A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I just want some opinions. Please be sensitive with your advice since this is a sore subject and I have never asked strangers before.I had a rough childhood, use your imagination. I have reconciled with most of my family and I honestly forgive them. I am now a functioning adult (meaning I live independently hold down a full-time job and getting my masters) but as a child when the abuse was happening, most people disliked me. I was picked on and alienated. I tended to be the girl everyone hated. Overtime I was able to make friends but it was more by being the queen bee bitch in high school (I became attractive).In college my first year I got a lot of male attention ( I did not hook up with any of them) and I got a lot of negative female attention that eventually turned into all out hostility from my entire floor in the dorm. I was harassed non-stop to the point where I needed to call police. I transferred schools. At my new school (a bigger and higher prestige school)I made friends that I still speak to but not all. I did not have mass harassment and for the first time carried out a serious healthy long-term relationship. I did have my bouts of fights with suit-mates (but never a roomate). I felt like I must have become a better person.At my first full-time job I became friends with my co-workers and only had conflict with one person. Unfortunately, there was mass lay-offs and I had to go to a different job. At this job I got along with everyone for 8 months until I got a new assistant. She showed me hostility from day 1 (she used to have a manager position like me and chose to step to assistant which happened to be my assistant). For almost a year she has tried to get me fired and now 90% of the staff that used to be my friends now hate me. They won't say hello when I say hi, at the Holiday Party no one would speak to me and "reserved" seats to keep me away.The mass hatefulness and harassment from my assistant makes me feel like there must be something I am doing. I swear to you I do not go out of my way to do anything purposefully negative to anyone. I have smiled at them, said hello, tried to show interest in their pursuits, but I mostly get dirty looks or no looks at all. I hardly work with them and I have become afraid to even speak to my assistant (my boss' like drama so if I complained about her in any way, even though she constantly does so about me, I would put my job in danger). I don't know what to do. After a year of smiling and putting up with it I am falling apart inside. What could be wrong with me for this mass hate?? I just want to make things better.Please don't tell me to talk to these people about what is wrong and asking for a clean slate. I have done it several times and I get the same response from them that its no dice.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (21 February 2010): Why are you trying so hard to gain these people's approval? Who cares what they think? Their opinions of you DO NOT MATTER. Instead of trying to socialize with them-keep to yourself...stop saying "hi," "how are you," etc. and they will eventually get the message and stop harassing you. In time, they may even respect you for simply trying to stop winning this popularity contest. Not to say YOU yourself are immature, but popularity contests are something for high schools, not the adult workplace. Simply do your job and do it very well. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
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