Member-only story
Are You the Source of the Drama?
Many years ago I worked in an office that was rife with drama. The boss was cool. My direct supervisor was cool. One of my coworkers, however, was totally uncool. Even though she wasn’t in the leadership structure of the department, she made life stressful for everyone working in the department. She wasn’t just a stickler for policy, she was a stickler for her particular interpretation of the policy. In other words, it didn’t matter if your decision had been aligned with policy, if it hadn’t been aligned with the way she alone interpreted that policy to be, you made the wrong decision and she was going to report you to the higher-ups. If the higher-ups agreed with you and not with her, she was going to give you the cold shoulder, often for weeks at a time. In private moments, however, she was always the one to complain about how tense everyone in the department seemed to be and how everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells all the time.
At one point, a situation arose where she needed to work from home for a while. Since it was a private matter, they didn’t go into detail. We just had a departmental meeting in which we were told she would be working offsite for several months and we should direct any communication by phone, email, or instant message. After the meeting everyone just kind of shrugged their shoulders and went back to work.
