It makes for parlous moments. I'll be discussing something with one coworker when another coworker approaches. Suddenly there is the cold electric current of hatred and hostility and I'm stuck right in the middle, absorbing it. Generally, I try to tie up the conversation quickly and be on my way.
The situation is the result of people working together for many, many years. Most of the people are women. And while it would be convenient to make it a gender thing and dismiss it as women being catty, it is not. Men -- some of the business agents -- practice the chilly burn and malevolent stare as well; they are just more low-key about it.
People work together for years, decades, and wrongs, perceived and real, accumulate. Finally a decision is made to cease all but the most necessary and perfunctory communication.
For me, since I have been at this particular work site for less than three years now, I have not accumulated a reservoir of ill will similar to my coworkers, many of whom have been working together for 15 years or more. I only have the unfortunate situation of the one woman, who tends to the bipolar, with whom I have fell afoul. So for the most part I have the luxury of moving comfortably between and communicating freely with everyone on the job.
This is not without its burdens since I am often used as a tacit go-between for coworkers who are so nauseated at the prospect of dealing with one another they would rather angle a third party into doing it for them.
From the prologue to Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All or None (1883–1885):
Then something happened that made every mouth dumb and every eye rigid. For meanwhile the tightrope walker had begun his performance: he had stepped out of a small door and was walking over the rope, stretched between two towers and suspended over the market place and the people. When he had reached the exact middle of his course the small door opened once more and a fellow in motley clothes, looking like a jester, jumped out and followed the first one with quick steps.
"Forward, lamefoot!" he shouted in an awe-inspiring voice. "Forward, lazybones, smuggler, pale-face, or I shall tickle you with my heel! What are you doing here between towers? The tower is where you belong. You ought to be locked up; you block the way for one better than yourself." And with every word he came closer and closer; but when he was but one step behind, the dreadful thing happened which made every mouth dumb and every eye rigid: he uttered a devilish cry and jumped over the man who stood in his way.
This man, however, seeing his rival win, lost his head and the rope, tossed away his pole, and plunged into the depth even faster, a whirlpool of arms and legs. The market place became as the sea when a tempest pierces it: the people rushed apart and over one another, especially at the place where the body must hit the ground.
Zarathustra, however, did not move; and it was right next to him that the body fell, badly maimed and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while the shattered man recovered consciousness and saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. "What are you doing here?" he asked at last. 'I have long known that the devil would trip me. Now he will drag me to hell. Would you prevent him?"
"By my honor, friend," answered Zarathustra, "all that of which you speak does not exist: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further."
The man looked up suspiciously. "If you speak the truth," he said, "I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than a beast that has been taught to dance by blows and a few meager morsels."
"By no means," said Zarathustra. "You have made danger your vocation; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish of your vocation: for that I will bury you with my own hands."
When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man answered no more; but he moved his hand as if he sought Zarathustra's hand in thanks.
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