If you’re this unlucky, so sorry!, but help might be found in the books described below:
"CERTAIN mortals have the power to sink hearts and sour moods with lightning speed. The hysterical colleague. The meddlesome neighbor. The crazy in-law. The explosive boss. A mélange of cantankerous individuals, they are united by a single achievement: They make life miserable.
"You call them jerks, dolts and nitwits. Psychologists call them ‘difficult people.’ In fact they are difficult in so many ways that they have been classified into species like the Complainer, the Whiner and the Sniper, to name but three.
[snip]"Two decades ago there were only a handful of books offering advice on how to defang the dears. Today there are scores of seminars, workbooks and multimedia tools to help people co-exist with those they wish did not exist.
"In the spring, Career Press is to publish 151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People by Carrie Mason-Draffen. But numerous resources are already on the market, including the succinctly titled Since Strangling Isn’t an Option by Sandra A. Crowe."
More books dealing with the "jerk problem" follow…