the place of poisoned smiles

Most offices are a hotbed of gossip and cliques, very much like high school which we thought we left far behind when we entered the working world.....

I hate to break anyones bubble but the working world is exactly like the playgrounds we thought we had graduated from.

The popular people still are the ones in charge and the misfits like me watch in horror as  they takeover the boardroom and press their agenda forward.

I am tired of dodging bullets and knives that are constantly being thrown at me, I am tired of knowing that behind the smiles and cheerful banter lie cold hearts and scheming minds.
I have always been a straight up, no nonsense  person and I forget that not everyone is cut from the same cloth.  I forget that people will step all over you to get their way.

The office politics is getting extremely tiresome. I knew this place had alot of  venom floating around and I wrote about it after a few weeks of joining the company and  My old post, Life lessons from a non swimmer described the back stabbing environment.

Problem is I care what happens and I care enough to want to make this environment as non toxic as I can and I sometimes get caught up in the whole making a difference thing but the people I fight for, end up joining the other side, leaving me feeling like I have just gone through a revolving door too many times.

So I am feeling sorry for myself right now.  Friday morning was such a positive high that the back stabbing on Friday evening left me quite shell shocked......
I am too sensitive I know, and I do know that I forget to take my own advice.... "Its nothing personal, its just a job"
My desire for everyone to like me takes over and  I hate that there are people here that dont.  So I shall wallow in self pity, mope around and stay away from everyone that doesnt like me......just for a
little while.

SIGH.........

Stephen Fry > Quotable Quote

“Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '.

Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.

I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.”

― Stephen Fry