Lots of chatter this week at the office. Mainly about the Us vs. Them atmosphere that some of us are starting to realize may have been entirely manufactured by someone no longer in a leadership position. I actually had to go back and amend something I told my bosses boss about the vibe at the office, because the truth is, as I went back and thought about it, the Us vs. Them thing isn't something that I actually experienced myself. It was the chatter in the office. The general consensus among others that I adopted as my own. Work and group dynamics are so strange. I didn't intentionally buy into other people's perception, but it crept in, seeped into my brain and became how I saw things, when the reality is, I don't actually have any experiences of my own to back that up. Just a bunch of They Said bullshit. I hate that I was susceptible to that. Years ago I had a new boss who was not popular with some of my coworkers but I happened to like the guy. I found him hilarious, to the point where sometimes I was laughing so hard I'd have to excuse myself and go to the bathroom because OMG GET CONTROL OF YOURSELF. I never really outright defended the guy when my work friends would bash him, I would just sort of shrug and say I didn't know him well enough to have the same opinion. But later, after a few months, shit wasn't funny anymore, and I began to see what they meant. I sort of prided myself on the fact that I formed my own opinion, I didn't take what everyone else said as the truth. I waited and eventually, I did come to the same conclusion, that the guy was a total douche-bag. But that was from my experience. It wasn't just because a bunch of yahoos at my work said so. I am aiming to do the same thing now, under these new circumstances. Just wipe the slate clean and start over. That's all I can do. I'll trust these people (in the work sense of trust) until my own experience tells me to do otherwise. I guess I'll be wearing my headphones at the office on a more regular basis - to block out the chatter.