I'm probably a bad person for reading the IMs of a co-worker while turned around from my desk to talk about work issues with some other people.

Months ago, I mentioned the girl that sits nearby that has a constant string of men coming by to "visit" (meaning hit on her), in spite of the fact that she's married.

I wondered about all the dyanmics of that, and how much she knew about how people treated her differently, and gave her more attentions than the majority of people at work, etc., purely based on her looks and pleasant personality.

No one else has locks on our desk rollaround file cabinets, but our facilities people drove to a hardware store to by locks for her. It's fairly blatent like that.

We've spent about a week with someone else coming into our little hoveled cubicle area to work with her on some technical issues, someone who apparently is genetically incapable of not talking at all times, and if it wasn't for a slight worry about embarassing this girl, we'd tell him to take his obnoxious attempts to socialize somewhere, anywhere else.

So, as a bad person, I'm reading her IMs, where she's telling someone (don't know who), that she doesn't think that she's really attractive at all, and how she pretty much ignores all flattery as just being a shallow, inconsequencial, meaningless thing, except if someone is praising her for the work she's doing.

The cynical part of me things that's all bullshit, as I look at the extra stuff installed at her workstation, but the better part of me really wants to believe that she really thinks that, and think a better person of her because of it.

I don't really talk to her much, since although we're a row away, we're in totally different departments, but in casual conversation, she seems grounded and normal enough. She seems like a pleasant person as far as I know.

The IM's just add an interesting piece to a puzzle I doubt I'll ever understand. Is a person really like that? Or is that just part of a game being played to her own advantage? *I* find the constant stream of visitors to her desk annoying, but does she? Is she just preying on them for her own gain?

I want to believe the best in people but maybe because of, I dunno, jealousy, it's hard to do.

Not that I need locks on my desk or anything....