Grudge

I like to think that I am pretty popular at work. Over the years, I have received feedback that people enjoy the fact that I am always in a good mood and they like my sarcastic comments and pragmatic approach to any task at hand. Some people have even told me and others that they are "fans" of my workshops. There is one guy, however, who always averts his eyes when he passes me in the lobby and downright ignores me. He has acted like this since 2017, the year I started at the company. What did I do to him, you wonder? Well, one of my first projects was to design a kind of high potential programme for specific technical roles and colleagues who were interested in joining had to go through a formal application process. This guy whose name I have long forgotten was on the shortlist for one of the roles and got rejected eventually. Instead of just taking the constructive feedback and accepting his fate, he lashed out and tried to convince us that the person whom we eventually chose instead of him was not in fact a good choice, but lacking both in competency and experience. Needless to say this behaviour did not leave the best impression and only confirmed that we had made the right decision. I say "we" as there was a jury and I only happened to be the bearer of bad news and hence the person he came to blame for his - in his view - unfair rejection...forever as it seems.

Every time I see this guy, I am reminded how sad and immature this behaviour is and every time I feel resentment towards someone myself I deliberately conjure up his image as a cautionary example: nope, I definitely don't want to become this person as it's downright ridiculous.