Coworker not so much friend?
I just need to vent, that’s it. I just have no one talk to about this. Im making this as short as possible but happy to give more details if needed. I listed the 3 things that I felt have bothered me the most btw.
So a little context. I work for a company that has several locations in the region, and each region has a manager. I work in the main office with my boss (“the big boss”) and another guy who handles the warehouse. Most of the managers and I have been here for years. Some of them have been here even longer. My boss has only been here about a year.
Yes, I know it’s my fault for venting to someone I thought was a close acquaintance, maybe even a friend, but here it goes.
Over the past few years I got close to one of the managers. We vented to each other because it was nice having someone to confide in who wasn’t going to stir the pot or go blab about frustrations like some of the other managers do.
The first red flag happened when I vented to her about certain situations involving my boss. Stuff that, if it ever got out, it would immediately be obvious it came from me because I work in the same office as him. One day during one of her own frustrations, she said something like, “If he keeps pissing me off, I’m going to tell the bigger boss about him doing this.” That completely caught me off guard because that was something I had vented to her about privately. Meaning if she repeated it, my boss would absolutely know it came from me.
I should’ve said something right then, but I didn’t.
Another thing is that all the managers call me to vent and complain about my boss. I mostly just listen because I’ve already tried getting my boss to understand their concerns, and nothing really changes.
Then my coworker constantly makes comments saying she never really has issues because she just goes to me. And honestly… she’s not wrong. I do help her a lot. But I help her because she’s easygoing and never makes a huge deal over mistakes I’ve made. Most of the things I help her with are small and take me little to no time, but they make her job ten times easier. So of course she doesn’t have as many frustrations because I’m constantly fixing things for her.
Then there’s the thing that really got me in my feelings.
I got to the point where I felt like I could actually consider her a friend, although I was still cautious. She’s a lot older than me, by the way. Her grandma was having a birthday party and she brought it up to me. I say “brought it up” because she never actually gave me a time or place. She just said something like, “I can finally invite you.”
For context, she’s never invited me to any family events because of an issue between me and her sister-in-law years ago. Which honestly I understood. I never wanted her dealing with drama at family events because of me. She told me her sister-in-law was going on vacation, so now she could invite me.
Before leaving work that day, I told her to send me the time and place because I’d definitely be there. I even mentioned it to my husband and blocked out the entire day for it, even though my family and I were leaving for vacation the next day and I knew we wouldn’t have time for anything else.
I never got any details. Nothing.
And then there’s the thing that really made me feel like this friendship is one-sided.
I’m working on a project, and I know her husband is in the business for materials related to it. I wasn’t even asking for favors or discounts or anything like that. I simply asked if she could recommend someone good that I could contact for the project. That’s it. Just a recommendation.
She told me to give her a couple days and she’d talk to her husband and get back to me.
Days went by. Then weeks. Then months.
She never got back to me.
And honestly, yeah, I felt disappointed. I feel like I’ve helped her so much over the years, and the one time I ask for something as simple as a recommendation, she couldn’t even follow up with me. I know it probably sounds petty to be upset over something small like that, but it’s not really about the recommendation itself. It’s the fact that I rarely ask her for anything at all, and when I finally did, it felt like I wasn’t important enough for even a quick response.
Lately I’ve been more distant with her, and she’s noticed. I honestly feel like I’m done helping her so much.
Anyway… I just needed to vent but other perspectives are welcome.