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Fix the bad behavior, not the dud personality

Q: “I hate coming to work because of one obnoxious co-worker. ’Alan’ listens to our phone conversations and frequently interrupts with ‘corrections.’ He claims to have superior knowledge, yet he passes along sloppy work to the rest of us. We have to take Alan’s share of the calls, because he refuses to answer the phone unless our boss is around. Several of us have talked with our manager individually, but he doesn’t seem to understand the problem. Since he never sees this behavior, he thinks Alan is great. What can we do?” Seething