Every morning when I get to work I grab my water bottle and head up to the cafeteria to fill it up. I could fill it up at any number of places but I go the whole way upstairs because I like to walk. See I leave my cube and take the most twisted longest way to the stairs then again upstairs to the cafeteria and back. Doing that gets me some early morning steps and plus I get to see how the rest of the building is doing, if I notice someone has left their cube or they are doing maintenance anywhere. Chances are you wouldn't notice stuff like that on a normal day. Anyway I am there super early so there are not many people around but I do see sometimes the same people when I do this. Some co-workers are friendly and say Hi, others do not. I'm cool with that. You know I'm not a overly 'people' person anyway.
I started having trouble recently with the lady in the cafeteria. First off I don't know her and I'm sure it's probably her job to greet everyone that goes into the cafeteria but she started taking things too far. She works for Eat N Park I guess. They run the place. Apparently like I said it's either her job or she just feels it's her duty to say Good Morning to absolutely everyone that enters the premise whether they want to hear it or not. What started weirding me out was that even if she was busy clear on the other side of the room if someone (me) would come in I noticed she started dropping what she was doing to go over to the person I guess for the sole reason of saying Good Morning to them. I was friendly at first but she kept doing it and it was making me uncomfortable. I would just sort of grunt back at one point. I figure she would get the message to just leave me alone. It was unnecessary for her to feel she had to talk to me. I was here for 60 seconds to get my water and then leave.
Instead of discouraging her this seemed to make her want to extract a pleasantry from me even more so. For a few days I watched her get a bead on me and track me down when I'd show up in the morning. I'm sorry lady but I don't know you and as nice as you may think you are, you're freaking me out. Now when she would confront me I would just stare at her. I wasn't sure how to handle this anymore. Truthfully it seems like a non-problem for most people but I was getting serious social anxiety about it. I would think about it all day and run scenarios in my head. I was obsessing and it wasn't something I enjoyed yet I could not stop. The last straw was one day when she got right up in my face and after I wouldn't say anything back she started getting pissy with me. WTF? I don't need harassed like this. My solution ended up being to continue my normal morning walk but simply do not stop in the cafeteria anymore. Avoid this lady at all costs.
I know that probably seems weird to normal people but that's me. It's been a few weeks now and I haven't encountered her since. I thought this would be an interesting story to tell now that I feel better about it. Has anyone else ever had an experience like this?
