u/Intrepid-Ad-1010

And some days, she meanders into the office at 10am and leaves by noon. She WFH the rest of the day. Even though the rest of us could do our jobs from home too, we’re not allowed to. We’d have to put in an Alternate Work Arrangement request (which *she* would have to approve), and it would only be allowed to last a few weeks at most.

Edit: people, I am not hating on parents. I am hating on the fact that my boss uses her child as an excuse to leave the office early when other people here have kids, too.

Edit 2: no, she is not the owner; we work at a huge company with more than 6,000 employees across the globe (though there are only eight people on our team). She’s a middle manager, but the boss she reports to isn’t even in the same state as us. No, we can’t just walk out after she leaves because there is a tattletale amongst us. No, she has not, and will not, approve anyone else’s Alternate Work Arrangement.

My department is small—five people, including myself. They’re all around the same age (late 40’s, early 50’s) and have all been working together for 20+ years, so when I first started here, two years ago in my late 20’s, it was difficult to get into their crowd. They’d always have hour-long conversations, and I really tried to be a part of it, but they never made any real effort to include me and I stopped trying. After that came the comments: “Why are you so quiet? Are you feeling alright? You don’t talk much.”

Despite the fact that I did my work, my boss started to dislike me, and that in turn made the others start to dislike me. I can still feel it now whenever we’re all at our desks, and they’re speaking to each other in hushed whispers; I really try not to look at my phone at all when I’m here because whenever I do, I’ll hear a hushed, “She’s on her phone.” (Mind you, I only ever use my phone to look quickly at the time or glance at my texts. Meanwhile, they will chat for hours at a time). Also, they always go out to lunch with one another, but they do so quietly. Like, all at once they’ll just get up and leave the office without saying anything to me, and then they’ll come back with sandwiches or something. Once in a blue moon, the only man in the group will invite me and I will go, but I can tell they don’t want me to.

This made me start to feel anxious whenever o was at my desk, so I started working elsewhere—in the cafe, in a small conference room, at an empty desk on the other side of the office, etc. I told my boss I was doing this, so it wasn’t a surprise to her. I did this for a few months, and my mental health improved dramatically.

Yesterday, though, she told me during a one-on-one meeting that I wasn’t allowed to do this anymore because “they” didn’t like it. I’m assuming “they” means her. She said that I have to work at my desk because “they” want open collaboration.

So here I am, back at my desk surrounded by my coworkers, who are still going out to lunch without me and having whispered conversations for hours. Aside from the obligatory “good morning,” nobody’s said anything today. So much for “open collaboration.” I’m beginning to think I was ordered back here because my boss enjoys the fact that I can tell nobody likes me. And the thing is, I don’t really know why. I’ve never done anything to them

TLDR: my coworkers dislike me and were making me anxious, so I started working away from my desk and them. Boss didn’t like that, so now I’m back at my desk.

Every time someone posts something along the lines of, “Why do people dislike introverts so much?”, someone inevitably comments, “Growing up, the opposite was true—my teachers would always tell me to shut up!”

I think this is disingenuous because there is a difference between being extroverted and disruptive; I know plenty of extroverts who knew how to behave in a classroom. Also, being an introverted child made me, and many other introverts I know, a target for bullies, so I have no idea why extroverts think that being told to settle down in a classroom = being discriminated against.