Outside the group at work

[Brood]

I work in a busy service in a team. There were 7 of us on the team when I started, now we are down to 4. All of my existing colleagues are senior to me and supervise me. Today my one of the supervisors told me that a colleague who was my previous supervisor texted her and asked her when she was available to meet. The plan was to come in to see her in the office with her baby. My supervisor asked me and our other colleague if we would be available to meet. When she asked my other colleague, it seemed she already knew about it. I really don’t like being that person who tags along unexpectedly to a meeting that was organised between 2 or more people directly. This has happened to me before and there’s nothing worse than looking forward to catching up with a friend only to see that they’ve brought someone else along & now you need to summon up the energy for small talk. So I said there was no need to wait for me, they could meet without.

This happened before when an old colleague planned to meet up with the rest of the team for lunch and they asked me on the day if I’d like to join. When I decline to join late to these pre-arranged meeting with colleagues I haven’t heard directly from, my current supervisor looks like she’s not happy about it. But my feeling is, everyone who works there has my number so if they want to meet, why go through other people. My feeling is they don’t want to meet me as they had no arrangement with me.

i do feel like the rest of the team all seem to have a bond where they text each other outside of work and meet up and I don’t feel like I want to be the tag along.

Am I being unreasonable for keeping outside of these arrangements that have been made without me?

You are hugely over thinking this.

I can see what you mean but the more you do that the more you will be excluded. If you want to be part of the group then you need to accept a few invites even if they are last minute and see how things progress.

I mean, you are being invited. This is how closer bonds and friendships start. If you make a huge point about not going because you weren’t personally invited ahead of time by text, you’ll come across as a bit high maintenance and/or bitter and self pitying. Just go. If you want to be included, you need to actually let people include you - even if it’s not 100% on your terms and done exactly how you’d like.

Only as an after thought though - not intentionally. And I’m pretty sure the colleague who initiates these meet ups wouldn’t know I would be coming as well

It’s self perpetuating though because they might think that you are standoffish and not interested in socialising. They don’t know why you keep turning down invites so it could just be misunderstandings in both sides

But it’s just a random work meet up, not someone’s wedding! You’re way overthinking this. Just go or the whole situation will get weirder and weirder, as people wonder what your problem is that you refused to meet so-and-so’s baby or join the team out for lunch.

If you really dont want to go just accept (say) every second or third invite and make an excuse to cover the others. You have a headache/some shopping to do/a phone call to make etc. At a time when almost everybody smoked I used to feel like this about meeting in pubs, Some of the team went drinking every week and I joined them maybe once every few weeks and always left early.

It's no wonder you are outside the group at work - you keep excluding yourself from opportunities to get closer to them.

This is how connections happen. You don't build connections by saying no because you weren't part of the initial planning. You get to become part of the initial planning by saying yes and making the effort to get to know them better.

Well you certainly won't be on the 'inside' of the group if you keep turning invites down!

If you’re outside of the group, it’s by your own doing.

Your best chance of knowing them better is to go along when invited. That is probably the way to be included more often.

So we all know each other quite well. We all work together very closely. So I just think it’s weird they all arrange these meet ups by text and they all know about it in advance and I’m the only one of the team not included in these texts. Then sometimes one of them will ask me along without informing the others. I feel like it’s super awkward.

The first meet up, I was left out of it was organised by a colleague I had been very close to - we shared an office and were the same staff grade - but then I walked in on her slagging me off to senior staff members. Her face went bright red when she saw me walk in and realised I had heard. She kinda avoided me after that for a while. That’s when the awkwardness started. She has left since but she still texts all of them and they invited her to our Christmas get together. It feels very cliquey.

There have been some awkward work dynamics too where the role has been exploitative since this other co-worker left and it has been my senior co-workers who have been responsible for this. It’s the role of senior staff members to train juniors in and to mentor them up the steps of the ladder. Since my co-worker left, we have been very short staffed and there hasn’t been time to mentor me or to give me relevant work that would help me progress so I’ve been stuck doing jobs way below my pay grade and I’ve missed a lot of opportunities as a result.

I feel very taken for granted anyway and the social dynamics have only worsened this

I think I have made really big efforts like asking them to go to lunch daily when we moved to a new office and they always say they’re too busy. On one occasion, I asked them to lunch and one of them said they were going out to meet the co-worker who had left. They didn’t ask me to come but then later in the day, I discovered the only other staff member working had been asked to come.

I have made so many efforts to chat during the day and they’re always met with claims of being too busy. So I think that has caused me to take a step back. That and the other staff members take me for granted and treat me like I have no skills to offer the team. It’s a very tricky situations because they have been stand offish with me for months then ask me to come along to these group meetings as an after thought to suddenly try and make me feel included. It’s very odd

It’s not random though. It’s very much been pre-arranged by everyone on the team texting. If they wanted me in on it for the beginning, I’d be in the group text imo rather than a tag along

From your updates it sounds like there is no love lost between any of you.

Go if you want to when they invite you to things, and don’t go if you don’t want to. But it’s a waste of your energy trying to second guess how they do or don’t expect you to respond.

Sounds like a shitty situation for you, and it might be a good idea to start looking for jobs with more opportunities for progression, where you’re not the only junior colleague.

And when you say they are all senior to you, what’s the difference in seniority? Are you entry level and they are managers? Because it makes sense, if that’s the case, that they might have their own established friendship group it would be weird to include you in.

What was your colleague slagging you off about?

I think that is the issue that I am the only junior and that naturally creates a divide as well the issues I had with the other junior. I often feel they don’t think I have any skills and it’s clear they don’t value me as a team member even though I have a lot of training behind me.

In terms of difference in seniority, they would all be on 6x my salary and on permanent contracts whereas I am on a temporary part time contract. My role is temporary because it’s a training role. The purpose is to get trained to the next level of the career. The role I have is like gold dust. To even get such an opportunity is highly competitive but because of this, these roles can be exploitative. Instead of getting the benefit of gaining relevant skills I have been doing very long hours - often 70 hours a week when I’m only paid for half that and the work is not relevant to my role and won’t help me progress.

The exploitation can be difficult to address because I need references from the senior staff members to further my career but I also need skills that they have been neglecting to give me.

We all had a big argument about this a few months ago and it’s been very tense since. Management had to get involved. One of the seniors started to speak to me in a very pitying way, which was very condescending and now I think all their efforts are fake.

The junior was imitating me and laughing at something I said. She would often talk about other staff members to me and tell me that we were tight and nothing we said to each other would be repeated to others on the team. She was repeating something I said and I saw from her face when I walked in that it wasn’t the first time. I walked in to the rest of the team laughing at me and she was leading it. Not nice

It’s a very uncomfortable working situation at the moment and I feel very vulnerable because I need the experience to progress but the dynamics are very awkward

Well, this is why you’re not happily socialising with them all, and I’m not sure why you’re surprised to be outside of the group if you’re on a temp contact and they’re all manager level, and there have been arguments and conflict consistently through your time there.

It doesn’t sound like this is a good workplace for you, and unfortunately it doesn’t sound like they are going to give you what you want in terms of training. Have you had enough experience there to be able to look for something the next step up elsewhere? Gutting as it feels, you might get further faster and with less anguish if you to look elsewhere rather than hoping this might turn into the job you’d hoped it would be.

I’m very sorry you’re in this situation. It sucks that so many industries are so exploitative of junior staff. When it’s fundamentally baked in to the structure of a profession, I think sadly it’s one of those things people either need to find a way to accept, or consider a different career path.

I have a lot more experience than a lot of the seniors starting but it’s a strange system in that you need to interview every year to try to get further. And it’s the seniors you work under who largely determine how far you can get. Last year I missed most of the deadlines because I was working so much overtime and when I asked for time to focus on one interview, I was told no. I raised this with more senior management when we had the argument and then everyone was overly nice to me but recently it feels like we’re sliding back into bad terms. My contract is up in another few months so I’m just going to try to put my head down. The work arrangements changed recently. We went from all being in different offices to being in the same one so the atmosphere is unbearable and there’s no escape. And every time one of these social things comes up, it feels so awkward. I’m just not sure how to manage it as it’s hard to act like nothing happened and hard to feel like they really want me there when there’s been such bad treatment over the years