6ImpossibleThings, I get what you’re saying, but I think you’re being overly harsh and missing a little something. You seem unduly angry about Floaty, which makes me think that you may have played the Sally/Judy role at some point in your career.
If I were Sally/Judy, I’d probably be jealous and annoyed too. Thirteen years (plus) is a long time to be in a position and it’s a long time to get complacent about it. If Floaty were to come in and totally change everything I’d ever known about my role, everything I’d created for myself, and up expectations, it would piss me off.
Judy and Sally are from another generation (if not in real life, at least at the job) where they felt like they needed to lay low and just get through the day. Maybe they didn’t have higher aspirations. Maybe they didn’t take initiative. Maybe they weren’t creative.
There is a certain amount of manipulation to what Floaty did to get the job, but she was trying to secure a position that she really liked in a crappy economy at a place where they weren’t planning on hiring anyone It was survival instinct. It was smart. And it worked.
Kudos, Floaty!
Floaty goes above and beyond. She’s social. She’s helpful. She’s proactive. She’s competent. And she likes what she’s doing. She brought new life to the office. This is who she is. She is simply better at office politics than Sally and Judy. It’s a strength, not a character flaw. She must also be good at perfoming the work, too, or they’d have seen through it and wouldn’t have hired her in the first place.
The more Sally and Judy cause a scene, the bigger a hole they dig for themselves. Instead, they should continue to share their knowledge with Floaty and in turn, they should learn from her too.
What on earth is wrong with being purposefully opportunist to get ahead at work? You’re there for most of your life, you’re getting paid (with hopes of promotions and better pay on the line) for making higher-ups happy, and jobs are hard to come by right now, let alone jobs you like. Why knock someone for sucking up if they’re obviously putting effort into it, and not neglecting their actual job to do it?
You’ve either never had a nasty co-worker/patron sideswipe you with no recourse to protect yourself, OR you’ve never had a temper. I don’t know which, but either way, I can assure you that personally, I remain smiling and very friendly towards patrons I see every day, when if I had my preference, I’d stick them in a bottle so I could refuse to give them any air.
The difference between what my internal monologue says and what I actually say is not because I’m manipulative, but because I am smart enough to realize that I like my job more than I dislike that person. Liking my job doesn’t mean that I have to like them also. Neither does it mean that all transgressions are automatically forgiven and forgotten simply because I have to maintain a professional exterior. Nor does my hatred of one patron/co-worker embitter me against the whole rest of them. I don’t see any contradiction in **Floaty **being the ‘chocolate person’ because she wants to please the office and still being extremely angry towards one person in that office.
Yes, it is. As far as I’ve ever seen, that’s professional work life in a nutshell.
As I once told an employee who was extremely angry that his customer service evaluation was low and who used the justification that he couldn’t MAKE himself happy if he wasn’t, “We didn’t hire you to BE happy and to FEEL like smiling and being helpful and polite and kind. We hired you to APPEAR happy, and to smile, be polite, kind, and helpful towards our customers. We cannot make nor expect you to be happy all the time- but we can expect you to SEEM happy all the time. That’s what we pay you for. You may not wish to pursue a career in customer service if you are unable to put a smile on your face and a smiling tone in your voice.”
Not to be snarky, but I have no idea how else Floaty could have put this. I mean, the Fax Bruhaha was the genesis for the thread so she kind of needed to mention it. And her boss does know (thanks to Judy, not Floaty), and is not (IIRC) Judy’s boss. How could Floaty have talked about this without sounding passive-aggressive?
QFT. I currently have a thread going about two of my co-workers. I won’t talk about myself because I could be mistaken, but my co-worker M. is THE nicest guy in the world by common consensus. And not because he’s being manipulative or trying to advance his career; in fact, his career would probably benefit from being a little more aggressive and a little less inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. And if you heard what he had to say about our co-worker F. after he recently screwed us both over, let’s just say it was not nearly as nice as Floaty describing her colleagues. He was just letting off steam. In the end the actions he took (as did Floaty’s) reflected his sympathetic, sweet personality and not his brief outburst.
I think you’re (6Impossible, not Lasciel) describing Floaty in rather harsher terms than Floaty has been describing Judy and Sally, honestly. After reading Floaty’s descriptions and knowing only her side of the story, I’d be happy to work with Judy or Sally. After only knowing only your side of the story regarding Floaty (without reading her posts), I wouldn’t want to work with her. Considering Judy actually did something to Floaty and Floaty has done nothing to you, I think this says something.
You’ve also apparently never worked at a place that has restrictive and stupid rules. This kind of thing happens at my place of business all the time, and I don’t consider any of the people who do it underhanded. Well, not for that reason, anyway.
This is absolutely true. I was unemployed, with no job prospects and was planning on going back to school. A government office job has been my (realistic) dream job for many years but it’s almost impossible to get into, especially during a hiring freeze! I had two weeks to do something to get people to notice me. I was the temp receptionist for two weeks. Nobody cares about that person, a temp who is there for only two weeks is a hindrance, not a help.
Everybody is working away in their office. There are 3000 people who work in this building. Standing in peoples doorways going “um, hi, I’m FloatyGimpy” would only piss people off and I had to be at my desk all the time because I was the receptionist anyway. So I had to come up with something to bring them to me, thus the chocolate and daily puzzle. That allowed me to be able to get to know people and them to know me. On top of that I worked my ass off. All I was asked to do was sit there and answer the phone that would ring maybe 6 times a day. I was told I could bring a book to read or surf the web for the rest of the time. The temp receptionist on another floor who was there at the same time I was, brought her knitting and sat and knitted the whole day. Guess what? She isn’t there any more.
Once I started to know a few names I’d ask them or send emails asking if there was anything I could do for them, including getting them coffee. As the weeks passed they just kept extending my stay. I did tell them outright that I was buying them with chocolate. However I’m very confident that had I put out chocolate and sat there knitting for the day, I would not still be there.
I’ve never worked so hard at getting something I wanted and it worked. I make no apologies for that. I’m actually shocked at myself for being so proactive.
Judy and Sally are very good at what they do. Judy is exceptionally competent. That is not diminished because she did something really mean to me. Sally is very good but less so than Judy and I am less so than Sally. The one difference between Sally and me, is that she complains all the time. If someone leaves a coffee cup in a board room, she complains loudly about “I’m not your mother, people!”. I happen to agree with Sally and it’s annoying that people just leave their dishes for us to clean up, but I just suck it up and do it.
I have a sticky taped to my pen holder that says “Don’t be complacent” to remind me how fortunate I am to have this job and to not take it for granted.
I just wanted to come back to say that I am seriously impressed with your work ethic and how you are handling this situation, FloatyGimpy. I think the thing with the puzzles and the chocolates is sheer genius and if I ever find myself in a temp situation I am totally stealing your idea.
I didn’t say you were being ‘nasty’ FloatyGimpy; I said ‘passive aggressive’. For example, rather than posting your question to me, you have instead sidled up to an ally in order to reveal your confusion in a very indirect way. It is my opinion that this is a behaviour that does not evoke trust. To me. That you use words like ‘sad’, ‘mean’, ‘nasty’, ‘super ultra’ and ‘happy’ suggests to me an immaturity afforded to the young; so I accept that you may not have the confidence for assertive confrontation.
So what appears to be ‘passive aggressive’ to me, may simply be a limited strategy for solution.
That you have decided to not personally acknowledge the fax incident with Judy and/or Sally in my opinion does not ensure a cohesive ‘team environment’ that you say is something in which you ‘try really hard’ to be part. These two people have the knowledge you need, are in close proximity, and are with whom you had enjoyed a good working relationship. The mature, and professional conclusion to such an incident would be to approach it as an unexpected misunderstanding: that you trust that such miscommunication will be avoided in future because the respect you have for them as colleagues is further enhanced by your enjoyment of them as people you feel very fortunate to work with. That you would like communication between each of you to be open and supportive, so that any misunderstanding to be easily addressed. That you appreciate there may be times for facilitation by a superior, but that you trust that they share a willingness to firstly negotiate the issue, and find a happy resolution. It is my opinion that leaving it as it is with completion being the intervention of your boss with each of you singally, infers that since your boss ‘has your back’ then any responsibility of yours in the incident (and there is some, because it happened to you) is negated.
Whether you’ve mentioned it or not, others know of the Infamous Fax Brouhaha of 2011. It’s an office. It has its own culture, and mulches its own gossip vine.
[COLOR=black][FONT=Trebuchet MS]Acknowledging it is not dredging it up. It’s giving it a conclusion that guarantees there will be no complex equivalent if, or when, you make a naïve error that directly or peripherally includes Judy and/or Sally. It also disempowers them of the idea that you are one who will ‘hide behind your boss’ skirt.’
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This is an interesting opener, wonder lust, since I have offered no information whatsoever in my post about my profession, or career path. Not as fact, anecdote, or example. That there are little grounds for what you ‘think’ holds some pertinence to the ‘Sally/Judy’ characters. This curious assumption is outweighed only by how my post conveys to you that I am ‘unduly angry’. It is your post, not mine, extrapolating this theme, with use of the terms ‘jealous and annoyed’, ‘everything I’d created for myself’ and ‘piss me off.’ This could be considered projection by some; irony by others. I’m sure you will identify the most palatable of these in regard to your own perceptual filter.
You realise of course, how subjective this accolade is, being that it’s derived from only one (subjective) source.
Cleary nothing, Lasciel when the word ‘opportunist’ is in your post; somehow it’s only offensive in mine.
The behaviours under discussion have never been referred to by me as ‘sucking up’ – though it definitely carries the vastly more negative connotation which I think is the idea here in reaction to anything stated in my previous posts. Agreed - nobody neglects ‘their actual job to do it’. What they generally neglect are the perceptions and attitudes of their colleagues - which can ultimately negatively impact on the day-to-day enjoyment of their working environment.
As many of you have chosen to disregard, I did say in my post that “…how people choose to get where they want in this world is their own prerogative.”
I’m unclear on your inference here, but it seems emotionally charged so I’m sure it has some personal significance.
‘Hatred’ and ‘embitter(ment)’ and ‘extremely angry’ are rather emotive; and could suggest little differentiation between what’s ‘personal’ and what’s ‘professional’. That you allude to carrying workplace grudges is precisely the result of not being proactive in ensuring there is a satisfactory conclusion reached between colleagues when the inevitable transgressions occur. Hence my aforementioned suggestion to FloatyGimpy in taking some personal action.
There is contradiction in FloatyGimpy being the ‘chocolate person’ and being ‘angry’ with a workmate when the anger is internally processed as such - rather than as ‘disappointment’, ‘confusion’ ‘lack of knowledge’ or whatever is the more appropriate distinction. Being competent in the tasks of your job is one thing. Being outstanding in your role extends to possessing quality interpersonal skills and a useful approach to conflict resolution.
If you want it to be, sure. If the company culture nurtures it, and you can add to that dynamic, great. If it provides you with an environment in which you excel both personally and professionally, brilliant.
Ok, so we agree that it came across as passive aggressive. I appreciate that it was brought to the boss’ attention via Judy (as a tactic that surely backfired) and my reasoning is up thread.
Since I neither condemned or recommended Judy or Sally’s actions, and described **FloatyGimpy **as coming across to me as a smug, passive aggressive, immature opportunist with whom I’d have trust issues, was based on the the words used, and the subtext of her posts. What ‘this says’ is nothing more than I have the ability to forman opinion. That this is prefaced in your post by ‘Floaty has done nothing to you’ is a bizarre technique in attempting to qualify something (unidentified) that you feel is important to the stance that you (being quite within your rights) have chosen.
While the gross assumptions of my career history continue, whatever term you’d prefer to apply to this type of action hardly changes the nature of it. If, by consensus, the rules are restrictive and stupid, it is more useful to actively endeavour to change them, rather than repeatedly circumnavigating them. If they can’t be changed, then they are workplace rules: in place for valid reason, and deemed restrictive and stupid only by those who want to break them. (Not uncommonly in order to be counterproductive to the job for which they are being paid.)
FloatyGimpy, that you are pleased with yourself, and how proactive you can be is commendable. That you earned yourself your dream job, is to be congratulated. That you want to learn how to not be so ‘ultra super sensitive’ is both worthwhile, and easily achieved. Just presuppose that there is no such thing as failure or criticism – only feedback.
When a person is relating their internal monologue, it’s going to, by definition, sound one-sided, self-absorbed and opportunistic, even devious, as we relate our motivations and internal reactions. We have to allow for that when we read it.
We might have all handled the initial incident with Judy and Sally in different ways. Having two co-workers whom you thought were friends plot to lie about you to your boss in order to screw you over would be a huge blow out of nowhere. I can’t fault anyone for not handling it the way I would reading about it days later from afar. I might have handled it exactly same as Floaty, or I might have done it differently, depending on my mood, the moon, or whatever. But I sure wouldn’t have cared about rebuilding my relationship with Judy and Sally right away, rightly or wrongly, as I’d be thrown for such a loop. It would take time for me to process the doublecross first. Floaty held off on dealing with it until she could figure out what the hell was going on. She was called in to her boss, and explained the situation, rather than run crying to her in the first place. I can’t see anything wrong with that. Maybe if I were further removed from the situation, I’d handle it in a more direct fashion, but I’m sure it was a devastating kick in the stomach and would take some amount of time before setting about to rebuild a relationship. Next time, Floaty will have it to look back on and be able to deal with it more immediately. But I think you are underestimating how devastating the blow was, and the confusion that arises when people you know as your friends screw you over. Don’t forget, they are not so much her co-workers as people who work in the same region for different divisions. If she were actually their co-workers, she would have approached it differently.
I have run into this sort of thing before and I don’t know why it always takes me by suprise. My brain just doesn’t work that way.
Having done this office dynamic, I will tell you to:
Keep a work journal. Make it a professional document of your activities, thoughts, ideas and contact with these two as well as any extra duties assigned to you. I very much doubt that these two will give up. They will just get sneakier. Remember those nasty girls in High School? Yeah, they are just like that.
Save all written and electronic communication to and from them. Including post-its, notes in margins, anything.
Each and everytime something icky happens, you need to bring it right out into the open, in the best possible problem solving way, and confront them with it. Such as, “I must be confused. I was unaware of a problem with faxes getting to the right people. Did something happen?” Then DOCUMENT in your journal
If you find you must meet with these two, have a third party present. I found that women like these can take anything you say, no matter how benign, and turn it into a reason be a victim.
Its sooooo hard to put up and hold appropriate boundaries. I suck at it. I have had the blessing of observing some women I really admire in action in this area. I marvel how they can appear strong, yet not bitchy, let people know how they felt, then get over it after it was over. I am part of the ‘just ignore it and it will go away’ crowd. But I can clearly see the benefit of taking a firm yet friendly approach right at the point of conflict.
And make a couple of voodoo dolls if it makes you feel better.
Suck it, needscoffee. The word “bitches” must have been tossed about a half dozen times by other posters.
My comment was half in jest, but it was also half serious. Deserved or not, there is a very real perception in the business world that women employees bring an extra level of pettiness, bitchiness and histronics as well as lacking the confidence necessary to succeed.
I mean Jesus Christ! Do you think as a manager, I want to deal with this crap of “FloatyGimpy said this” and “Sally said that” and “Judy stole my fax”? (and who the heck sends faxes these days?)
I gathered, since you are getting crap from admins. I’m not sure what sort of office you work in or what sort of boss you work for, but my professional advice is that you make your communications such with your boss that he/she is aware that you are doing your job (iow following all the rules both written and unwritten). Even go out of your way a bit to make sure stuff is getting done. I wouldn’t try to undermine Sally and Judy. You don’t want to appear to be instigating.
See “important” managers like me have enough crap to deal with between our managers, staff and clients that we really don’t want to get sucked into petty admin nonsense. All we really want from the admin staff is to smile and hand us our faxes (again…faxes?). When stuff isn’t getting done or you start bringing your conflict to us, you become a “problem”.
IOW, focus on your job, appearing pleasent and let Sally and Judy undermine themselves with their own bitchiness.
Out of curiosity, Floaty, what type of industry are you in? This will come off as snarky, but I’ve never worked in a profession where the person whose desk was called “the fun zone” was considered really professional. I can see where being social would be valuable, but that seems kinda cutesy. Was it management that called your desk the fun zone?
Regardless, your coworkers strike me as insecure, backstabbing bitches. Unfortunately, every office has them. If it makes you feel any better, I made a recommendation last week to improve the flow of contacts in our call center and it got back to me that I was going to restructure the department. It’s amazing how your words can get twisted when someone feels threatened by you.
Just watch your back, keep doing the good job you’re doing and ignore Bitchy and Minion.
And another thing - where do you work that people get such expensive handbags?! Our company policy is no gift over $25. I’m totally jealous. I’m going to tell your boss you stole my fax.
Sorry – that bit was a little snarky. And I should say that I also work in a situation where some of our rules are handed down by the government, which makes it a great deal harder to change them, and also often makes them not fit quite as well as a workplace-specific rule might (since a one-size-fits-all rule covering companies of a varying size, shape, and composition isn’t always going to fit one specific company extremely well). So here I was the one making the assumptions based on my workplace experiences, and I apologize.
You are doing just fine Floaty. The way to deal with petty people (and for those of you who think it’s only women, you are dead wrong) is to give yourself permission to be above their tactics. Repeat to yourself “you have no power over me” and move on. Keep working hard, going the extra mile, and being a bright spot in everyone’s day. (And that’s the difference between being a suck up and not - are the chocolates enjoyed by everyone, or just the top brass? Everyone? Yes, I thought so.)
Take the high road. In an office so overrun with pettiness that this doesn’t work, you will find yourself happy to leave. In an office worth devoting your time to, it will work just fine.
I as a manager, and my Dad as a CEO have both held firm to the rule “I don’t employ mean people.” When I come into a new office, I watch the interactions very carefully. I will counsel mean petty types a few times, and work to encourage their good points. But if mean petty gossip continues, they are out. People like that greatly reduce the efficiency of an office and make the overall setting uncomfortable for anyoen who performs better than they do. Gone.
Your best defense is a sympathetic smile. When they start the whispering, think to yourself “Gosh, it must be horrid to have to live in your head 24/7.” And then give them a sweet sympathetic smile that says “I understand, hang in there.” Because the truth about these people is that they do talk that way about everybody, no matter how much they like/love them. It drives away any kind, healthy people, and leaves them with a life either empty, or filled with other mean people. And their internal dialog - the way they speak to themselves - is generally just as bad.
Your response here is not any less petty. It’s passive aggressive in the exact same way you are accusing the OP. You’re hiding behind msmith’s coattails.
Furthermore, you first post in this thread was just a snipe at the OP. Is it any wonder people have thus taken your posts as being angry at her? I mean, even your second post was dripping with disdain for her. It was full of the same passive aggressive crap, talking to someone else while saying crap about the OP. You even flat out said you were completely closed minded: anything she ever says will just be her trying to schmooze you.
Why in the world didn’t you just say what you said to floaty in the quote before this one? If she has to be perfect and respond unemotionally at work, why is it okay for you to not do so here? Despite what some people seem to think, I can detect a hostile tone, and you had one.
EDIT: I apologize to the OP, but this hijack was already started, and I think this needed to be said. I’m just being direct.
I work for the Government. The main thing that our department does is facilitate trade between the province and other countries, mainly Asian countries. We get regular visits from international delegates so we’re always ordering gifts from local artisans. We just had a big order for these bags because we have a visit coming up, so Yvonne ordered 12 extra for the people in her department.
I am still reception but since being hired on permanently, I’m also an admin. So my desk is the first point of contact and in front of my desk are couches and places for people to gather before meetings. There’s nothing more pleasing to be sitting there chatting with a minister from Japan as he tries out the daily puzzle.
People just love it. Instead of everyone standing around, awkwardly quiet, they end up laughing and chatting.
And everyone is welcome to have a chocolate and try the puzzle. You know who’s the best at the puzzles? The lady who comes to water the plants.
