Silly question, I know, but not without reason.
After getting “this isn’t a reprimand but kind of is a reprimand” about how I correspond with people within my company (for the second time), I’ve accepted the reality that people in my office are scared to communicate with me. As irresponsibly cowardice as it may seem, it appears to be in my best interests to let other people do the speaking for me, as my words coming from someone else, appear to be vastly less inflammatory to the fragile people I work with.
I have to remind myself that I’m not in an agency environment, where people have told me to my face that something I’ve done is not acceptable in spite of the amount of legitimate work I’ve put into it, or that I’m not in an actual creative studio, where everyone is perpetually in competition with one another regardless of how much they may deny it, so everyone develops somewhat of a shield and an edginess to their tones. Despite the fact that I just turned 32, I’m still leaps and bounds the youngest person in the office, which is to say that everyone else is much older, not just in age, but in work experience.
That being said, stating true facts in a robotic voice is clearly coming off as condescending and in an inflammatory tone. Either that, or people in my office have a preconceived notion that I’m a very mean and awful person. This is what I wrote:
To be perfectly honest, not a single one of the images provided (in an external folder) matches a single image in the Publisher file. Publisher also does not include file name information, so there’s no definitive way to identify whether or not it’s using any of the images that were provided. Furthermore, the images that were provided are all inconsistently cropped, many are distorted (squashed), and are low-quality to begin with. When it comes to screen captures, there’s little we can do on our end to make them better, they have to be captured while they’re looking their best before they’re sent to us.
So if it’s feasible, I’m going to need every single screen cap, recaptured, and given to us without all the green and red circles and arrows already on them. Otherwise, if we have no choice but to use the images that are embedded in the Publisher file, keep in mind that Publisher compresses them harshly, which does compromise the quality and will reflect on whatever we make on our end.
These are all true facts, and the person I had my “discussion” with unequivocally agreed with my message. Regardless, they were told (behind my back, naturally) that it rubbed them the wrong way. This is not the first time that someone has opinionated this, so I’m left to conclude that the people I work with do not like being stated true facts, and doing so is a form of verbally intimidating them.
I know, I’m sounding a little indignant here, but I’m not entirely sure that I’m being condescending, or if they’re interpreting such based on preconceived notions about me that they might have. I do not speak to a lot of people in the office, mostly speaking when spoken to, but I don’t wish anyone here ill will. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you, and we can all exist harmoniously.
The bottom line is that after being spoken to about my supposed “tone” again, I feel that I might either come off as slightly intimidating, or maybe I just work with some really, really thin-skinned, overly-sensitive people. Perhaps it might be a combination of both.
But regardless, I’m curious to know if I actually do intimidate anyone?
