My company have taken on a new client and, without going into too much detail to preserve anonymity, my role requires me to spend 8 days per month (days vary, 1 day one week, may be three the next, sometimes an even 2 days) at their office.
The first week was really nice, staff were warm, friendly and the manager who I directly liaise with was very accommodating. The next week it began falling apart. It started with my reserved parking spot (agreed in contract) not being available, my having to find a public car park, thus making me late and just about the whole floor stopping to look at their watches tutting. The prior welcoming atmosphere was nonexistent and I was pretty much ignored apart from being given the necessary files and sitting down with various managers to discuss business. I soon learned that the company is owned by my ex’s in-laws and until just over a year ago he was a senior manager there.
Being a family owned business, they’re a close-knit workforce with high staff retention and 95% female. They hold family event days for all staff like summer picnics and Christmas parties. Through one of the few male managers I found out that my ex talked shit about me through the years he worked there and “xxxx’s ex” was the target of snipes on nights out, at picnics etc. So, my reputation was trashed way before I’ve even had an opportunity to prove myself. Apparently, I’m a self-absorbed, alcoholic bitch, a gold digger, and negligent mum who bankrupted him and sabotaged his relationship with our daughter 🤣
I appreciate I’m asking internet strangers to believe me, but I assure you I wasn’t and neither am I any of those things. The women in the office apparently had a field day of gossip when they discovered I am the ex and they’ve unanimously decided their opinion of me based on their bias of my ex’s untruths.
I explained the situation to my manager and showed him a letter my daughter, now an adult herself, wrote to her dad to tell him why she was not interested in having him in her life, to basically capsulate how everything my ex shared with his colleagues is BS. The gist of the letter was pretty much his appalling attitude towards me after we separated and during divorce, his unreliable/sporadic attitude to being a very part-time parent to her (7 times out of ten he’d cancel/rearrange his one weekend a month with her to prioritise himself), and his refusal to accept/support her autism diagnosis being the fundamental reasons that they have no relationship. My manager discussed the matter with the CEO of the new client, my reserved parking has been maintained and cursory apologies were made.
There’s still hostility and side eyes from the women. I get on with the male staff in the office on a professional and friendly basis, but of course that just makes the women see me as some kind of flirty tart. The men just laugh it off as they see the women as nothing more than cliquey, gossipy hellions who don’t like change or male management interference. One of the women blatantly-not-accidentally spilled a drink on me last week and made a huge deal of faux apology in front of the CEO, even buying me a coffee from downstairs (I didn’t drink it, just in case).
My daughter has suggested I scan a copy of her letter and send it in company wide email with a short message to the effect of “Despite what you may believe to be true from xxxx, this is the actual truth. Can a line please be drawn under the catty attitudes, glares and hostility towards me, and allow yourselves to actually get to know me?”
WIBU to do this?