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AIBU?

Toxic friend WARNING IT IS A WHOPPER!

72 replies

JudgeJodie · 22/01/2013 19:38

This will be be a long one!
Ok, so I have this woman in my life. She is godmother to my 12yr old dd and 5 yr old ds. For about the last three years she has treated me like shit on her shoe. She can go from full on buying ad-hoc friend gifts to complete and utter silence from one day to the next. In fact from one hour to the next. There is never an explanation for it, and when I pull her, most times she will tell me I am imagining it and this is just who she is.

So far so obvious. Dump the toxic friend. Only it is not that simple as we work together. In the same room.

A couple of years ago she was diagnosed with depression and was off for a fortnight. By this point we were barely speaking at all, all the effort came from me. I was treated to one word answers and grunts on a good day. Others in the office were treated fine.

Things started to get really bizarre. As an example we had a conversation on a Monday(one of her rare talkative days) about the masoods in eastenders. She said she hated corrie as it was caricatures of northerners, but loved eastenders, particularly the masoods. Cut to the Friday, some big storyline had happened with them in ee so I said "ooh did you see that last night with zainab" and she just shot back at me in a room full of people "I don't watch that pile of shit, I'm a corrie girl" and then turned her back on me.

I was baffled to say the least, it had been five days since our conversation so it was obviously said just to disagree and be rude. That was when I started noticing more and more her erratic behaviour towards me in particular. Tbf she was also rude to a few others as well but she saved the best of her venom for me.

So I confronted her. I took her to the board room and said we are going to sort this out. At first she was like a petulant teenager and refused to even look at me. Then she got angry and stared bringing up decisions that I had made with regards to work five years earlier (that were nothing to do with her and had no impact on her job). She said she didn't agree with them and that was why she was being funny with me. This was the first time she had admitted it. But FIVE YEARS! I told her it made no sense, and then we continued on the rollercoaster of emotions when she burst into tears. She then went with we hurt the ones we love and she doesn't know why she does it. She was glad I had pulled her about it and it wasn't going to happen again. Then she hugged me and, this is no exaggeration, grabbed my hand and started to skip out of the boardroom saying how happy she was that we were friends again.

Being as we were in a work environment I figured the best course of action was to go with it for everyone's sake and be wary going forward.

I was right to be wary as it wasn't very long at all before things returned to how they were. Only worse.

Time and again I would pull her about it only to be told it was in my mind, but then she would be ok for a day or two. So she obviously was aware of her behaviour.

The last time I pulled her was Christmas and she told me if I ever felt like she was being off with me I should just approach her at her desk and give her a kiss on the cheek. I told her she could kiss my arse, if she was off with me I would talk to her not fucking kiss her. This time she had been missing me off emails relating to a Christmas party being arranged by one of the bosses. I was supposed to be invited but had somehow been accidentally missed off four emails. She said she doesn't know how it happened and she can see why I would be suspicious. Then said she thought she had talked to me about it. Obviously this wasn't the case as she hadn't spoken to me in weeks.

So cut to this last week, and if you have stuck it out this far thanks!

I had to make a work related decision regarding disciplining someone. Never nice to do when you work in an open plan office but it was a business decision not personal. She came over and hugged me, told me I was absolutely right to do it, and it was about time.
This was on a Friday. Then on the Monday she was off with me as was the person on the receiving end of the disciplinary. I emailed her and asked why she was off again and she replied that she couldn't believe I had done it to such a nice guy and she was very upset by my decision. WTF!
I replied back and told her it was none of her business, and that I was confused by her reaction considering she had positively encouraged me to make things formal. She was clearly caught out being two faced and reacted very badly. At that point I got a text, silenced it before it had even finished as I was on the phone. She started effing and blinding at the top of her voice to me across the office about my phone. I ended the call and to my shame started swearing back at her. She couldn't believe that someone had called her on her two faced behaviour and tried to detract by moaning about my phone.
I told her to fuck off and we haven't spoken since. So the atmosphere is terrible now in the office. She has been telling people not to talk to me, snorting under her breath if they do and when I have asked them why on earth grown adults would go along with it they have said they don't want her to do to them what she did to me. Cheers!

Anyway I went to the boss with a proposition of moving her department to another room so we don't have to see each other and to my surprise he agreed to consider it. I didn't make anything formal but I did tell him why. Two days later he called me to tell me it was going ahead but would take a couple of weeks. This is because he had received other on the record complaints since we spoke. Don't know who, but pleased.

I can't sleep properly and it is on my mind all the time. AIBU to allow it to bother me so much? Should I just suck it up for a fortnight until she is in another room and I don't have to see her. I can't stop wondering why she has behaved like this towards me. I feel like I am going mad.

I have never been a drama llama but equally I am no walkover. Pretty pissed with myself for letting it get this far actually. I didn't want everyone in the office suffering and they were happy to throw me under the bus! I have been looking at bullying websites but it feels ridiculous to give it that name as I am a confident grown woman.

So as not to drip feed some important points.

She weaned herself of her medication after the depression only four weeks into taking it.

She has no boundaries with regards to her manners. She will best blatantly rude to people that everyone goes foetal!

I can think of at least four people who have worked under her and been the best thing since sliced bread only to be hounded out of a job weeks/ months later for some perceived slight to her moral compass. None work related but they went anyway. The way they dressed. They had cheated on their husband. Decided to marry someone she deemed was controlling.

A friend of hers for over twenty years was treated exactly the same (ignored, ostracised etc) out of the blue but she told anyone who would listen it was because he had feelings for her.

She has withdrawn from social contact with work mates. This was the only social life she had. Without sounding mean she has no friends outside of work and spends all her time with animals. Although she has recently taken up with a young girl from work who happens to be the disciplinary boys girlfriend.

What can I do to switch off from this situation? It feels better just to get it written down.

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bongobaby · 22/01/2013 19:42

Switch of from her, she is insecure and jealous of you. She needs to deal with her issues.