Peter sat at the desk across from me in the cubefarm. He wore a tie, and he was the only guy who did. He also objected to anyone eating their lunch at their desk. Not just food that was full of garlic and anchovies, but any hot food at all. He complained on my second day, when I reheated something innocuous in the vegie-tomato-pasta line and tried to eat it around 12:30.

Now, there are lots of times when it’s annoying to have people eating at their desk. Outside of normal mealtimes can be particularly distracting; I struggle with this one because I get all low-blood-sugary around 4pm and really want to eat something substantial. If there’s a lunchroom I’m set, but if there’s not then I’m torn between distracting my co-workers or sitting there headachey and braindead.

But Peter… Peter objected to perfectly ordinary lunches being eaten at perfectly ordinary times. He raised the issue politely, saying that he found it distracting and would I mind terribly not doing it. And, like an idiot, I complied. I spent the next little while avoiding eating lunch, because there was nowhere else in the building to eat. My other option required leaving the office, walking for 10 minutes, and paying for fairly expensive take-out food. Instead I munched on dried fruit and got headachey and absolutely hated the whole experience.

It wasn’t til Peter politely asked me something else that I realised what was going on. See, he very nicely mentioned that the second computer under my desk had a rather noisy fan, and would I mind turning it off? I said no, it was acting as a server and a number of people were using it, and it needed to be left on. The fan wasn’t all that noisy; I hadn’t noticed it and nobody else had commented, so I figured he could live with it.

A few days later, when I was working from home, he switched off that PC without notice, dumping me out and preventing me from working.

Peter wasn’t being polite. He was being a manipulative bastard. In a calm and friendly tone, he’d ask people to take extraordinary measures to ensure his comfort, and people would usually fall for it. He’d happily cost people time and money or prevent them from working to protect his delicate sensibilities.

I moved desks.

Don’t be fooled: just because someone sounds polite doesn’t mean they’re being polite. And don’t feel that you have to be a doormat to be polite in return.