Is This High School All Over Again?

Have you ever left work early because you just couldn’t take it anymore?  Have you called in for a ‘mental health day’ lately?  Do you question whether your coworkers are the spawn of Satan?  If so, then Hi, my name’s Gen Clever; you must work with the same people I do!  Nice to meet you and I’m so very sorry.   

Image Courtesy of ClkerFreeVectorImages

Coworkers:  People we are thrown together with, usually by circumstances beyond our control, generally in a work environment.  Different but similar people may be found in your organizations, clubs, or civil activities.  The bottom line is that you wouldn’t spend time with these folks without some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise.  It is a forced relationship.  Maybe that’s why it’s called a work-force…

Back at work some days feel like a high school field trip where everything is fun and everyone is bonding like fingers dipped in superglue.  Other days feel like that day in high school when that note you wrote got passed directly into the wrong hands and you felt more embarrassed than if you’d shown up naked to gym class. 

Alas, there are those high school tales of undesirables undergoing extreme makeovers and a musical montage morphing them into the Prom Queen with a heart of gold…  Spoiler Alert!  These tales are unlikely to unfold in the workplace.  One is generally the victim OR the bully, the awkward loner OR the socially accepted, not one and then the other.  Sometimes a transfer or promotion will toss you from one status to another, but after an initial adjustment period, one usually ends up in the same old group, just perhaps now wearing heels from time to time.

Where am I going with this? 

If you're like me, it matters emotionally how your coworkers treat you.  It matters more than how your boss does.  (Much like in high school where your peers’ opinion of you was infinitely more vexing than any teachers’.) 

Nope, definitely not me.

I once was Homecoming Queen of the workplace.  Middle management with a smile.  Stern but fair and pretty darn likable.  Kinda like the Prom Queen but better because I got to hang out with the marching band and that is so much more fun than cheerleading!!  I mean let’s face it: upper management is just saying the right words with the proper enthusiasm while simultaneously shunning the minions and pleasing the shareholders.  I’m just not that girl.  

So there I was, minor royalty, when the company decides to cut corners and ‘laterally move’ me.  (That’s upper management speak for a demotion without a pay cut.)  So here I am, working in a department I used to run.  Ouch.  It feels like the queen is now forced to eat lunch at the Goth table.

It’s not that I mind the Goths.  I look great in black.  I appreciate Poe.  I’ve dabbled in cynicism and sculpted my own ‘Bell Jar’.  I get it.  So now I deal with insecure clones that push me around because they know I can and have done the job better than them.  I get micro-managed.  I get to be the scapegoat.  I internalize.  Then I go home and write.  Thank you?  

Image Courtesy of Gen Clever at insane_ekard Productions

It’s simple: treat me as you would a stranger.  It’s the least you could do.  And hey, we all know you’re good at doing the least…  

Please feel free to share this memo.

This post means no harm to Goths, Cheerleaders, Prom Queens, or Upper Management.  Especially that last one.