My boss is constantly sabotaging my relationship with a young woman. I want peace and quiet, a chance for thoughtful reflection, to embrace what we've shared, but that's not something my boss likes. Because when I come into contact with what happened with the young woman, I also come into contact with what happened with him. Therefore, I see him, and therefore, those feelings resurface, creating that unfortunate distance precisely because it's incongruous with his absence. This man thrives on making contact, to prevent others from reflecting, and thus avoid the situation becoming unpredictable. He did this once before, and now I understand the issue. He makes so many omissions that he needs me to remain unaware. Knowing whether one is alright in the workplace, amidst the emptiness, I believe, is a way to prevent the feelings that lead to these distances, born from brutal actions committed blindly by the authorities due to the lack of consequences—and they certainly want to prevent them.

This young woman and I have worked hard to maintain a peaceful relationship. In fact, she dislikes being contacted during her vacations. Of course, during the work season, her position demands her time at odd hours, simply because it involves work-related communications. She's a very nice young woman, although I must admit, she can be difficult to work with. I also confess that I'm finding it a bit difficult to write right now, as I'm doing it in a rush, because my boss contacted me today, disrupting my routine, where I hadn't anticipated any contact with him beyond the start of our work period. I don't like this approach, because, as I said, it doesn't allow for any real action to address issues. The idea is that the employee can react appropriately to what happened during the work period, to be more assertive, and to rectify the situation. Otherwise, interfering during the vacation period only results in keeping her tied down by comments about any inconsistency, making it easy to accuse her of deviating from expected norms, when the whole point of vacations is for individuals to express themselves fully.

This isn't something that boss understands, nor does it seem to many others. Everyone else embraces full contact, but I don't. In fact, the time I was in contact with the young woman was to establish my responsibility, to show that as a friend I maintained the necessary boundaries. I can even say that the issue was about establishing healthy limits for our relationship within the environment. I need this time for reflection so I can show her, no matter what, that she has made it difficult to compromise her principles. It wasn't that I forced her to do it, but rather that I felt her own principles were being contradicted. In other words, her feelings for life, which had been sidelined for too long, were being prioritized over her own goals. While we can say that her goals are achieved based on her principles, this is only in the preliminary stages. They weren't developed holistically, leading to unforeseen problems. When she tries to resolve these issues, she ends up abruptly denying them, thus necessitating a more immediate solution, as it's something she's struggling to handle, and it's clearly affecting her established objectives.

My concern with her was precisely to safeguard her goals at all costs and ensure they weren't compromised in any way. It wasn't something my boss understood, not at all. His mindset was that of a dictatorship, one that would create chaos among us, thus affecting his life and mine as well. He masked it with his power, and with public humiliation through victimhood. In fact, I had a major falling out with my boss. I'd always wanted to leave, because for a long time he'd been looking for any excuse to get me out of the office, or at least undermine me, to the point where the best course of action would be for me to resign. Undoubtedly, the possibility of my leaving was a powerful motivator this time, to destroy any chance he had of doing this and to get me out of the office, where my plan was precisely to be there for some quiet reflection. I had to protect my plans, and he wasn't helping in any way. The girl also needed to look after her plans, but she did so in an imposed way through the exploitation of trust, whenever she needed it for said plans.

The young woman, in fact, was suffocating everyone with her social insistence, trying to establish that she was comfortable in the office. However, this wasn't a positive outcome; rather, it was causing more friction for everyone else. She would promise to attend company parties and then fail to show up for some reason, if she even gave one, which I doubt. In effect, the young woman was already creating a kind of explosive situation, one that wouldn't tolerate any mercy if she found some significant work-related loophole to exploit. And they were already looking for her, because the young woman didn't do efficient work either; in fact, everything she did was just a quick fix. It was clear she was only in that office to carry out the tasks assigned to her and attend to her own affairs. I confess, this is the case with me, although I must also say that due to the lack of regulations governing how things are done, everything there is completely improvised, which is advantageous for doing things in that casual, almost haphazard way.

She seeks swift resolutions in the office, without much detail, prioritizing strict adherence to instructions, though any insistence is seen as abuse, thanks to her routine, which consists of other things. In a way, she shares my own spirit. I must also confess that the office doesn't inspire any seriousness, as the hours are far from those of a typical company; they're barely twenty percent of what you'd expect, and even then, they're flexible. The pay is vague, typical of a regular company, but under these kinds of schedules, it's a bargain. Unions are everywhere, so any enforcement by the authorities is met with suspicion. Essentially, the worker feels comfortable performing a social act, rather than a purely professional one, contributing to the upkeep, since the minimum elements for a proper work structure are lacking, precisely because everything is improvised, nothing is in writing. This leads to the office behaving, in the long run, as a social center, whether the authorities like it or not, in exchange for collaboration that is also extremely subsidized, making the company so needy that it accepts meager wages just to have people there, for goodness sake.

This very scenario leads to the formation of groups beyond those established by the bureaucracy, creating situations that transcend bureaucratic boundaries. In order to prevent the exposure of the current social reality, they establish themselves under the guise of what is forbidden. This is the case of my boss and his secretary, who maintained an elitist atmosphere in the office, a situation that was shattered when they used their work for personal gain, thanks to a complaint I filed. For my part, the young woman and I subsisted by carrying out our work, under the established conditions, and through occasional contact. We are using as an example a regulated love in the middle of the office, something that my boss and his secretary did not do, but rather sought that of boss and secretary in the face of adversity, that is, the inclusion of someone of their style in power and thus demonstrate that those below are not segregated.

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