Besides being a writer, I currently work for the federal government as a social scientist/researcher. Some days I wish I was a lab rat locked away from the rest of the team (it’s like doing your taxes in a room full of 12-year-old girls who are gushing about the latest boy band) and when I want to be really productive, I work from home. But I am a social scientist, after all, and observing our office social – and anti-social – interactions is fascinating when I can avoid being completely sucked in to the vortex myself.
This week I wasn’t so lucky. You know how people’s hair stands on end in a lightning storm? Picture me like that, sitting at my computer Tuesday afternoon.
In walked our newest team member, a writer recently hired to help draft the huge report we’re producing on a very short timeline. We’ve met three or four times in the past month (for a total of about 16 hours) to get acquainted, explain where we are with the project, clarify expectations, go over the outline and discuss the finer points of the introduction, which we’d asked her to draft using information we supplied.
Who’s the “we,” you ask? I share my office with another analyst who is in charge of pulling together the report, and she and I are collaborating very closely on the process and the product. We both feel some sense of responsibility for this report, but she’s the one with the lead role. (insert suspenseful music that alludes not-so-subtly to the possibility of violence here)
So the new writer breezes in and asks me if I have 5 minutes to talk. Sure I say, have a seat. "I’ve gone to see the boss," she says. "Just wanted to fill you in."
Hmm. Okay. It’s standard practice to have an office call with the big boss when you come on board – say how happy you are to be here, get a “glad you’re part of the team” handshake – so I figure it’s nothing earth-shattering. And she only wants 5 minutes.
“I clarified with the boss that I report directly to her,” she says. (I hear sirens go Wah-wah-wah LIGHTNING IN THE AREA) “I’m putting together an alternate outline for the report and the boss and I agreed I’d have it done by the 14th,” she says.
My head nearly popped off, I’m sure. Somehow when you come face to face with an act of passive aggression this huge, it doesn’t feel passive at all! The three of us had been playing so nicely together, and she’d gone to the boss to sell her ideas and grab control of the process behind our backs.
I didn’t lose it completely, but I wasn’t feeling calm. I asked her to explain herself, clarified what we’d discussed and agreed to earlier, and (after 2 hours of conversation) ultimately came to the conclusion what she was doing was not going to completely derail our efforts. I felt comfortable that she would go out and get to work.
Suffice it to say, when my office mate returned and I explained what had gone down, she wasn’t happy. Initially, her hair stood on end (like mine). Then the smoke started streaming from her ears. Her head turned round and round on her neck like a demonically-possessed individual. Her white-hot anger raised the temperature in our office by at least 10 degrees. Really.
The following day she called the writer by phone. She got angry. She didn’t want to discuss, she wanted to explode. And that’s what happened. She started by dragging me into the conflict – yelling about how the writer had wasted two hours of my time.
(I’m thinking “That’s the not real issue here.” More warning sirens go off. I say nothing.)
She followed that fight with a discussion of who works for whom here. Told the writer that she (the writer) doesn’t report to the big boss (no one here does) and re-asserted her role as the leader of the report-writing effort. The writer blathered on about the collaborative role she wants in the process, but continued to argue she takes her direction only from the boss. The writer asked for the boss’s phone number and told my office mate she’d call the boss to clarify. Fine.
(I’m thinking “You need to address her behavior head-on. Tell her you are angry that she went behind your back, and that collaboration requires trust that has clearly been violated here.” I say nothing.)
The writer says we should have a meeting to discuss the issues (I’m picturing another 2-hour dialogue, with more people and more vitriol.) My office mate flatly refuses. She tells her we are too busy to get together on Friday, have interviews to conduct Monday, can’t do it. She says “I think we can work together” through clenched teeth, but refuses to spend any more time discussing “the incident” or clarifying roles. Her usual in-your-face-aggression has become door-in-the-face-aggression. She shut the writer out.
(I’m thinking this will be painful, but there has to be a discussion or we can’t work together. I say nothing.)
To make a long story not quite as long as it might be, the next morning the writer quit. She opted out of a contract worth more than six figures that she would have completed in the next 4 months (yes, that’s about 25K per month). She said ours was a hostile work environment and she couldn’t handle it.
How’s that for the eerie calm after the storm?
We all feel like we were hit by lightning this week. Our hair is singed, our energy drained. I picture us all walking across a field together, our clothes in tatters. No one really knows what hit them.
Misused anger burns everyone. Beware.
