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The Girl at Work Who Hates Me

There’s this girl at work, who I’ve started to call Julie, and she absolutely hates me for no particular reason.

Now, okay, I know you, having read more than one blog entry here, are probably thinking, “But Stan, look at all the things you say and do, and then reevaluate your assessment that she has no reason to hate you. I think you’ll find that there are, in fact, many reasons.”

“But,” I cautiously respond, “I haven’t even had the chance to alienate her yet!”

It’s true. While I’m sure I will have many opportunities in the future to destroy her emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and hopefully physically, I barely know her. We’ve had overlapping shifts maybe twice since I’ve started working there, but every time I’ve ever around — even when I’ve just shown up — she’s all heavy sighs and frustrated grunts.

No big deal. I know I smell.

One Monday, the second time I’d ever met Julie in my life, it was just her and me. It was nine sharp, but the door was locked and nobody was around, so she was sitting outside in the hall, doing homework. I sat across from her, breakfast and coffee in hand. As I spread out my food, she grimaced at me as if I’d just killed her dog and took it upon myself to eat the adorable pet right in front of her. And I hadn’t even disgusted her by beginning to eat yet.

“What’s going on?” I asked, referring to the locked door.

“Like I know,” she said, indicating it was obvious she would be just as ignorant as me. I guess that makes sense.

There was an awkward pause. I began eating, but I decided she needed to like me. It would be fairly excruciating, I decided, if she hated me all the time.

“What are you working on?” I asked.

She looked up at me, frowned, and went back to her work. “History,” she muttered.

“Oh,” I said. I decided not to pursue that line of questioning anymore. Fortunately, before I tried a different approach, Bianca showed up, shouted about nobody being there, and went to get a key.

Things were silent and awkward between us after that, even though I usually only saw her when I was arriving and she was living.

Then, last Thursday, she actually went to the extent of making fun of me behind my back. Except, the thing is, here at this office, there is no “behind my back.” Everything reverberates through the whole office. I hear everything, including but not limited to what happened on Thursday.

See, I was supposed to work the front desk from 9-1, then take an hour, then sit around the back from 2-5. But apparently Gregory was supposed to be the one relieving me, and he wasn’t around. Also, I didn’t know this little nugget of information, so I called the back. I was hoping somebody who didn’t completely hate me, like Bianca, would have picked up.

But no, it was Julie.

“What?” she said tersely. Actually, pretty much everything she says to me is “terse,” so I may as well drop that. Just assume from now on.

“I’m taking lunch; I need someone to cover the front desk,” I said.

“Uh,” she groaned, “we’re all leaving.”

A beat.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, “I think Gregory’s supposed to be here, but he’s not, so you’ll just have to wait for Jenna to get back.” (Jenna was at lunch and wasn’t expect for another half hour.)

“Okay,” I said.

Really, I didn’t have a problem with this. All I do on my lunch is take a shit, get more coffee, and occasionally run minor errands. It’s not like I was starving, but even if I had been, I wouldn’t have eaten. I planned to just stay at the front desk until Jenna came back.

But then, I heard Julie’s voice wafting up from the back.

“…and he’s all, ‘I’m taking lunch,’” she said, doing a fairly spot-on impression of the drab monotone I refer to as my “I-don’t-care-about-my-job-enough-to-be-pleasant” voice, “and I’m like, ‘Uh, whatever.’”

Which is funny, because in addition to taking on mocking tones while retelling the story to Bianca and Eric, she created the inaccurate illusion that they hadn’t already heard the entire conversation as a back-and-forth.

Bianca took pity on me and relieved me, saying she could wait 15 minutes, during which Jenna should come back, so I could take lunch. I didn’t really care about going, but she took enough pity that she forced me out.

I still find Julie very bizarre. Some of my more rational friends have suggested that maybe she’s an introvert, so my attempts at conversing with her only irritate her and cause her to withdraw more. I can empathize with this, because my paranoia causes me to withdraw from people quite a bit. But even still, I get the hate rays. This isn’t just a casual case of paralyzing fear when it comes to talking — it’s outright, random hatred.

It’s also been suggested that possibly I’ve wronged her, or one of her friends, in one of the many ways I’m known to wrong people, and now that we’re working, we’ve become sworn enemies. Except I haven’t been informed of this anti-bond. Still, that might make sense. Perhaps she knows or knew The Ex, who still haunts me intermittently. Or maybe she knows one of the three people I’ve gone out with since The Ex.

This is part of my problem, though. I don’t care if people don’t like me. I know a vast majority of people don’t like me.

What I can’t stand — absolutely can’t stand — is when I know people don’t like me, but I can’t figure out why. Sometimes, I don’t know, and that’s fine; I don’t go out of my way to be liked by people who may dislike me randomly. But when I know and I can’t figure it out — that’s when the psychological torture comes.

Sigh. I’ll never win.

Posted by Stan on November 17, 2003 7:49 PM  | Permalink | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace | Digg It