I have been accused of bullying a girl at work. Can you believe it? Me, a bully! It's ludicrous. Even my manager said so when the allegation was made 'you don't have a bulling bone in your body' were her exact words.
It first started when I got back from holiday after Christmas. My manager took me aside and told me that the girl at the desk next to me had made a complaint about me to the HR manager. 'She says you are disrespectful to her' etc.
I was shocked that she had made such a complaint. I mean there is no love lost between us that is for sure. I don't like her. She is stupid and annoying and has made some very condescending comments to me in the past. I don't enjoy her company and have declined invitations to after work drinks if I knew she was going to go. Not out of spitefulness but because I knew she would annoy me with her inanity and ruin my night and I didn't want to turn anyone else’s night sour with my foul mood.
We had to have a meeting with my line manager to 'discuss the situation'. She spouted the many perceived crimes against her and I managed to (mostly) diplomatically tell her she was full of shit and imagining things. I may have raised my voice ever so slightly (OK quite a lot) when she started telling me what I was thinking 'You think this, and you think that' are you a fucking mind reader then? And accused me of leading a gang of women who were purposely ignoring in an attempt to bully her!!! Beyond ludicrous - if people in the office are ignoring her it’s because she is an annoying twat. I have in fact been extremely professional and kept my dislike of her completely to myself. I have never mentioned my dislike of her to any of my colleagues, ever.
But, I managed to reign most of my anger in and actually kept my mouth shut through a lot of it, knowing that she wasn't actually listening to anything I was saying and that retorting would just wind her up even more and escalate the situation. And besides she really isn't worth the breath.
I must say though that my line manager’s mediation skills were first rate and that by the end of the meeting she had negotiated a 7 point plan to try and make the atmosphere in the office more tolerable.
7 points are as follows:
1. listen to each more apparently I don't listen to her.
2. make eye contact with each other when speaking apparently I don't make eye contact with her when she speaks to me - probably because the sight of her make me angry.
3. not interrupt each others conversations apparently I am always interrupting her conversitions - But I freely admit to this because as she obviously hasn't noticed I interrupt everyone’s conversations with my 2 pennies worth, I'm not singling her out!
4. say hello and goodbye to each other I don't say Hello or Goodbye to her because she is never here when I arrive and never here when I leave, I say a general hello and good bye to the office at those times I don't greet everyone individually, but apparently she feels that she is so special she deserves a personal greeting every day.
5. Earth Girl will ask Crazy Office Girl if she wants certain phone calls put through to her if Earth Girl is not sure who they want to speak to If I answer the switchboard and don't know who the call should go to, I do the logical thing and I put it through to the team administrator, but according to Crazy Office Girl I do this because I want to disrupt her works and make her look bad by not putting her calls though to her - If they don't ask for her by name how the fuck am I supposed to know it's her they need to speak to?
6. Earth Girl will be more mindful of Crazy Office Girl when she is ordering things or asking members of the department if they want something she isn't on my fucking team - that's why I don't ask her if she wants to order stuff, her own team admin can order stuff for her, she just has to fucking ask!
7. Line manager will see if she can get one of us moved to a different desk Dear God, Please, please, please, let them shift her to the other end of the office, Amen.
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