A reader writes:

So I bit a coworker yesterday. Obviously, I’m mortified.

I work in an incredibly dysfunctional office. The tone is set by our office manager. He’s in his fifties, has always worked in an office setting, and is difficult. Things are right if it’s in his favor and wrong if anyone else does it. He once cursed at me and called me a child for asking him not to say I’m prettier if I smile. He then didn’t speak to me for a year — which was a relief.

Well, yesterday, I had a meeting with a coworker. (If it makes a difference, the office manager and I are on the same level, as is the person I was meeting with.) My hands were full of paperwork and a full mug. When I got to the coworker’s office, the office manager was in the doorway, braced with one arm stretched across the opening. I stopped, said, “Excuse me, I have a meeting.” Aaaaaand he refused to move. He replied that he didn’t give a s*** and it wasn’t his problem. The coworker grimaced but said nothing, as is usual for our office.

Normally, I’d sit and argue. Rarely, I’m able to convince him to move. In those cases, I’d put down my things in the office and wait for the colleague and him to finish speaking. They don’t work together or like each other, but they angry-gossip frequently.

This time — this time I bit him. I don’t know! His arm was in front of my face, my hands were full, I know from experience he almost never moves, and I’m reaaaaally busy right now.

In any case, I bit him, over his sleeve, pulled back, and we just sort of stared at each other for a second, because … wow. He finally got his feet under him, figuratively, and retaliated by stomping on my feet (I was in ballet flats and he had heeled dress shoes) and shoving me. As I’m regaining my balance and trying to save my feet, I dropped my mug, which shattered. At that point, he stopped and bent to pick up the shards. I ducked into the office and shut and locked the door. Not helping him pick up the shards angered him more.

I’ve since apologized. He accepted gracefully, while admitting no fault on his part.

This office is bad. It’s warping my perceptions of normal behavior. I know there is no one above us who would address this issue with him and short of quitting, I have to deal with him every day. What is the right way to deal with difficult coworkers in these situations? Just keep arguing? Walk away and reschedule the meeting? There are no magic words to deal with impossible people, but how do I reason with myself mentally to stop myself from going down this road again?

Thank you for considering my question. I suppose most everything is solved by “walking away,” but I feel helpless and clearly spiral a bit into wild behavior when at a loss…

Ooof.

I think the thing to do here is to use this incident as a way of seeing really clearly that this office is messing you up. It’s destroying your sense of norms, it’s making you act in ways that (I assume) you would never normally act, and it’s turning you into someone who you don’t want to be. (Again, I’m assuming, but it feels like a safe bet that you don’t want to be someone who bites coworkers as a means of conflict resolution.)

It’s also going to start messing with your professional reputation, if it hasn’t already. It’s going to be hard for people to recommend you for other jobs if they know you bit a coworker.

So, three things:

1. You need to start actively job searching right away. Not like sending out a resume every few weeks when the mood strikes, but seriously working to get yourself out of this situation as soon as you can.

2. You should apologize to the coworker who saw the incident. It’s all kinds of messed up that she didn’t say anything at the time or afterwards, but that’s probably a further illustration of how out of whack the norms in your office are. Regardless, though, she did see it, and you don’t want her to think that you think it was okay. So talk to her and explain that you’re mortified and that you know it wasn’t okay.

3. For whatever amount of time you have to continue working there, it’s crucial to keep in the forefront of your mind that you are not somewhere that supports normal behavior. You should expect that when you deal with the office manager, he will be rude, unreasonable, and hostile. You should go into your interactions with him expecting that, so that when it happens, you’re not surprised by it. You want your reaction to be an internal eye roll, not outrage. You should also be prepared to have to alter your plans when he obstructs you. So for example, when he blocked your path to your coworker’s office, ideally you would have said, “Jane, I can’t get past Fergus, but let me know when you’re ready to meet” and then left.

It might help to think of yourself as being in a foreign country with completely different norms than the ones that feel obvious to you. Hell, pretend you’re on another planet where the inhabitants have their own, seemingly bizarre rules for interacting. If this were happening during your interplanetary trip to Neptune, you probably wouldn’t go into a rage and bite an alien — you’d more easily see it as their own particular culture. You might also try very hard to get off Neptune very quickly, and that would be reasonable. But while you were there, you’d understand that they were playing by different rules.

But really, this is as clear a sign as anyone will ever get that you’ve been there too long and it’s time to go.