The Cat Came Back

When I joined this group there was one student (I’ve referred to her before as the “pet”) who spent a large percentage of the day in the boss’ office. There were rumors of an inappropriate relationship, although vehemently denied. Both parties were confronted on multiple occasions that I know of. She graduated a year ago and moved away. Things started to get better. The boss was more involved with the rest of us and the cloud of doom and the fear of backstabbing sort of went away. The atmosphere still wasn’t good, but it was better.

Then she came back. This week. Not to our group, but to a facility on campus that we interact with regularly. At first when I heard, I thought – no biggie, we won’t tell the people that hate her in the group, and we’ll have no reason to come in contact with her. She stays over there in her office and doesn’t come over here, no big deal. Wrong. First off, they found out the first day. Largely I didn’t want them to find out because I didn’t want to hear all about it all day long, every day. “Can you believe she’s back? I guess she was too stupid to keep her other job, (aside: I think her position was eliminated due to natural disaster), if the boss doesn’t respond in 2 days I’m going to go tell him what for! Can you believe it, she’s back"…you get the picture. It’s too early to really tell how it’s going to change things. Hopefully I’m right and it won't affect my life much other than listening to the chatter, but I have to admit, I’m a little nervous. I think it would have been better if she had stayed away.