Questioning my judgement after losing a job and a difficult friendship

[Housebashing]

Over the last month two things have happened that have just really made me question things
First one I got a job after five years of being self-employed and only having to answer to myself was in an office with one person that was very much older than myself. The business owner and a young Ish girl of 30 and a very young girl of 16 and another girl of 18.
Within a week of being there the 16-year-old just got fired for no discernible reason not showing enough enthusiasm apparently anyway she was gone
I should’ve been on my guard
There was then a conversation about profit and loss and turnover and the 18-year-old who was remaining just didn’t understand it at all so I explained it to her
She thought the business was making millions and I showed her how company accounts work and that the business was not making millions.
She then relayed this to the business owner and I was promptly fired for being I don’t know what maybe judgemental. I don’t actually care straight back to self-employment. All good.
So that was the first thing
I then went out with a friend over the weekend that I just catch up with once a year and we go to a gig together and usually it’s fun
However, this time she revealed that she’d been seeing somebody behind her husband’s back for 10 years
And honestly, I just don’t know how we recover from that
I don’t want to be judgemental, but equally I don’t want to be friends with her either
But in light of what happened earlier in the months, obviously being judgemental does not serve me well
What would you make of it all?

Are you in the UK they can’t just fire people? As for your friend, maybe she’s unhappy in her married. She hasn’t gone the right way about it but it could be something has been brewing for a while and she needs supporting rather than judging x

I'm assuming the work misstep was on the basis of confidentiality? Not everyone is, or should be, privy to the company's accounts and financial data.

Which UK are you in, the UK I'm in you can before 2 years ( will change to 6 months but not yet).

If it’s a Limited company, they are easily seen by anyone. A quick visit to the Companies House website sorts that.

I think there is an age tipping point at which it is difficult to get new employment because someone in authority may feel that you are going to present a challenge to them. Ask me how I know…

I think your financial discussion was probably a mistake and a bit tactless. I would have just said something vague like: ‘Oh well they have to deduct costs before declaring a profit..’ and let her work it out. To the boss it might have come across as criticism, depending on how your colleague worded it in the retelling.

I cant understand how you see the work thing as you being judgemental? Id assume it was for a different reason, like the boss felt you showed him up (did he like people thinking that he was making millions) or ge felt threatened that you could understand the figures (no room for him to hide anything) but how is explaining finances to a colleague being judgemental.

As for the friendship, it's a normal reaction. A friend revealed the same thing to me. I needed some space to process and then I told her that I still wanted to be friends but I wasnt interested in hearing anything about it. The friendship was never the same but I was fine with that.

Interesting because I didn’t think ‘judgmental’ as a description. I thought ‘tactless and not taking time to understand either the environment they’re in or the reasons for others’ actions’.

Im 57 and I find these days that interactions that would have worked in the past are much more likely to go wrong. I am easily spooked by working for younger people, who I still think of as roughly the same age as me but they are 20 or 30 years younger. I have a specific problem about reacting with a kind of needy jealousy to beautiful young female colleagues that I’m working on. I am more confident about stating my opinion - I used to not say boo to a goose - but i don’t always see when that’s not the right thing to do.

None of this may be relevant; it’s not clear eg whether you have e spoken to your friend about your views. But greater confidence with age does come with greater risk of overstepping the line.

Tbh op i was put off straight away by you referring to a 30 year old as a ‘young ish girl’.

I have had several female bosses higher up than me speak to me like shit because i have been much younger than them, or the same age as their kids, despite me being a professional in my own right.

The work situation wasn't judgemental, but it was odd. Maybe you came across as arrogant rather than judgemental? Why are you so hung up on everyone's ages, when it's not relevant? Why do you describe a 30 year old woman so dismissively as a young girl? Then you give a mini lecture/training session to a colleague on business economics/accounts, instead of getting on with your actual job. I hope you didn't go through your employer's actual accounts with her, commenting on them - even publicly available ones - can't you see how inappropriate that was? The whole thing was pretty odd behaviour.

I'd be pretty judgemental of someone having an affair too. It's not okay to do bad things/hurt people.

I'd desceibe it as " a bad 10 minutes" and not read into it.

The job - lots of small companies are bonkers. This kind of thing (or variants) happens a lot.

The friend- again some people would have no issue. Quite a few would.

Also, the business owner can fundamentally have whoever they like working in their own business, as long as they aren’t being discriminatory. If I had been on the long journey of building up a business and built it up to the stage of employing several people, I probably wouldn’t like it either if someone I had employed was critiquing the profitability of the company to junior employees, unless of course that was their role in the organisation. It might have seemed that you were undermining their leadership. So I can understand why they didn’t react well.

The 30-year-old was not the boss, not the business owner and 30 is youngish and I don’t speak to anybody like shit whoever they are.

Mm. 30 is still not a ‘girl’ though.

Were you simply made redundant? Did they literally fire you without a word about why?

They literally did fire me without words and I had no real interest in pushing back on it to be honest because I joined the dots and if that was going to be how it was where you tried to offer assistance to somebody and that’s how it’s taken then there was no point in wasting more of my time there never mind theirs.
I don’t think the terminology is important here whether she was a girl or a woman given that neither reference was made to her in person it was on an Internet forum that she will never read so

You weren’t really offering her assistance you were showing the company in a bad light. Yes the accounts might be public but you shouldn’t be dissecting them in the office on work time. I was self employed for 10 years and am back in the workforce. You wouldn’t like your finances being shredded by an employee in front of another employee either while you’re paying them to work. You need a better attitude to keep a job really. Keep thoughts in your head unless you’re really sure you can trust the person you’re talking to (or anonymously on here).
You came on here questioning your judgement (rightly, IMO) but are doubling down that you were right and don’t care anyway about the work situation which is why I think it’s attitude as much as judgement here.

You weren’t really offering her assistance you were showing the company in a bad light
whereas the company owner was blatantly misleading her and taking advantage of the fact that she didn’t understand that the business is not in as good as position as he would have her believe.
My motivation was not to embarrass or humiliate or show anybody up. He did that for himself when he lied.

But bluntly, what difference did it make to the business owner? Most business owners don't care whether a school leaver employee thinks they're working for a giant multinational or a sole trader.

I completely agree hence my surprise that his reaction. But hey ho