You have been very good friends with a person you work with for the past two years. Things between the two of you have gone sour due to the friend having issues (going through divorce, custody battle, etc.). She would take out all of her anger and aggression on you. You got tired of it and basically limited your friendship to work related issues only.
Things have now gotten worse. The friend sits two desks away from you. She’s paranoid, thinks you are out to get her job, and things between the two of you have escalated to the point where HR is involved. Despite clarifying that you aren’t interested in her job or anything about her, she’s still convinced you are out to ‘get her’.
You don’t want to quit your job as it’s a brilliant job, you’ve been there for over 10 years and have excellent working relationships with everybody else …however, you have to talk to this ex-friend for work-related issues so it’s not exactly easy to ignore her behaviour.
Behaviour of ex-friend involves:
giving you major attitude
gossiping to others about you
being hostile towards you
doing some dramatics including slamming desk drawers, making a huge dramatic exit when leaving work (including slamming things, etc.)
intense paranoia on her part where if she sees you talking to another person, she assumes you are badmouthing/gossiping about her which is obviously not the case … which leads her to accuse you of doing stuff you aren’t doing … more false accusations and hostility received from her.
What to do? Both are in high-level positions and both women are in their 30s. HR and management are aware of the situation but there isn’t much they are doing. I told her to tag her for harrassment but my friend thinks that the other woman will just turn it around on her and say that she’s the one being harrassed.
I opened this thread in H&R cause it deals more with someone who you used to trust but has now become an enemy, despite your attempts to clarify the situation with her.
She should speak to her friend first. If you are a valuable employee and you feel that your productivity is suffereing and so is that of your friend's then it is better this is resolved first between the two parties before both get fired. Because the company will do that to avoid any liability arising from awrongful termination suit. Where is Moona when you need her? Prabably looking for a man. :(
Ignore her as far as her personal behaviour towards is concerned. Don't think or worry about what she thinks about you. And definitely don't feel any remorse over anything. But stand firm and defend yourself with regards to HR case. Don't let her attitude affect you at all.
childish behaviour on the ex-friends part. she is deeply upset by something, maybe how the other friend treated in her in the past, as in teh childish one with problems trusted her and used her for support, and now they dont have this relationship anymore, she doesnt know how to admit her true feelings as she is scared of losing face. Sounds as if this ex-friend is angry and cannot bring herself to tell the other friend how she is really feeling. i think the ex-friend is using this hostile behaviour as a shield, shes tryingt o protect her true feelings
WHy cant she just talk to her, they need to have a one to one, if they were friends once im sure there must be something there that will bring them together again.
I knew my best friend at primary school since i was born, we were born 3 dyas apart and lived next door to each other, primary shcool was great. Secondary school was a nightmare, she made new friends and began bullying me as her new friends didnt particulary like me. she used to beat me up with hockey sticks and everything...it was awful, i used to skive school and had no friends as a result of not attending school. I met her again a few years back, she said sorry and explained her behaviour. i have actually forgiven her for what she did, she was young, people make mistakes. i allowed myself to talk things through with her.
Matsui, she's attempted talking to the friend several times before getting HR involved. In fact, the last thing she wanted to do was get HR involved cause she used to have great respect for the friendship that 'was' ... but it never led to any change. The other woman would just say, "sure o.k. I'll stop it" but she never did. That's why HR had to get involved.
Mind you, my friend isn't the one who went to HR first. It was the other woman who not only complained to their immediate manager, but also the people up in HR.
Roman, i've told her to toughen up. She's a relative of mine and I know she's a huge softie. She doesn't know how to stand up for herself, which makes me so angry cause then people treat her like crap and get away with it. So now, I've told her to just brush it off and don't let it get to her when the other woman makes stupid remarks.
The other day, she goes to my relative, "does it make you feel good talking behind my back and trying to steal my job". This was while they were both in the kitchen making tea. My relative just stood there and asked her what she was on about. Of course, more abuse was hurled her way and so she ended just leaving the building for a few minutes to get herself together.
It's these mini attacks which get to her the most and it's done when nobody else is around. Mind you, she's done some antics in front of others (being hostile and rude to her) and so others are aware of her behaviour although they aren't involved in this situation.
Well, your relative gotta bring this up with her and that ex-friend's supervisors. It's a nasty work situation but the best way is to get others involve who are in authority there and can resolve the issues objectively.
It is a very nasty situation. But what about those situations where the behaviour carries on when HR isn't around? It isn't stopping.
There's a lot more crap that's been said that I won't put down here. She's tried so many times talking to her about the situation and trying to work it out but the other woman just won't have it. To think, my relative used to look after her kids and take them all out to keep them busy and help her through her divorce. Personally, I think a lot of it stems from her issues involving her divorce and a bit of jealousy about the fact that my relative doesn't have any of those issues (divorce, kids, etc.) that this woman has.
I think she should clearly start documenting instances where she is being harassed, with specific details, actions and effects. WHat happens in these situations is that you probably have specific HR policies that might be affected adversely (safe working environment etc etc) adn by her friend taking the case to the HR folks first, your friend's position would just seem reactive. Politics..what you can you do?
She needs to make things appear that her work is suffering due to the harassment and give tangible examples. SHe needs to be calm and collected. Women often in these situations start getting flustered. Tell her to reach deep down into her testoterone stockpiles.
Mehnaz, are you sure your relative is completely innocent? Taali dono haathon se bajti hae. No one is so completely evil. Maybe your relative also needs to go through some soul searching and see where she is going wrong? The other woman might be acting irrational and a bit crazy, which one does one going through problems, not that its justifiable but still but would she really go so much against your relative even if your relative had not given her any reason to do so? I mean, they were friends once upon a time.
If she really wants to salvage this relationship then she will also have to see where she is going wrong and try to improve herself as well.
It might not even be about "right" or "wrong" but just how she needs to change herself so that she gets along better with the other female.
I'm saying this b/c there was a female at my workplace whom I thought was also giving me major attitude and I thought I was the right one but later on when I really examined things I realised I was the one at fault in many situations as well, but I had never even thought that I was wrong. I changed my behavior in certain things and that made things much more positive. Everyone has a different nature and you have to deal with different people differently, there is no right and wrong when it comes to human relationships.
So maybe your relative should re-examine what exactly is the cause behind the woman behaving this way. I would think that partially it could be the issues she is going through but such animosity towards your relative could not have stemmed just from that. Your relative must have done something, which she might not even realise that bothered the other female, but it could have been perceived by her as unfair towards her.
She needs to take it slow and try to iron out everything, be accepting to a little bit of abuse till things get completely sorted out.
In the meantime, she should try not to get HR involved. More people just means more complications and that female after all is going through so many issues, it would be even worse if she lost her job or something.
I'm sure things will work out inshallah.
Irem, there's more to this than I've put down. I'm 100% confident that my relative isn't the issue here. It came out that this other woman had issues with other co-workers in the past and is known for this kind of harsh behaviour. My relative just gets the brunt of it though cause they work literally side by side. However, the other woman has been acting out like this with another person, but that issue wasn't taken to HR as they didn't work side by side.
In their past discussions where they attempted to resolve the issue (prior to HR's involvement), some of the complaints about my relative was that she was talking to people this other woman didn't like at work. So, my relative stopped talking to them in order to protect this woman's feelings and make sure she wasn't being hurt unnecessarily. It didn't make the issue any better. If anything, the other woman has been going around badmouthing my relative to other co-workers. It's a good job my relative is well known within the company so most people aren't buying into the lies she's spreading about her.
Basically, she thinks she's after her job which is why she's so hostile and full of attitude now. My relative has told her repeatedly that she isn't interested in her job, taking over her job or even helping her. At first, she used to help out with the other woman's work cause their manager had asked her to help and that's when things actually began to get really bad. The whole, "you are after my job" fiasco started then.
Matsui, she's been documenting her tantrums in detail since November and already took it up with HR. It hasn't done much expect cause the other woman to lash out even more.
Roman, she's looking into getting a new job but she really doesn't want to as it's for all the wrong reasons.
Hmmm interesting Mehnaz. Did that other female tell your relative WHY she thinks that your relative is after her job? There must be some incidents or maybe something she has heard from some third party that led her to believe that and that too to such an extent that she felt the need to retaliate in such an extreme manner?
"Matsui, she's been documenting her tantrums in detail since November and already took it up with HR. It hasn't done much expect cause the other woman to lash out even more."
It is ok..if she wants to fight for her job, after having investd 10 yrs..gets passed over for a promotion based on this..or any other perceived wrong. She could take a legal recourse. www.igotfkedatwork.com
