Hello fellow potatoes!
I’m a long time lurker, first time poster. This is a long one, sorry in advance.
I (26f) and my ex best friend - we’ll call her K (f32) met when we were kids through family. We never hung out because of the age difference but later reconnected through another mutual friend a little after the COVID pandemic started and she quickly became my bff. She was awesome in the beginning, she was easy to talk to, fun to hang out with and always had my back. She was even the person I chose to witness at my courthouse wedding. We were close with each other’s families. She planned surprise birthday parties for me and we did the same for her and anyone else in our friend group this group consisted of myself, my husband (m26), K and her now boyfriend who we will call S (m26) and about 5 others. We saw each other all the time and we were a very tight knit group.
My husband and I announce that I am pregnant and everyone is ecstatic. Especially K, She begins to talk baby shower and nursery decor. Checks in on me regularly and is so so supportive, she kept the gender for my gender reveal and organized the whole thing for me. The pregnancy becomes hard on me, I am bed ridden and she comes around a lot, helps with anything I may need. Decorating the nursery, planing my shower. When the baby was born we were still on lockdown so she had mine and my husbands family and all of our friends in the parking lot of the hospital with signs to congratulate us even though they couldn’t come in. And helped me after wards with the baby while my husband was gone (military) and is literally just the best friend you could ask for.
Then comes time for me to go back to work, so I get a job. The job I chose is completely new to me, new industry and no experience, just trying something new. I ended up loving this place! K was looking for a new job too, and I ended up getting her hired on with me and eventually S. And this is where the drama begins.
At the start of this new job, working with my friends was awesome, we could carpool, take turns buying coffee on the way to work or if we worked different shifts we would bring Lunch of coffee and eat together before the others shift started. It was a field that took a bit of training so we would meet after work and study together. It came time for promotions and we both went for the same one and I got it. I would have been fine with working under her, but she was not okay with working under me, I guess. To me she was congratulatory and happy. But, one time while we were working, she asked me to read some messages between her and S. I had to scroll to read the messages as it was a long conversation. But when I scrolled to the bottom I caught a glimpse of the next conversation they started.
K: “it was so stupid of him to give her that promotion, and I can’t believe we have to work under her, he’s going to regret promoting her”
S: “I know”
K: “She’ll f**k up and get fired eventually and then we can run this like it’s supposed to be ran”
I didn’t read any further but I can tell it was just more shit talk that followed. I wasn’t surprised at any of this.
For context, She didn’t start out this way, but became like this with any of the groups other friends, any time of the guys in our group would get a girlfriend she would berate them and make things up to tell the group about them until the friend group didn’t like the person and make it very uncomfortable for them to come around until they just didn’t anymore. Anytime that one of us tried to be friends with someone new or bring them into the group, she would say that they were not part of the “original” group and she would find a way to block out and not let them join us anytime we hung out, especially other females. I am not an outgoing person, I was very reserved so I never tried to bring anyone into the group. I wasn’t the best at meeting new people or making new friends. It made me uncomfortable how she would talk about other people, but these weren’t my friends and I had no way to prove that she was wrong about all of the “outsiders”. I found out that a lot of the things she would say about people were not true after reaching out to them afterwards, I started distancing myself from her after witnessing this behavior over and over again.
So back to the story, I had worked HARD for this promotion and was in no way incapable of handling the position. Of course I was hurt by this, but not surprised at all given her behavior lately. So, I just scrolled back up and handed her phone back. And went back to the conversations. I really just needed time to process what she said. I went home and talked with my mom and husband about it, I never said anything, but my mom sent K a LONG message (without my knowledge, but she always stood up for me, bless her) about it and she ended up crying about it for like an hour at work. She told me what happened and what my mom said, and K didn’t offer a sorry, just a very tearful “you weren’t supposed to see that” I didn’t say anything, I just brought her a tissue and said “when you’re ready, we need you back on the floor.” And everything continued business as usual after that. I didn’t know how to feel. She has been very resentful and mean to others lately and now this to me, but she has been such a good friend before all of this. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe she was just going through a hard time lately. I tried to talk to her but it never seemed to go anywhere. She eventually got promoted to the same position as me, and everything was back to normal.
Until it came time for them to replace a management member that was leaving. Her and I both put in applications for this promotion and I got the position, at this point It was the same as last time. She was “very happy for me” and even planned a celebration within our friend group. Everything seemed great. Until about a week into my new position. We worked across a couple properties and I went to check in on another team when a co worked pulled me aside and said “hey, I just want to let you know that K is telling everyone that you slept with the regional manager to get this promotion” I was blind sided because shit talk is one thing, but this cost me my job. I absolutely was not sleeping with my manager.
The rumor was quickly squashed at work because everyone knew me and the manager in question were not sleeping together, we only spent time together during the slow times to compare reports and work on future plans in the open, at a table that was in front of the establishment. And that was the extent of our time spent together. I filed a report with HR and that was the end of it at work. Of course I told my husband what was happening and we distanced ourselves from K and S. She then texted my husband and told my husband that other people at work were telling her that I was sleeping with him and that he should watch me. WHAT THE LITERAL F**K?!? It absolutely wrecked my home life. At that time, my husband was working through trust issues from his childhood and from his ex, so while I wasn’t cheating it did cause some problems for us. My husband and I did eventually work through this, but she caused a lot of issues in my marriage. Shortly after that, someone bought the company out and they replaced all management with their own, she was not a part of the management team and chose to stay. They gave me the option to stay, and offered to hire me onto their team to be a manager, but I left that job and went no contact with her immediately.
Fast forward to today, it’s been about 2 years. S who is now engaged to K, reached out to my husband to reconnect, and K would like to meet to make amends. It takes a lot to upset me and I am normally a very forgiving person. Maybe she was going through somthing In her life she didn’t tell anyone about. I do believe that everyone should have a second chance, and she was an amazing person and friend at first, but I don’t know if this is forgivable. Should I hear her out, or just leave it where it lies? Someone tell me what to do!!!
Also ~ I love your videos Charlotte, I think I binge watch you more than Netflix! ❤️😂