Office Politics

Things started going better for me. I was still strong and opinionated but now I could keep my mouth shut long enough to figure out what I could say or do to make a situation that was going bad come out better, the way I wanted it to come out. Because what I said and did was my choice. I didn't have to say or do something destructive just because I got hot under the collar or inpatient with someone. To understand a situation and change it, I learned to listen and pay attention. I saw that most people seemed to think they had to fight to get what they wanted. And a lot of them did it behind the scenes. Talking about each other, recruiting allies, and taking pot shots at their enemies. Office politics. It had been going on around me the whole time, I had just never recognized it before. I had just let myself be goaded and manipulated by people playing office politics. I wasn't its victim anymore. But I noticed that the people who were doing it, who thought they had to do it, were hurt just as much as the people they set out to get. Everybody suffered. By this time, I had worked in over 30 offices. And it was happening in all of them.