Wimps of the World Unite

Ok, I admit it. I've always been a wimp. I have also been called a doormat, spineless, and a few other choice terms. My daughter says her "people pleasing" was inherited from me, and I can almost guarantee that she is right. I will go out of my way to keep people from being mad at me, or to escape from others when they are confrontational. I hate conflict.
Once, many years ago, a woman in our office was having a bad day, and decided to take it out on me. When she first started on me, I just sat at my desk and stared at my computer screen. This seemed to infuriate her even more. Then she started yelling. I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to try to calm her down, but everything I said just added more fuel to her fire. Finally, after I sat shaking in my chair and deciding I was very near tears, I got up and calmly walked into my boss's office and said, "You get that woman to leave me alone or I'm going home, and I won't be back." To which he called her name, very loudly, and took her into his office for a closed door come to Jesus meeting. She came out and stormed past me, but from that day she was nice to me. Other people in the office were shocked that I took that off her. Many said I was much much nicer than they would have been. It wasn't being nice. It was being terrified to speak up for myself.
My parents screamed at each other a lot when I was growing up. It was a huge relief when they divorced, and I learned you can go to sleep with yelling going on in the house. Maybe that's what caused this fear of conflict. I don't know.
But I've been told many times I need to learn to be more assertive. Today I did just that.
I've mentioned that I've just started a new job. One of the other secretaries decided to dump all the stuff she didn't want to do on me. The first day, she cleaned off her shelves and dumped piles of stuff onto my desk saying, "This is yours to do now." Later the first day, she said, "Do you have a copy of your job description?" And like a patsy, I said sure and showed it to her. She said, "Oh good, it says filing. Here." She dumped an accordian file, stuffed full, on my desk.
Well she was out of town last week, and I decided to read HER job description. When she got back, she found the box of pagers on her desk. This was one of the jobs she dumped on me. Having new pagers activated, changing out batteries, replacing defective ones, and keeping up with who has which number. Well it was on her job description and no where on mine does it even mention pagers....She wasn't happy about finding them back on her desk, and when I returned from lunch, they were back on mine. I mustered up all the courage I could find, and took them back to her. I said, "I moved these in here to you, because pagers are on your job description, not mine, just like the filing was on mine, not yours." She said, "You expect me to do the pagers?!" I said, "Of course." And I walked away. She huffed and puffed a little but when I left today they were still on her shelf. I felt so brave!
And it only took me forty-nine years to grow a spine!