Aibu for working in the same place as my friend?

[Clydethecaterpillar]

context, been stuck in a bit of a career rut for 4 years, feeling down about it. Saw a job post on LinkedIn for a role at the same company my friend works at, different department so we wouldn’t really be working together but might bump into each other at the office if we were both In at the same time.
sent job ad to friend to get her thoughts, all very positive and telling my to go for it. I did, interviewed and got the role with a 7k pay rise and more holiday. Win win. Accept job, quit old job and sign contract.
friend now tells me, she’s uncomfortable me working there, but can’t say why when asked, she’s just uncomfortable because her career is everything to her and she has integrity. My working there has no impact on her as I can’t foresee any situation in which we’d be working together. She didn’t sneak my interview questions or anything. She’s now defriended me on all social media and said if I chose to work there then she can’t continue the friendship.

have I done something wrong here? Aibu to have applied in the first place. I didn’t name drop her or anything to get the job, we wouldn’t really even see each other at work as 90% is remote. i just don’t understand.

if it was such a big deal I don’t get why she didn’t say before?

Honeslty at this point, I want to leave. I just don’t have the energy for this. As much as organisations say HR is there for you, organisations don’t like trouble makers and it’s the new person that gets viewed as the trouble maker even with proof or weird patterns to behaviour, plus in each of these things there’s plausible deniability.

ive Had an off the record chat and it went along the lines of if you’d like to make an allegation then I can signpost you to the steps… I felt like I wasn’t believed, probably because it seems so f’ing bonkers (which it is).

point is though, I’m unhappy, she clearly has set about to make me unhappy and to try and make life difficult and almost force our paths to cross when they wouldn’t naturally In order to make a case or points about me. If i push her, who knows what lies she’ll make up.

In the past a friend of mine who had always worked in public sector constantly asked if there were any vacancies in the private firm I work in, because of better salaries. I always fudged it. There is no way I would have wanted her to work there. In every department she's worked in she's become very friendly with a colleague only to fall out and ultimately raise a grievance, then moved on. She gets her money's worth from her union subs. She'd not be able to cope in the private sector.

Ultimately, over time I began to not be able to overlook certain character traits that in my 20's didn't register, and I ended the friendship. Her poor behaviours went much wider than I've outlined.

It may be OP that your friend has unspoken concerns. Could she be concerned about potential project conflicts impacting your out of work relationship?

Or yes, very possibly that she presents a different reality in work to that which you know. Strange that she encouraged you to apply though.

So we’ve never worked together and never should, there was one instance of someone for a meeting being off last minute and she, when hearing the project working group and who was running it (me) volunteered her direct report for it, who lo and behold expressed to her (apparently) that I was hostile in the meeting. I should say this person never actually mentioned their concern themselves so I’m not even sure it’s true and not made up by her.

if there was any indication that this may be the case, why not say before. Why wait until I sign a contact and hand in my notice ?

her vendetta now also makes 0 sense

It's very odd that she's gunning for you. Could you make a report to HR stating everything that's happened, and just request they keep it on file - even unopened, as a means to protect yourself should something really nasty happen that you can't disprove as you did by being on leave?

For 95% wfh, your paths (or yours and those of her team) are crossing a fair bit.

The thing is they shouldn’t cross, but she’s ensured they have. I’ve literally not even seen her around the office

Is there a referral bonus at your company that she missed out on by you applying independently? Perhaps she thought you'd apply through her so she'd get the bonus and she feels slighted and deprived and is such a cow that she's taking it to the far end of a fart to 'punish' you?
Whatever it is, I'd look around for something new. You will be doing it from the starting point of £7k more than you were on, so if you can maintain or build on that you won't be any worse off.

Oh God what a bitch!
I would want revenge and wouldn’t leave without exposing her first, surely there are other people in the company who have had issues with her as well, sounds like that kind of behaviour is ingrained in her,
Find out if she has being doing this to anyone else

Have you told anyone there that ye used to be good friends and she suddenly cut her off… things like that spread like wildfire and would damage her reputation, try and expose her for the nasty piece of work she is

Do ye still have mutual friends outside of work?

We don’t actually have any mutual friends, we met at a class once and then hit it off after being in a similar industry but no mutual friends, but we grew quite close. My dh and her dh got on too, so so we thought, but her dh hasn’t spoken to my dh since either, ignored texts etc

but she would tell me that she had to cut friends off before, ones that were toxic or brought her down, now I’m wondering lol.

i think she has been similar to other people at work, I get the tone that she’s very harsh on her direct reports too, teetering into bullying. Now whether they feel comfortable speaking out is another thing.

im hesitant about saying because I never mentioned it before, even with the allegations, I thought she might make something even more nuts up

I don’t think this woman can continue to try and get you into trouble as at some point it will start to look suspicious that all complaints are coming from her / Her team.
Anyway I think you definitely need to go to HR and tell your side of the story so that it is on record in the event that she does continue.
Start sussing other people out to see if anyone else has a bad word to say about her

Re: bullying of direct reports. From experience... don't bother trying to help them. It's thankless and invariably will blow up in your face.

As much as it pains me to say it...
Given your line manager and HRs tepid avoidance around the issue I'd put your energy into job hunting rather than "collating evidence against her" and just look for a new job....

No, I would not look for a new job if you are otherwise happy with yours. You don’t work directly together so you should be able to pretend she doesn’t exist. Do not let her win.

You know yourself that you are not doing anything wrong. Just keep doing what you are doing and trust in your own ability to deal with any unjust allegations that come your way.

It sounds like other people are already wise to her anyway. And that is why she didn’t want you working there and hearing what other people thought. You’ll probably end up being there long after she has been managed out.