Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black. If your work environment is stressful, you may find it impacting your home life as well. You might have an overbearing boss or an irritating co-worker who's

making your life miserable and taking a toll on your mental health. Our guest on this episode

is social psychologist Tessa West, who's an expert on difficult workplace relationships. She's

an associate professor of psychology at New York University who specializes in

interpersonal interaction and communication.

And her newest book is called Jerks at Work, Toxic Co-workers and What to Do About Them.

Thank you so much for joining us, Tessa.

We are thrilled to talk with you.

Why did you decide to write this book? I mean, it certainly seems like it's much needed.

Well, I think the shorter answer is I was doing a jerk at work and didn't really realize it until it was too late.

And I think, you know, as a social psychologist, I studied this stuff. I've been

studying awkward social interactions for almost two decades. And if I can't find my way around these

problems, I don't really understand who can. You know, we don't really get an education on this

stuff. And I thought it would actually be fun to kind of write a book where I bring in some of my

own real life stories and then accompanied with some just really basic strategies from social science

on how to actually handle these difficult social situations at work.

Now, what do you mean you were the jerk at work?

And why did you not realize it until it was too late?

You know, so I ran this really horrible committee and is my job at

NYU as a professor where we were in charge of moving offices, kind of, this sounds really lame,

but from one side of the building to the other, and it was this brand new renovated space,

and my job was to just help orchestrate the move, help put people in new offices. And it felt like

...