Wednesday's Whine - One of Those Weeks Already

So I have this job now...you may have read about it in earlier blogs. It rules my life at the moment (yet one more reason I prefer to be self-employed). Anyway, I've had a few bottles of wine in the last couple of weeks, but no energy to search the net for label pics and general information about them. Then I made a bad attempt at using an example and humor to illustrate a point during a meeting that turned out to be neither funny nor a very helpful illustration...sigh. A coworker was offended and another coworker tattle on me to the boss. I get that it was bad form, but the offended coworker should have come to me and not stewed over it. The other coworker really had no right to go to the boss either but could have come to me about it. I dislike tattletales. I assume that people make mistakes and if they make enough to bug me, then I talk to them directly. Occasionally, I'll seek counsel from a knowledgeable coworker on how to handle a situation or to vent. Just like others come to me to vent. But I'm bad about assuming that obvious venting is considered confidential. Guess that's a bad assumption because I now suspect my venting (as well as some others') is not being held in confidence. This whole thing gave me a 3 day headache. Fortunately, I'm not the one that is apparently going to be in big trouble for sending an email about something confidential in our department to someone in another department. Still, it makes people paranoid to chat with former coworkers in other departments when someone is going to get in trouble over what they've shared. It kind of feels like folks are potentially being set up to not be retained for the next year...sigh. I could be looking for a new gig...or someone I work with will be...or maybe several of us...