How I turned a workplace conflict into a healing

Last Monday afternoon I was feeling good, as good as you can feel in the last hours of a 9-5 job. I’d just gotten back from a walk I took on my 20-minute union-mandated paid break. I had basked in the sun and lifted my arms to embrace the large gusts of wind that reminded me I was alive. Like many of us do, I was making the best of eight hours I wished I could use on more personally fulfilling activities.

Shortly after I got back from my break, my supervisor came in to our office and closed the door. Clearly flustered, he told us that he had been instructed to remind us that we are only allowed one 20-minute break in the afternoons. We were all confused, wasn’t that what we were all doing? He went on to say that someone from another department reported that they had seen one of us take two breaks since lunch.

First of all, we were annoyed. Why are our activities being monitored by coworkers, fellow union members, when we have supervisors to do that? We were all genuinely confused, trying to figure out what someone saw that made them think that we were taking off more than our allocated break time. After offering up some possibilities—maybe it was when I went outside to clean the work truck?—my supervisor folded and gave us some more details.

It was me. This coworker claimed that they had seen me at 1:00 in the break room, then observed me on my walk later at 1:30. Among other feelings, I was genuinely perplexed. I knew I was at my desk during that first time they saw me. After some thinking, I remembered that it was a new employee’s first day, who happened to be around my same age, height, and build as me. The nosy coworker must have seen this young woman in the break room and assumed it was me.

I was very annoyed, to put it lightly, that this coworker saw me on my walk and, without asking me for an explanation, accused me of taking extra breaks to multiple supervisors. The department this coworker works in is known for being petty and starting drama with my department, a history that started long before I showed up. I’d done nothing to make this woman suspicious or offended besides being in the department I’m in.

The argument was that my coworker did this because they were concerned about fairness. If they were really concerned about fairness, they wouldn’t have thrown me under the bus without seeking any confirmation or clarification. I was declared guilty without a trial, or even being informed of my crime! Their actions were extremely self-serving.

For context, to make it worse, I am still on probation. For the first six months of this job, you can be let go without any reason. In addition, as a young woman I struggle to get taken seriously, the middle aged woman who tattled on me should have realized that. This upper class, entitled woman was meddling with my reputation, my job security, and networking opportunities. Besides, why did she care so much, why is this any of her business??? If I see a coworker taking an extra long break, I mind my own business. As long as it doesn’t affect me, I’m happy for them. We don’t work in an environment that breeds constant comparison and competition, why aren’t we teammates?

I biked home angry. I pedaled hard in fits of temper and didn’t show much patience for well-meaning drivers. I sent my boyfriend an angry voice memo about the situation. I imagined all the ways I could hurt this person. I did angry push-ups.

This event would piss off just about anyone, and I had the extra layer of having left an extremely toxic work environment earlier this year. At that job, I was constantly getting thrown under the bus by coworkers. I’d become the scapegoat and nobody was on my side or recognized the good work that I was doing. I was told by multiple older coworkers how unwelcome I was there. The hostile environment had become so bad for my health that I was getting sick. I was having GI issues to the point that I couldn’t eat for days and would feel weak for weeks at a time.

Even after I quit, I still struggled with the tension of feeling like I’d been wronged and never had a chance to make things right. I was actively taking steps to heal—I did a two week pilgrimage in Spain, practiced yoga (not just asanas but meditation and pranayama), and talked about my feelings in productive ways with loved ones. I was determined to use this painful workplace experience to wisely inform future jobs.

In the evening I made an effort to calm myself. I went on a walk at sunset and listened to Tara Brach. I sat along the Flint River and watched a crane that flew in. I started to calm down and envision a productive way to handle this situation.

So there I was, triggered by the previous two years but understanding that this is where the real work happens. This is where I analyze the data from past experience to inform future decisions.

I concluded that the best course of action would be to have a private conversation with my supervisor. I would be direct and level-headed. I would express my frustration but not be led by my emotions. I would make it clear that, even if this accusation was impersonal and misguided, it still negatively affects me. I would also mention extra projects I had taken on to demonstrate my work ethic and exacerbate the ridiculousness of the accusation. On the way home I listened to Cranes in the Sky by Solange and found softness in my heart.

I did a good job of calming myself down before bed, but at 1a.m. I woke up very alert and annoyed again and wasn’t able to fall back asleep. Even laying in savasana didn’t help. It’s hard to relax when your frustration hasn’t yet been addressed. At that point, I hadn’t even gotten a chance to explain what really happened to management.

The next morning I successfully executed my plan and afterwards joked about the whole thing with folks in my department. I was still angry and admit that I wanted to humiliate this coworker, but I realized that she had done that herself. From this ordeal I got a chance to demonstrate my professionalism and work ethic, while she exposed herself as the vindictive fool that she is.

The next day, I realized that this low-level nagging ache of frustration I’d been living with since my last job had reduced significantly. Since quitting, I’d been working on learning from past hardships, but I hadn’t been able to put my new insight to use. I intellectually believed that I went through all that suffering to learn something valuable, but I hadn’t been shown how yet. In a weird way, this whole experience has been a gift because I got to use skills I learned from past experiences with toxic coworkers. I’ve had a challenging relationship with confrontation my whole life and I finally feel like I’m hitting a sweet spot.

As a teenager I could be very confrontational. This confrontation was emotionally charged and self-righteous, preventing any meaningful change to take place. When I got to college, I pondered on these experiences and started to hold myself accountable for the pain I’d caused people, resulting in a lot of guilt. My response was to move in the exact opposite direction, letting people use me as a doormat and tell me degrading things about myself that I knew weren’t true. I framed it as not caring what other people think, as presenting my other cheek when I get slapped in the face like the Bible encourages. I would ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” and hold myself to those standards. This mindset is what led to the disastrous events of my previous job.

I’m trying really hard not to be bitter. I came to terms with the fact that I will never be as perfect as Jesus, and I wouldn’t want to because I don’t want to be crucified, literally or metaphorically. I found a lot of relief in book characters who were resentful, like the father of a teenager who was raped in We Were the Mulvaneys and Cathedral in Jewel by Brett Lott, who, when the main character slapped her, offered her the other cheek as a gesture of despise.

I’ve also found solace in Me Now by Denzel Curry. To someone who was similarly in a place of hopelessness and bitterness, this song reminded me that I was not alone in my anger.

This media helped me finally accept my anger and do the important work of emotional alchemy: turning it into something great.

In male-dominated fields, many women turn to pushing down younger counterparts, thinking that it will save them. I believe that this has to do with recent pushes towards inclusivity in the workplace and women in STEM. Millennial and Gen X women in STEM remember the pain of being the only women and not being perceived beyond that identity. They were born late enough to have expanded career opportunity, but too early to be respected in those careers. It’s not hard to imagine them getting bitter, looking at confident and capable young women like me and thinking how unfair it is that I don’t have suffer like they did.

I’m not going to offer up any advice to women decades older than I, it makes me nervous just to try and diagnose their problems. What I will be doing is trying my darndest to not pass this curse on to future generations.