signs of toxic people — 1 fairly sure investigation

signs of toxic people, plural, is what i have been collecting in a notebook for four years. the notebook is yellow. the notebook has water damage from a coffee i spilled at a brunch where someone called me bitter. that brunch is in the notebook.

writing this from the desk at 9:18, which is when carla disappears into the annual planning meeting on the third floor and i have, conservatively, the rest of the morning before anyone notices the shape of my screen.

the notebook lives in my work bag. the work bag lives under the desk. the desk is the only stable surface in my life and even it wobbles on the left back leg, which is a metaphor i refuse to develop.

signs of toxic people, the working list (~250)

the working list is not theoretical. the working list comes from the notebook, which comes from four years of someone telling me at a bar that i was, and i quote, “a lot,” followed by the same person two weeks later asking me to help them move.

i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a serious magazine, that confirms what the notebook already confirms. signs of toxic people, plural, do not announce themselves. they leak. they leak in the small adjustments other people make around them. they leak in the way a room exhales when they leave. frasier the show ran eleven seasons on this exact dynamic, except funnier, and with a producer.

this post is not about a single person and it is not about your friends, either. you can audit your friends in a separate investigation i wrote about a single person, and your friend group in the friend-specific one. this is about types. types you spot in the elevator. types you spot at the coffee place. types you spot in the sales meeting you joined by accident and never left.

the apartment where the certified letters keep coming (~260)

i need to tell you about the apartment, briefly, because the apartment is the laboratory and the drawer of certified letters is the data set. the drawer is in the kitchen. the drawer is the third one down. the drawer was originally for utensils and is now for evidence i refuse to open.

also in the kitchen: the seventh microwave. the previous six are in a landfill, philosophically. the current one hums when it is not running, which is its way of telling me something is coming. HT25 belongs here too — water is the most overrated drink, and i mention this because the only beverage i have at my desk is a tap water from a mug shaped like a duck and even that feels like a concession.

the certified letters started arriving the week i started the notebook. correlation, not causation, probably. the productivity bro online — the one with the pinned thread about morning routines — would say that toxic people are everywhere because i invite them in. the productivity bro online has a ring light. the productivity bro online has never received a certified letter that he can identify by the weight of the envelope. i can. that is the difference between us, philosophically.

items 1 to 4, the productivity-bro ones (~260)

these are the four signs of toxic people that the productivity bro online would, if he were honest, recognize in himself. he is not honest. that is item zero.

1. they redefine what you said while you are saying it. you make a point. they restate the point as something adjacent and stupider. you correct. they correct your correction. by minute three you are arguing for a position you never held, against a person who is, you suspect, enjoying this. the technical name for it is something a real manual would call gaslighting. i call it the redefinition loop. one of my colleagues runs the redefinition loop in every status update. i have stopped attending the status update.

2. they keep score and pretend they don’t. the score is in their pocket. the score is updated weekly. the score is brought out on the third drink, disguised as a story about how they once helped you. you do not remember being helped. that is, of course, the point.

3. they manufacture urgency on your time. their request is always urgent. your request to them is always something they will get to. urgency is a one-way valve. urgency funded by you only. i have a colleague whose monday email reads like an evacuation order and whose response to my friday email arrives the following thursday with an apology that is, in fact, a brag about how busy she has been.

4. they treat your boundary as a negotiation opener. you say no. they hear “begin.” you say no again. they hear “begin harder.” this is the sign that overlaps the most with the classic fool dynamic — except the fool is loud about it and the toxic person is quiet about it, which makes them harder to spot at the office holiday party.

items 5 to 8, the certified-letter ones (~260)

these four signs of toxic people i associate with the drawer, because they correspond to the kind of slow accumulation that the drawer represents. you do not notice them on day one. you notice them at the count of seven.

5. contempt disguised as concern. “i’m worried about you” said in a tone that is, on closer reading, a public diagnosis. “are you okay” as a status check on whether you have, in their view, gotten worse. there is a pitch they use. you can hear it. it is the pitch of someone hoping the answer is “no” so they can be the one who saw it first.

6. they audit your minor errors and forgive their major ones. they will remember the time you misspelled their last name in 2021. they will not remember the time they cancelled on your event because of a “headache” that was, by everyone else’s account, a date. the asymmetry is not accidental. the asymmetry is the entire posture.

7. they tell you what you meant. this is item one’s older cousin. you said a thing. they tell you, with something like patience, what you actually meant. what you actually meant is always less generous than what you said. by the end of the conversation, you are apologizing for an intention you did not have, in front of an audience you did not invite, on a topic you did not raise.

8. they collect grievances like a hobby. a real hobby would cost money. their hobby is free and pays interest. every interaction is filed, indexed, retrievable. when they finally bring it out, six months later, the timestamp is exact and the framing is theirs. i am observing this as a man whose drawer is a drawer of unopened paper, so i recognize the impulse to file. the difference is that my drawer is sealed and theirs has a search bar.

closing pulpit, the signs travel, the people stay (~250)

the working theory the notebook keeps confirming, against my preference, is that signs of toxic people are portable. the people travel — new job, new city, new partner, new friend group — and the signs travel with them. the signs are not a response to a bad environment. the signs are what they brought to the environment. the environment, in fact, is the thing they corrupted on arrival.

this means two things that are inconvenient. first, leaving the environment does not solve it for the toxic person, which is something the productivity bro online will not tell you because his brand depends on geography being the answer. second, leaving the environment can solve it for you, which is something nobody will tell you at all because it sounds like quitting.

the certified letters keep coming. the drawer keeps filling. the seventh microwave keeps humming. and somewhere in the building, in the meeting on the third floor, in the elevator at 9:18, in the kitchen of an apartment that is not mine and not yours but is, apparently, very much like both of ours — the system runs. you can see it now. that is the only good news in the post.

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