Tales from the Office: Look around you and see if someone's getting left out.

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A couple of weeks ago in the office I was talking to one of the temps who has been helping out on a big admin task. I don't work in her field at all and I'd previously only really spoken to her to ask her to "PLEASE - BEFORE I GO TOTALLY INSANE - STOP USING THE SHREDDER". Poor woman didn't realise that 100 feet away it sounded like someone was killing a herd of mice. Anyway, let's say we weren't exactly best buddies and I'd not had much to do with her. But she sits near the coffee machine and I'm an affable sort so I started chatting to her whilst I waited for the machine to dispense my dark brown vaguely-coffee-like-beverage. After that I'd have a brief chat whenever I was passing. She subsequently told me that she'd got a new job and was leaving within a few days. On my last day in the office before she went, I dropped by to wish her well and she had a mini-meltdown. She told me that she'd been with us for nearly 4 months, and that all the people in her 'department' had just totally ignored her. They never spoke to her, never invited her to go to the canteen with her and just acted like she wasn't there. I thought it was really sad and said I was really sorry that she'd been treated so badly. About half an hour later, she appeared at my desk to thank me and to tell me that in the whole time she'd been there, I was the only person who'd ever treated her like a human being. I really didn't think I deserved much thanks for the odd little chat as I passed but she made it clear that it had meant a lot to her and that she was leaving with a pretty bad impression of most of the company but I'd been nice to her and she was grateful. It made me stop and think. It had been so little effort for me but TOO MUCH effort for her direct colleagues. I also thought about how utterly miserable it must have been for her to sit there all that time being treated like a piece of furniture. So the moral of the story - if there is one - is to please look around you and see if someone is getting left out. Don't assume that they don't want to be invited to go to the canteen or they don't want to talk about the weather or the lousy coffee. Give it a try. A tiny effort on your part might be the difference between someone having a totally lousy day and one in which they realise that somebody noticed they were there.