This is something that I struggled with a lot when I was 18-21.../(still) lol. My tactics for dealing with it have evolved over time.
I've found that generally I have to deal with less as I get older. They usually assume that I will be more confident in dealing with games and not sit there and take or lose control of my emotion. Every once in a while though I run into someone who underestimates me.
My brother works where I am. The one guy in maintenace (Jeff) has a bit of an ego. He's older like 60s. Then there is one of the supervisors named Holly. So here's what happened today. One of the elevators broke down with Holly in it. She was just there until the elevator guy got there. All 3 of us teased her. Then the breakfast bar closed so I went up with my brother to grab a coffee because they throw it out anyways. They pretty nice to me and usually even give me a muffin or something. Which they don't have to do.
Jeff comes up and goes off on both of us and makes us look like the bad guys. Says we were teasing Holly and she is having a fit in the elevator. Reeks of a game to me, but I'm not sure the angle. After me and my brother were talking about it and he thought it was to make us uncomfortable so we wouldn't go back up. Because he wants to feel like he has more privilege than us. Makes sense.
The optimal way to test would be to bring in my own coffee put it in one of the hotels mugs and observe his reaction. It is after all "double pleasure to deceive the deceiver".
Anyways he is downstairs after Holly gets out and starts ripping on me and my brother. Making a big deal out of nothing and questioning my work ethic/saying that he told my brother he could go on break but not me. That we were holding hands blah blah. He jokes with a straight face, but it felt like he was actually going for a nerve. So I said something along the lines of I'm surprised you saw us from the break room. He didn't like that very much so when he went for another jab. I was like I bet the smoking section could use some "maintenace"
. I don't really need to be working, it's just so I don't eat into my savings. But honestly, don't dish it out if you cannot take it back. I'm wayy better at finding nerves lol.
He kept going so I just lol'd and was like are you getting serious now? It feels serious. He said that he was going to talk to the manager. So when he was alone. I told him to talk to the manager if he had concerns about my work ethic (which is fine). I waited until he was alone so he wouldn't posture. He told me in a snakey voice I don't have a problem. In my head thinking "Yeah I didn't think so" . Basically I removed his ability to bluff me by calling his shit hand.
He tells Holly about it, I can tell by the way she talked to my brother when he didn't know about the new setting on the washing machine. She said "I wasn't yelling at you or anything". She is nice but kinda a passive when she needs to not be.
I predicted to my brother that Jeff would posture for a while and then give us food or something. My prediction came true later that day, got a bunch of free goodies lol. But then right after that he made up a story to another guy about how I couldn't find the keys and they were in plain sight. He had the guy go look for them and of course he found them right away.
He is quite a skilled manipulator, I don't often come across that level of mind games. He is attempting to destabilize a power base for me by making people not like me. Since he has no real dirt he manufactures it. He is obviously salty. At this level of my development I ALWAYS downplay myself enormously. It truly is necessary after a certain point. There are things I cannot hide though, they know what school I go to. It has a lot of prestige in my hometown/area. So that is certain to inspire jealously. With the amount of skill he has it's impossible to not have heightened observation which means that he has noticed that 3/4 of the housemaids are jocking. That's not even including the front desk workers lol. He can manufacture all the drama he wants he cannot take away from the attraction they have.
Good, his movements are slow and his form is sloppy. I want him to see how the game is really played