To be upset that I don't seem to fit in at my workplace?

[CleanaholicSpendaholic]

I have been in my current job for about 15 months. Everyone there is nice enough but I don't think they see me as part of the gang or particularly like me.

It is just small things such as being excluded from things like the Secret Santa planned for next month. Or not being asked to sign peoples' birthday cards. Or everyone just disappearing at lunch time to the cafe down the road and no one asking me if I want to go.

What is more hurtful too is a new member of staff started only a couple of weeks ago and she's been welcomed into the gang and is treated like an old friend.

About a month ago our boss rearranged our seating plan and put me in a small office with one other woman, who is also very much part of the gang. She's pleasant and polite enough but it's like she can't wait to get away from me. Today she was perched on the end of a desk in the main, larger office for a couple of hours. I feel isolated in the office just left on my own and hearing the others laughing loudly. Quite often if I've been to lunch I get back and she is back at her desk with 2 or 3 other colleagues in our office with her but they all exchange pleasantries with me once I'm back and go into their offices and she then follows shortly.

I have tried so hard to be friendly and to make an effort. I don't want to be best buddies with them all but I'd like to have 'work friends'. One of them is a similar age to me (the others are mostly younger) and said she wanted to take her kids to a place one weekend and I said mine would like to go there too and perhaps we could go together and she looked like she'd been sucking lemons and just said nothing.

I know the answer is to not care but how do I do this? How do I stop giving a shit about whether people at work like me or not?

Oh I feel your pain as well. For me since starting full time employment 15 years ago it's been one job good, one bad, one good and one bad (currently in the 2nd bad...but incredibly good career wise hence why I'm still here).
I know you can spend hours agonizing over this sort of situation but it's really not worth wasting your energy. I have to actively tell myself "it's not you, it's them". Luckily I've found a few others who are on the same wavelength as me but the majority I keep well away from.

I agree with a pp who mentioned the Queen Bee and if they don't like you then there's no chance. I know it's hard but ignore, ignore and concentrate on life outside work. Remind yourself that it's not your fault. And look for a new job

Been thinking about you OP and I bet that most of your colleagues are women?

From what I've found men are never that petty when it comes to work.

It's sad to hear that most people have felt/been excluded in their workplace: and most of the time it's down to some random thing such as too educated, better at the job, prettier, slimmer, younger, richer - a threat in some way shape or form.

Totally pathetic.

I felt a bit overlooked for about the first two years in my current job. I don't think anyone was being deliberately mean to me (I wasn't missed out of a Secret Santa, although the first two presents I got through it were so generic they didn't suggest the givers had any idea who I was), but people just didn't seem to notice me much on breaks, apart from one person who always made a big effort to include me but in such a way that you could see she was making a big effort, if you see what I mean - it was a bit "look at me I'm being really nice to Emma!" I never got told about nights out or asked anything about my family. And yes, I saw a few newer people seem to fit in instantly. By the way, I was neither young nor pretty at the time. I would say the youngest and prettiest person at that workplace is the least friendly of all - even the people who have no trouble fitting in say she looks down her nose at them.

What changed things for me was actually a restructuring at work. Basically there are two big groups at my work, I mean in terms of the jobs we do, not friendship groups. After two years we got a new building and there were two different recreational areas to spend our breaks and lunchtimes, which were not officially designated for the two groups, but that's how it tended to work out. It turned out there was a bit of a "them and us" mentality, with a strong feeling among some of the longer serving people in my group that the management showed favouritism towards the other group. I didn't really know much about it, so it was a bit cheeky of me to jump on the bandwagon, but I found that as soon as I started expressing agreement with the moans about the other group, they felt as if I was "one of them" at last. I started getting asked to nights out and people took more of an interest in my private life. So I suppose in my experience the key to breaking through that barrier is a common enemy!

Oh, and a couple of months ago I started working with the "other" group. I don't completely fit in yet. They make small talk with me but nothing very personal or interesting. Every time I see a member of my old team on the stairs they get quite lyrical about how much they miss me and sometimes I even get a hug if we've both got our hands free!

They sound unbelievably rude and childish. Maybe they recognise something in you that they don't have themselves; such as empathy, maturity and kindness.

This happened to me once, it was in the NHS. I've had loads of jobs, retrained as a teacher pretty late in life, prior to that I've done tons of different stuff and always had great workplace relationships, went on loads of nights outs and had really good proper friends that I met through work.

Then I got this job in the NHS and it was horrendous, the Queen Bee of the office was a total cunt and shunned me from the get-go. I was very confused and found it hard to accept, I knew it wasn't "me" but it was still hard to cope with.

I only lasted 6 months. In a way I'm grateful because it spurred me on to get my teaching qualification and it was the best move I ever made.

That sounds really awful op, they are bullying in a really insidious way.

I've not experienced this in the work place (there's still time though, only just turned 27), I don't let others be excluded though. I remember how horrible it was at school and dislike the idea of making someone feel that way now.

For the sake of your happiness and self esteem, you really must leave. Making that decision and finding a new job isn't weakness, it is strong! Easy to sit around feeling sad about about it, harder to accost what they're doing and leave. Because no adult wants to accept they're being bullied, I get that. There is no shame in it though, it is them not you.

*accept not accost

Last workplace was like that. Everybody else was of a certain age and a certain ethnicity and a certain background, and I arrived and was very different. I didn't get invited to anything, didn't get the plum projects, and used to get upbraided over the tiniest things until I decided to define my job myself and approached people who wouldn't normally be approached by my team (with managers support) for projects. I kept my head down and forgot about the idiots and their gang and managed to get promoted out of the team with 18 months. You should do something similar, or leave.

It's them not you.
Don't doubt yourself. They're being cliquey and mean. I really hate that sort of behaviour especially from so called adults. Time they all grew up. We have had three new starters lately who have been included in everything, as it should be.

My current workplace is like this and I empathise as it does get you down. My maternity leave cover was nagged to go to the pub with them before my DD2 was 2 months old! She's fitted in way more than I ever did which is amusing as we've been best work friends for 5 years.

The difference with my situation is that someone told me why I wasn't one of them. The reason will out me as it's ludicrous and I've retold the story in RL but I realised if they could be that petty about something I couldn't change about myself then I didn't want to be friends with them. I've made really good friends with other people across the organisation who I've come across instead. Yeah it sucks sitting in my team's office with no one talking to me but I get loads done! Everywhere else I've worked I've been central to the socialising and always invited to everything.

They're arseholes. That's their problem. I'd try and make friends with other people outside your team.

Come on PegsPigs, give us a hint!

Why were you ostracized?

I can't believe how many people seem to act in this way. I don't want to derail but why do they do it? I mean it can't just be envie and jealousy because everyone feels these emotions sometimes but some people still manage to get over themselves. especially at the work place, behaving like this is actually bad for productivity, isn't it? Very odd.

Adopting a 'most people are nice' stance, perhaps they assume that they don't realise how upset it makes you feel, or think that you want to be included?

For what it's worth, I feel completely sidelined at work since returning from maternity leave. I used to be very close to work colleagues, then there was a big falling out, and even though that colleague apologised to me and has since left, it's never got back to normal and since having a baby it's made it 100 times worse.

I sit there sometimes and think- should it really be this bad? Am I really do awful? But reassure myself that I have amazing friends outside of work. I just wish I got a bit more fun out of the few moments of quiet time when I am at work.

The difference with my situation is that someone told me why I wasn't one of them. The reason will out me as it's ludicrous

Not in the workplace but this has happened to me with a neighbour. For some reason different people in different situations started to shun me, including this neighbour. Being well aware of my faults, I thought she and the others have twigged them. Anyway after about six months she started being friendly again and I went with the flow. Finally one day I managed to ask her why she had sent me to Coventry. I answer was so totally ludicrous that I have never got my knickers in a twist about this behaviour again. If someone stops talking to me, heaven knows what reason they have, but it is most likely some stupid thing going on in their heads.

I tend to find that there is one person who 'controls' the group in toxic situations like these and they decide who is 'in' and who is 'out'. I found most 'followers' didn't like this 'main' person that much but knew what it was like on the outside so they shut up and shun whoever this alpha person decides is not part of the group for a quiet life.

I disagree with those saying that you should complain or interject yourself, if you try either in this situation it will backfire quite spectacularly in my experience and make things even worse for you. Best to find a new role.

You sound a lovely, emotionally intelligent person so I convinced it is nothing you have done. In my experience these alpha's boost their self esteem by controlling their work place. Weak management allows this to happen.

Find a new job. Life is far too short to have to deal with this nastiness every working day.

beardsrock The real reason is genuinely too ludicrous but it's the equivalent of finding out I used to help out with Brownies before working there and hating the Guiding movement therefore hating me because of something I used to do but stopped before I worked there and is actually something I'm proud of and didn't hide!! Didn't realise I had to hide my past

markinng this to read later.

People are nice to my face at work but I have discovered that there is a lot of idle chat about me behind my back. Insinuations that I'm a bit thick. Nothing terrible. And borne out of no factual evidence at all
The boss herself said to a bunch of others, 'how does fox get through the day at all?" meaning, oh fox is such an airhead. I don't know but class-wise I don't fit in there and I think they want me to be a tim-nice-but-dim, whether I am or not. Sometimes, there's been a feud around me and I've walked on tightropes around it. And this has not been recognised as a skill !!! but as me being too simple to notice, or lacking the energy to get involved, or lacking the integrity to nail my colours to the mast. Sure why would I??? One man basically jokes that I'm thick to my face and I don't react, which instead of being construed as admirable restraint, and a good sense of perspective, and a healthy self-esteem etc... it seems to show that I agree with his perception of me.

I'm job hunting myself.

ps, I was frozen out years ago in another job and that was worse far worse, so OP I really feel for you.

I've had this I think in a recent job... Which I left after 5 months!

The main receptionist a queen bee type and older and divorced apparently behind my back too got affronted at me asking about a tin of sweets on the front desk eg where they for everyone? And there was something else, really petty. Oh I had the audacity to ask her where the tea and coffee in jars in the kitchen was stored as she obviously knew this (it was in big catering bags in a cupboard but how was I meant to know that?!).

I was told by someone else who'd left (Sadie) recently that one afternoon/evening everyone was gathered chatting (I think I'd had a half day) and receptionist was slagging me off saying "Super has done x and y isn't she awful?!" - Sadie stuck up for me and said "actually Super is great what are you talking about?!" The others then joined in saying "we like Super". Strangely enough I wasn't happy there, got upset on occasion and the receptionist (she'd changed job titles) by then (we'd moved downstairs) seemed very kind to me and made an effort to my face..... Someone else I knew who knew the receptionist well said "receptionist is like a cat, if you stroke her the right way she's nice, if not she's not nice!". Receptionist also had her favourites and was very vocal if she disliked someone.

Long and short of it I resigned and hopefully will get a job with less bitching!

I had this during my first job. I was excluded from everything. I even found out that the name out of the hat system they used for selecting a member of staff to work during the Christmas do was doctored so I was selected. It was a pub in the town I'm from however I was the only "local" to work there. One of them even told me they'd decided that I wasn't their type of person. They were mostly from wealthy families and I was a working class scally. It hurt but I pretended not to notice and just got on with it. I became friends with newer staff and formed some tight friendships. One newbie (very pretty blonde with a great sense of humour) was selected by them as a target of dislike. I spotted it straightaway and invited her to our casual nights out and we had a blast. Eventually as the cliques tend to find the infighting and sniping decimated what they once had. The 6 was down to 3. Suddenly they wanted to join us and have a say in our plans. I was shocked to find myself invited to their houses for meals and parties. I always declined politely.

Luckily, I have a "sadie". Let's call her Naomi. She left the company and I@m still there.. And then later she told me a few things which kind of hurt for five minutes but she knew that I already knew them deep down, and she knew it would motivate me in the right way, ie, to job hunt, which it has.

I can't remember who said it, but I love the announcement

"I've found a job with more money and fewer aresholes!"

laughing -and more $$- is the best revenge! Thanks for the laugh redfox.

Read oh cripes is Sadie going to be a new MN term for someone who leaves an office but tells you the truth about where/who you work with?! A bit like a Wendy...

my Sadie was fired (but used by boss for recruiting and she had another job she was being trained, but not properly to do...) but she got another post immediately and now with hindsight she was maybe being a big bitchy and sour grapes but also telling me home truths.

As a result I am most likely going to be changing areas of work from legal back to architecture (as PA) which I loved... Silver linings and all that. :-)