A group of us at work got an email yesterday informing us another employee has had back surgery and is recovering. I didn’t know about it and could care less. I don’t like this employee and never have. She works from home so I am happy I don’t have to see her but twice maybe three times a year.
So the email sender states she has a card and if we want to sign it to come back to her office and do so. Well I didn’t want to sign it but the bitch had such a lack of signatures, which proves this employee is not liked, that she had to walk around to our cubes pointing out we forgot to sign the card and to please sign.
If I wanted to fucking sign it I would have walked the twenty feet from my cube to your office you dumb bitch. I didn’t forget, I did not want to sign. She also gave me an off look because I didn’t read it before I signed it. Fuck you, I didn’t want to sign as it was, so I am not reading it. I am sure whatever you picked out was slurpy and sweet enough to suffice.
I may sound like a royal bitch myself but it pisses me off with all the cards, gifts, cakes whatever the fuck that floats around this place for the smallest little thing.
**Dear entire company,
Snow Whites plant died lets send her a pick me up bouquet. Donations are welcome.**
But then come around to our cubes with their hand out for money with a pen and card in hand.
I don’t understand why they don’t get the fact that if these little card giving, gift giving, cake making ideas do not sprout the entire department beating down their door to contribute that maybe most of us think it is stupid or just maybe we don’t have the funds to hand out every time Jeanie gets a hang nail and requires sometime type of card.
I’m with you. Enough. At least you weren’t held up for a donation for someone you didn’t know.
I’ve signed a lot of cards, but when it came my turn one secretary signed each person’s name for them. They could have saved the card, as it went straight to the recycle bin. Not exactly a keeper.
Yes. If I wanted to sign I would have. She sent the email yesterday so if people had not come over by then she should have left well enough alone.
If she thought people really forgot then sending out a new email would have been fine. But I don’t feel I have to be cornered in my cube and forced to sign something I didn’t want to sign in the first place.
And what’s wrong with that? It’s a helluva lot better than being guilt-tripped into…well, anything, especially glurgy well-wishings from someone you wish were in a well.
I sure wouldn’t want bullshit sympathy from someone I didn’t like, would you?
Unless you work with child molesters or former members of the Backstreet Boys I cannot imagine what makes signing a card to express some morsel of sympathy such an imposition on yourself.
From a purely ethical standpoint, you’re right, of course. You have no obligation to sign, donate to, or support anything you don’t want to.
As a human being, though…I personally have never disliked a coworker so much that I’d actively resist the effort of signing my name to the prepackaged sentiment “I hope your recent medical procedure does not result in your death”. I’ll grant your larger point about offices that give gifts/cards/cakes/what-have-you for every little thing; that’s annoyed me at places I’ve worked as well. But for something like this, where the occasion seems to merit some kind of acknowledgement, and all that’s asked of you is a two-second stroke of a pen…well, why the hell not?
I can tell you this: if I were in this employee’s situation, and I were to discover that you pointedly refused to sign the card wishing me well, I’d not likely interpret your actions as an ideological protest against interoffice coercion. Instead, I would almost certainly conclude that you actively wished me physical harm, or were at the very least indifferent to whether I lived or died.
Is that really the message you want to send? I mean, I know you don’t like the lady, but damn…
ETA: Looks like you’ve been around a few months, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not just trolling here. Kindly prove me right with some sort of added explanation or backstory, would you?
Perhaps because there was no sympathy felt. I’ve just passed on cards without signature or comment because I didn’t give a fuck if the person it was for died in a flaming car crash. I’m assuming the favor has been returned.
There’s only been two people in my workplace that I have not signed for–one who threatened to beat me up in a the parking lot (this was a middle aged woman, btw–the beater upper I mean) and one was my director for whom no words of loathing are strong enough. Other than that… Hell, I didn’t like half the people I used to work with (I’m just getting to know the ones I do now–newish job), but I still signed and donated $. At my workplace, we collect money for any death or birth–anything else gets a card. I don’t give much, but something. It’s called getting along with other people. The fact that I have donated many, many times and yet not one penny was collected for me, nor was a card even presented, when my sister died is beside the point. (that did irk me, but it’s over now).
There’s folks I work w/that I truly have low opinions of. But they are, in fact, humans that I work around. Now, if it was the ‘my plant died’, yea, I’m there. Pay out $$ for a gift? depending, maybe not. But sign a goddam card that expresses "get well soon’ or some other glurgy shit? what the fuck does it cost you? It allows others to (erronesously as it turns out) to see you as a human being as well.
I’ve seen that sort of cosmic badassery in folks, and I’ve always been grateful to have limited contact with them. GOod info to know. thanks for the update. Yet, if I worked w/you and learned you’d just lost your spouse, had surgery, or what have you, I’d still say “sorry to hear”, and mean it. "cause I don’t actively wish misery on pretty much anyone reasonably human.
The problem is that, in the UK, people are supposed to write something witty or heartfelt on the card, too. So when it comes to someone I’ve never even met, I tend to refuse, with the reason “I don’t even know this person”. That usually suffices. There’s 150 people in my office - get real.
Though I suppose I could scrawl what another friend always writes, whether he knows them or not:
So refusing to lie to someone make me a “miserable shit?”
It isn’t “cosmic badassery,” as you put it. It’s not going out of my way to be nice to someone I have limited contact with (as in the OP), and don’t like.
That’s different than going out of my way to be rude to them, something I don’t do. That’s just…rude.
Do you think eleanorigby was in the wrong for not signing a card addressed to the office bully? How do we know that SomeUsername’s co-worker isn’t a loudmouthed, ignorant fuckup? Sure–we don’t know that, and it would be irresponsible of us to assume anything more about their personality than we were given:
Fact is, nobody is obligated, either by the terms of their employment, or by ethics to wish someone well who isn’t liked. But you know what? That’s not even what the rant was about. It was about being cornered in a cubicle (along, it would seem, with many other people who didn’t want to sign) and being browbeaten. Which, whether or not the card should have been signed*, is inappropriate.
for the record, I have actually signed cards for people I don’t like, with a noncommital statement, or just my name. I have also not signed for people I didn’t know or actively disliked. If that makes me a miserable shit, so be it.
what lie? signing a “get well soon” card is a lie? You wish that they **don’t ** get well soon? In which case, yes, you’re a miserable shit in my book. You won’t expend the miniscule amount of effort to put your name to a card extending some sentiment that some one you know is in pain and it wasn’t an active wish of yours? yes, that makes you a miserable shit in my book.
Some one who was a bully at work told me “sorry about your loss” when my dad died. I thanked him. It was a human moment. Doesn’t change a whole lot but christ, there’s enough bad in the world that I cling to those tiny human moments. I dont’ see any, repeat any percentage in shitting on them.
I actually prefer that custom, and use it as my benchmark in determining whether to sign cards. If I don’t know the person well enough to think of something witty or heartfelt, I pass the card on to the next person.
“Do unto others” . . . When I receive cards, witty remarks from people I know well please me. Unadorned signatures from people I barely know make no impression.
To clarify: the bully in my workplace left (was allowed to leave, but she should ahve been fired), took a job in Maine and died there. The collection and card was for her daughter. I said no–not only because she made my work life hell, but because she was no longer an employee!
The director was a hypothetical–luckily I was never called on to sign anything for her, and I have moved on. If I had been asked, I would most likely have refused, but then again–there is no reason to make/take a stand on something as small as a signature on a card. Maybe I want it both ways–I don’t know. I do know you have now given the office Something to Talk About which is never good. That I would avoid as much as I could, IIWY.
Not as such. If you truly don’t give a fuck whether the person dies, it’s not wrong of you to refuse to pretend that you do. Assuming you’re not a sociopath, though, I’d be interested to know what this person did to you that you that endorsing the statement “I am not wholly indifferent to your continued existence” would infringe upon your integrity so.
Like I said in my previous post, you may not think of it as actively snubbing them, but if the person finds out that you were approached about signing the card and actively refused, I’ll give you 100 to 1 that that’s how they’ll take it.
I agree with everything in these two paragraphs. As you say, it would be irresponsible to assume anything about this coworker beyond what we were given, which is that the OP doesn’t like her, and some other folks agree. I am not inclined to think positively toward someone who feels that simply disliking a person (“dislike” being the OP’s term, not mine) is sufficient cause to renounce any trace of concern for their well-being.
Now, obligation? Sure, the OP had every right to refuse to sign the card. Standard terms of employment and ethics do not obligate anyone to be nice. Neither, though, do they obligate others not to call your behavior jerkish, or ask for the reasoning behind it (I hope you’ll agree that eleanorigby provided us with reasoning a bit beyond what the OP offered; “person I don’t like” and “person who has threatened me with physical harm” are somewhat different concepts). Posters to this thread seem to be more or less agreed on this. Hence why, despite your correct assertion that the rant was more focused on the signature request than the card itself, the thread has focused more on why the OP felt compelled to take the actions she did (gender assumed, sorry if I’m wrong).
As a caveat, SomeUserName is certainly not obligated to justify herself to anyone here…then again, she didn’t have to bring it up in the first place, either. It’s perfectly possible to rant about office glurge without placing it in the context of dismissing someone else’s human worth. You can’t seriously expect something like that to pass without comment, especially when it’s the far more contentious (and therefore more interesting) part of the post.