Ever been stuck in a love triangle? It’s my contention that a triangle in love is an easy-peasy, jolly object when compared to the thing that terrifies me, a triangle at work.

You know what I am talking about. It could be in the department you teach in, where you really don’t mind Donne and Galsworthy. You also really don’t mind Pynchon and Yashpal. But it’s rapidly becoming clear to you that your colleagues want you to pick a side. What is this ‘don’t mind’ business, they ask.

It often doesn’t start this way. When you and your two colleagues began your food start-up three months ago, you were all about the boot-strap, the scale-up, the disrupt. Now only you are feeling booted, strapped and disrupted. The other two, they love you. They keep telling you that they love you but they just can’t stand each other. It started slow with the occasional jittery joke followed by a quick glance to see your reaction. Now each one takes you into corners for coffee and truth, both of which you feel like you have OD’d on the moment you catch sight of them.

In one of my first jobs, I worked in a department of three. Colleague A was a good 15 years older and repeated over and over again that she had important household reasons to be part-time. Colleague B was five years older and talked over and over again about how much she wanted to fix the organisation she loved. I stumbled my way through the job for a bit, trying to find my cues. And into this vacuum entered my colleagues’ dislike for each other.

The difficult thing in the work triangle is to acknowledge that your behaviour has contributed to the triangle. What did I do when Colleague A pointed out that Colleague B was overly indulgent and unstructured with the young children in the institution? What did I say when the cleverer Colleague B made vague allusions about unhappy adults taking out their unhappiness on children in their care? I could see some truth in what both said. How much did I participate in these conversations, I don’t remember.

However, I must have said something. And I must have felt special in my ability to get along with both, must have been warmed by being a 23-year-old diplomat.

Meanwhile I got quite decent at my job, which I enjoyed tremendously and my work triangle didn’t worry me as much as it should have. I was the good girl, the new girl sweeping clean, the one that everyone got along with. Or so I thought.

It becomes easier to accept later when you are in trouble — when you get crushed between the other two, like in those old-fashioned books where villains always have special rooms with moving walls that gradually close in, threatening to make chapatti out of the hero.

When our team’s annual review rolled around I went into it happily. And came out of it feeling like a hit-and-run victim. Because when our team was asked about unresolved issues, my colleagues who didn’t see eye-to-eye cheerfully told the committee how I was a little difficult, particularly, they said with several giggles, in the matter of communication. I came down the narrow stairs from the room where the committee had met, with wide, wide eyes.

I’d already learnt what to do when couples squabble (not to be ever confused when a man is beating up a woman, in case you are reading this while standing near one of those domestic-violence-is-so-confusingly-like-a-lovers’-tiff clowns). I already knew I should offer no opinion and go far, far away where a triangle is not a viable shape for the two warring dots. I just hadn’t realised that the same rules applied at work.

When I think of my two colleagues, with the distance of a decade, I realise how similar they were and how much each other’s opinions mattered to them. I’d have done well to not exist as a semi-willing, semi-gleeful ear. After all, they had trundled along with friction before I came along. If I knew what I know now, I’d smile a lot and not participate. And wait for the triangle gods to move on. Or kill the triangle by introducing a merry fourth.

What new things do I need to learn to live in our politically polarised world where I feel like all I see are triangles? Lips curl if you say you don’t want to take this side or that side. It’s not that I want to be like Switzerland, growing rich on intrigue and bank accounts. Shouldn’t there be a word more active than neutral? Because neutral is a word that has even less meaning now that I think of it in terms of bra colours.

What is the word for “you are both irritating each other right now and I am nervously watching the clock for this moment to pass”? And please let there be a new moment where we will cease to irritate each other and make tea and look after our start-up?

Whatever that word is, let me know.

Nisha Susan is a writer and editor of the feminist website The Ladies Finger. @chasingiamb

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW