Mean Girls: After High School

We’ve all seen the movie “Mean Girls”. If you haven’t, get with the program and watch it. It perfectly captures high school in the best way possible. The one thing it didn’t capture, is that mean girls don’t go away once you graduate. Mean girls become mean women who become mean moms that raise more mean girls. I happen to work with one. We’ll call her Regina. Regina is my supervisor. When I first started working at… for legal reasons we’ll call it North Shore Inc. Regina was super nice to me. She made a point to tell me a bunch of intimate details of her life and in turn, I felt comfortable enough to share intimate details of my life. Mistake number one.

Regina had another friend. We’ll call her Karen. Karen stayed mostly out of everything, but enjoyed telling all about the many men in her life and shared many details about such. Wanting to feel included, I found myself lending advice to Karen as I felt bad for her and her situation. The girl had text book daddy issues and struggled with her self-esteem. (Even though she was beautiful and was the equivalent of a cheer leader for an NBA team.) Mistake number two.

Everything seemed to be okay for the first little while. I enjoyed gossiping with them and going to them with my problems. It seemed like a good friendship. With one exception. The majority of what we talked about was negative. We made fun of people and put them down. We gossiped about other people’s lives and told mean stories about our outside friends to each other. It was not a healthy relationship.

Fast forward to a few months later. We had moved into a new office and the seating arrangements had changed. As a result, I was no longer sitting by Karen and Regina. Enter Gretchen. Gretchen isn’t necessarily a mean girl. Gretchen just knows all the secrets. That’s why her hair is so big. Gretchen grew close to Regina, Karen and me. She was great at her job and awesome to talk to. I told her everything and in turn, she told me all the office gossip.

Gossip had become a drug for me. If there was something going on in the office that I didn’t know about, I would walk around listening to people whispering and call Gretchen to learn exactly what was going on. Regina and I would have secret meetings in her office discussing everyone else and I so loved the attention.

Fast forward again. I received a promotion at work. With this promotion, I was once again going to be working very closely with Karen and Regina. We were the only members of the team that handled a certain aspects of North Shore Inc. I felt like I had power. I was finally where I wanted to be in the company doing what I wanted to be doing. And best of all, I was good at it.

And now for act three. Regina turned on me. She did everything she could to put me down and belittle me. At one point, she told Gretchen that she didn’t believe me that my mom had cancer (see mistake #1) because I didn’t know the name of the cancer.

I was diagnosed with an awful stomach condition and she told me that it was very common, that she had it at one time, but that she cured herself with diet and exercise and that it wasn’t a big deal. The stomach condition that I have is not curable, is a big deal, and is different for everyone that has it (though I doubt she actually did).

She told me that the junior team lead at the office was demoted because he couldn’t handle the responsibility. She also told me that the GM of the company was demoted because the CEO said that he wasn’t doing anything at all and didn’t deserve the title. I later found out that these were all lies that she was using to see if it would get back to her because she didn’t know if she could trust me or not.

Every idea that I had for the company, good or bad, she would immediately shoot down. Two weeks later, she would adopt them as her own and implement them on the team. I didn’t need the recognition, but I was very tired of being ignored when I had worthwhile ideas that would help me be more efficient.

 I sent her a message asking if I could go home because I was sick. She ignored it. I sent her another message asking again. She ignored it again. I sent her a third message telling her I needed to go home and she sent me a nasty email telling me that she was trying to do her work and that she expected me to be more professional in the future.

I addressed these issues with her on multiple occasions. I told her that I felt strain between us and that I wanted to fix it if we could. Every time we sat down and talked, she assured me that she treated me like everyone else and that it was me that had the problem. This lead to me questioning myself and thinking that I was a big baby and that I needed to grow some tougher skin. But the abuse got worse every day. I spent so many breaks crying in my car because of her. At 2:30 pm every day, I would storm out to my car and peal out of the parking lot in a blind rage. At 5am every morning, I would wake up sobbing because I didn’t want to go back in.

It finally got to be too much. I found a new job and handed in my two week notice to the CEO. I was waiting to give Regina notice because I wanted to speak to the CEO before she knew anything. Things with Karen had felt strained as well. Because I was an honorary mean girl, I had spent some time up at the copier telling Gretchen all about how incompetent Karen was and how she spent the first three hours of her day putting on makeup and how I did most of the work and that it wasn’t fair that she get paid more than me and blah blah blah. While a lot of this was true, it wasn’t nice. But to my knowledge, Karen didn’t know about any of this. I couldn’t figure out why she was being so cold to me and acting so annoyed. I was upset because I had devoted so many hours to listening to her problems and trying to help in any way that I could. I finally shot her an instant message and asked if she was upset with me. She said no, that she had just been really focused. I replied that I had turned in my two week notice and told her that Regina didn’t know yet but that I had spoken to one of the other supervisors and was waiting to speak with the CEO. She told me that she was happy for me because she knew that I wasn’t happy at the company.

Immediately afterward, she went and told Regina. I don’t know why she took it on herself to tell her. It was very frustrating. I later found out from trusty Gretchen what occurred.

In front of another employee’s office, Karen told Regina that I put in my notice. Regina high fived her, laughed and said, “This is the best Tuesday ever.” Later, Gretchen went into the kitchen where Karen and Regina were. Karen said, “I do feel bad about it” and Regina said, “Why do you feel bad? She’s not quitting because of you, she’s quitting because I’m mean . Isn’t that right, Gretchen?” Upon finding out about this, I cried. I cried a lot. I called my husband, my step-mom, my mother-in-law and my father because I just couldn’t believe how mean they were. I called the GM, we’ll call him Mr. Duvall, and told him that I was planning on finishing out my two weeks, but that I couldn’t if I was going to be laughed at and made a fool of. He told me that he understood and that he would call the CEO. He told me not to come in the next day and to take the day to myself. He said that he would personally deal with Regina and Karen.

I called Gretchen after work for all the details. Apparently, Mr. Duvall called Karen into his office and talked to her about the whole situation. Karen came out crying and told Gretchen that she knew she was unprofessional and that she would apologize. When Regina was called into Mr. Duvall’s office, she lied and told him that they were celebrating because she had just told Karen that she was pregnant. This lie had me reeling. I am supposed to go in to the CEO’s office tomorrow to tell him the whole story.

The way that this story fits right in with the movie is just astounding to me. I realize that I am Cady. While I may not have started out as a mean girl, I am one now. The worst part is, It’s not their fault. It’s my fault. I let myself get sucked into it. If I had just left everyone alone and not gotten involved, I would still be happily working and doing a job that I enjoy. Instead, I have to quit. But I brought it all on myself and I only have myself to blame. I guess the lesson to take from this is that being popular and knowing all the gossip isn’t the most important thing. It’s not even a good thing. It’s best to just live life thinking the best of people and staying out of their business. That’s what I intend to do from now on.

So I’m sorry to anyone that I have hurt from being a mean girl. That Chelsy is done. That chapter is closed. It’s time to be friendly with everyone and stay out of the gossip. Onward and upward.