‘I don't make the rules, I just work there’: 56-year-old Shelly blames her coworker for the company’s new policy change, yells at her face, and starts office rumors

Stories like this woman's really make me think offices are some sort of parallel universes, complete with different physics. Within these sets of laws, a corporate policy change, especially when it comes packaged with winners, losers, and a fresh round of workplace scapegoating, is a real gravity-reversing event. This 36-year-old finds herself cast as the office villain simply because her paycheck didn't take the same nosedive as someone else's. It's the kind of twist that makes you wonder if HR moonlights as a screenwriter for workplace melodramas.

56-year-old Shelly, once a casual friend, now delivers Oscar-worthy glares and whispers with the subtlety of a soap opera mean girl. The company pulls the rug out from under her, and somehow it's her coworker's fault, as if being in the right place at the right time is a calculated act of betrayal. Attempts to address the tension are met with managerial shrugs and HR's favorite refrain: not technically a violation. Emotional cold wars and passive-aggressive mood swings don't make the employee handbook.

It's just a new take on the old workplace blame game: when the system fails you, find the nearest target and make them pay in awkward silences and icy stares.

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