Sticks and stones ...

There is a paralegal at the office who doesn’t like me. I don’t know what I ever did to get on her bad side, but needless to say, she hates me. No, really … she hates me. She doesn’t ever give me the time of day and when she does talk to me, it is in as few words as possible. She has been out the last few months due to illness. However, she was well enough to come in to see the firm president yesterday (I’m guessing to discuss her future employment with the firm).

My friend of about a decade, KLM, is the firm president’s new secretrary and said paralegal took the time to talk to her before she left. I received the following email from KLM yesterday:

I told her I learned about the job here from you, but it didn’t stop her from trashing on you for a second. It made me uncomfortable!!

She made a fuss over how quiet it is in my area, and how much I must love that, and how much she would love that. Then she said the area where she worked wasn’t quiet at all. “Well, that is, it would’ve been quiet except for Inge. She talks loud and she never stops talking.” Apparently that was the main thing you supposedly did that bugged her – I think maybe she was just jealous that you’re friends with everyone here and that you have fun joking around with everyone here and everyone likes you and thinks highly of you.

I really didn’t think that this would bug me, but apparently talking about it shows that it does bug me.

FYI -- I am no louder than her (especially when she screams because she doesn’t hear someone coming towards her cubicle, which unfortunately happens quite often and makes me wonder what she is up to in her cubicle that makes her so jumpy). I don’t talk incessantly. What am I supposed to do if someone comes up to me and talks to me? Tell them to go away? I am a very social person and I am friendly towards my co-workers and I have very social bosses who enjoy chatting around my cubicle (even when it’s not chatting with me) … yet, I am blamed for all the noise in this corner of the office.

I must say that I have enjoyed not having her around to throw my print jobs away. The no blood curling screams is also welcomed. Not to mention, now that her return to full employment is in question, the extra cubicle she had commandeered for the last few years to dump all her "old" work in (which she refused to give to other paralegals to do) is now organized and sent off to their proper storage.

Oh, did I mention? She had also complained that I whistled too much while I work … apparently, that too, bugs her. I can do no right ...