A few weeks ago, I started to realize that one of my rolls within the company was acting as a middle man. A middle man of what you might ask?

I’m not talking about a similar Office Space scenario where there’s a middle man between the customers and the engineers. The middle man position I speak of actually relates to the internal strife between two fellow co-workers.

I sometimes feel like I’ve taken a time machine back to high school. Here’s the background; there are two co-workers in my office who refuse to work together. Their hatred of each other is constantly growing day by day.

When a document needs to be shared between the two, one will bring the papers over to my desk, and ask if I can “work” with the other person to review them. Our cubicles are all within 50 feet of each other.

If an email needs to be sent, once again, it goes through me. I didn’t realize it at first until the requests became more and more ridiculous. We are all big boys here, and there is no reason for this nonsense. Back and forth I go, listening to each other bicker about the other. Each time this happens, I find my level of patience diminishing to a lower level than before.

Eventually, these guys will need a new middle man to the middle man. You watch.

It’s just mind boggling to me that situations like this exist in the workplace. I consider myself somewhat of an easy person to work with, but damn, some people just can’t communicate. You wonder if upper management is truly oblivious to these situations, or they just don’t consider it a real issue.

This whole middle man conundrum defines inefficient. Today’s a new day, and one where I will officially retire from this mediator position.