It matters not who got there first, but who makes it home first to tell the tale.

So, as some of you are ware, I've been contemplating reporting a coworker for the novel (to me) crime of 'bullying by exclusion'. For several weeks now, the situation was getting steadily worse as he refused to work near me if another desk was available and refused to speak to me in most situations. If I entered a room that he was in, he would often leave immediately. Yesterday, things seemed to have reached a new level when he walked into a room i was in, saw me, and turned around to walk right back out.

So, I'd taken advice from a union rep about this, spoken to other team mates and people from near by teams who've been witnessing this. I'd decided to speak to my manager about it informally before leveling any actual charges. My manager has only returned from an extended holiday yesterday, and said she had no time to talk to me today which I could understand. Other coworkers who aren't on this particular team interceded (one of them was actually from another department!) and spoke to Sarah about it, suggesting she should try to make time to have a word with me.

So, this afternoon Sarah came and asked if I could give her a few minutes. I replied most certainly. We took a vacant office and sat down. She asked me what was up. I said 'Well, before yesterday I would have said that Matt was engaged in bullying by exclusion, but some stuff's happened since then that makes me think it's not just me who's affected by it. The whole team feels a bit weird now.'

She said that she found my claims odd, as the exact same things had been said about me. She said from things she'd heard from Matt and others that it was pretty clear I had a problem with Matt. I said I didn't have a problem with him, it was him who had a problem with me. Over the next few exchanges, she tried to put words in my mouth claiming I'd said I had issues with him. It was very difficult not to get the impression that I was being railroaded.

At one point, I asked for an example of how I'd allegedly been bullying him. She said she could not give me specifics, as she was not at liberty to divulge them. What she could explain was that I would, allegedly, deliberately leave the lid on my scanner up so that the fan would run, the noise from which was known to bother Matt. Given that part of my job is using the scanner, this strikes me as absurd. Given that in the past we have tried leaving my scanner off only to upset other coworkers by burdening them with more scanning, it seems like there really isn't any solution to that... but there is! See, I swapped desks with Matt so that the scanner wouldn't be so close to him. Only, it's still an issue.

So now one possibility that Sarah raised was moving me back upstairs to my old desk, separating me from the team I'm working with but removing the issue of noise pollution from office equipment.

I dunno... this is really only scratching the surface of what that meeting was like, and I've not got it in me to continue with more specifics or definite examples, but I walked out of there feeling like I'd just had my neck taken off the chopping block, having been sentenced by a prejudicial jury.

I think you should just have a word with Matt. (unless you've already done so) Going to managers will only expode things. If you are both feeling the same thing, having a talk about is probably the best way to deal with it.

matt usually gets in at about 9, and we've got a team meeting (at which Sarah intends to announce that we won't be getting into personnel issues at the meeting.) at 9:30. if matt shows up early enough, I'm planning to ask him for a quick chat to offer an olive branch.

for the record, there IS more to the story from this afternoon, i just haven't had it in me to really go into enough detail.

I'm trying NOT to replay the whole thing in my head all evening.