The Evil Eye

There is this new girl at the office who started working with us perhaps six months ago. Although her debut seemed promising, she turned out to be a complete disappointment. We had hoped for another bright, pleasant, hard working person, who require next to no supervision. We got the complete opposite. Worst still, her attitude was such that no matter what you’d say to her, or how you’d say it, she would systematically remain mute while looking through you as if you weren’t there. There were no “good morning to you”, no question asked, no reply provided, she simply did not utter a word.

It didn’t take long for our interest to fade away and a certain frustration to surface. As a result, most of her work was divided amongst people who preferred still to work harder than waste time training and retraining her. Because no matter how much effort and patience was applied, she could not remember from day to day what she had been explained. The tension escalated even more as she seemed perfectly comfortable doing the bare minimum while we struggled along.

Of course, we all shared part of the responsibility in this fiasco. There was obviously something we had collectively done wrong to make her feel so inadequate and so un-welcomed. My office is not a bad place generally, but I guess we are used to more assertive people. Let’s just say this was not a period of glory we should be proud of.

Still, it was obvious she was miserable, and this alone was enough to make us all miserable as well. But we didn’t know what else to do without feedback on her part. So we did nothing. We watched the situation deteriorate more and more every day, waiting for her evaluation period to end so that we could all be put out of our misery.

That is, until the day she brought to the office an amulet against the – Evil Eye -. The message was as clear as could be and a formidable sense of shame dawned on all of us. Yet, soon after, changes started to occur. Things became smoother. She opened up, we opened up and even though we were all very careful, a sense of camaraderie slowly emerged.

One night not too long ago, we rode the elevator together. Out of the blue she mentioned her amulet and the fact that the bad vibes had dissipated, that she finally felt good in the office. She was happy that – it – worked, but then again, from the moment she had put it on the wall, she knew things would get better.

“You know, it works both ways” I replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you were convinced that things would change, it made you feel safe, you behaved differently, and you started smiling to people. So people responded to you differently. Perhaps you were your own – evil – all along?”

We reached the ground floor, the elevator’s doors opened and I left. She looked stunned. It had never occurred to her that she might have been partly responsible for her misfortune.