The difficult one is still on the team

Every crew has one. The driver who gripes about every route. The clerk who turns a simple handoff into a standoff. The teammate whose first answer to anything is no. You'd cut them loose if you could, and since you can't, you start treating them as an obstacle to route around — a problem in the shape of a person.

Marcus, running an empire full of difficult people, kept returning to one fact about how things are built: "The intelligence of the universe is social" (Meditations 5.30, Long). The whole thing is fitted together, parts made for parts. The difficult colleague isn't outside your system, jamming it from beyond. They're inside it, a working component of the same body you belong to, which means the relationship — not just your half of it — is the actual unit you're dealing with.

That changes the question. Instead of asking how to get around this person, you start asking how to keep the joint between you working well enough that the whole thing doesn't seize up. Liking them was never on the table. But you do share the work, the shift, the floor — and that sharing is the part you can actually tend.

So treat the difficult one as a piece of the same machine you're a piece of, geared into yours whether either of you likes it. The machine still has to run. You're both in it.