Imagine working in an office, and your coworkers walk by your desk a lot, stopping to chat while they do. What would you do if you got in trouble for talking too much? Would you keep chatting with your coworkers, be honest about getting in trouble for talking, or stop talking altogether?

In this story, one employee is in this exact situation, but when she tries to stop talking, her boss still isn’t happy.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

You talk too much. Wait, why are you so quiet?

I used to work as one of three assistants for the engineering / r&d department of a medical company. My desk was situated between the other two assistants, and we were all in the middle of a cube farm.

It was problematic because everyone who had to go anywhere had to come by my desk. They would stop, say hello, and no matter how hard I tried, they’d start chatting.

This of course impacted my work.

The supervisor wanted to put an end to the chit chat.

After a certain point, my supervisor pulled me into an office and told me that I’m talking too much, that it’s impacting my work, and to not talk so much with people.

I asked her to give me a script for what to say to people, and she didn’t have anything to offer.

I was in counseling at the time and I asked my counselor the same question.

She said to use the phrase, ” I won’t talk to you right now” and return to my work.

She wasn’t going to say that.

I’m a bit of a people pleaser, and that’s too abrupt for me.

So I stopped talking. To everyone.

After about a week, once again my supervisor calls me into the office. She asked me what’s wrong.

I told her nothing was wrong.

She asked the supervisor to clarify.

She said people are complaining that I’m being antisocial.

I said, “you told me to stop talking to people, that I was talking too much, and it was impacting my work. So I did.”

She said, “I didn’t mean it like that”.

Once again, I asked her to clarify exactly what I should and should not say, how much conversation was too much, and what to say when the conversation went on too long.

Define “too long.”

Again, she had no response. She said, “Just don’t talk too long.”

I returned to work.

One of our lab techs was one of the chattiest, and one of the worst offenders. She came by my desk one day, we exchanged greetings, and she started chatting.

I quietly told her that I had gotten in trouble for talking too much, and I needed to get back to work.

She respected that, and walked away.

Her situation became office gossip.

I did that a few more times, and the point got made to the office.

It didn’t make my supervisor look particularly good because everyone knew when I said I was in trouble, what the source was, and when layoffs came sometime later, guess who was the first to go?

But that wasn’t really a bad thing.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a blessing in disguise. The severance was amazing, they paid for job placement training, gave us 9 months notice, and once our termination date came, they paid us out in regular paychecks, not in the lump sum.

During that time, for me, almost 3 months, I accrued vacation and sick time the whole time. They cashed it all out at the end.

The week after my severance package ran out, I found a job at another division of the same company and continued for another 11 years.

I was hoping there would be some sort of negative consequence for the supervisor. I’m glad it worked out okay for OP though.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s a good summary of the story.

This person had the opposite problem.

Here’s a story about high school.

Another person quotes Tolkien.

If she couldn’t explain exactly what she wanted, she shouldn’t have asked for it.

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