basically I’m the quiet one and even though she never was my supervisor, she acted like it. I was doing my job and she kept pestering me to help her with something she could do alone. I told her to wait, she kept calling me. I ignored her to do my job, she kept calling until I exploded:
First I said I don’t want to argue. She kept nagging me.
I yelled: leave me alone. She started a chain of expletives and called somebody. I don’t know who she called, but I assume somebody from management.
She’s the popular one and has been working there for 15 years already.
Back to today: I work in the same department, but another building, doing exactly the same, but it stings that nobody ever called me to ask for my side of the story. I feel disrespected and angry.
This is also a job I haven’t been happy for the last 2 months, before this conflict with this coworker, meaning I’ve been applying for positions, both for promotions within my company (office job instead of mechanical job) and for jobs elsewhere. After finding out the real story, after knowing how much power a popular person has over you, I only want to move on as soon as I can to another department or quit altogether.
The rational solution would be to focus on the office job within the same company away from that coworker and that department, but I’m not making much sense now…
It hurts.
Is this the right way of going through life?
What do you mean by “popular”? The workplace isn’t high school. Everyone is expected to reasonably get along professionally with everyone else. If someone is on good terms with everyone in the workplace, that’s good. If your coworker was asking you for help with something, even if she could do it alone, maybe she knew it would be more efficient for the workplace as a whole if the two of you did it together, maybe she respected your input on the way the task got done, or whatever, maybe she had a good reason. You’ve not given us a lot to go on here. Without knowing the whole story, this makes you sound unwilling to be a team player, and like you have some behavioural/anger issues. It really doesn’t sound like you handled this situation well at all. Your coworker would be well within her rights to go to HR over something like this.
Edit: as others have said, if you find you often have trouble containing these sorts of outbursts you should seek professional help, eg. therapy.
It can be. I’ve definitely seen cases which were more high school than a professional workplace.
https://youtu.be/DHm7-Z4spHw
This is when I knew I was starting to really learn how to do my current job, when people came to me with questions instead of the other way around. It took about two years, but it was a nice shift.
Cubicles farm are worst than high school. There is an ever ongoing political tug of war for pretty much every little fucking detail, and someone is always trying to tell you that you do your job wrong
Multinational companies are even worst because you have to fight off the other offices trying to meddle with your office to get what they want.
And then, when someone breaks because of the constant bickering, people come and tell them they are wrong for breaking.
Your whole post is a prime example of that.