u/AdSea6127

So I’m in Corporate Finance and I wfh. My boss, a director, is a very smart dude. Overall, I do like him and have no problems working with him but there’s one thing that bugs me from day 1 of working here - is that when I share my screen and try to actively show him something in Excel and I need to filter a bunch of data or do other manipulations in a model to get to whatever I’m trying to show him, he guides me as to how to do it. I have almost 2 decades of experience, so I’m not entry level and know my Excel, although admittedly not at the very advanced level like he does. I do often experience a bit of a screen sharing anxiety and randomly freeze up, which just means executing a task (like sorting or filtering) might take me a few seconds longer. I know he is very quick in everything he does and I can never work at such speeds even if I’m not anxious, so I feel like he gets annoyed and thinks that I’m slow and in that time feels like he needs to help me by guiding me. His guidance makes me feel like I am incompetent in his eyes and don’t know what I’m doing. And again, it’s not rocket science type of stuff but basic excel work that he feels the need to guide me on.

This is making me feel extremely insecure and incompetent about my work, but I don’t know what to do about this. Any suggestions?

I have a friend who goes out of her way to talk to people. Every time we hang out she starts talking to random people in store lines, people with babies, cashiers, random service people. I know her for 16 years and while she always had a bit of that element I always found her to be more reserved, but now there’s literally no time and place where she isn’t talking up some stranger on the street. We do live in NYC and it can seem normal to do this here, but at the same time people generally keep to themselves and mind their business. I think most people find that she’s just being friendly, but I find it a bit pathological, especially lately when I hear that she literally befriends every person that crosses her way. There’s never any depth or substance to those conversations however, I often feel like she just mumbles whatever she wants to say without truly caring to hear what the other person is saying. It just all seems so fake and performative. Obviously as an INFJ I tend to be introverted, especially since covid. My extroversion only comes out for the people I love and care for and generally know well and/or feel comfortable around.

My other thought is maybe my friend is just lonely and that’s her way of dealing with it?

How do you feel about extroverts in your life?

EDIT: thanks for everyone’s responses so far. I guess my post does read a bit judgmental toward my friend and I apologize, as this was not the intention. As a self-proclaimed loner I never made friends easily in life unless I was already in a comfortable environment where I felt free to express myself with no judgment. But that’s rare for me! Outside of that I mainly keep to myself and now that I’m older the desire to have any conversations with strangers is just not there. I think Covid also changed a lot of things for me, as previously I do recall being more chatty with strangers, but I also remember comparing and feeling like I couldn’t do it so well relative to some of my friends. I do want to note I have other extroverted friends and they don’t jump at every person on the street for conversation. In fact, nobody else I know does it anywhere remotely close to the level of this friend and that’s why I questioned it. I know we are all different in how we communicate and that’s the beauty of being human.