Sadistic story problem

The organization I work for has a central communications department that’s at another location. I don’t work for or with them. Some of my coworkers understand this but most don’t.

Today, an email about budget reductions went out. Departments were named and total savings by department provided. It stated whether positions would be lost in each department but not how many. This created a frenzy of trying to figure out individual salaries to calculate how many people would equal the amount saved. It became a sadistic story problem.

I was working with my headphones on so I hadn’t heard all the hallway chatter. I only became aware of it after someone pushed my mostly closed door wide open and stepped up to my desk to let me have it for communicating absolutely nothing and to let me know that I’m the one who should go.

So that was fun.

I handle conflict about as well as any introvert. Fortunately, my communications degree has served me well and I’m good at de-escalating heated situations. It took awhile, but the person calmed down. No apology for me but getting the person out of my office was good enough.

After awhile I considered going to my boss, not to tell him what happened—I don’t do that—but to alert him to the stress people are under and that there's a lot of anger there too. He can’t do anything about the messaging, but he’s in a position to take it those who can. Plus, he can at least try to do something to shore up morale in our office. Three times I walked out of my office only to turn around and go back in. I decided to let it go.

An hour later I sent Henry the file I’d been working on for him. A few minutes later he called. “Outstanding job. This is really superb.” That’s just Henry. There’s never a morale problem around him.

Of course the part of today I can’t shake is the part where the coworker said I should be the one to go.

After this day, I needed a visit to my personal therapist. Fortunately he was in and accepts walk-ins as long as a w-a-l-k is part of the payment. I hadn’t seen the little white dog in over a week, an eternity for both. If things don’t improve at work soon I’m going to have to resume our daily lunch sessions.