An Office Worker Just Wanted To Walk To Lunch With A Co-Worker, But Another Colleague Turned It Into A Problem
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No matter how big or small the company you work for, there is always that one person. You know the one. The person who is somehow at the centre of all the drama – whether that means finding themselves frequently the victim of workplace issues, or the actual perpetrator of them. While most of you get your heads down, just wanting to get your work done and get out of there, these folk seem to live for the other aspects of working with humans. Namely, finding problems that aren’t there and drawing other folk into them.
And in the person in this story‘s workplace, the drama all started with an innocent trip to collect a coworker so that the pair could have lunch together. Quite a normal thing to do, right? But thanks to a co-worker who otherwise had nothing to do with their frequent lunch dates, this habit became the root of a new office rule – and a wholly impractical one at that.
Read on to find out what happened here.
Nobody allowed unless you work on that team
Years ago when I worked in an office setting I had a friend I would have lunch and breaks with.
She was on the second floor, I was on the third – so I’d go down the stairs, pop out a couple steps from her desk, and we’d walk together to the break/lunch room which was on the second floor.
One day a woman called Maureen decided that the reason I was on the second floor was to give her dirty looks under the guise of picking up my friend for breaks and lunch. After all, I could just go directly to the break/lunch room and wait there for my friend.
For the record I’d never worked with Maureen, didn’t know a thing about Maureen, and didn’t care a single bit about Maureen.
Let’s see what happened with this Maureen drama.
Maureen escalates this to the management, who decided that only team members on that team should be in team areas.
A memo was emailed and it was brought up on the team huddles. A huge deal about something that should have been nothing. Cool. Game on. Me and the partners in crime decided we are going to press this issue to the point of disruption.
The stairs all exit into team areas, so any time someone pops out the door a comment is made ‘Hey you can’t be here. You aren’t a member of this team.’
Someone walking by who stops to talk with a friend? ‘Sorry but you aren’t a team member. You can’t be here.’
And they were really committed to this bit.
We are relentless. It doesn’t matter who it is. Everyone gets called out for non compliance.
People are stopping before entering team areas and calling out to their smoking, lunch, break buddies to come and join them.
Its a bit of a problem since customer service calls are being taken by the teams.
Everyone is waiting for elevators in the common hallway to go anywhere in the building.
Let’s see how the company reacted.
This all lasted exactly three days until the managers decided it was dumb and wasting everyone’s time. I didn’t expect them to back down as quickly as they did but yes total waste of everyone’s time.
The memo was retracted and anyone could now walk anywhere.
But being extremely petty people, my friend and I rerouted our walk to and from the break/lunch room to walk directly by Maureen’s desk from that point forward.
Always stopped talking right as we got to her desk and faced forward only to resume talking once we passed.
Honestly, what was Maureen’s problem?
At least, if anything, the bosses have learned not to jump to appeasing the Maureens of the world.
Because this was just ridiculous.
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Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.
This person thought ignoring people like Maureen was the best policy.
While others had experience of annoying colleagues.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a delivery driver who tried warning his boss the truck needed new brakes and tires, only to find his truck sidelined during their busiest season.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought their malicious compliance was perfect.
It’s a real shame that Maureen mistook two people meeting to take their breaks as somehow targeting her. The real fact of it was, the accused had never even interacted with Maureen, and it’s downright bizarre that she believed that this routine – which had nothing at all to do with her – was actually some kind of bullying or harassment. You have to wonder what is going on with Maureen to lead to her jumping to these conclusions.
The fact that the company made the knee-jerk reaction to ban workers from offices other than their own, only to essentially grind the working day to a halt as everyone was having to queue for elevators so as not to use the stairs which would exit into other offices, is laughable. At least, by revoking the memo, it seems like this workplace learned their lesson.
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