Lunch Let down

I sat at my desk and could hear their voices over the hum of the AC and the clack clack clacking of someone typing. I heard her say, "should we try the new Thai place or go to the steakhouse again? You know how much I love their Cobb salad. Oh and we are leaving around 11:45 so make sure you wrap up that meeting on time."

At the time, I was a HR generalist working for a large cell phone company. The entirety of the Human Resources organization worked on the 9th floor of our 10 story building. We all supported different teams, but in order to make collaboration and team meetings easier, we all sat in cubicles relatively close to each other.

Organizing same day lunches could get tricky at times in this open office setting. Normally, people were pretty aware and would make a point of including people within earshot. If you wanted to organize a private lunch with just one or two people you would usually do that through email or direct message so as to not unnecessarily hurt anyones feelings.

That day however, my co-workers were being very obvious about it.

My heart raced. My palms got sweaty. Were they leaving me out? Why didn't they want me to go to lunch with them? I've never not been asked before.

I started wracking my brain wondering if I had done something or said something that would make them all hate me. I mean that was obviously what was happening....what other reason could there be for them to purposely leave me out? My throat tightened as it became more obvious that they didn't want me to go with them.

You know what? I was going to just ignore it. So what if they didn't want to me to go to lunch with them? I brought my own lunch that day anyway so I guess the jokes on them!

Who was I kidding? I was confused and sad. I just didn't understand why they would so blatantly leave me out. It bothered me so much that I actually surprised myself by working up the courage to actually get to the bottom of it.

I waited patiently until one of the gals I heard talking before was alone at her desk. I strolled over, made some light conversation about something else entirely and then casually said, "hey, I heard you guys talking about going to lunch..."?

My voice cracked a bit because I knew that if they were purposely leaving me out, this question would likely put her in an awkward position. But to my surprise, instead she cheerfully replied, "oh yeah, the recruiter for our team is coming to visit today so our manager wanted to take the team out for lunch! She doesn't come in town very often so the manager thought it would be a good way to have a team meeting at the same time."

Oh! Ha! Wow. I almost chuckled with relief. I was on a different team so of course I wouldn't be invited. This explanation was perfectly logical and now that I had this crucial piece of missing information...my earlier reaction seemed incredibly silly.

In the span of 45 minutes, I made up stories about how someone must have been mad at me or decided I was unworthy to go to lunch with. Walking up to my coworker and asking her, in the most non-confrontational way I could muster, was so uncomfortable for me. It still makes my palms a little sweaty. But I'm so glad I followed that nudge to push past the awkwardness and find out what I was missing. If I would have listened to my own flawed narrative about how unwanted I was, those made up stories could have festered and grown into something much bigger. It could have had a disastrous affect on my relationships with these co workers going forward.

Now, I find myself paying closer attention to areas where I might be filling gaps in knowledge with my own made up stories. I pause and think, "do I have the full story here or am I making assumptions?"

Sometimes we wont have the opportunity to figure out the full truth of a situation, but even the knowledge that we might be missing something can lead us to have greater compassion and understanding towards others. And isn't that half of our main purpose in life? To love God and love others. It can be difficult to love those who make you feel unwanted. Difficult, but not impossible...especially with the help of Holy Spirit. But don't make it more difficult than it has to be. Remember, you might not actually be uninvited, you might just be on a different team.

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