60% of Workers Have a “Work Enemy.” Here’s the Strange Trick That Disarms Them

Feeling stuck in a situation? Trying to resolve a difficult challenge?

Here’s a strange solution, but I promise it works: Just pretend that you’re in a sitcom.

Framing your situation as a sitcom allows you to view yourself as the protagonist of your own story. It encourages you to channel the confidence and self-assuredness of iconic movie characters like Ferris Bueller or Elle Woods. This perspective also infuses appreciation into almost any circumstance by transforming the dull, bland backdrop of your daily life into a well-thought-out set with interesting characters and details that you’ll want to pay attention to.

Consider it: Shows like The Office didn’t become so popular because the characters all got along swimmingly. The fun of watching The Office comes from seeing people with very different personalities and goals get along and observing how their peccadilloes create conflict in real time.

Rather than treating those around you as people you need to tolerate, the sitcom perspective can help you see them as personalities and personas that are more endearing and easier to understand.

Take the character Newman in Seinfeld. Newman is the archnemesis of Jerry, the main character of the show. It is impossible for Jerry and Newman not to interact, because they live in the same building and share a best friend, Kramer, who is also Jerry’s next-door neighbor. Jerry and Newman are diametrically opposed about everything, except the New York Mets, and often refer to each other as the “sworn enemy” or just “pure evil.” “Hello, Newman” has become one of the most iconic lines in TV history because of the somewhat sinister way Jerry greets Newman every time they cross paths.

We all have our Newmans in life, especially at work. According to a 2019 survey of over 7,000 employees by the United Kingdom’s largest job listing platform, Totaljobs, 60 percent of workers have a “work enemy.” In fact, almost 50 percent of those polled had at least one, 43 percent had more than one, and almost 10 percent said they saw most of their colleagues as enemies.

At my core, I want to figure out how to decrease these numbers, so let’s talk about how seeing a situation through the lens of a sitcom can help us feel less stuck at work.

Let’s say my work enemy is Barbara. I see Barbara as a work enemy for these reasons:

• She has used fear tactics to push me and has a passive-aggressive communication style.
• She is short-tempered toward me and skeptical of my credentials.
• She is difficult to trust as an advocate for the change I am implementing. She would do anything she can to diminish my role in a project in order to have more control over it.

But when I see Barbara as the “sitcom frenemy,” she now feels more approachable:

• She has a quintessential Southern accent that immediately brings levity to a conversation.
• She has a short fuse that I can anticipate and cut off at the pass, but if I’m unable to do so in time, I can shrug my shoulders and just say, “That’s Barbara being Barbara.”
• She protects her team like a fierce mama bear.
• She is incredibly intelligent and always has insightful monologues when least expected.
• There is tremendous opportunity for me to win her over, which would make a great plot twist as the season progresses.

Over the years, I collected a perspective like this for just about everyone I interacted with, from my friendliest coworkers to my archnemeses. It helped me feel as though I had control over the dynamic of the relationship, as well as my own mood. It reassured me to know that I could turn down the dial of any unpleasant interaction or tense conversation as I saw fit.

I may not have been able to choose what was happening to me directly, but I could choose how to frame it. By seeing myself as the main character of a bizarre sitcom, I dictated how I used my energy instead of letting work drama decide for me.

Want more ways to feel better, and appreciate everything around you? This essay was excerpted from Timm Chiusano’s new book, How to Get Addicted to Appreciation.

Feeling stuck in a situation? Trying to resolve a difficult challenge?

Here’s a strange solution, but I promise it works: Just pretend that you’re in a sitcom.

Framing your situation as a sitcom allows you to view yourself as the protagonist of your own story. It encourages you to channel the confidence and self-assuredness of iconic movie characters like Ferris Bueller or Elle Woods. This perspective also infuses appreciation into almost any circumstance by transforming the dull, bland backdrop of your daily life into a well-thought-out set with interesting characters and details that you’ll want to pay attention to.