Catfight in the Office

Audrey W http://audreyweiselworth.com 2m 525

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

Looking back at the time when I was working in an office, these problems now seem so small. Back then, they infuriated me and I demanded justice to be made in the disputes.

I was working in an office that handled airplane tickets. Data entry, some accounting. Not a big deal. We had a huge room where our computers were lined up next to each other. I think there were at least 60 people in the room. It didn’t feel crowded, though, we had lots of sunshine coming through the windows in the ceiling.

Most of my colleagues were females so there was always something to quarrel about. Our boss was a woman, too, so even if she tried to keep her “cool” as a professional, in the end she always ended up settling fights or getting involved somehow.

I have to admit, I was one of these girls, too. But I never started a fight for no reason, only if someone did something that I didn’t particularly like or annoyed me – AND she did it 10 times in a row- then I would tell them at the 11th time not to do that anymore.

We were in groups but sometimes not every member could sit next to each other. A girl, her name was Sarah, sat in front of me. She had to deliver a report every day to her group leader. The group leader sat in the end of the row behind us. Sarah would never take her time to walk over to her leader and hand her the document herself, but instead, she would give it to my partner, Amelia, and send her over, like a courier. Sometimes she even told her what to tell the leader to the point, where they were sending the poor thing back and forth. Amelia was a very, very shy, a gullible person, especially with that being her first job at 18. After a while, I had enough of this ridiculous game and decided to stand up for her.

It fell on a day when I just had a dental appointment and I basically was missing my two front teeth because of it (relax, I got awesome new teeth the day after). So I was uncomfortable with myself and in pain, too. Next time she handed her report over to Amelia, I stood up and told her heatedly that she should immediately stop this habit. I don’t know if it was the fire in my eyes or the bizarre gap between my teeth but Sarah was so intimidated, she couldn’t even say anything (and she was a fierce one normally).

From then on, she delivered her papers to the group leader herself and Amelia was thankful to me for standing up for her. I hope it was also a good lesson for her to be brave and say something the next time someone is taking advantage of her.

I know that this wouldn’t have been such a big deal to some people, but I felt it needed to be done. Sarah was a gossip girl who hated everyone anyways, so at least now, I gave her a reason.

(