Recently I have been having problems with the Psychology technician in my dept. He is really rude and tries to lord over the PhD students, as though he thinks he is better than us.

His job is basically to set up laptops and put them away before and after the teaching sessions, but he will hang around for ages trying to talk to me and control everything. There was one occasion where I had a clash on my timetable, so I cleared it with the module leader and told the technician that this would be a 'drop in' and the students would be fine working on their own, and all of them have their own laptops. The technician turned up anyway and sent me a really rude email telling me I should be with my class.

He also sometimes lets himself into my office for 'computer issues', or to 'collect keys' which makes me really uncomfortable, and just generally is quite creepy.

I really don't want to work with him again next semester, and don't really need him in my class as all students bring their own Macs. But not sure whether I have grounds to raise this as an issue?

Butterfly, do you think he might actually 'like' you and be finding excuses (albeit in a not particularly positive way) to make further contact? Or 1 is he like this with ALL young female PhDs-and is basically trying to 'hit' on the girls Or 2 Is he like this with every Phd student and perhaps resents them a bit or perhaps he is just a difficult sort of person?

Either way, he sounds like his social skills and emotional awareness are a bit limited. I think you probably do need to set some boundaries here.

Two suggestions for two simple boundaries are:

1 (Limit the chat and interaction) If he hangs around 'to chat' after your classes, really strictly limit this-just say using very basic polite and non committal chat, "hi, yeah no problems today, thanks for putting it all away...see you later, bye" walk out the door.And give really polite but brief responses to his replies to the above.

2 Discuss with your supervisor or relevant person, the need for this person to email you before he enters your office to outline why he needs to and what his purpose is. The technicians in my workplace always email or phone before coming in to do something-it is basically a courtesy and to confirm that this is okay with us-we can organise to be present or to leave or to negotiate another time if we need to. However, technicians need access to people's offices sometimes to run their various checks, updates, what have yous and it can be a tough gig, so sometimes we need to cut them some slack here and there and be appropriately grateful for the support they do provide.

Finally if he sends nasty emails complaining about why you didn't run a class, show this to your supervisor if it makes you uncomfortable. Sometimes not replying to these sorts of things and ignoring them is the best solution though I have found. Using the principle of not giving any oxygen to a potential spot fire. Helps it die out very quickly.

Best regards and good luck!

He is generally a pervert towards all female students, and very resentful of academic members of staff.

Thank you for your helpful suggestion. It hadn't occurred to me that simply ignoring him would send the strongest message!