I can’t help but relate to Carrie’s post regarding office bullies and working in a not-so-friendly corporate environment.

Had I known of blogging then, it would have been the perfect outlet for my rants, torments and aggravations. But since only now that I can actually release my angst thru written words, allow me to indulge in the benefits of expressing my [negative] thoughts in this post. As I think about it, now is the best time to unleash these demons inside. If I had written about it then, this post could’ve been nothing but unmentionables and four-letter words.

Being bullied, stepped on and made fun of is not really an unfamiliar territory for me – I’m gay, you see? Filipinos are known homophobics, so I was kinda expecting same scenario entering the corporate world, and somehow prepared myself for it.

First two companies I worked with were fine, but the third one surpassed even my highest expectations. I finally understood what discrimination is when I met these creatures.

I really thought that theirs is a gay-friendly company, since one of the senior staff is openly gay. I have nothing against them but he is a parlorista, screaming faggot type. It would be an understatement to say that we have nothing in common, as far as being gay is concerned. This, my new officemates find hard to believe and they even question what my real preference is. I did not bother to explain that I’m not really loud and as much as I want to it’s just not me. I just shrugged their side comments off by giving them WYSIWYG answers – they branded me as a hypocrite.

I couldn’t care less if they think so. Besides, I have the company of my cute guy officemates around. They’re my buddies at lunch, cigarette breaks and we constantly spends our leisure office time throwing jokes and being cozy with each other. I’m just ‘one of the boys’ for them, even though I’m gay. But to my insecure female officemates,who could only dream to receive glances from the guys, I’m the flirt, slut, bitch and whore. They wouldn’t even think twice calling me these names [at least jokingly], it would have been fine if they call me these in English but they refer to me using the vernacular.

I could live being branded as a hypocrite or slut or what-have-you. But the real deal manifests when I was somehow promoted and some of the authority were delegated to me. Most of them did not take this news too eagerly.

After my so-called promotion, issues came out one after the other. They say that I am my boss’ pet, that I’m a butt-kissing bitch spying on everyone, that my boss is too lenient towards me for her own good and all those pathetic things they could think of. It even came to a point that they had made an issue out of my so-called extended cigarette breaks, at a general meeting at that. I could only laugh in disbelief!

I thought that they way to deal with these earthlings is to ignore them and be oblivious. It would be later on that I would realize that one should speak up and defend himself when he needs to…

to be continued...