I don't quite fit in socially at work. It's not that I don't like the people I work with, its just that I come from quite a different background than most of them do and consequently we don't really have much in common. Most of them, for example, do not have college degrees, enjoy country music, do not speak English (in some cases, have never heard of Marcel Proust, John Locke, Patroclus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Laurence Olivier, Thomas Pynchon, James Taylor, David Sedarris, or Spencer Green, and think I'm showing off when I use "big" words like "effeminate" and "sequential." And yet, despite all this, I'm consistently the one saying stupid things and generally giving the impression that I'm a big idiot. As witnessed by the sorry scene that happened Friday afternoon:
I'm not a rude person. Its never my intension to offend, and in fact I feel I put a lot of effort into being non-confrontational, considerate, sympathetic, and approachable. The idea of me being rude is about as likely as Fox News actually being "fair and balanced." (OK, so I've said that one before, but come on. On Fox, Republicans are Republicans, but Democrats are always "the Dems." I constantly hear things like "next we'll be discussing the effect of the tragedy on the market… and of course on the victim's families too." Anybody who wants to tell me there is a liberal bias in the media has got to try to explain Fox News to me first.) So, I'm not rude. But sometimes, I'm very very stupid.
A lively conversation started around my work area in which I was not involved. This was mostly because they were discussing benefits they get for being full-time employees of Nestle which I, as a temp for now, do not get. The discussion drifted towards paid vacation and paid leave of absences granted for special circumstances. One of my co-workers is very pregnant and looking forward to her couple months worth of maternity leave. Another middle-aged lady said, "You know, if your spouse dies you only officially get three days paid leave of absence!" The group was sufficiently disgusted with this information, and began making jokes about it. They began inventing things that the company might say to a poor employee whose spouse had just died to justify expecting them to be back to work in three days. These comments were directed to the woman who had brought up the information, as if she were the aforementioned poor employee.
"Here at Nestle we like to focus on life, not on death. So come back to work!" my supervisor joked. Everybody laughed. There was some more jovial discussion, and suddenly I remembered something I had seen or heard someplace and realized it would make a perfect addition to the growing frivolity, thereby integrating myself into the social circle of my collegues and receiving the ego-boosting thrill of hearing people laugh at something I said and think me witty. And so, like a total moron, I said it.
"Your morbid fixation on your spouse's death is disturbing," I added. The reaction of the group was unforseen. There was an immediate, awkward, tense silence. The smiles and laughter that had filled the room for the last ten minutes were gone, leaving no trace of where they had once been.
"Actually, my spouse did die," said the woman, defensively. Then she added, in light tone that somehow indicated that she was offended, "I bet you feel really bad now."
I did. I felt terribly, awfully, horribly bad. I did everything but melt into a little puddle on the floor. The group sat in silence for a moment, then somebody tried to make a joke to lift the mood ("Wow, some people sure are mean, aren't they!") but it didn't work and the group slowly disbanded in a somber mood. I opened my mouth to try to explain, but it became clear to me very quickly that it didn't matter anymore what my intentions were or what explanation I could possibly offer to defend myself. Nothing I could say would do anything but make the situation more painful and awkward. So I turned back to my work and finished the day in silence.
Later, though, I tried to figure out what was wrong with what I said. How could I have possibly been expected to know? And what was so different about what I said that made it offensive when the jokes of the others were received with laughter? It didn't make any sense to me, unless she did not recognize that I was making a joke, speaking as the voice of the hypothetical boss in the situation I thought we had implicitly created for the sake of argument. Perhaps she thought I was really speaking what I thought, that I was actually being callous and unfeeling. Perhaps my dry wit was too subtle to be picked up on... no, thats probably not it.
By some stroke of cruel fortune, I had to work most of the morning today in close proximity to this same woman. Right off the bat, I could feel a tension between us. She spoke to me as little as possible, and with a somewhat frosty tone. I said nothing, not know what I could possibly say to ease the situation. This continued for a few hours until I entered her area to find something and she spoke.
"So," she said, tentatively, "do you work every Saturday now, then?"
I said that I do. She said, "How'd they get you to agree to that?"
"I guess I'm just really stupid," I said, meaningfully, hoping it would do for an apology.
"You're just the low man on the totem pole, thats how it goes," she said.
That was that. But later, she came into the room where I was busily removing frozen entrees from their packages, and offered me some cookies she had baked that morning in the company ovens.
"Take one of each kind," she said. This gesture of goodwill I took to be a peace offering, a sign of reconciliation, and even though I have been on a diet I accepted her gift.
"Thank you," I said, and she smiled and left. Everything is going to be ok, I thought, watching her leave. Everything.
I'm not a rude person. Its never my intension to offend, and in fact I feel I put a lot of effort into being non-confrontational, considerate, sympathetic, and approachable. The idea of me being rude is about as likely as Fox News actually being "fair and balanced." (OK, so I've said that one before, but come on. On Fox, Republicans are Republicans, but Democrats are always "the Dems." I constantly hear things like "next we'll be discussing the effect of the tragedy on the market… and of course on the victim's families too." Anybody who wants to tell me there is a liberal bias in the media has got to try to explain Fox News to me first.) So, I'm not rude. But sometimes, I'm very very stupid.
A lively conversation started around my work area in which I was not involved. This was mostly because they were discussing benefits they get for being full-time employees of Nestle which I, as a temp for now, do not get. The discussion drifted towards paid vacation and paid leave of absences granted for special circumstances. One of my co-workers is very pregnant and looking forward to her couple months worth of maternity leave. Another middle-aged lady said, "You know, if your spouse dies you only officially get three days paid leave of absence!" The group was sufficiently disgusted with this information, and began making jokes about it. They began inventing things that the company might say to a poor employee whose spouse had just died to justify expecting them to be back to work in three days. These comments were directed to the woman who had brought up the information, as if she were the aforementioned poor employee.
"Here at Nestle we like to focus on life, not on death. So come back to work!" my supervisor joked. Everybody laughed. There was some more jovial discussion, and suddenly I remembered something I had seen or heard someplace and realized it would make a perfect addition to the growing frivolity, thereby integrating myself into the social circle of my collegues and receiving the ego-boosting thrill of hearing people laugh at something I said and think me witty. And so, like a total moron, I said it.
"Your morbid fixation on your spouse's death is disturbing," I added. The reaction of the group was unforseen. There was an immediate, awkward, tense silence. The smiles and laughter that had filled the room for the last ten minutes were gone, leaving no trace of where they had once been.
"Actually, my spouse did die," said the woman, defensively. Then she added, in light tone that somehow indicated that she was offended, "I bet you feel really bad now."
I did. I felt terribly, awfully, horribly bad. I did everything but melt into a little puddle on the floor. The group sat in silence for a moment, then somebody tried to make a joke to lift the mood ("Wow, some people sure are mean, aren't they!") but it didn't work and the group slowly disbanded in a somber mood. I opened my mouth to try to explain, but it became clear to me very quickly that it didn't matter anymore what my intentions were or what explanation I could possibly offer to defend myself. Nothing I could say would do anything but make the situation more painful and awkward. So I turned back to my work and finished the day in silence.
Later, though, I tried to figure out what was wrong with what I said. How could I have possibly been expected to know? And what was so different about what I said that made it offensive when the jokes of the others were received with laughter? It didn't make any sense to me, unless she did not recognize that I was making a joke, speaking as the voice of the hypothetical boss in the situation I thought we had implicitly created for the sake of argument. Perhaps she thought I was really speaking what I thought, that I was actually being callous and unfeeling. Perhaps my dry wit was too subtle to be picked up on... no, thats probably not it.
By some stroke of cruel fortune, I had to work most of the morning today in close proximity to this same woman. Right off the bat, I could feel a tension between us. She spoke to me as little as possible, and with a somewhat frosty tone. I said nothing, not know what I could possibly say to ease the situation. This continued for a few hours until I entered her area to find something and she spoke.
"So," she said, tentatively, "do you work every Saturday now, then?"
I said that I do. She said, "How'd they get you to agree to that?"
"I guess I'm just really stupid," I said, meaningfully, hoping it would do for an apology.
"You're just the low man on the totem pole, thats how it goes," she said.
That was that. But later, she came into the room where I was busily removing frozen entrees from their packages, and offered me some cookies she had baked that morning in the company ovens.
"Take one of each kind," she said. This gesture of goodwill I took to be a peace offering, a sign of reconciliation, and even though I have been on a diet I accepted her gift.
"Thank you," I said, and she smiled and left. Everything is going to be ok, I thought, watching her leave. Everything.
Comments