When you work in a government office, conflict seems to begin and resolve in ways that I never could have imagined.

In some places of employment, “fights” don’t happen. What you have are “disagreements” or “differences of opinion,” if you will. Most of the real action occurs behind the scenes, when one employee goes to another employee (or friend or spouse) to talk about how they *really* feel about so and so. There may be some blind-copy emails, some political maneuvering to make that person look bad, some rumor-spreading, some lunch time gossip…

I discovered today, however, that when you work for the government there is an entirely different way of dealing with these matters. A conversation about shoes, for example, can turn into a screaming match where the words “bitch” and “crack head” are bandied about. Things can, quite literally, come to blows. Security gets called, and hand cuffs make an appearance.

…Who knew?