Although this workplace horror story happened almost 20 years ago, it still seems like yesterday because it left me mortified.

I worked as a receptionist for 5 years, right out of high school. I liked my job and took great initiative in my job descriptions. I worked with all women, there were no men in our office at all. Take into consideration of all the hormonal imbalances and other womanly disorders, then add to that, one woman deciding that she was going to quit smoking. Oh boy. Talk about torture.

One of my duties was to distribute the mail to whoever it was addressed to. If it was not to anyone's attention, I was able to open it. Well, this one particular day, the mailman delivered the mail, I sorted it and handed it out. Humph, here comes Donna, yeah the one that decided to quit smoking. She proceeds to accuse me of opening up her mail and then tells me that it is a federal offense to do that and she is going to call the CEO. I was well aware of it being against the law, but I did not open up any of her mail. She had me so mad that I grabbed my waste paper basket, marched my butt into her office, dumped my garbage on her desk and told her when she found anything in there with her name on it to come and see me.

I proceeded back to my desk and waited. Swinging my leg in anticipation for I knew she wasn't going to find anything. She had to sort through pickle juice stained envelopes and mixed in with that were, yep, cigarette butts. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, to make a long story short, she returned my waste paper basket with garbage and all and never spoke another word to me.

The moral of this story is to never ASSUME things, we all know what that makes of you and me, but in this case, the only one was her.

Learn more about this author, Diane Fal.
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