Toxic Limit

 A few days ago, I had to call someone out in the middle of a meeting for being rude, cutting her mid-sentence and leaving her shell-shocked. It made everyone else present very uncomfortable as well. We've worked together for over a year and this was not this person's first offense. Everyone ignored it because such is the culture of this organization. 

I did the same deciding it was not worth dealing with. Post-confrontation with someone who is hyper-competitive and ties up their entire self worth with achieving goals (with no concern or understanding of real impact of their actions),is unpleasant. One has to be prepared to live in a smoke-filled room for a long time because such individuals cannot let it go until they get even. So a lot of their time an energy is spent to finding that opportunity - work does not get done in that smoke-filled room. But that afternoon, she had managed to go past what I willing to tolerate and as such a public reprimand seemed the only logical solution. 

The event left a nasty taste in the mouth thinking about how a person my age and stage of life can waste what good, productive years they have left getting into entirely pointless things like this. This person will not change - she has neither the desire or incentive too. She is set in her ways and thus far in her still early career, her toxicity has served her well. It is unlikely that she will give up what works and rewards here. She is one of those people who will stay on for ever, long past folks like have come and gone. Those visiting will have one of those days like I did when they would lose it with her but it won't matter - they were visiting anyway. I wasted that time then when I lashed out and I wasted this time now mulling over it.