Man all of us have to deal with difficult people all the time regardless whether we are in the work environment or not. There was this time where I was in the Marines and I always had a Marine who showed up late and after the 3rd time I knew I really had to pull him to the side and talk to him. A technique I used for the situation was I obviously pulled him to the side in private for the talk because I felt that it was something personal going on with the individual, if I did it out in the open in front of everyone I could of put him in a very hard place where maybe he didn’t want to talk to me at all.