A reader writes:
I was out for a few days recently for personal reasons and came back to discover that two of my colleagues have done something incredibly thoughtless that has completely screwed up a major work product for me and then lied about it to my supervisor, saying I was involved in the decision. I am livid about it, but I don’t know how to cope with this anger in a work situation.
They are desperate to talk it out with me and apologize, mainly to make themselves feel better rather than to help me out at all, but for now I’ve sent a message saying that I’m not able to have the discussion with them.
My instinct is to just stop talking to them because I don’t feel I can trust them again, but that’s not practical in our work situation and would make everyone else in our close-knit, incredibly friendly team really uncomfortable.
Do I just accept their apology and try to get over it, or is there a socially acceptable way to reject someone’s apology? My supervisor (who is not their supervisor) is being helpful with trying to sort out the work stuff but isn’t getting involved in the interpersonal aspect.
Your choices aren’t to just accept the apology or reject it. You can sidestep that binary entirely and instead explain why you’re concerned despite the apology.
For example: “I appreciate you apologizing, but I’m really concerned about why it happened. I of course understand mistakes happen, but you lying to Jane about it could have caused serious issues for me.”
“Concerned” is better framing for most work issues than “angry.” That doesn’t mean you can’t be angry, but the bar is typically very, very high to frame things as anger at work. But you can be deeply, gravely concerned without bumping up against that convention. (More on that here.)
On a similar note, if “lying to Jane about it” feels too harsh for your workplace culture (it will for some, despite being true), you can say “misrepresenting it to Jane.” That’s frankly a pretty BS softening — they lied! it’s a lie! — but in some work cultures it’ll go over better / help everyone move forward if you’re not quite as plain-spoken about it. (Is this is a weird, wildly inauthentic thing about work culture? Yes, absolutely.)
From there, you’re right that you can’t just stop speaking to colleagues, particularly if you need to work with them. You don’t need to trust them again — and it sounds like you’d be wise not to — but you do need to be reasonably civil to colleagues, including ones you don’t trust. That said, you can certainly limit your interactions to mostly work-related ones. (I say “mostly” rather than “exclusively” because you still need to, for example, return a courteous “good morning” and otherwise engage in at least minimal pleasantries in order to be considered professional and because obvious hostility or freezing-out will make people around you feel uncomfortable.)
That doesn’t mean that you’ve forgotten what happened, just that you’re treating them civilly because you are a professional.
