Dear Prudence,
I’ve been struggling with my mental health during this pandemic, and in a moment I regret, I snapped at a coworker who kept pushing me for details about my personal life during a Zoom meeting. I said something to the effect of, “Honestly, ‘Tabitha,’ I’m not great, and neither is anyone else. Can we please move on?” I don’t know what came over me (Tabitha and I were friendly colleagues before this), and things have been painfully awkward ever since. We see each other in Zoom meetings during the day but don’t have any one-on-ones, and without the benefit of proximity, I can’t casually drop by her desk and smooth things over. Email feels formal. Scheduling a meeting just between the two of us to discuss our feelings somehow seems both overly aggressive and overly sensitive. We’re both adults, so why am I finding it so difficult to fix this situation? How does one handle difficult conversations when distance is a must?
—Zoom Apology