Defriended a colleague from FB. Wondering if I should tell her or see if she notices.

[AbitComplex]

My colleague and I became FB friends when I started working in the dept, along with other colleagues.

It was all nice in the beginning, until she started to comment on things I put on FB, so I decided to make her an acquaintance and change my posts to friends except acquaintances. Thinking she would stop, but she has carried on.

I’m not sure if she can somehow still see my posts through comments from other people, or can’t see them and goes into my account to see what I’ve written, but she still goes out of her way to comment when she sees me next.

So a (boring) example is, I posted about some soup I’d made, joking along the lines that “it was tasty, even though I say so myself” followed by laughing emoticon.

The next time I saw her, she commented “oooh, I made some soup the other day, but mine had white wine in it though, it was sooooooo delicious “.

Right , okay. Could have been a coincidence that it was the same flavour....

Not long after, a friend and I decided to complete a four mile walk. We both completed it, and it went on FB. Well, my colleague somehow miraculously walked five miles that very same week....with a dodgy hip and knee..
And many more..

I just smile and nod slowly when she says these things, maybe I should have cocked my head to one side Mumsnet style, but never mind.

Anyway I got fed up and defriended her. I feel better already, but if she’s been checking my posts, she’s going to notice anyway, so should I be upfront and tell her, or not tell her and have some fun with this?

So as not to dripfeed, she is quite a rude and entitled person, and has been getting on all of our nerves lately, that plus the comments have now driven me to defriend her.

So true looool

I'm another who won't have colleagues on FB.

@teaandtoast. Thank you. Glad somebody sees it as it is.
It does get wearing. Especially when colleague makes the special effort to keep doing this.

@TechnicalSergeantGarp, I don’t want a confrontation with her. If she says something, I’ll tell her why. Nicely.
The day I started there, one of the first things my colleagues asked was ‘are you on FB’ I felt pressurised, tbh.

@MammaLovesMango, I was joking about the soupgate bit.

For the record, this is the first time this year that I had made soup and we’re in November 😂😂..

It does get wearing.

I don't understand. How on earth is it 'wearing'? You post on Facebook, she comments. Big deal.

@AbitComplex are you being serious?

How about this

"Oh hi friend, I saw you made a delicious looking soup last weekend. I also made a soup thinks to self, better make it a bit different so she doesn't think I'm copying her and look at me in that snarky way again - my soup was quite similar to yours only I put white wine in it - you should try it next time it was very tasty"

It sounds like you have very strong negative feelings towards this woman, and therefore take ridiculous offence to everything she says or does. If you don't like her, own it. Don't be mean and nasty about it hoping that she will either notice and you can "have fun" over the situation, or going out of her way to tell her that you've deleted her so you can spend 10 minutes berating her for all the ways you feel so wronged over your soup and your walks.

*out of your way

Isn't the point of Facebook that you make posts and people comment on them? If you don't want her specifically to comment then unfriend her since she is only flowing normal social conventions. Sounds like you just don't like her.

I don't think you're ready for the internet, OP. How are you coping with people commenting on this thread?

YABVU, OP and you don’t understand how Facebook actually works.

You post, people comment. Both online and in real life. If you don’t like that, don’t post.

You can’t go around claiming other people are rude or weird because they’re responding to something you freely put out there.

Right ok, so I gave two examples of responses by my colleague, and both were in the same subtext as what @teaandtoast said.

Now if, say, she replied in the same way as you put @Tropicana1 about the soup, then on another occasion says she walked the 5 mile walk with a dodgy hip, then I wouldn’t think she was undermining me. Two differing responses.

And no, I won’t be berating her. I’ll tell her nicely if she notices, and hope we can clear some air. Until then, I feel undermined.

why don't you just do your privacy settings properly so that she can't see them? You obviously got it wrong if she still can see them, so do what you tried to do in the first place and stop her seeing them. That way there's no need for confrontation or drama or anything.

Make her an acquaintance. Check that she is on that list.. Make sure each post you have the privacy set to 'friends but not acquaintances'. If you set the main privacy on your page to that before you post anything, it will then keep it like that until you change it for a different post. If you want to change it for a different post, do that after you've posted it and you won't risk changing your general setting and forgetting to change it back. Go to your own page and select 'view as' to double check what she can see. Make sure you have it right, and then there's no chance she will see what you post. Mutual friends commenting on it won't make a difference either. It's all down to your own settings.

Thanks for your responses everybody, genuinely.
There’s a lot to think about.

@Cloudsaway, that’s exactly what I did. Sorry, it says that in my original post. Might be me not making that bit clear.

@AbitComplex but it's all about perception. You dislike this woman so you perceive her comments to be in a certain way, when in fact they may be intended in the tone I used.

Your thread title was all about should you tell her you've deleted her or wait for her to notice - basically you just want to tell her your list of how undermined she makes you feel, so you can feel better about yourself. It all sounds very bitter and to be perfectly honest a little bit spiteful on your part. The mature thing to do, if you truly don't just want to berate her, would be instead of deleting her and hoping for an opportunity to be catty, have a conversation with her. "Sarah, I hope you don't take this the wrong way but sometimes I feel....." slightly uncomfortable, yes, but less bitchy and far better for all involved

basically you just want to tell her your list of how undermined she makes you feel, so you can feel better about yourself

It won’t make me feel better about myself. Why would it? It’d help to clear the air to explain nicely how she makes me feel, but I’m not going in gung-ho and battering ram style.

If you post stuff on facebook, you really should expect that people on your friends list will see it and make a comment. Thats how facebook works. Its not particularly weird of her. It sounds like she likes you and is trying to chat about things.

feel free to defriend her, but if shes your colleague, then I think that would be pretty awkward. I think maybe the other option is to create two accounts, one for colleagues and one for friends and family

@AbitComplex in your original post though you said "should I be upfront and tell her, or not tell her and have some fun with this? "

That doesn't really imply that you want to merely clear the air, but that you want to get "one up" on her.

I get that people make comments on FB. I get that.

Other people do comment on my posts on FB. Other colleagues, family, close friends etc etc. Now, if they said’ yuck, that soup looks shit’ I’d laugh it off. Fine. Because they dont undermine me every time I say something.

@Tropicana1, yes I did, but being upfront doesn’t mean being confrontational.

The fun bit was me saying “ hey colleague, I walked on the edge of a very thin ledge overlooking the Grand Canyon on Saturday morning”.
To see if she’d have replied “yes, but I did it naked”.

Sorry, my dry sense of humour.

Looking at it, it doesn’t sound nice, but it’s got me down enough to post about it.

....And I don’t hate my colleague, otherwise I’d ignore her comments rather than feel down about them.

If you clear the air with her by telling her what's bothering you, you'll sound like a loon. If someone told me not to comment on their posts I'd think them a bit strange to say the least.

Perhaps she finds you Facebook bragging about the very unimpressive topics of a basic meal and a short walk a bit much?

ELEVENERIFE

Jesus wept. This on the surface sounds pathetic. I can only assume there's a big back story as I can't see how she's done anything wrong other than make a clumsy attempt to engage with you over things you've publicly shared on social media.

Which surely is the very point of sharing inane things.