Dear New Person at Work

Dear New Person at Work,

I don't like you. No that's not true, I don't know you, but I don't like the idea of you. I don't like change, I don't like worrying that I am too in your face or intimidating or weird or inappropriate for other adults to like me.

I like knowing where I stand, are you my superior, inferior or equal? Will you look at me in disgust when I shove a Kinder Bueno in my face on a Friday afternoon? Will you judge me because I don't brush my hair everyday or wear makeup when I should? 

Will you be better than me? Will people like you more? These all sound like such pathetic things to worry about but here I am worried. I'm not in high school anymore but to me office environments feel rather cliquey. It's like Mean Girls but all a bit more underhand because you have to be openly professional.

An office setting is a little bit like life in a fish bowl, you are on show, and you can't have a meltdown because your day has been f*&king awful or just because you are female and dammit sometimes I just need to cry. In an office setting you are thrown together with people that you wouldn't necessarily choose to spend everyday with and sometimes that's stressful. And yeah sometimes I don't cope with stress that well, which lets say can make getting on not exactly smooth sailing.

Maybe it's just me but I have preconceptions of a person before I have met them. I am more likely to pick out the bad in a person before noticing the good. I'm never ready to say I like someone until I actually know them and I hate that people get upset when I have an opinion that they don't agree with, don't ask me if you don't want to know. 

So dear new person, it's not you it's me.