Walking Disaster

This has got to be one of the most passive aggressive, nuclear phrases to ever be spoken into existence…up there with “tone yourself down” or the word “actually”. It’s one that I’ve only had directed at me a few times, and each time it’s a phrase that completely escapes my notice in the moment, but happens to send me into an anxious, overthinking downward spiral as soon as I stop to think about it for more than a heartbeat. Although, in all fairness, that’s hardly an accomplishment — one time I saw someone put their shoes on sock-shoe-sock-shoe (instead of sock-sock-shoe-shoe) and nearly lost my grip on reality.

In this particular instance, the speaker was my anti-vax coworker who is based on the other side of the country. We were on the phone discussing our upcoming monthly reviews when she threw out the comment, “you’ll be fine, you’re a hard worker…you’re a bit too much, but that’s okay!” Um…what? First of all, there is no way to make it clearer that a comment is an insult then to add the phrase “but that’s okay” after it. Second, we have never met in person, and never really spoken, apart from our half hour weekly zoom meetings held by our incompetent manager. And while there is some validity to the claim that I am a lot to deal with sometimes, she doesn’t know that! Those weekly sales meetings occur first thing on Mondays, and I am never as quiet and dead to the world as I am on a Monday morning, waiting for my caffeine to kick in. I’m hardly even alive at that point. Telling someone that they are too much, or to be less themselves, is a ridiculous thing to say. Mainly because it’s an all encompassing insult from which the target has no solutions for change, but also because it’s dreadfully uncreative.

For someone who has literally been complimented on my ability to deliver a backhanded insult (by friends and enemies mind you), I still don’t think I would give someone as vague a snub as that. My personal rule is always: if I’m going to go after someone, it’s going to be on what they’re doing, not who they are. Unless it’s my mother. Or the office douchebag, in which case his condescension and double standards are so infuriating that it allows his haircut, and abnormally large chin to be up for grabs. But whether I refrain from saying what’s on my mind in order to keep the peace in cubicle city, or because I want it to be abundantly clear to everyone that I’m the bigger person, is irrelevant. I still don’t think I would ever have the balls to just point to someone in their entirety and say “that’s too much.” The only person who would say something like that is probably also the type to untag themself from a group photo on Instagram just because they think the lighting is unflattering.

I know that the proper reaction and solution would be to work on my self-confidence and not let any slight get to me to such an extent. No verbal dig is worth the amount of overthinking and overreacting that eventually leads to asking the cashier at Trader Joe’s what he thinks it could’ve meant. Poor guy probably thought I was a lunatic. Which I’m not…obviously. I think that if I hear it again from a coworker who, thanks to the pandemic, has only met me via webcam, I’ll try my best to disregard what she says, because why should I listen to the opinion of someone who hasn’t met me? However, if my roommate said I was “too much”, then I would know it’s a more valid character commentary. Same for if one of my other close friends said something along those lines. And while part of me thinks that only paying attention to who says it is the key going forward, I’ve decided that isn’t fun enough.

Instead, a far more entertaining way to deal with passive aggression is to turn it on its head. Me and the other girls in the office have taken to using that as a giant inside joke between us. When the social media coordinator makes Christmas themed coffee that causes the whole upstairs to smell like a sickly sweet caramel concoction, it’s now phrased as “a bit much” for morning coffee. If the graphic designer keeps sending her own memes to the group chat, she’s told to “tone herself down” and work on the website. If that same anti-vax coworker happens to lash out at a product manager who’s only been with the company for two weeks, then the rest of us can gather around and tell the new girl, don’t worry about so-and-so, she’s just too much.