Hello,

I would like some advice with a frustation situation I have at my work. I would also like to hear if any other Christian's have experienced similar situations.

Before I begin, let me just give some back ground on my job. I work in IT office. There are only a couple Christians here that I know of. Most folks are buddhist, agnostic, or muslim. Our office is filled with people cussing, argueing, making crude jokes, and things like that. There's a lot of bitterness, gossip, and fighting between different teams. I try my best to avoid involving myself in those things and try just to work hard, treat people with respect and love and generally be an example of a good Christian.

My boss recently gave me an assignment where I would be working with another project manager on a certain project. This particular PM is one who can be very annoying. However, I don't think he means to be, he just tries a little too hard. What he did was, the people on the project he kept coming by their desk a couple times each day to check on things or see if there are any problems he can help with. My boss and other people started being really rude to him. My boss would not reply to his emails and if he saw him in the hallway he would go another way. Since I was the only one not being rude and/or ignoring him he would come ask me questions. The questions meant for my boss I would just tell him I couldn't answer. I was a little annoying by his frequent visits, but he also did help me resolve a couple issues I was facing so it wasn't all bad.

So then on our next employee team meeting my boss mentions this PM coming to my desk and says to me in front of our whole team "you need to grow some *****", insinuating that I am not standing up for myself and letting this guy annoying me. Which, I am a shy person by nature, but if someone is really bothering me I will tell them so politily. But I find it frustrating that people mistake my respect for others for weakness. My boss then talked about how he has been avoiding the guy and I added that is why he has been coming to me.

So I guess my question is, how do we live as Christians in the work environment, trying to live the gospel before others and not have others perceive our grace and respect for others as being weak?