Reflections

Letting Bygones Be Bygones

• By fannieb
• July 30, 2015
• No Comments

What?! Did I hear Angela correctly? Did my petty tyrant just say that I have such “a calming sense” or “such common sense”? Either way it’s quite a compliment coming from a coworker who only 16 months earlier had flexed her hierarchical muscles and told me to stop causing a turmoil with her employees.

But today I simply accepted the compliment.

Five weeks after a crappy welcome into a new company Angela had topped off my regret of having accepted this position by sending me a threatening email. But now, we seem to be getting along surprisingly well, in spite of the grievance I still harbor with her. It’s dwindling slowly. I’ve let that settle into the background as an expediency in order to be able to get my job done easily in this new, friendlier work environment.

I’ll probably never know what caused Angela’s turnaround, how I suddenly became nonthreatening to her for I hadn’t changed my behavior. I had bit my tongue. I had grinned and beared having to deal with a bully as my company’s corporate culture accepts this. But my actions, work methods, and interactions were the same as they had been when I was supposedly bothering her employees.

I don’t know what caused her to change and I’m still on guard with her a little. I don’t know if I will ever fully trust her, but I’ll take Angela’s more pleasant side and her compliments too, while I continue to work on letting bygones be bygones.

Photo credit: Mark Walley