To find people who like making a three act tragedy out of everything v annoying

[arabesque]

One of my colleagues does this and she's getting on people's nerves. Last week her American cousin's husband died suddenly. Very tragic, obviously but my colleague barely knows her cousin and had only met the husband a couple of times. However, on Friday she wouldn't come to another colleague's retirement drinks because 'given her family bereavement it wouldn't really be appropriate and she didn't want to put a dampener on things'. I mean, FFS. Two colleagues have lost their fathers in recent months and she's making more of a fuss than they did.

Last year her mother had her credit card skimmed and this colleague went on as if the woman had been mugged at knife point, talking about how 'shaken up' the whole family were and 'you never really think it will happen to someone you know, do you'.

She took a day off work when her sister was having her appendics out (op in morning, home that afternoon) because she'd only be 'worrying and no use to anyone'.

AIBU to wonder how she will ever cope if she has something serious to cope with and also to feel that there are people in work with real worries and traumas and she should get over herself and stop being such a drama queen?

[vintageclock]

I actually feel a bit traumatised by that typo. Does anyone mind if I sit down for a minute? I'm sure I'll be alright in a few days but just coming on top of my cousin's father in law's death, and the man across the road losing his job, and my boss's friend's son being in a car accident, I just don't know how much more I can take

[SnookyPooky]

My DM is a drama llama. There is ALWAYS something going on and she has to involve everyone and it usually drags on to the next drama. Very draining.

[StealthPolarBear]

Well my drama llama has a poorly hoof. He may need to go to the vets.

[WorraLiberty]

YANBU. These people want all the fuss and attention that goes with being at the centre of a tragedy, illness or trauma, without having to actually experience the upset, worry, sadness or devastation that goes with it.

Exactly what vintageclock said ^^

It's a disgusting way to behave and the people who indulge their behaviour, without calling it into question are almost as bad imo.

[StealthPolarBear]

[doingthesplitz]

Oh, I know how you feel VIntage and Stealth. I've just had the most awful weekend. DS's best friend's rabbit died. We were still reeling from that shock when we heard that DH's uncle was laid up with a sprained ankle and then, as if we hadn't been through enough already, the woman down the road that I sometimes see at the bus stop died.
It's just too much. I don't honestly think I can take much more.

[StealthPolarBear]

oh dear splitz. I hope your work have been understanding, and allowed you to drink tea and gossip all day.

[doingthesplitz]

I actually couldn't face going in today Stealth. I just couldn't .

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

YANBU at all.

I have a group of female friends who, by and large, are fairly sane, but one or two of them are constantly "some random person related to me by the most tenuous of tenuous links has died. They were 112 and I'd never actually met them but IT'S ALL ABOUT ME ME ME" and then the others (who are nicer than me clearly) send them hugs and flowers and sympathy and I'm sat thinking wtf???? Or they'll post saying "I heard the other day that someone I haven't seen or spoken to for 35 yrs is dead and I am DEVASTATED!!!!"

Oh fuck off, if you were so close you'd be devastated, then you wouldn't not have seen them for 35 yrs would you?

[FasterStronger]

worra - you could not communicate to my SIL that the world is not all about her. I have tried and failed.

I think if you are like that you surround yourself with people who collude with you so anyone who calls you up on your behaviour does not fit with your (self created) world view.

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

The weirdest though was when one of them discovered that someone she had once worked with had been involved in a nasty national headline tragedy thing. He was the guilty one and she spent weeks feeling sorry for him because he was such a lovely chap.....before he turned into an axe murderer

[TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong]

Strikeout fail in my crossness.

[TSSDNCOP]

A woman I work with had an entire week off, full pay, when her pet died.

[doingthesplitz]

I have a friend and when she calls around, even if you've just broken both your legs, lost your life's savings, and discovered you're the Queen's illegitimate daughter, she will still have much more drama going on in her life and we must spend all evening talking about that.

[youarewinning]

I work with one of these. TBF she has got a family member who is seriously ill - but she just tags on to the rest of the drama for added effect.

[StealthPolarBear]

This is going to sound awful but a friend once called me at work to tell me a mutual acquaintance had died. To put it in context I think she knew him (slightly) better than I did - I wouldn't have known him if I saw him in the street and had never spoken to him. Why she felt the need to call me at work I'll never know, she's not usually a drama llama. This was in the days of pay phones, so someone had to come and hunt me down to come to the pay phone.

[youarewinning]

I use to live in the village and drink in the bar in Tenerife (at the same time) as the man who murdered the 2 policewoman. I recognise but did not know him

And I was a lifeguard with a person who was convicted of murder.

By all accounts - I should never have to work again.

[doingthesplitz]

There was a high profile case here where a man murdered his wife during a row. My friend from the post above had once gone on a date with him about a hundred years ago and now likes to talk about how 'she had a very lucky escape'.

[ElectricSoftParade]

Reading this thread is making me feel a bit better.

I have a (good) friend who just seems to have drama around her all the time. But the biscuit has been taken lately and I have had enough of it all. It's just so draining and you know when you see her there will have been another tragedy/falling out/snub etc. Quite honestly I cannot be bothered anymore but still feel a bit of a shit for feeling this way.

[wem]

My mum once told me a story of how, in the last few days 3 different people she had spoken to had been in awful accidents recently (including her usual hairdresser and the person sitting next to her at the hairdressers), she wound up the tale with the words "I don't know how much more I can take..."

[FoundAChopinLizt]

I know what you mean.

I heard of this man who knew a young girl who fell in love with a boy, but the two families were enemies, they got married in the end but they ended up committing suicide. He kept going on and on about it and eventually made a proper five act drama out of it.

Some people love to make a drama out of other people's lives.

[PostBellumBugsy]

How do these people get away with it for so long? How did they start & who allowed them to get away with it?

I work with someone like this too & her bosom is constantly heaving & her eyelashes fluttering with distress & drama. She works in an open plan office & her dramas, always conducted at full volume over the phone, infect the whole office. There is not a single health (physical & emotional) detail about her extended family that is not known to the entire office. Drives everyone nuts.

At least once a month, she will have to go and lie on the sofa in the staff room with a blanket covering her because she is so overcome by some flipping drama.

None of them are ever serious either, all small incidents like her daughter in law wanting to go to her mother's for lunch on mothering Sunday instead of the heaving bosom's lunch or her own son having to go for a routine eye test or one of the grand children having a tummy bug. Blardy hell tis annoying.

[curryeater]

I was a manager of someone once who came to me in tears because her car had been stolen. It was obvious that I was supposed to envelop her in hugs and then send her off, no questions asked, to do what needed to be done. I asked her how she knew the car had been stolen (because she didn't drive to work and it should have been parked at home). The police had recovered it abandoned and contacted her. How long had it been missing? She didn't know. She hadn't driven it for ages. She hadn't seen it for a while. She didn't have a driving licence and only went for a drive now and then with her sister. Now she was crying and hyperventilating. Never ever I have been more at work.

[curryeater]

I am interested in the dynamics of who gets to make their drama the top priority of a group, and who doesn't.

In my NCT group, we all had our first babies with varying degrees of ease or difficulty or whatever, stayed friends, supported each other through the stitches healing / establishing bfing / etc.

A couple of years later, many of us were having second babies. In the end all of us had had a second baby but two; one was pregnant, the other confided sadly that she had had a mc. The pregnant one had a long-ish labour and a CS, not her plan, she was going for a vbac. Still, good outcome, lovely healthy baby, happy mother. Yet perhaps because she facebooked through every contraction, it was organised to send group flowers in "sympathy" for what she had "been through". wtf? no one else who had had a shitty labour, or any kind of labour, had flowers, and frankly I had more sympathy for the stoical mother of one child who kept being nice about us all gushing about our new babies when she didn't have one of her own. how do these things work? What is the hive-think that appoints some people to bouquet-receiving status?

[TheRealFellatio]

I know a few people like this and they get right on my fucking wick.

YANBU.