Ugh! I feel like I am 12 years old again and that I’m heading to my first day of junior high school. Will people like me? Does my hair look okay? What if I don’t like it there and nobody wants to sit with me at lunch time?
Heading back to work after two weeks off is a drag.
It’s not like I scheduled two weeks of earned vacation time off in advance, either. Nope. I have been On Leave, and I’m not sure how people are going to react to me at work now that I’m going back. Will things be weird? Will people secretly give me pity looks behind my back? Or will my coworkers just be happy not to pick up my slack anymore? Water under the bridge, you know…
I have worked at my workplace for just about three years now. During that time, two different coworkers have taken leave for stress and have never returned. We joke about the ‘three year burnout’ around the office– most people can’t seem to hack it for any longer than that– but having been there for three years and having taken a leave, too, I can totally understand why the other colleagues didn’t come back.
It’s just… awkward… you know? Like I’ve got a big STIGMA sign taped to my back now. “NOT ABLE TO DEAL WITH STRESS PROFESSIONALLY“.
Whatever. I’m going to put on my too-cool-for-school attitude this morning, the one that pretends it doesn’t care what other people think, and I’m going to head on over to work today. Maybe it will be awesome, no? Perhaps I’ll be wearing the right outfit and I’ll be popular and everyone will want to take their lunch at the same time as me. (Even though that would be annoying, because I like to read during my lunch time and never get any reading done when the rest of the office is in the lunch room, too.)
Wish me luck, okay?
zona pellucida 
I wish you luck Dana, and offer you reassurance that your co-workers won’t be speculating about you behind your back. This blog shoould eliminate any chance of that.
Good thing it isn’t highschool anymore, and to welcome your return and let you know what you mean to them, it wouldn’t surprise me if they are planning to give you some little gift and then just maybe,.. a wedgie.
Ha. This blog is kept separate from the people at my job, and I’d like to keep it that way!
Yesterday was pretty tough. Most people were awkward at best and some were even icy cold. I wasn’t expecting a party or anything, but a simple ‘hello, nice to see you’ would have been nice… Sniff, sniff.
Oh, maybe they are reading it without your knowing. It’s hardly a private forum.
If you weren’t glad to be back, they may have just picked up on that.
Hey Dana, I hope your second day back to work was a bit easier than your first. Don’t worry too much about what other people are thinking or doing, because usually it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Keep smiling and don’t let it get to you!
Things go better for days two & three ?