I will apologise in advance as this will probably be very very long, but I want to make sure I get everything off my chest. I started working in a HR office just over a year ago and it’s had it’s ups and downs. There are 3 teams in total along with the HR manager. We all get on 99% of the time, but there is the odd occasion when people clash. Our manager is awful at times and plenty of people have left due to the way she’s treated them. She made me cry in the middle of the office during my first month but has left me alone since, so it’s not the nicest of places to work, but needs must. I would say my team is the bitchiest out of the whole office, in particular my supervisor (we’ll call her Jane) and colleague (Sarah). There is 4 of us in total including Jane. A few people have said they look down on others and can be rude, brutal and judgmental. They sometimes sit at their desks and whisper nasty remarks to each other about other people (they’ve done this to me before whilst I’ve been sat right next to them). They just think their invisible and that nobody can hear them.
They are both very close outside of work, talk every day etc. Jane has said a couple of times that she see’s Sarah as a mother figure (Jane is mid 20’s and Sarah is in her 50’s, just to clarify) which in itself isn’t an issue, but I do feel this has a huge affect on the way Jane manages our team, in particular my other colleague Emily and I. For example, Sarah has made a few mistakes in work (as we all do, nobody is perfect after all) however Jane always covers for her and doesn’t pull her up on anything, yet she will with Emily and I. The smallest mistakes are always blown way out of proportion, yet Sarah’s are never mentioned. Sarah also chooses what work she covers, and Emily and I are always just an after thought. The work isn’t spread fairly across the team because Sarah does what she wants (frankly, there isn’t enough work for all of us anyway which our manager is aware of but has never done anything about it) and Sarah is always given more to do so it always looks like she’s busier than the rest of us. This doesn’t make any sense because Sarah works part time, as where Emily and I are full time, so surely it makes sense for us to have the bigger workload? I thought so anyway. I don’t think this bothers Emily as much as me.
They have both been rude to me (Sarah more so) on many occasions, including one time when Sarah and I had to travel together for a work event. A company car was provided and left at the office for us. We were wfh that day so I offered to pick her up on the way, but I didn’t want to leave my car at the office over night as there had been an awful storm (office not far from the local beach) so I decided to park it outside my family members house just down the road for peace of mind. Sarah needed to check something in another department before we left and as we were late setting off we agreed I would make a head start and she would meet me at my aunties house. She said she knew where the village was and I sent her the address (it is literally 5 minutes down the road, was on the way to our destination and the postcode takes you straight to it), yet she still got lost.
Whilst I was unpacking my car, she had rang me a couple of times (phone on silent, my fault) to ask where I was. I phoned her straight back and before I’d even had a chance to say hello, she started shouting and swearing down the phone at me, saying she had been driving around for ages (not true) because she couldn’t find the address and why couldn’t I have waited for her (she agreed to meet me there and told me to go to save time). She said I was impatient and taking the piss. I told her I’d sent her the address before I’d left the office and her response was that she couldn’t check her phone whilst she was driving. I had no idea why she didn’t check it before she set off as I told her I would send her the details. I was so taken aback by the way she spoke to me, that I didn’t know what to say when she finally arrived and picked me up.
Once we set off, she was fine and chatting as normal. I told her I wouldn’t be spoken to like that again, and whilst I should have answered my phone straight away, her reaction was completely over the top imo. At first she disagreed and said she’d done nothing wrong, but then apologised shortly afterwards (probably because she thought I’d tell our manager). She was then overly friendly all night, thanked me for picking her up multiple times, gave me a hug before we went into our rooms which was very awkward. It wasn’t until we checked in that I realised she’d left me a voicemail before I spoke to her, and she was shouting and swearing on that too. I’ve kept it but never told anyone as she had already apologised and I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.
I’m not an angel either, before anyone questions me. I have been rude to them on one occasion (that I’m aware of) however I did apologise to them privately afterwards as I felt guilty. This will probably sound very childish, but they never apologise for anything unless prompted, and even then they don’t always say sorry. They just don’t feel guilty at all for the way they speak to people or if they upset someone. This isn’t even the issue that I’m dealing with currently, but I just wanted to give examples of what’s happened in the past and explain what kind of environment I’m working in.
This is completely unrelated to our work btw. It recently came to light that the tenant who lives underneath Sarah’s elderly parents flat is a close friend of my cousin (small world). We only realised this because Sarah had told us all about problems they were having a couple of months ago, and asked me if I knew her as we come from the same area. I had no reason to lie and we have each other on social media, so it could have easily been traced back if someone looked hard enough. It’s honestly the worst thing I’ve ever done as it’s literally the only thing she’s talked about in work for nearly a month. The tenant (call her Mia) has supposedly been a nightmare, having loud parties until early hours of the morning, banging, shouting, fighting with her boyfriend and had animals in the flat without permission etc. She has now been served an eviction notice and has to move out by June next year. Just to clarify, this person isn’t my friend and if true I don’t condone her behaviour at all (I lived in a ground floor flat for 5 years under nightmare neighbours) so I completely sympathise, however this isn’t my doing and it’s certainly not my cousins. I understand Sarah’s frustration but she’s completely taken it out on the wrong people.
At first, she asked me not to speak to my cousin about it as the council were involved due to the anti social behaviour and she didn’t want the investigation being ruined. I respected her wishes and didn’t mention anything, however she then kept making comments in the office such as “your cousins mate is making my parents lives a misery, and you can tell your cousin that”. I was so confused because she’d asked me to keep my mouth shut and not get involved a week earlier. She then said I could tell her. When I spoke to her, she knew bits of the story but not a lot, and in all honesty I don’t think she understood the severity of it all until I explained it to her. My cousin would never purposely hurt or upset anyone. She explained that Mia was going through a hard time, suffering with depression and that her boyfriend was physically and emotionally abusive towards her. Not that this excused her behaviour, but it did explain a lot.
I wasn’t telling her because I wanted her to speak to Mia, but because I didn’t want her to be dragged into it and be approached by someone in the block of flats if she was visiting one day.,It was up to Sarah to deal with Mia through the appropriate channels. My cousin said she wouldn’t go there again and would only meet up with Mia away from her home, but that she couldn’t control what Mia did in her own home. They have also been friends for over 20 years so I didn’t expect her to disown Mia or fall out with her over this either. On Monday morning, Sarah and Jane were talking about a recent party that Mia had thrown and that my cousin was there (this was before I spoke to her and she said she wouldn’t go there again) and that my cousin was blasting loud music in her car and drink/drug driving. Sarah heard this through one of the other residents in the block. They were talking about it whilst I was sat at my desk but didn’t actually say anything directly to me so I kept quiet and carried on with my work. I honestly think this was planned as they both talk every day and this supposedly happened last Friday but Sarah didn’t tell Jane until Monday morning, whilst I was there. It all felt very calculated and I believe they were waiting for me to bite the bait and get into an argument with them about it, but I didn’t although I will admit it was difficult to bite my tongue.
Sarah called my cousin feral and scum whilst I was sat there and said that if she chose to hang around with people like that then she was scum, not realising that they had been friends for many years. I spoke to my cousin about all of this and she was adamant it wasn’t true and was actually quite upset that she’d been accused of drink/drug driving. There’s was no proof that this was true, and surely if it was why didn’t the residents call the police at the time if they witnessed this. My cousin has been dragged into this as she has innocently visited her friends home a couple of times, however this has been a regular ongoing thing so I’m not sure why all of Sarah’s anger is directed towards my family member.
On Wednesday, I was sat at my desk and Sarah got up to make a drink and randomly said to me “your cousins mate is going to get a slap soon”. I asked why and she went off on a huge rant about something else that Mia had done recently. I told her I couldn’t comment on that as I wasn’t there, but explained to her that I’d spoken to my cousin since the other night and that she said she wouldn’t go there again or attend any parties there etc. I knew this didn’t change anything with Mia, but I hoped it would eliminate my family from the equation and that would be the end of it. She then started saying I didn’t have to do that and my cousin was allowed to visit if she wanted to?? (yet she called her feral and scum a few days prior for being friends with Mia). At this point, I was getting really fed up with it all and was just hoping she would let it go. I didn’t want to be involved any more than I already was.
The next day, I was talking to Emily about a funny story that just so happened to involve my cousin. It was a silly lighthearted story and as I was speaking to Emily in the corner of my eye I saw Sarah look over at Jane and I heard her whisper “that’s what I’m dealing with” insinuating that my cousin was stupid. Shortly afterwards I asked Sarah if I could speak to her in private and asked her why she said that. She denied it but I told her I wasn’t deaf or blind and I heard what she said and I thought it was really uncalled for, and that if she wanted to slag off my family why couldn’t she do it in private (like a bloody normal person) so I’d be none the wiser. She just kept on denying it. I told her I didn’t appreciate all the things she’d said about my cousin over the last few weeks but that I’d let it go because I understood she was stressed and upset about the situation. I told her it was getting really out of hand and that I felt I couldn’t even speak about my own family in-front of her (like everyone else does in the office) without her making sarcastic comments.
She completely backtracked when I challenged her and said it wasn’t my cousins fault that all of this happened, yet she had completely slandered her over the last few weeks and tried to argue with me about it at every opportunity. I asked her how she would feel if I spoke about one of her family members like that and that I felt it was a double standard on her part, and she responded that it wasn’t personal. It feels personal to me, as though she was looking down on my family and I. I’m not saying my cousin is perfect, but she is still my family and I feel Sarah should have respected that and been more careful with her words when she found out that we were related. She didn’t apologise or acknowledge any wrongdoing, but gave me a hug and walked back out. She said that she’d try not to talk about it anymore in work and won’t involve me (which is fantastic) but I’m still angry that she thought it was acceptable to speak to me that way and talk badly about my family member.
It’s caused a lot of bad feeling on my end and I’ve even pulled out of the Christmas meal because I don’t want to spend any more time with them than I have to. It’s a shame because I think the world of the other ladies and 99% of the time I enjoy my job, but I just feel that so many lines have been crossed recently. I’m sick to my back teeth of Sarah and Jane joining forces and treating people like shit all the time and getting away with it, but I don’t know whether to speak to my manager about it or just leave it now? My manager isn’t the most helpful person anyway and I’m not sure how she would deal with this. She is unaware that all of this has happened. It’s causing me a lot of anxiety because I don’t want to see or speak to them anymore and I feel like I need to look for another job. It’s always been a bit of crazy office but it’s just gone too far and think boundaries need to be put in place. Why all of this was dragged into work in the first place is beyond me. After speaking to my mum (who is the same age as Sarah, I’m 28 btw) it made me realise that Sarah would be furious if someone treated her daughter that way.
I’m still furious and can’t stop thinking about it. If you’ve got this far, thank you very much. I know this all sounds like an episode from Eastenders.