As I began to realize that Sam was going to be a significant source of stress in my life, his mere presence or sighting would cause my blood pressure to rise. In a way, Sam was controlling how I experienced my time on campus. If I had learned to accept that Sam was not going to change, or cared little about me and the trouble he was causing, the heated confrontations would have ended because I would have learned to walk away. There were times that I sensed Sam was deliberately baiting me into arguments in order to damage my reputation with my coworkers. In addition, I should have been more forthcoming with my supervisors about my experiences with Sam because my word would have carried some weight. Doing so might have minimized how much suffering Sam eventually caused to everyone in the laboratory, because it would have put them on alert. This might have occurred to me if I hadn't been so caught up in the emotional reactions I was having to Sam's behavior. Accepting that Sam was incapable of changing might have made the difference.

After reading O'Donohue's (2011) detailed portrayal...

I never had the impression that Sam believed he was better than anyone else. Quite the contrary, it seemed like all the lies, deceit, scheming, manipulation, and charm represented compensation for felt inferiority. There were several moments when it felt like Sam actually seemed to believe I was superior to him, a realization that seemed to trigger agitation and the need to escape me or that realization.
Conclusions

The advice O'Donohue (2011) provides for coping with difficult personalities like Sam would have been helpful. While I couldn't have avoided Sam without shirking my responsibilities to my employer and my coworkers, I can see how it would have been productive to simply accept that Sam's personality could not change. The level of my suffering, and that of my coworkers, might have been minimized with this advice.

References

O'Donohue, William. (2011). Difficult Personalities: It's Not You -- it's Them [Kindle version]. Lucky Bat Books. Retrieved from Amazon.com.