The Finer Points of Confontation

On my friend Peter's blog, we recently concluded a dialogue about "Confronting Sin" so it is ony fitting that recent experiences (and God) are teaching some of the finer points about confrontation -- of sin, though? I'm not sure.

The situation at hand concerns a co-worker of mine who has a bossy and pushy attitude. She has worked here longer, but is new to our department. The guideline is: when you start in this department, you go to the bottom of seniority b/c it's all based on experience and "time on the books." Unfortunately, her attitude has often betrayed her better instincts to honor this code and she has been bossing many of us around, including myself.

I was able to turn a blind eye and accept this as a part of her personality initially. Then, it went from being an occasional occurrence to 3 times a week... then every day... and then several times a day, particularly on the days when her workload was heavy. I turned into one of her favorite targets.

Two weeks ago, I finally reached "situation critical" and decided I needed to confront her. I let my emotions get the best of me, though, and chose the wrong battleground: a volatile incident involving someone else. I didn't realize what I had done until, now 2 weeks later, she is giving me the cold shoulder and gossipping about the situation.

I owe her an apology, for I chose the wrong battleground. I should have waited for another opportuntiy involving myself or, even better, talked to her about the past occurrences when I was not so emotional. Better yet, maybe I should have taken this to our supervisor (though, I thought it best not to involve them on something that could have been taken care of between two employees. Why bother leadership unecessarily?).

Now I am facing the hard choices: 1) Eat humble pie and apologize to my co-worker; 2) Bring this situation to the attention of management so that the gossip can stop and she can be properly confronted about her behavior; 3) Learn the proper process at work for dealing with these kind of situations. It's going to be a hard week at work.