I was taken aback from the recent comment my collegue made about me and hence I decided to put down my emotions through the medium I have a grip on “writing”. Let’s call this collegue Tracy (for the clarity of the scenario).This is an issue that most of us might have faced. I am working in a company more than 2 years now and another person ( Tracy) joined the company few months back. She sat next to me and I have helped her a few times this got us closer, like work friends. We speak about everything, relationship, friends, coworkers, projects, work issues, literally anything. Mostly, we speak to avoid the boredom, she has her set of friends and I have mine. Her circle is bigger than mine, but yet the way she talks to me sometimes doesnt feel right. Let me just set the scene for my fellow readers, this is what happened. We sometimes say our opinions about our coworkers to each other, mostly because she asks me oh how is she/ he ? And I say my honest opinion apparently thats where I made a mistake..I feel. She asked me about my collegue , let’s call him Mr.X. I said he is ok, but once when I fell sick and wanted work from home due to my autoimmune disease he said a line to me which made me feel bad “ No company gives work to sick people”. This was very offensive personally but yet I maintained my calm and didn’t complain about Mr.X because he was like someone me and my family knew. She also said she didnt like him because he apparently had an attitude. This is a totally harmless talk, we are not spreading hate speech we are just sharing what each other felt. I also shared my opinion on another collegue lets call her Mindy. Mindy stays with her boyfriend and she said she feels like her parents dont give her enough freedom, tracy agreed that what Mindy said is not right because parents actually looked after us for a major period of our life and then speaking about ones own parents like that didnt tick our check boxes, again totally our personal opinion. When we have an opinion, it is ours. It is what we feel about others but our opinions doesnt make anybody bad right? Now after sharing her thoughts and listening to mine, Tracy gave me a bad vibe today she just said to me just because you mentioned that incident with Mr. X , your opinion makes me dislike him. I was taken aback by this and said to her “ Hey, I said an opinion when you asked about that person. You should not like or dislike a person based on what others say. You should do that based on your experiences.” How can she put the blame of disliking somebody on me? Now again she mentioned to me that my perspective about Mindy is wrong. How can anybody say to anyone that their perspective is wrong? Because You are entitled to have your own opinions or perspectives based on your experiences that is just how you feel that doesnt mean you are bad/ wrong and the people around you are bad / wrong. Your opinions are solely based on your experience, and some people can have a better experience from the same scenarios/ people.We can be friends and still not like the same people/ things. Its not like what I speak/ think is gold and what you speak/ think is garbage! Sometimes we forget that when we call others opinionated , we ourselves are opinionated!!
I want to conclude by saying that we are all human beings, we are not perfect. We don’t like everybody entirely not even ourselves sometimes. We are entitled to have our own opinions/ perspectives until it doesnt hurt anybody. And we don’t have to change ourselves for anybody or our opinions. Tracy, has alot of opinions herself and most of the times I feel she is very biased for instance she likes north indians more compared to south indians and she have justified this by saying she have been with more north indian people than south. Being a south indian person myself, I found this offensive but I didnt say her perspective was wrong, I just kept quiet and let her be. She have said multiple times to me that she dont find most of the south Indian men attractive , and that she prefers north indian men — punjabis or maharashtrians. There was also a rumour in our office that Mindy and another coworker Say David had a thing going on. Like david had a crush on mindy, then during that period also tracy was so enthusiastic about them, speaking about them , making fun of them and having her opinions about them, but now she has a problem with my opinions and perspectives. There is a point when we realise that we are so much better than some people because atleast we dont blame others for what we do or how we think. Everyone has a mind of their own, and I believe nobody can influence anybody so much into liking / hating anybody or anything and, if you think so you are just a fool. Because you have your own mind and experiences to judge others more than other peoples opinions right? !! If you have experienced similar scenarios in workplaces or school or college, I say; it is better to not talk alot / speak your mind to such tracy’s. Its ok, a Tracy’s opinion shouldnt hurt you because tracy is not the only person who has an opnion about you, there are many. There can be many good and bad opnions about you for other people. Live your life and let others live smoothly!
PS: Now, You can like or dislike me, you are entitled to your own opinion.
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