"I knew my boss was interviewing someone for a new position," my friend told me, "But you could have knocked me over with a feather when she walked in!" My friend Judy and I were talking about her experience with a difficult coworker. Judy lives in another town and works in a small-world-after-all industry -- one I used to work in, and truthfully, the one I'm in now is very much the same: you tend to cross paths over and over with the same people. Judy actually had worked with this difficult coworker at a previous job. When Judy joined that company, this woman, Anne, was already well-established. She was cheerful, friendly, outgoing, and one of those people who loved to accentuate the positive. She took Judy under her wing on Judy's first day. "I went home that night and told my husband that if she was a reflection of how this company was going to be, it was going to be my best job ever," Judy recalled. For the first few months, Judy felt like she...