On the other subject

HR pulled her in on Tuesday and kept me out of it like I asked. She was warned about her conduct with many people.

She was quiet and downtrodden that day. The day after someone asked her why she was quiet and she loudly said "well I don't want to upset anybody do I?"

From Wednesday onwards she was exactly the same as always. No difference in the slightest. I felt a sense of vindication for requesting being left out.

I've learnt a valuable lesson amongst this though. I'm unsure if I mentioned last week, but I've been doing a few new things.

All last week I was practically silent. I'll use an example before I go on. You know people who walk into parties or gatherings.pubs and they crack jokes or act like they're in a great mood, then they spend the rest of the evening pretty much being negative or crying?

Well, she sort of does this and I've spotted it now. She will ask me for help with something, and after she's got my answer, she'll talk about how the process or whoever wrote the process has caused us problems. The conversations quite a lot of the time end with,

"but if you actually did what I asked and told them to change it then we wouldn't have these issues would we?"

I've realised in any interaction with her she's going to act normal at first and then attack. I've started to shorten my answers to her and cut out the opportunities.

I've had success with this so far. To be asked many times last week "you're quiet today, are you okay?" signalled I was getting somewhere because she wasn't finding moments to snipe

I'll stick to this because I only want to get in and work anyway. It's no biggy to me to have friends in a stressful working environment. If I can silence her I'll be able to think straight about difficult work issues

Posted By: pants, Oct 2, 23:26:34