Work dilemma...

Although I don't talk about work a lot on my blog; my reasons are pretty obvious and make a lot of practical sense. However, this particular work topic is more an everyday dilemma, which unfortunately occurred at work.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the bathroom and coincidently, so to was my colleague, we were met at the door by another colleague and someone whom we are friendly with. She has a predisposition for both her lack of discretion and her loud, booming opinionated voice. Don't get me wrong, she is a nice person, very interesting and generally intelligent. However, it can be, as some would say, "All about her" aka AAH. She's very inward-looking sometimes and as a result, neglects the thoughts of others.

Anyway, yesterday AAH was recounting to us, her fall down the stairs at work and told us the story as to how she came to be there - she was avoiding another colleague from work. She, like many others, views this fourth person as a person who constantly talks about herself. This woman has a pretty uncanny ability to twist a conversation to a thread which becomes about her. It can be aggravating and time consuming, but this woman is someone who is blatantly lonely and obviously needs some conversation and more importantly, someone to care. So, for the purpose of this story, she becomes lonely lady.

So, AAH was trying to avoid lonely lady. She recounted this story to us in the hallway outside the toilets and comments such as, "Were you avoiding Lonely Lady because she has an uncanny ability to make the conversation about her?" and "She always makes it about her!". There was a great deal of laughing and some knowing grins, before the conversation ended and we all walked back to our area (normally AAH wouldn't come into our area, but yesterday she did).

As we were filing into the main office area, we walked past another desk area and as I looked up, I saw lonely lady and the look on her face - it was enough for me to know that she had heard everything. You see, it's two fold - lonely lady wasn't meant to be there - her work area is on another part of the floor. The second thing is, I was the only one out of the three of us to notice the look on her face, yet I was the only person, who although present during that conversation, did not say anything to contribute to the 'sledging' of the lonely lady, nor do I consider myself to be someone so indiscreet, as to have an open, full and frank conversation in the hall of my office. I'm too paranoid that someone will hear us.

And you know; they did this time.

I might sound very noble. like I am tooting my own horn, but I'm almost proud of the fact that for once in my life, I did not degenerate into the general conversation. My history has usually seen me join in such unfortunate conversations in an effort to be accepted. I guess I don't need their acceptance.

Being caught out speaking about others embarrasses and guilts me; Guilt by association to a conversation I did not participate in shits me.

And yet, I probably feel the most guilt - although, I know my colleague also feels bad about it all.

Today, I sort of ran into lonely lady and thankfully, it seems like she's either understood that I was not involved (because she would not have heard me say anything during that conversation) or she wanted to ignore it completely.

Either way, there were no valuable lessons learnt on my part, only reinforcement of my life-rules - fortunately, I have always been ultra sensitive to who could and couldn't hear the things I said. However, hopefully others will learn a lesson - it's not that you have to be discreet about the things you say about your colleagues, it's that you should always think first before you start bitching about someone who really is very harmless and think about the underlying issues which serve to make them an AAH and a lonely lady, rather than hurting them with senseless and selfish comments which serve no purpose.

The irony of this is pretty funny to me - my AAH friend is very possibly lonely and lacking attention, which is why she is an AAH, while my lonely friend could be mistaken for an AAH because she always twists the conversation to herself.

I would say they are more similar than either would like to think or admit.