I recently came back from a week-long trip to Europe, and brought back a ton of snacks and small gifts for my coworkers and my boss.
I handed out all the small gifts this week. I gave my boss, Alex [50sM], a lot of stuff -- a small bag filled with little snacks and trinkets that I thought he'd like. I also gave another department head, Brian [40sM], a small bag filled with snacks.
Some background information: my department is around ~50 people, and as cliche as it sounds, we're definitely like a dysfunctional family. Alex and I are extremely close -- we often spend a lot of time joking around and chatting. I can honestly say that I'm probably his favorite employee. Brian is a relatively new hire -- within the past 6 months, and he heads a department that's a lot larger than ours. We became friendly with each other before I left for my trip. I'm a non-managerial staffer.
On Friday morning, Brian was telling another staffer in our department about some of the snacks I gave him and how much he enjoyed them. It was a little awkward, because he seemed to be under the impression that I'd given everyone a bunch of snacks, and it wasn't the case -- I'd given a few things to some people, but not to the level I'd given to Alex/Brian. I gave him the *stop talking* look and Brian stopped talking about the snacks and walked off.
A few hours later, Alex comes barging into my office. He jokingly started talking about how he thought it was unfair that Brian got the same amount of snacks as he did, when Alex was my boss and Brian was a new hire that I didn't even know that well. I laughed it off, and was honestly confused... so Alex explained to me that Brian had called him up -- according to Alex, the conversation started with Brian asking, "Hey, did you get a goodie bag from Interesting_Cod?" They then began to compare what I had given each of them, and how many. They then realized that I had given them both the same amount of snacks. Apparently, they brought all their snacks to Alex's office and compared what I'd given them one by one.
Later, I realized that Alex was actually annoyed by this. He brought it up 10+ times over the course of the day, even bringing in other staff members into it and asking them: "Here's a scenario I want you to consider and answer me honestly: if you went on a trip and brought back snacks, would you give your direct boss the same amount of snacks as the head of another department?" This literally went on for hours.
I tried to explain to him that I honestly hadn't even counted or even thought of it that way... and that in reality, I'd hastily thrown together both packs without too much thought. I even tried to apologize, but he wouldn't accept it. I was honestly nearly in tears because I was so upset, so I avoided Alex for most of the day -- he finally came by and told me that it was okay and that he was "kidding," but I could tell he was actually upset by what happened. Honestly, I'm still pretty annoyed by this and I'm wondering why the fuck Brian was calling just to have a snack comparison contest. I still feel uncomfortable by the whole thing but I want Alex to be okay about it and understand that I didn't mean any harm. What should I do next?
Also, my apologies for this childish ass middle school shit you had to read through
TL:DR; my boss got mad at me for giving another boss the same amount of snacks as him.
Submitted September 01, 2018 at 04:41PM by Interesting_Cod https://ift.tt/2CaB6u0
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