Personality Plus

I don't write about work, because there isn't really anything to say. I go to work, I do my work, I go home, I come back the next day and resume where I left off. I am left alone to do what I'm supposed to be doing. Work is, thankfully, not a source of stress in my life. Getting to and from work via public transit tends to be more stressful. When I get home, the Mrs. always asks "How was your day?" and I always say "Fine." (And yes, I do ask her about her day, which typically includes large amounts of stress.)

But there is something about work that bothers me. I've been here fifteen months, and everyone has been very welcoming and friendly from day one, except for one person. She happens to be the person who trained me when I started the job, because she did it before me. During that first week she struck me as shy and introverted, and though it was pretty obvious she wanted to get back to her own work as soon as possible, she did a good job of getting me oriented and up to speed.

But as soon as my training was finished and she went back to her other work, she stopped talking to me. Not even a "hello" if I passed her in the hall. Occasionally I would see her outside the building or on the subway, and she would avoid eye contact and ignore me. She might as well have had a guide dog. And she's completely normal in her interactions with everyone else in the office, so it's not some generalized personality disorder.

This is how it's been the whole time I've been here, with very rare exceptions. From time to time I have had to email her about something, and her responses are always prompt and polite, as though we had a normal coworker relationship. And a couple of times she has appeared at my cubicle to ask me a question, and again the exchanges were perfectly normal. But we've never had any other sort of conversation, and she still avoids eye contact. We've had roughly eight or ten elevator rides of awkward silence, the kind you have when the other occupant is a total stranger.

Naturally, this bothers me. I've been working for almost thirty years, and I have never experienced anything like this. I have worked with people that I thoroughly disliked, and who disliked me just as much, but we still said hello to each other out of simple civility. Not that I think this coworker is uncivil; I just don't get her. She's breaking the social contract of the workplace, and I don't know why. I have an overwhelming urge to break through her wall of slience and just blurt out "Hi, how's it going?" in the most obnoxiously friendly voice I can muster, just to see what sort of reaction I'd get. But I haven't done it, and I probably won't.

I can handle not being liked, but being ignored? No one likes to be ignored, whatever the reason.