THE WORKPLACE... what an experience!

LENGHTY POST! (...worth the read)

Hello There You,

Yes you, man, woman, young, old, beautiful, not so beautiful, tall, short, fat, slim.... Are you making someone's life miserable at work? Stop it today. Just flipping stop it!!!

I am 2 months into this job which my Father in Heaven gave to me in his own supernatural, inexplicable way of doing things gave to me, which I testified about in church and own my social media platform- Instagram. I am happy with my job. I enjoy it. I get to go for important meetings and meet important people. It makes me feel alive in some weird type of way. My mum always tells me that my job was not given to me by merit or by my qualifications but just God who shows me mercy allllll the time. Btw, I have added mercy to my names. So there goes. You know who I am now - Mercy. :-D

I will share my testimonies from time to time. Can't do in one post. Will do as the Spirit leads.

Now, back to the all important stuff plus I told my friend about it but said I will blog about it so she can read it instead of me having to type it to her in a chat then have to blog about it again! Hey there, lazy! Sorry for keeping you waiting, R! I'm on it. :-*

So back to this workplace issue. Like I said, I am happy with my job. The experience I am getting is untradeable. I was determined to not work in a law firm after law school because I wasn't ready to be about that slavish life. I did not bother applying to any even as a backup plan. I did not want it at all. My work hours are 8-5 and 5 means 5 in my office. The AC's actually go off at 5 so if you like, 'ga an' suffocate. Anyway, I did not want to work in a law firm and God knew this and He did it for me. To work as an in-house lawyer in any company you generally some experience but I did not have this as I was fresh from law school, actually still awaiting my law school results when I applied for the job but when God says yes, na you say no? When I had my interview with my company, the front desk officer was very unfriendly. Extremely so. After giving me all the attitude and bad eyes in the world, as I was about to leave, she came to ask what perfume I had on which I gladly told her but I am there thinking sooooo, this was just love and hate at the same time? That unfriendliness has not changed now that I am a full staff by the way. It has deteriorated badly, The truth however, is that we are not in the workplace to make friends BUT we are there to be professional, no? Please pick up The Rules of Work by Richard Templar and educate yourselves on work etiquette. Don't be a disdain to someone's life in the office environment. Especially as we are all employees. Not the employers.

A general description- most of the women in my office are in their 30s or 40s. It is not a big office. We are about 45 staff including the support staff and occupy 2 floors of a building. I put in effort in my appearance to work. I plan my outfits (re: Rules of Work) and always try to look my best. This, however, might not be the same for the other females at work. I greet females at work, they don't reply. My sister actually had a similar experience at her workplace and said she stopped greeting after a while. How can people be that way? In an office environment for that matter. I don't tend to have this issue with the males.

I had a spectacular experience yesterday. I called the elevator to go back to the floor where I work and I was talking to my 'work friend', a female, my age, who started on the job the same day as me while waiting for the elevator to arrive. She was on her way out of the office for lunch. When the elevator arrived, one of these workplace females had got on it and she could see me running from the entrance door to catch it but as expected, she did not help to hold the lift. Luckily for me, I was able to make the lift. The next thing I heard was, 'please excuse me, jare'. I was lost as I had already stayed at the other end of the lift. She moved to one corner of the lift. Please note that I do not work directly with this lady at all. She works on the other floor we occupy but I go to that floor very often as I have meetings there and my portfolio executive works on that floor so she sees me around. Our lunch room is also on my floor so those are the only encounters we have. She is one of the people who never responds to my greetings as well. Back to the lift experience. As I got to my floor which was before hers and got out of the lift, the next thing I heard was the loudest hiss I have ever heard in my life. I did not look back. I went to the lunch room, got out my food from the fridge and started eating. Still trying to block out what had just happened in the elevator. I don't even remember how my food tasted. I was just chewing.

As I thought of the experience I just had, I tried to console myself that since she was heavy, she will be out of the office soon for her maternity leave which meant I could get a break from one of these ladies at least. My 'work friend' who I was earlier talking to on the ground floor returned from her lunch break and sat opposite me in the kitchen talking about how her lunch went and even complained that I did not seem to be listening to her. Next thing I knew, I burst out in tears. I don't even know how that happened. I just started bawling. She was confused. She kept asking what happened, what happened. Said we should go to the bathroom so that people didn't see me. I managed to explain the lift situation I just encountered with the 'pregnant woman' (I didn't know her name) in the lift and she was stunned! I was inconsolable. It was not because of what had happened in the lift particularly that hurt me but everything I had been bottling up. The attitude I got from these ladies on a daily and hourly basis. Working at a job which I really liked but which the females were making it so hard to want to continue.

I called my sister who had I had previously told about some of the things I faced at work and who had advised me to toughen up as I was going to face far worse things at the workplace. She had had her own fair share of workplace politics so she understood, but hey, I was just 2 months into the first proper job I had ever had in my life. After speaking to my sister (the phone went off as we both ran out of credit), I went to the HR manager who is such a Christian, motherly woman and narrated the whole incident and general experiences at work. She was hurt. It was at this point I will find out that this woman I had faced in the lift was not even pregnant and just sized that way.

The HR manager had a long conversation with me and narrated how they had previously encountered issues like that in the office but was hoping that people would have turned a new leaf. Apparently, they have this clique in the office where all they do is gossip and my Head of Department who had come in after a number of them but got promoted above them within 2 years of working had been a victim of this fatality. Cut the long story short, she encouraged me and assured me that the issue was going to be addressed. Not my own experience but the whole concept of hate, envy and unprofessionalism in the workplace.

Women need to treat each other better. We need to love and appreciate each other. You don't have to be friends but be civil in your dealings with the next person. If you hate the next person, wait until you get home, go into your bathroom and scream so loud. Pour some water over your face and you will be alright. Do not go out of you way to make someone feel so uncomfortable in the work environment. We are all there for a reason and professional we must be. I was also advised that if they knew that the things they were doing were getting to me, they were only going to do it even more, therefore, I had to grow a tough skin. It is well.

Me.

x