Office politics doesn’t only involve people with varying levels of authority. So it’s not just your relationship with your boss that demands attention. Most of the politics involved in the workplace is with your co-workers. Basically you have two types - your friend and your foe. And it’s always the latter who’d give you a hard time at work.

The key here is to immediately figure out who of those cubicle creatures would be the one who’d stand up for you and who’d rat you out. While you might be optimistic that everyone’s your friend, well bad news sonny-boy, the world isn’t built that way. Somewhere out there is that jealous rat of a co-worker who’ll be more than happy to tell the boss that you drop by the water cooler a tad too often (accented with the work-hours that you’ve been wasting).

The tricky thing here is to identify who among your co-workers bear that often-times inexplicable grudge against you. But all you have to do is to keep your eyes and ears open and you’ll soon be able to tell who that person/those people are.

One way to handle them is to generally steer clear and avoid confrontation. If you spend no time at all in each other’s presence then neither one of you would have to share (un)pleasantries. They’d always be watching you so be careful of what you do. Just keep an eye out for them so that they won’t catch you checking your personal e-mails or watching YouTube videos while on the job. Don’t give them any reason to rat you out.

However, some of these bastards might go the extreme to make false rumors and accusations against you. Don’t be bothered though since those who make the accusations bear the burden of proof. Since you’re careful enough not to commit any blunders, they won’t have proof to back their claims up. If they start to seriously annoy you, probably a calmed talk with them can sort things out. If their pranks escalate to threats, then make the appropriate action and file an official complaint with your company’s human resource department.