Familiarity.

Sometimes, when you work in a close enviornment and you're a nice person and try to make people feel at ease, those people feel an openess with you. They get familiar with you, sometimes a little TOO familiar.

The other day I was having a conversation with another teacher, when a student walked by and "insinuated" herself into our conversation. She just jumped in, "Oh! No, you can't do that. I think we should...." I was a bit shocked, not because she jumped into our conversation, but because of the way she did it. She was speaking as if she were a co-worker, "WE should". And she was making suggestions that were more like directions from someone in charge.

I kept trying to turn it around to "Well, I think the manager will..." or, "What your teacher will probably do is..." But she kept in with "No, I told her that we should..." And it wasn't in a bossy manner, it was truly as if she felt like she was a co-worker.

I also heard that she was doing the same with other people. I heard she had made herself a copy of the staff phone list. Another co-worker saw her and said "You're not supposed to have that." and she replied "Oh, this is just so I can have it. Don't worry, it's not like I'll be calling you on weekends or something."

TOO familiar.