Dear Fionnuala: Have I been accused of being a thief?
Am I overreacting?
FIONNUALA – I work as a cleaner and something odd happened, and I’m not sure if I’m being paranoid. The lady who owns the house, maybe three weeks ago, mentioned she’d lost a pair of earrings and could I keep an eye out. I thought nothing of it.
Anyway, last week as I was leaving, she said ‘Oh, I found those earrings, in case you were worried’.
Sure I couldn’t care less about her earrings but there was something odd in the way she said it. When I told the story to my daughter, she went mad and said the woman was clearly accusing me.
I will admit the comment didn’t sit easy with me.
I’m disgusted at the thought that she would think I was a thief. I don’t want to work for someone who would think that of me but at the same time I don’t want to be silly and overreact.
It's hard to give advice when I didn’t witness it and so I won’t tell you what to do, but what I will say is trust your gut. Your daughter may be right and indeed, that does sound like an odd exchange. However, misunderstandings happen all the time: people say odd things, they kick themselves afterwards, they wonder why did they phrase it that way, or they don’t realise how poorly they made their point.
However,work takes up far too much of all our lives, and the best we can hope for is that when we go home, that it doesn’t take up our leisure time as well.
How do you feel now, when you think about going back? Would you wait and see until you do another day, or is it hanging over you? Would you consider clearing the air altogether, and asking her straight out?
You’re quite right in that your pride and sense of self is most important, and so do not continue, if you an avoid it, in a situation that belittles you. We cannot control what others think of us, but we can hold some degree of control of what situations we put ourselves in.
Economically it may not be easy to just leave a job but it does no harm to keep an eye out for something, just in case. And remember, trust your gut.