Tuesday, October 22, 2002
A "hypothetical" situation:
There are a certain five employees at Coffee Shop X. All five employees have worked together on numerous occasions, and seem to get along well.
Let's say Employee A is working with Employee B when Employee C comes in. Both Employee A and Employee B are chatting with Employee C, when Employee B asks Employee C, "Hey, do you want to go out with us tonight?" "Us" is Employee B and another co-worker, Employee D.
Employee B asks this question RIGHT in front of Employee A. It is in no way directed to Employee A. Employee B makes no attempt to disguise the fact that Employee A is positively not invited. Meanwhile, Employee C accepts the invitation, and asks Employee A to make him an iced tall Americano.
Employee A smiles forcedly and does so. She turns a deaf ear to the continuing conversation between Employee B and Employee C.
Some time later, when Employee A and Employee B are closing Coffee Shop X, Employee E shows up. Employee E is also invited to this get-together. He chitchats with Employee A, but says nothing about the group plans to go out. Employee D arrives moments later. Employees B, D and E are now all together, in the store, with Employee A -- and they openly discuss their plans for the evening.
Employee A, once again, resolves to ignore this and go on about her work as usual.
When Coffee Shop X is finally entirely closed, Employee A's three co-workers bid Employee A goodbye without so much as an indication that they notice that Employee A is obviously disgusted by their attitude. Employee A sees Employee C driving in to join the par-tay as she is pulling out of the parking lot.
Just to reiterate, that's FOUR employees -- one of which was invited impromptu -- all going out together, and they didn't even offer an "I don't really want you to come but I'll ask you anyway because it's the polite thing to do" invitation to Employee A.
In this situation, would the actions of Employees B, C, D and E be considered completely rude and inconsiderate? Add to the equation the fact that Employee B ordered food for herself and Employee D -- and traded coffee for it, at that, which is a no-no -- but never asked Employee A whether she'd like anything. Employee B did, however, watch Employee A make a tall mocha for the food delivery boy, sending it out the window at no charge.
Now, for the "hypothetical" question: How should Employee A react? Should she confront her co-workers at the next opportunity? Or subtly make it known that she is displeased with the blatant cliquishness? Or write a public note asking offending employees to please keep their social outings a bit more private if they're going to be obviously exclusive? Or be just plain mean and go to Manager Z, and make a nicely-worded complaint?
Hypothetically, of course. I mean, Employee A seems to be generally well-liked and gets along with her fellow employees without trouble most of the time, so naturally they would never be so rude directly to her face...
Ha, ha, ha.
| 1:27 AM |
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