I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a grown up workplace. This was my first real job fresh out of university and getting a rude awakening. The things that I was hearing flying around the office were making me feel physically ill. The way they were treating each other at the moment was enough to make any human being want to run away. These people are meant to be professionals, work colleagues, and they can’t even speak politely to each other. The reason everyone was on edge was because the central heating had stopped working and the office was boiling. The heat was putting everybody in a terrible mood, so much so that a lot of people decided to go home. I don’t see any reason to take a bad mood out on work colleagues just from the lack of air conditioning, Canberra was on fire sure but that was no excuse.
I was getting sick of hearing people complain so I decided to say something to my boss. As soon as I’d made that decision in my head, I heard one of the women say she was going to find someone to harass today because she was in a bad mood, she even mentioned firing an intern just to make her day better. I couldn’t believe these people controlled people’s lives, whether or not people had a roof over their head.
I approached the lady and asked her to keep the offensive comments out of the workplace and talk to each other with respect. I was told to stop bothering them as they were busy, and very important. I knew they were only bickering because the cooling wasn’t working, but that was no excuse. I decided to be proactive and do something about this mess.
I went back to my desk and phoned the local air conditioning repairs company in Canberra. I couldn’t stand being in the office around grumpy people any longer, and I couldn’t afford to quit.
I told my sister about the office politics when I met her for lunch. She was horrified that grown men and women could act like such children. We both had a bit of a laugh and I explained that the air con repairs crew were going to be there at 3 o’clock that afternoon to brighten everybody’s day. I had my fingers crossed that a cool office would stop the problems. These so called professionals need a kick in the pants.