Am I wrong for telling my friend in front of a colleague that her dad got her job, not her
A bit of context. Me and my friend are both 28, weve known each other since uni. About a year and a half ago I got laid off from a company I had been with since I graduated, no warning, just a Tuesday morning email. It took me about ten months of grinding through applications, interviews, and a lot of getting ghosted before I landed where I am now, a mid sized firm thats genuinely competitive to get into and that I am really proud to be at.
My friend works at the same firm in a different department. She got there about two years ago via her dad, who is one of the senior partners. She has never really tried to hide that, but it also doesnt usually come up between us in any direct way, its just a thing both of us know.
Last week the firm had a quarterly mixer and we were chatting with one of the senior associates from her side of the office. He was being polite and friendly and at some point asked me how I had ended up at the firm because hed heard it was a brutal year for hiring. I told him I had applied through the normal channels, had a few rounds of interviews, and got lucky with timing. I didnt want to get into the layoff and the long unemployment stretch in front of someone Id just met so I kept it generic.
My friend, standing right there, cut in and said that actually I had been out of work for a while after a layoff and the timing was lucky because I was running out of runway. The associate looked a bit caught off guard but tried to play it off, then she added that she herself had been at the firm a couple of years already, like she just wanted that on the record.
I asked her quietly what that was about and she smiled and said it was just for context, no big deal. I was already stung but I let it slide, and then she did it again to someone else about twenty minutes later. So when the next person asked her how shed got in I just said well to be fair her dad is a partner, so it was a fairly different process for both of us.
She went bright red, told me I was an asshole for outing her like that in front of people from her department, and walked out before the end of the night.
I keep replaying it and I genuinely dont think Id say it again unprovoked, but after the second time she did it I just couldnt sit there and pretend the comparison was clean. Am I wrong here