Coworker Drama
Long post - sorry.
I turn to Reddit for pretty much everything and when it comes to my job, I just hope someone I know doesn’t see it. Not that I ever give names or anything, but you never know.
Like many attention needy people, I’ve always been the type to need people to like me. I’m sure this stems from the trauma of my childhood, but I’m not entirely sure. There are big parts of my past that I have blocked out because I don’t want to remember them. I know they’re there, and if I think hard enough I can recall them. I don’t know how that works, just that there are things I don’t want to remember, so I don’t think about them.
My feelings get easily hurt when someone is rude or demeaning to me. Especially because I never behave that way towards anyone. Even when I want to snap at someone, I don’t. I’m afraid. My romantic relationships have always been the same way. I always hate when my partner is upset with me, even if it’s something that isn’t my fault. I don’t want them to leave me. In essence, I’m a people pleaser. At past jobs I have tried to fit in and sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I think I often share too much in the hopes that someone will interact with me and that causes people to think I’m weird.
I have actually come a little ways in fixing this about myself. Not in my romantic relationship, though. It’s a deeper, more personal relationship to me and it’s more difficult to turn away from that people pleaser attitude. At work, though, I’ve come to be more comfortable with not everyone liking me. It still hurts, but if I see that someone doesn’t really want to talk to me, I back off and don’t try to make friends as much. I still do to an extent, though. It’s something I need to continue to work on.
No matter what, I always treat people respectfully. I’m never rude to anyone. There’s no need to be, unless someone is rude first. When that happens, I then have the fear of losing my job added in to the mix. When people are rude to me, I absolutely want to snap at them, but I always hold back. Some of it is that I’m not that type of person and some of it is not wanting to lose my job.
Where I work currently, there have been two people I have had negative interactions with. I posted in here about the one person a while back. Things are actually better with that person and attitudes are more cordial. Not really friendly per se, but nothing negative. The second person seemed to be a nice person at first but as the months went by, her demeanor began to change. You began to see that if she didn’t have things the way she wanted them, she developed an attitude.
The last few months, multiple of my coworkers have talked about her attitude when working with her. She actually ended up causing someone to lose their job. The details were not shared, obviously, but the person who lost their job confirmed it was because of her. Working with her became unpleasant. You had to tip toe around her. People were literally moved to different positions because of interactions with her. Including myself, this makes four people who have had issues with her. And at that point, how does management not determine that the problem must lie with her?
Overall, I’ve tip toed around her and not had a truly negative interaction until today. Today, I was running the area we were in and after break, I started our machine, as we were informed to do in the past. Machines must start immediately after break, with everyone in their positions. Upon starting, I actually had to cover for someone because they were in the bathroom. When I started it, she said “Hey, why did you start that? We’re not ready.” I replied that I had to start it. She then said “We’re not all here, so we’re not ready”, to which I informed her that I was covering for the absent person.
She knows very well that this is done in all areas when someone is elsewhere. The person running the area will cover for that person until they return. Right after I told her I was filling in, the person in question returned, so I gave him his spot. A little later, I noticed that they were behind. I didn’t know why, I could just see that they had work piled up, which shouldn’t happen. I stopped the machine to let them catch up and she snapped “You don’t need to stop that. We’re catching up”. They were absolutely not catching up and in fact would have continued to get further behind. I told her I was just stopping to let them catch up. After a few minutes, I restarted the machine.
The thing is - she didn’t just SAY these things to me. She snapped them at me. Personally, I feel that’s not a behavior someone should have with coworkers. A bit later I went to talk to my boss. I’m not someone who will complain about others unless I feel it’s warranted. To me, I don’t want to work with someone who is going to snap at me like that. But, when I told my manager, she asked me if she was really snapping at me. I told her that yes, that’s how she was behaving. She then told me that she’s talked to her in the past and that she has issues with becoming frustrated with herself when she can’t do what she thinks she should be able to do.
Number one, I get that, but it gives you no reason to act in a rude manner. And two, it didn’t seem to me that she was frustrated with herself. It seemed like she just thought she didn’t need to catch up and that I should wait for an absent person to return instead of covering their spot. FYI - stopping a machine just because someone goes to the bathroom would make my manager look at me and ask me what the fuck I’m doing. Machines have to be running at all times, unless waiting for something or it’s broken. Yet my manager seemed to side with her. Is it because the woman is in her 60’s?
Time passes through the rest of the day and at one point, I notice her getting behind on some of her parts. The issue is that getting behind doesn’t only affect her - it affects everyone running that machine. If she’s behind, the person giving her parts gets behind too. I went to help her and this woman blew up at me. She didn’t just get snappy - she got pissed. She started yelling that she didn’t need me to do anything. I told her I was only trying to help and she continued yelling that she wasn’t behind and she didn’t need me to help her.
I was absolutely confused. I had not said anything to her at all. My manager didn’t see it happen and I didn’t say anything because I felt like it wouldn’t do any good. My only concern is that she may make a complaint on me and try to make things seem like I started something with her. I believe this is what she did with the last person that was fired.
I honestly don’t know how to react. If I’m not called into the office tomorrow, I don’t think going to HR will help. Somehow, people tend to side with the elderly person. They didn’t see it happen, and they make their own conclusions. I’m just irritated and wanted to vent. It turned into this huge post, so I apologize!!