Was it just Communication - or something more?

I have always thought of myself as a pretty easy-going person who can get along with just about anybody. In fact, in confrontations I tend to apologize whether it was my fault or not. Like George McFly in "Back to the Future" - I don't like confrontations.

So when our company hired a second night tech for our department a little over a year ago, I didn't anticipate any problems. I knew she had been a professor in the Ukraine, but had been in America for several years. I knew she had some clinical experience, and that she was very eager to learn.

At first everything was coming up roses. We got along just great - in fact my family even had her and her daughter over for Thanksgiving dinner. She did seem to be a bit paranoid (she thought people at work were doing things to get her in trouble), but she had a great deal of enthusiasm and worked very hard. Even though she was several years older than me, she had a lot of energy.

Then little problems started cropping up. Sometimes she would refuse to admit that she had made a mistake - and used that reasoning that people were trying to get her in trouble. I tried to be tolerant as I realized she had probably grown up in a Communist country where there was good reason to be paranoid, but although she had spent several years in America, she did not understand my brand of humor. As an example, when the supervisor emailed me about a problem that had occurred on night shift (which was pretty evidently her mistake), she flat out denied that she had done any such thing. So I rather wearily said, "Fine, I'll email the supervisor and tell him that it must have been me, since you're sure you didn't do it." Her response? With perfect sincerity she said "Thank you". My somewhat sarcastic comment went right over her head.

She had been with us for a few months when things blew up. We had both had a hard night, and I was trying to finish up the last of the work. She asked if she could help, and I told her that I could handle it, and she could go home as she was already into overtime. She responded that I was in overtime too, and I replied rather off-handedly "That's irrelevant". After all, I AM lead tech, so making sure the work gets done is my reponsibility.

A few minutes later I found her crying on the shoulder of the lab assistant. When I asked her what the problem was, she said she couldn't believe that I could be so rude and unfeeling. To say I was flabergasted is a gross understatement. When I asked her what she meant, she kept insisting that I knew what she was talking about. I eventually got her to spit it out, and was flabergasted all over again. In her eyes, the fact that I had said it was irrelevant meant that I didn't value her opinion at all. The fact that I had mentioned she was in overtime meant that I thought she wasn't working fast enough, and that her work wasn't good enough.

I tried to explain that the irrelevant comment was more of a joke than anything else, but she refused to accept that. I tried to explain that my concern about her overtime was because I knew her daughter picked her up. She wouldn't accept that either. She kept going on about how I was over her, and I'm afraid I lost my temper. It was at the end of my shift and I was very tired. I told her that I had been treating her like a friend, but evidently she didn't want that - she wanted me to just treat her like a co-worker. To my absolute astonishment her response was "Yes, I think that would be best". I felt like I'd been kicked, and my friendship spurned. So I stormed back to finish my work.

As I mentioned before, I don't like confrontations and I felt badly about this, even though I didn't feel it was my fault. Therefore I wrote a very nice letter of apology and re-explained what I had said what I did. I told her that I did NOT think she was not working as fast as she could, and that she couldn't expect to be as fast as me when she had only been there for a few months. I apologized for losing my temper. I told her I would continue to think of her as a friend, but would try to treat her as a co-worker.

She politely thanked me for the letter, but told me that there was one part that she did not agree with - she did not feel that I was faster than her! After all, she told me, she had clinical experience from a previous job. Once again I was totally dumfounded. Either she had an extremely high opinion of herself that she could master this job in so short a time that she could equal somebody who had been there for 24 years - or she had an extremely poor opinion of how much I had progressed in that amount of time. However, I was emotionally exhausted from the whole thing, so I just smiled and let it slide.

I want to add that months later when I mentioned this, she vehemently denied that she had said any such thing. Either her memory or mine was slipping.

For the next several months we got along OK - at least most of the time. She would often make little jokes with me, and when I didn't respond, she told me that I didn't have a sense of humor. I replied that I did, but the last time I had 'joked' with her, I had gotten into trouble. Mind you, she was making little remarks herself like, "Oh Megan, sometimes you are so kind, but not very often". To be quite honest, I did not know how to take her. She would get upset about something I had said because she would interpret it in a different way than I meant it. When I would try to explain this, she would stick to her opinion that I had meant it in the way that she had taken it. But she would continue to behave like nothing had happened.

She was also extremely emotional. The night that she couldn't get on the computer (new system), she finally started crying and asking "Why is this happening to me?". She even said that perhaps she should kill herself. I tried to be off-hand about it, because I didn't really know what to do. She had told me once before that every day when she goes home she cries and thinks about killing herself.

We got her into the computer with the new system, but she didn't really like the new programming. She was constantly telling me how I ought to change it, but would add in a self-sacrificing sort of voice, "But what I think does not matter". We were extremely short-staffed and I was putting in a lot of overtime as well as being the major programmer for our new system. Her constant complaining about how things were turning out got on my nerves, although I tried to be polite about it. However, I imagine I did sound exhasperated once in a while.

Then we had another 'incident'. We had been getting along pretty well, and I forgot and made a little joke. She had enlarged the graph on the screen, and I said "Good heavens, your eyes must be worse than I thought". I said it in a joking voice, but I might have guessed that she would take it seriously. Sure enough, a few minutes later she told me that she found my remark highly offensive and did not appreciate me making negative comments about her appearance. (Eyesight is part of appearance?). When I told her it was a joke, she did her denial bit. I'm afraid I totally lost it.

I mentioned a couple of the negative thing she had said about me, and she replied in her stiff self-righteous voice that she had never said anything negative about my appearance. By then I was practically shouting (yup - I'd really lost it). I told her that I had forgotten and thought of her as a friend, and would have to go back to thinking of her as a co-worker again. I don't remember exactly what she said - something about not being appreciated. So I told her to switch to day shift - maybe they'd appreciate her there since she didn't think I did. And I stalked off.

I guess I should have apologized for losing my temper, but I was so tired of having my remarks misunderstood. Granted, she is from a different country, but she had lived in America for several years and should have learned how to get along with people better. It is so frustrating to try to explain what I meant, and to be told that I am wrong - that wasn't what I meant at all!

So she went out and found another job and gave notice. When she told the supervisor she was leaving, she made it very clear that it was because of me. Whenever I tried to ask her about her new job, she would get very weepy and sad and talk about how hard it was going to be to get there (4 bus transfers) and how it wasn't as good a job, etc. I tried to talk to her one night to find out why she was leaving, but the only thing she would say was that she 'Didn't feel appreciated". I don't know if that was a reference to the last argument we had had, or a commentary on the fact that I didn't praise her every few minutes on how wonderful she was. I often did tell her she was doing a good job, but apparently not often enough.

On the last night we worked together, she gave me a present and then proceeded to tell me how this had been her dream job, everything she wanted and she had hoped to retire from here someday, but the situation had become intolerable. However, she was sure I would be happy once she was gone. Wow - talk about a guilt trip! I drove home stunned and depressed. I didn't know if she felt that she couldn't take working with me anymore, or if she was being a martyr and quitting so I could be happy. She was so weepy that last week that it was hard to talk to her about anything.

I wanted to give her and her daughter Christmas presents. I thought quite a while about what to give them. The last really good conversation that we had had was about Dickens and his story "The Christmas Carol". Amazingly, she had never heard of it. So I bought a very nice copy of the book with illustrations. Both she and her daughter felt very strongly about all of the stray cats and tried to feed them, so I bought a cat calendar for her daughter. I wrapped them up in Christmas paper, attached a Christmas card to each with their names on them, and left them in her drawer on the last night I was working before she left. She was actually working a few more nights as I was taking some vacation.

Well, last night was my first night back, and I found both the presents shoved into my drawer. The cards had been ripped off, but I have no way of knowing if that was because she was going to open and read them, or she had thrown them in the trash unread. She had totally rejected the gifts I had left for her, even though she had given me a gift on our last night together. I was furious, mad, and very hurt. I allowed myself the luxury of crying as I was the only one there.

Since then I've been thinking about this a lot. I do feel that some of it is my fault. I definitely should NOT have lost my temper with her. I should have apologized after I shouted at her. Even though we were incredibly busy, I should have tried to take more time to talk with her, and find out what she was feeling. It is possible that there is something in her cultural background that exacerbated the situation without my knowing it.

On the other hand, I can't feel its 100% my fault. Her inflexibility, her emotionalism, and her refusal to discuss things with me made it very difficult for me to communicate with her. She would ask me questions about things that she had known just a few weeks ago, but would deny that I had ever told her. She was always so certain that she was right. And she didn't try to sit down and talk things over with me before she decided to leave.

Although I am still hurt by what happened, and feel considerable guilt (whether I should or not), I feel that her leaving was probably better for both of us. She was right about one thing - I will be happier without her being there. I won't be walking on eggshells wondering how she will take my next comment. Also, with the economy being what it is, there is a good chance that our business will downsize. As she was the last one hired, she would have been the first one to be let go, so perhaps getting another job was a good thing for her. And perhaps she can feel saintly about leaving so that I can be happy again. But I don't think she is very happy, and for that I am truly sorry.

But what I don't know is whether this entire situation was just merely a matter of miscommunication (or not communicating), or whether there were culture reasons behind a lot of what she said and did. I will probably never know, and I will always have a bit of regret in my heart for what happened. But as Uncle Scrooge's nephew said about his Uncle in Dicken's "Christmas Carol", what did he get by refusing to come to dinner with them? - a good dinner with a lot of friendly people. And what does she get by refusing what is offered to her? - she loses her 'dream' job, my friendship, and a couple of Christmas presents. And who is to say which would have had the most worth.

Thanks for letting me vent.