Did you know that October 3rd is Mean Girls Day? This year is the 15th anniversary of the “fetch” cult hit “Mean Girls” and yesterday was the anniversary of the day that Cady Heron first laid eyes on Aaron Samuels. If you haven’t seen the movie you should, and if you have, you know the premise. The name says it all – Lindsay Lohan faces the wrath of the mean girls who rule the plot of the movie. Did any of you get “mean girled” yesterday in honor of the special occasion? I have to admit that I got “down low mean girled” so I thought I would share a story time post with you about it today.
Mean Girled On Mean Girls Day
First, I have to say that I have a job besides the blog and I love it. I just started a month or so ago and I am still meeting new people, learning who everyone is, etc. I generally eat lunch in the area that I work in, just because it’s easier, but yesterday I brought a tuna sandwich for lunch and didn’t want to stink up my designated work area so I decided to eat in the communal lunch area instead.
Before I sat down, I asked if the seat that I was about to sit in was taken and I was told that it was in fact taken but that the two seats in front of it were clear. So, I sat in one of those. It was a small table with several people crowding at it as they filtered in, so the table filled up quickly. And one girl ended up sitting at the next table.
Then a discussion began about people stealing seats and apologies were issued for the girl sitting at the other table for being exiled. No one said anything to me the entire time I was in there. No one asked me who I was or talked to me at all. Of course I could have started a conversation with them and typically I would have, but being as it was obvious who they were talking about, I was slightly embarrassed and didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself at that point. I immediately felt guilty because of my apparent seat “stealing” although I did take the necessary precautions to avoid just that. And I felt like I was being like a child being reprimanded by what seamed to me to be “mean girl passive aggressive justice” being dealt.
I ate quickly and when I got up to leave, I apologized to the woman who sat at the next table for having unknowingly “stolen” her seat. Ironically, the woman who actually told me that I could sit in that seat participated in the passive aggressive conversation without ever letting anyone know she was actually the one who had given up her friend’s seat.
In high school, this would have mortified me. Yesterday I just thought it was rude. Perhaps they didn’t mean to be rude but the fact that they all talked about me and not to me should be something that we know not to do at this point in our lives.
I did nothing wrong and I could have pointed that out. I could have stated to the others that someone actually told me that I could sit there so she was the real “seat stealer,” if an unassigned seat could actually be stolen. I could have told them they were being Petty Patties and to chill. I could have sarcastically thanked them for their warm welcome and bid them a good day [my personal favorite]. I did none of this and just left went about my day. Why? Because not every slight needs an escalation. If they felt it was appropriate to act like that in the first place, I can about guarantee that anything I said wouldn’t help the situation and it surely wouldn’t make them like me more.
Of course, I could be totally wrong. They may be [and probably are] perfectly lovely people that I just met on a bad day. Who knows? But, in the grand scheme of things, does their uninformed opinion of me based on one event even matter to me? Not really. I’m a pretty cool, caring and fun person. And I don’t need anyone else’s validation and/or acceptance to let me know that. 🙂
