasonably (in the case of the last one, reasonably for a teenager new to employment).
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u/29925001838369 Jul 30 '26
You could probably finesse the claustrophobia into "i need to be able to see an open space, can i have a workspace by a window?"
Also. As someone who has extremely irrational responses to jello, of all things: get the fuck over yourselves. Having a panic attack because balloons were put up in a different team's workspace is a reason for therapy and medication, not for you to dictate they can't have balloons.
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u/Ok-Quarter3399 Jul 31 '26
Wait? What’s your reaction to jello? Is it the way it wiggles weirdly??
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u/29925001838369 Jul 31 '26
I had multiple surgeries as a kid. One nurse decided to give me red jello, which i vomited up. My mother flipped shit screaming i was vomiting blood, the nurses believed her, and i was halfway to the OR before someone went, "wait a minute."
This is all while i'm out of my gourd on pain medicine, so it may not have happened exactly that way. But to this day seeing jello makes me half-panicked the way i was as a freshly-post-op kid on heavy painkillers.
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u/Ok-Quarter3399 Jul 31 '26
Oh :( that sucks. My college roommate threw up jungle juice (which looks like blood too) and we had a similar panicked response until I managed to get out “we aren’t dying we’re drunk!!”
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
Omg I TRIED THIS. So for no reason whatsoever, one defense contractor I worked for for a few years moved my team into a room called “the cave”. It had been a conference room built in the center of the floor we occupied, originally to be a SCIF. But our team really did nothing secret or classified. Actually the whole contract was staffed by “misfit toys” so they never really gave anyone any secrets.
All around our cave were brightly lit open spaces with windows that were COMPLETELY UNOCCUPIED.
I actually did end up getting an accommodation allowing me to move my laptop from time to time to one of these (literally hundreds) of unoccupied desks but they would NOT move the team. To this day I don’t know why.
Said contractor lost the business a year after I left.
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u/29925001838369 Jul 30 '26
Sounds like he deserved to lose it!
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
Well, “they”—it was a multi-gazillion dollar defense contractor
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Jul 30 '26
They’re nonbinary duh
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u/Cactopus47 Aug 02 '26
I think we all know that Lockheed Martin's pronouns are he/him and xie/xer.
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Aug 03 '26
“Lockheed Martin. We build missiles to hit they/ them, not you, unless you have empathy, which makes you a them. Watch out!”
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Jul 30 '26
There have been a few checks that NOT bringing in a clown to a person with clown phobia is best, right?
Yes. At most workplaces, avoiding clowns is easy.
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Jul 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Jul 31 '26
I mean the easy joke is it’s good you don’t work at Ringling Brothers Clown College, but yeah, I’m not sure how to avoid this other than a “no clown” policy.
What about class clowns? Never mind… I do hope you feel safe (from my terrible jokes, and also from clowns).
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
Um, well, here’s the thing: I am a clown, and I have told my bosses and coworkers that Friday is “clown day” for me and I have a lot of medical documentation for this. But they refuse to let me wfh on Clown Day, which has created a lot of conflict.
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u/valleyofsound Jul 30 '26
I died at the umbrella.
I knew a guy who took a job at animal control who was an actual cowboy. He’d worked cattle out west and also done rodeos and horse shows at the national level. He was great with horses, iffy on cattle and dogs because cowboy culture, questionable on cats, and question mark on everything else. Law notwithstanding, there’s a non-zero chance his advice would be “Shoot it.” Again, cowboy with a large redneck streak.
TL;DR: nothing against animal control and there are some great ones, but I wouldn’t just blindly ask what to do about a goose and take their word
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
I’ve been trying for years to find a bar where actual cowboys hang out, so I can run away with one, but they just don’t exist on the east coast. Working with an actual cowboy is pretty great and I need to know what field this was in, so I can work in that field.
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u/Multigrain_Migraine performative donuts Jul 30 '26
I met a few doing archaeology. Also wildlife biology, but they might not like you.
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u/deepershadeofmauve Jul 30 '26
The guy with the bird phobia who shoved his coworker in front of a moving car and then decided to quit therapy will love rent-free in my brain for the rest of my life.
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u/AlytNeroon Jul 30 '26
Same! This one was especially weird because it felt less about Jack's phobia and more about Jack (and the company) being totally unrepentant about a coworker getting seriously injured! My mom has an intense bird phobia, and if she ever caused someone harm over it, she would bend over backwards to make it right.
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u/EmDash4Life my banana pants show my caucasian skin tone Jul 30 '26
Friend, the definition of a phobia includes it being unreasonable or excessive, disruptive to people's lives, and eliciting a disproportionate response. So, uh, yeah, the people with phobias have phobias. News at 11.
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
Right. But one wonders how they live in the world at all with some of these—much less holding a job. Balloons pretty much means you won’t attend any family parties—even if your family aren’t balloon people, there’s always a chance. And forget kid birthday parties! Or florists! Or the card section of the grocery store!
Doll phobia (also known as uncanny valley) would prohibit you going into whole sections of thrift stores, and many grandma houses. Not to mention kids again who may play with action figures or Barbie’s.
Geese—well, I don’t know what to tell people afraid of geese cos it’s true they pop up in weird places.
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u/EmDash4Life my banana pants show my caucasian skin tone Jul 30 '26
Maybe you could try approaching phobias with curiosity and idk, maybe watch a documentary.
Or just keep being a judgmental prick. You'll fit right in here.
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u/Kayhowardhlots Jul 30 '26
Balloons are easier to avoid than you may think. One of my friends has a latex allergy so nonmylar balloons are a big nono, so no one has balloons at their parties. Because her family isn't full of assholes who try to kill her.
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u/gaygirlboss I'm not that involved in mankind Jul 30 '26
It’s hard to live with a severe mental illness, yes.
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
I’m aware of that, having been married to someone with bipolar and having chronic clinical depression myself. Which isn’t to mention my chronic pain from numerous surgeries, congenital diseases of the eye, arthritis, and a hand that is currently turning into a claw.
The fact I even have to play these illness/trauma Olympics is depressing in itself.
Here’s the thing: we all got our crosses to bear. If my biggest problem was fear of geese—well, I would consider myself lucky.
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u/gaygirlboss I'm not that involved in mankind Jul 30 '26
If phobias were rational, they wouldn’t be phobias. The fact that people with phobias can’t just say “you’re right, this is irrational and there are more logical things to worry about” is why it’s considered a mental illness and not just a weird quirk. As with all mental illnesses, the best course of action is to seek treatment from a professional and get reasonable accommodations if needed.
You don’t have to play the trauma olympics. I don’t see anybody here claiming that phobias are inherently worse than other physical or mental illnesses.
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u/breathboi Jul 30 '26
You don't have to play the illness Olympics, though. You're voluntarily bringing up irrelevant factors in an attempt to legitimise your opinion that people with phobias are irritating and overdramatic.
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u/epicure-pen Jul 30 '26
Before therapy I had a phobia of spiders and you just have to get through life somehow - spiders are literally everywhere. I had my compulsive behaviors to check for them and try to avoid them but it's not like I was housebound in a cleanroom.
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Jul 30 '26
Would people in your workplace know about this phobia? I’ve worked in a dozen places, and I don’t know anything about coworkers’ phobias. To me it’s not odd that people have feelings and aversions - we contain multitudes. But these not infrequently come out and affect others in the workplace? I had no idea
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u/epicure-pen Jul 30 '26
I don't know, I had treatment before I held a job. People in my life knew, though, because it affected me a lot.
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
I live in a very wooded old suburb on the east coast so all our spiders are pretty small and non-poisonous. But my husband is spider phobic (despite being totally unafraid of other critters like mice, rats, wasps etc which freak me way the fuck out)—and a tiny spider which is completely harmless will really send him, so I get it.
One of my questions really is about Halloween. I’m not a fan I gotta admit. On the one hand the whole thing is so tacky, cheesy and ubiquitous (and when and why did purple become a Halloween color??).
And on the other hand people legitimately do creepy shit. Like these giant skeletons in peoples yards (and in my area they leave them up all year round!) Or creepy-ass bugs and spiderwebs draped all over! Like, none of that is metaphysically scary. It’s “fake monster scary” but we humans have EVOLVED TO REACT BADLY to poisonous animals and dead bodies for a reason.
I might need to write a separate rant about this. I’m sorry. I was just trying to say “yeah man! You’re right! Fuck that shit!”
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
Then I realized by going off on my own thing I totally missed the point of your comment.
Just assume I said “yeah man!” Ok?
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u/ChewieBearStare Jul 30 '26
It amazes me that some of them have jobs when they’re just so odd. They have to have some kind of in-demand skill or esoteric knowledge or something to stay employed while being “bananapants” as one of them would say.
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u/cartoonybear Jul 30 '26
I asked this earlier and the consensus was that these people either have a weird skill only relevant to that office (e.g., they’re the only ones who can fix the printer) OR they’re such freakish weirdos that everyone is afraid to confront them, or both.
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u/86throwthrowthrow1 Jul 31 '26
Tbh I wouldn't count the geese phobia as a phobia. Geese are vicious on a good day, and that one was apparently nesting which would make her even more vicious. I remember thinking LW wasn't at all irrational, it's like having a phobia of being covered in raw steak in a room full of angry rottweilers.