A short time ago, the following true story of this summer was related to me.
Two ladies share an office. It looks east and therefore starts getting hot quite early in the morning. Consequently, the curtain is drawn. Basically, there is still enough light in the office, but regardless, one of them “automatically” switches on the light. Which annoys the other, because she feels strongly about using energy in a responsible way.
I can sympathize with her. Whenever I get home after a day’s work and see that people have switched on the lights in all the rooms for no apparent reason, I, too, get annoyed. The same is true when I arrive at the office in the morning and see that people have switched on the light in the corridor for no apparent reason. Likewise when my children or colleagues leave the room for some considerable time and still do not switch off the light. However, I am hesitant about mentioning it, because I do not wish to sound bossy or niggardly. So I keep my mouth shut and once in a while, I get (a little) fed up with it.
That is how you build up frustration. One person hates wasting energy, while the other does not even notice it. Yet you never want to say anything, because you do not want to appear small-minded.
29 years ago, I suffered in my office for a totally different reason. Those were the days when smoking was still permitted in the office. I had just stopped smoking around a year ago. And I shared my office with a colleague who still smoked. Gauloise. Basically, I liked him very much.
Of course, he asked me if I minded his smoking while I was present. And, of course, I told him no, go ahead. To be sure, this was a lie, but I did not want to admit what an intolerant non-smoker I had turned into.
So he sat there and whenever he smoked, I got fed up. Frustration grew from day to day. Yet I did not want to say anything. Then came the day when I hit back psychologically. In self-defence. I started picking my nose unconsciously. Somehow or other, I seemed to have known that my colleague would not like that at all.
There was a wonderful escalation… and we had a discussion at the end of which we were even better friends than before. He stopped smoking in my office and I stopped picking my nose. Later we went our separate ways. When we met again by accident a few years later, he, too, had become a non-smoker 🙂 .
But that is how frustration grows – and a bad atmosphere. In more than one meaning of the word!
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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