My personal social media was rarely used except to check in with old friends. They were used to not seeing new posts from me and getting only the occasional brief comment or response from me. But there I was, retweeting images of the complex she took. It came as a surprise to me, considering it wasn’t exactly a secret how I felt about social media in general.
Despite those personal feelings, I’d learned to appreciate, at least to a degree, that social media was important for my company. It was the way of the future. Well, actually, according to Darren, it was the way of the future ten years ago, which meant it was the way of the past and the current, but I was catching up.
I had gotten used to having Merry as part of the company but rarely actually saw her. Except for in passing, we didn’t see each other during the day. But I figured that was actually a benefit during this early time in us working together. The less frequently I saw her, the less chance I had to stick my foot in my mouth again. And the less time I had to spend training my brain to stay professional.
That day, however, I knew I had to break the routine and personally go to talk to her. The first race was coming up quickly, and I assumed she would want to feature it heavily in upcoming posts. I wanted to find out how much help she would need from me to get the pictures and information needed to make the posts as effective as possible. And I wanted that conversation to happen with me. She and Darren were getting pretty chummy. Several of the times I caught a glimpse of her over the last week she was right there along with my youngest brother, talking and laughing, seeming completely comfortable and at ease with him. And I hated to admit that something about that fact didn’t sit right with me.
While it might have been easier for me to just let him handle the conversation with her about the social media campaigns, there was no way I was going to let that happen. She was hired for my company and was creating these campaigns for me, not him. I wanted to be the one to work with her, to get that chance to interact with her. In the back of my mind, I knew that reaction was ridiculous. There was no reason I should be even thinking about how much time she was spending with my brother or what they were talking about. It shouldn’t matter to me how she was getting to know the others in the company. If I was going to think about her relationships with other people in the complex at all, I should be happy she was making friends and feeling at ease. A happy employee was a productive and loyal employee.
And yet, here I was. Merry obviously wasn’t trying to make me feel jealous. She never did anything that seemed she was trying to catch my attention and force it onto her interaction with my brother, and he never said anything that implied anything about them that was more than just another coworker. But there was still a twinge when I thought of her and when I saw them together. It was stupid, but I had no control over it.
That might have been what bothered me more than anything. Control was an important thing to me. I liked to control as many aspects of my life as humanly possible, and that definitely applied to my work. Not being able to control how I felt about my social media consultant being friendly with my brother was uncomfortable and strange. Coming up on the first race of the season was stressful enough as it was. I didn’t need the additional stress and pressure of a new team member not sticking to the script and keeping up with my expectations.
But, again, that really wasn’t Merry’s fault. She didn’t know the expectations, and she wasn’t familiar with what I saw as the company’s set way of operating. She wasn’t doing anything wrong or purposely trying to get a rise out of me. I would just have to keep reminding myself of that. I went over that several times in my mind as I made my way through the building to her office. She was sitting behind her desk, picking her way through a selection of chopped fruit in a clear plastic bowl in front of her as she leaned over her tablet.
“Don’t you think it would be easier to use a laptop?” I asked.
Merry jumped slightly and looked up at me. She smiled through swallowing a large chunk of pineapple she’d popped in her mouth just as I walked into the room.