And Maybe It’s Me

Why Staffing and Compliance Matter in Warehousing

Every workplace has one. The colleague nobody looks forward to dealing with. The one who can kill the mood of the room with a single sigh, the one who somehow always manages to frustrate everyone else. I’m a warehouse manager, and believe me, in this kind of environment, that person always stands out even more. Stress is already built into the job. We’re racing against time, trucks arrive late, scanners fail, pallets disappear, orders pile up, and production is screaming for materials they should’ve asked for hours earlier. In the middle of all that chaos, you don’t need a difficult personality to make things worse — but inevitably, there’s always one.

I used to think I could spot them easily. There was this one guy, years back, who was technically good at what he did. He knew the system, he rarely made mistakes, but his attitude made you want to run the other way. If a shipment was ten minutes late, he acted like it was the end of the world. If someone miscounted a pallet, he called it a disaster, not a mistake. If you tried to joke with him, he’d stare at you like you’d wasted his time. Over time, people avoided breaks with him, avoided small talk, avoided asking for help. He didn’t even seem to notice that he had become isolated.

The strange thing is, one day I realized I was doing the exact same thing. A new hire was learning the ropes, scanning codes, trying his best. He made a mistake — it wasn’t the end of the world. But instead of guiding him patiently, I snapped. My tone was sharp, my words harsher than they needed to be. I saw the look on his face and it stopped me cold. In that moment, I wasn’t the patient manager, I wasn’t the mentor. I was the annoying colleague. I was the person who made others feel small.

That moment forced me to think. Nobody wakes up and decides, “Today I’ll be the most unpleasant person in the warehouse.” Most of the time, people don’t even realize how they come across. Stress, fatigue, pressure — these things add up, and suddenly you’re short with people, overly critical, or constantly negative. From the outside, it looks like you’re impossible to deal with. From the inside, it just feels like survival.

But still, let’s not sugarcoat it: some colleagues are truly difficult by nature. You know the type. They gossip behind everyone’s back. They complain about every single decision. They resist every change like it’s a personal attack. They roll their eyes during meetings. They criticize but never offer solutions. And if you try to ignore them, somehow their energy still spreads through the room. In a warehouse, where teamwork and speed are everything, that negativity is toxic. It drags people down.

Here’s the twist, though. Over time, I realized that even those people have a kind of value. That guy I once couldn’t stand? The one who complained about everything? He actually spotted problems early. He noticed flaws that others missed. Sure, his delivery was terrible, but his attention to detail saved us more than once. The same qualities that made him unbearable in daily interactions also made him meticulous about the work. Once I stopped taking his attitude so personally, I started to see the benefits of having him around.

It also made me think about myself again. How many times had I been that person for someone else? How many times had I focused on mistakes instead of effort? How many times had I been too strict, too impatient, too focused on what was wrong instead of what was right? The truth is, workplaces are mirrors. What we notice in others often says more about us than it does about them. Maybe I see the complainer in someone else because I’ve been a complainer too. Maybe I hate gossip because I’ve gossiped myself. Maybe someone out there thinks I’m the negative one.

As a manager, this is a hard pill to swallow. I want to be respected, I want to be fair, I want to set the tone for my team. But I’m human. I have days when my patience runs out, when my stress shows, when I act in ways I regret later. And the scary thing is, people don’t always remember the dozens of good interactions — they remember the one bad one. They remember the one time I snapped. To them, that one moment might define me.

So maybe the truth is this: every workplace has that annoying colleague because, at one point or another, we all take turns being that person. Some people stay stuck in that role permanently, but most of us slip into it during bad days. The key is whether we realize it and try to change.

I don’t think the goal is to eliminate difficult people from the workplace. That’s impossible. People are complicated. Personalities clash. Stress brings out the worst in us. The real goal is to manage how we respond. I can’t control whether someone else gossips, but I can control whether I feed into it. I can’t stop someone from complaining, but I can stop their negativity from dictating my mood. And I can control myself — how I talk to others, how I react under pressure, how I take responsibility when I mess up.

When I look back, the colleagues who irritated me most also taught me the most. They taught me patience, tolerance, and sometimes even humility. They showed me my own flaws in ways I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And when I finally admitted that sometimes I am the annoying one, it made me a better manager. Because it forced me to listen more, to explain more, to be aware of my tone, to remember that respect goes both ways.

So yes, every warehouse, every office, every team has “that person.” The one who seems impossible, the one everyone avoids. But before we point fingers, maybe we should stop and ask: when was I that person? Because if we’re honest, the answer is probably “more often than I’d like to admit.”

And that’s the uncomfortable truth about work. It’s not just about shipments and deadlines and numbers. It’s about people — flawed, imperfect, difficult people. Including me. Including you. And maybe the best we can do is to recognize it, own it, and try not to let “that person” become who we are every single day.