Reply to S/O You can be canceled even if you aren’t a bigot, it happened to me

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op…

Did you apologize? Acknowledge the (real or performative) hurt feelings?

Obviously I wasn’t there and I don’t know the dynamics of your workplace but I worked with someone in the past who had a similar situation.

She made a comment that was relatively benign but someone reported it. It wasn’t the comment but many other comments she had made in the past coupled with the types of things she posts on social media. The comment wasn’t offensive on its own but in the context of all the other things, it was.

She asked me for advice and I told her to apologize and do better. Even though she felt that she hadn’t done anything wrong, she was going to have to apologize to get certain coworkers off the warpath. [/quote]

OP here. Interesting comment. Some context (again, I’m being careful here to protect my anonymity).

I did attempt to apologize to the person who raised the issue, a colleague at my level. That was at the beginning, when I thought it was a genuine allegation based on what I assumed was a misunderstanding. They refused to speak with me. No complaint was ever filed against me, it was all done via informal gossip. A major issue was that the person complaining had many close friends in this workplace, and while I was friendly with many people, I was not particularly close to anyone. This allowed the rumors to spread pretty unchecked. I also made the mistake initially if declining to discuss it or defend myself the first couple times I had the opportunity, because it was raised with me as idle gossip (“I heard there’s some drama between you and [X], what’s that about?” I honestly thought I was being respectful to the other person by not engaging with people in the subject. I only learned later that this just resulted in making me look guilty because people assumed I didn’t want to discuss it because was wrong. But actually I was dying to discuss it because it felt so unfair to me, but I viewed that as an immature impulse and tried to avoid the gossip mill.

There was no formal complaint or investigation, so no opportunity for me to provide context and get actual feedback. Maybe if that had happened I would I been able to better understand how or why my words had been taken out of context and be able to apologize in a real way for anything I’d done to contribute to harm or misunderstanding. I’ve since come to believe there was no misunderstanding, and no formal complaint/investigation specifically because it would have given me a chance to explain and the explanation would very obviously undermine the narrative.

It was done entirely through gossip, mostly spread outside work via socializing. But my name was mud, and many people simply associated me with mess and drama— it wasn’t about the underlying supposed offense.

If this had been handled with direct conversation and a chance to apologize, it would be a very different story. They didn’t want to fix the perceived problem. They wanted an excuse to smear my name in a way that gave me no chance to defend myself.[/quote]

Well in that case, yes, they just wanted you out. I’ve worked in a place like that before. I had a good relationship with my coworkers (small office) and one day one of them googled me. Then all hell broke loose and they started being really weird and standoffish. I asked one person what was up and she told me what they had found and that i should just let it Peter out. After a few months, I left because they were just still being mean to me. Well honestly, not so much mean as in outright hostile but more just passive aggressive and cold. I can’t help my family name and where I come from so I left and went to a place with coworkers who 1. Didn’t google me, and 2. Wouldn’t have cared if they did. The coworkers in the original place were just catty. [/quote]

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