I get a lot of random somewhat work related email in my work inbox. Daily emails from companies whose webinars I’d attended virtually throughout the pandemic. Lately I get a lot of them on the topic of toxic employees and colleagues. I don’t even read them, as I am back in the office three days a week and we no longer have to fill our remote working hours with countless webinars and training opportunities. I’ve done all the learning on LinkedIn. I’ve read all the books in our employee training portal. I’ve watched every single ACRL/TDL/anything vaguely library or university related informational video on YouTube. There are always new ones, but they don’t change much. I don’t need to keep a tab for the university anymore, so I don’t do it. I do my job and I seek professional development opportunities as I see fit or as assigned.

I still get all the emails. Dealing with toxic employees tends to pop up right as I’m listening to someone complaining loudly in the other side of the room and it makes me laugh. Do I consider her toxic? Truth be told, it’s been a long time since I had a coworker that I consider toxic. Some folks like to bitch about everything, but they’re generally good people who mostly make an effort to get along. Work friends.

You may be wondering why I’m writing about this tonight. Don’t you usually write book reviews? I do. But today I’m feeling like learning about dealing with toxic colleagues.

Allow me to explain.

I engaged in what should have been another friendly conversation with a nice lady at work today. She was telling me about her plans for retirement. Not surprisingly, her plans involve expanding her involvement with her church. Cool. Not my thing, but it makes her happy so I’m happy for her. We’ve had many conversations about her work with the church and they’ve always been friendly and civil. She knows I’m an atheist and doesn’t push and has kept an open mind and I have always listened politely and offered impartial input when expected. People with different beliefs can be friends. But I guess her proximity to retirement has given her permission to let her mask slip, because the conversation we had today was unlike every previous conversation in the last 20 years. This conversation was marked with judgment not only of nonbelievers, but of believers of different faiths, different levels of faith, parents who have not taken their kids to church, parents who do take their kids to church, and most bafflingly, parents who trust the church to keep their kids safe. Yeah, you read that right. She has beef with parents whose children get molested because the parents don’t volunteer at the church. Her argument was that they don’t have enough volunteers to watch everyone. I’m not sure who she thinks is doing the molesting, but I am certain it isn’t random people popping into the bible school classroom for a quick molestation and then going about their business. The predators are already in the building. The predators are entrusted with the safety of these children. In my usual diplomatic yet sarcastic way, I rebutted her assumption and let her know that I was not cool with blaming kids and their parents for trusting that their spiritual leaders aren’t going to molest them. She agreed, but continued to suggest that maybe there would be less sexual abuse if there were more parent volunteers.

I remember when we first met she told me that if one of her kids told her they were an atheist or even just decided to follow a different religion, she would disown them. This conversation shouldn’t have surprised me, but when you’ve worked and been friendly with someone for 20 years, you think you know a person. I don’t know. All I know is that next time I need to talk to her about something, I’ll dispense with the pleasantries and just send an email.