Two experiences you never have at a small startup company:

1) I am part of a team (in the sense that rioting prisoners are on a team) composed of people from different departments gathered together to make a decision. Voting is involved, so it’s a democracy, except that by the time everything is finished everyone has to vote the same way. So like a Chicago democracy. Therefore, ballots are not secret and any time two people disagree they are expected to solve their differences in the steel cage. Historically, if the discrepancy has involved me — if, for example, my vote is different than the Security guy’s and it was a vote on Security matters– I have settled the matter by saying, quote, “Whatever.” There are issues on which I would vociferously take a stand, my areas of expertise, but as it happens everybody agrees with me on those.

The team is having a busy week of decision making and sleeperholding, and today I was sitting in my anonymous little cube in its anonymous row on its anonymous floor when the two people who run the team’s meetings met up in a cube about 25 feet away and began audibly talking shit about me. Not about the team including me, mind you; about me personally. Because the cubes, rows, and floors are so anonymous, neither had any idea I was sitting close enough to hear and/or lunge at them.

When you’re one of six employees working out of somebody’s basement, this does not happen. This is actually the second time it’s happened to me in the two months I’ve been on the job, both times with these same two guys. One in particular really seems to have it in for me because I acquiesced a few times at this one meeting. This marks the first time in remembered history I have been despised for not being enough of a vocally opinionated a-hole.

Office politics are like making first contact with an alien culture to me. It is unbelievable in that word’s most literal sense. This guy has made me a Vichy collaborator based on watching me be agreeable in two meetings.

And just… look: people talk about you. People talk about you all the time. Good friends of yours. And if they had anything nice or unscandalous to say, it would be a boring conversation and everyone listening would walk away to go talk about them. The stuff about how great you are and what a big heart you have only gets dusted off when you finally die. I’m sorry if this comes as news to you, but think seriously about the conversations you have with people; do you really believe they change when you’re the one who’s not in the room?

I came to terms with all of this a long time ago. At the end of the week, my phone still rings, so I can’t suck that much. But listen: the Gossiping Weasel Honor Code dictates that you at least make a cursory check of your surroundings before commencing. The social fabric is only held together by caffeine, primetime television, and the human ability to delude ourselves into believing people love us. Sloppy trash talking will tear down the walls, man.

Because I’m sitting there, I’m doing my work, and suddenly there’s this guy who doesn’t even work with me saying, “That Jimski guy…! Jesus. Follower, not a leader, definitely,” and now I have to put down my soda, get up, and commit multiple homicide. Or worse still, I have to go over there and act like I have heard nothing (must protect the anonymity of my cube, after all) and say, “Hmm hmm hmm, doo dee doo, walking to the bathroom HEY guys! Fancy running into you here! I was just thinking about the thing you were talking about, not that I know what that is. I was hoping to run into you, actually; I had some pointed yet veiled comments to make indicating that you don’t know what the f— you’re talking about without revealing that I have working tympanic membranes.” One minute I’m doing what I’m paid for and enjoying my life; the next, I’m devising some traditional Japanese face-saving tea ceremony to determine dominance in the khaki pack. It’s enough to drive a man to librarian school.

2) Half an hour after putting the kibosh on the whispering campaign, I had put the whole thing completely out of my head except for this nagging tickle, the faintest itch gently reminding me every so often that I was probably the most addlepated, incompetent nitwit to ever defraud his way onto my company’s payroll. I was just thinking of going to the top floor and seeing if any of the windows opened when I got a phone call from a coworker. This coworker, a member of the team, had called to say he was impressed with me from seeing my performance at the meetings and was wondering if I would like to take a new job with him.

So, the company I work for is so big that someone tried to hire me away from my company to go to work for my company. After years of working in the aforementioned basements, that sort of makes me feel like I could die at work and never be found by anyone. It did, however, go a long way towards making me feel less incompetent. I am being headhunted in the hallways.