Weird, b*tchy vibe at new job?

[ostogtmty]

I started a new job working as part of a team. There's around 15 of us, all women in our 20s and 30s just for context. We provide a service for another department, so the other department will email us briefs and we then complete the work and send it back.

I feel like the response to some of the briefs seems quite b*tchy and nasty. For example, someone dared to follow up their brief with a quick message to one of the members of our team just to make sure that an important detail wasn't missed in the brief that would jeopardize their ability to meet an important deadline. The person who got the message brought it up in our team meeting and they must have spent at least 5 minutes of the meeting laughing about it, saying 'do they think we just don't read what they send us' and just being nasty about it and berating this person by name. There are also other examples where they will talk about people in our Teams chat saying things like 'what a surprise, X has yet again sent us the wrong files'.

I get that in stressful jobs you do need a sense of humour, but it has left a bad taste in my mouth. I've never really come across this in other companies. I don't like my new job for several reasons though so I'm not sure if I'm just viewing something relatively normal with a negative bias?

How long have you been there? I'd say it might be worth waiting to see how the land lies. Is it possible the department you're doing work for really are completely useless? In which case, maybe a bit of camaraderie is just what gets them through.

Very hard to be the one that changes a culture though. Maybe I'd just be super positive about everyone in my dealings with them and hope it rubs off. Or take it all really seriously and ask if you should be raising this with the other department's managers? And if they say 'no that's not necessary' then feign total surprise and say "Goodness! I'd thought it must be really serious considering how much this comes up in our meetings!"

They may well just shut you out though, so it might be wisest to just keep your mouth shut and accept that this isn't going to be one of those roles where you make amazing friends. Sorry it's not been a nicer experience so far though.