I have a bit of a situation here. I do computer support here at my University. One of the groups I support is headed up by a woman a few years younger than I, we'll call her Mary.

Now, Mary is very fashionable. She's fashionable in the way that a lot of women (and men, too) would like to be fashionable in that she doesn't really wear anything particularly distinctive or different, she just wears what everyone else wears and what's "in style". "Well groomed" in a casual but innately conservative style is how I'd describe it. She's very smart, very conscientious and very organized. However, being open to new ideas and change, especially change associated with things beyond her control is not, shall we say, her strong suit.

She also does a very, VERY good job at work and is the apple of the department directors eye. Mary can do no wrong and it's easy to see why. She does a very good job and she has an excellent customer support ethic. However, my work track record with Mary is not good. What I do for her is never good enough.

It's often that way in this business. It's like being the telephone company. The telephone is 99.99999% reliable, but once a year when something goes wrong and it goes down, Ohmigod, but the complaints flood in. Does anyone ever call up the phone company and thank them for the ten thousand calls they made that went through without a hitch? No. It's just the nature of the business,and I'm aware of it.

So here's the thing. Mary doesn't like my kilt. She doesn't say it outright, though once a few weeks ago she commented. "Well, don't you look eclectic, today". in a cold sort of way. Well, her distaste has climbed the ladder to my supervisor, via her supervisor and the Department director.

My supervisor discreetly told me that no, the department can't and won't tell me what to wear. If I want to wear a kilt I have every right to wear a kilt. However, my work relationship with Mary is very important and "you know how it's gone in the past, I don't need this to become another issue with her. There have been too many flash points in the past".

This is office politics at its worst, eh? So I invited Mary out to coffee yesterday, a day I wore my kilt to work. I told her "let's go over to the Moonbeans and get coffee and talk a bit about this kilt thing". I e-mailed her first and followed it up with a phone call several hours before the actual "date"' time so she could fit it into her schedule. I gavve her th eoption of meeting later in the week. She turned me down.

My feeling is that I've made an overture to listen to her concerns, which she probably wouldn't even have had the ovaries to actually tell me. If she can't tell me directly to my face what the problem is, and can only complain about it behind my back, then I'm inclined to basically write her off and just do my job as best I can and screw the politics. However, that sort of straightforward attitude has endangered my job in the past. In fact I tend to be blithely unaware of most of the department drek, but that has indirectly cost me a job in past so I'm hypersensitive to the issue now. Yet I'll be damned if I'm going to go around playing games all the time.

Thanks for reading, gang....long post. OK, X Marks...what are your thoughts?