I take trust very seriously. It takes a lot for me to have %100 percent trust in someone that is why I value trust so much. One person I lost trust for is my friend from work. We once had a very close friendship. We would call each other various times a week and have two hour long phone conversations. I would tell her almost everything. Eventually, I ended up working under her at our counter. As soon as she took over the counter, I began to hear from her boyfriend and several other people whom she was close to, that she wanted to get me fired. After I heard that, management told me what she said behind my back and I was devastated. I lost complete trust in her and couldn’t believe she had gone behind my back and talked badly about me. After I had heard all the bad comments that she had made, I became very distant. When she would ask me a question, I would give her short answers. When she would ask me a personal question, I would change the subject. Unfortunately, I was never able to trust her and we no longer have a friendship.
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteThats a really sad story! Nothing hurts more than being betrayed by someone you trusted implicitly. Not only does it damage your relationship with that individual, but it also makes it far more difficult to trust again in the future. What you describe is particularly distressing because you had to maintain a working relationship with this person long after you found out the truth of what she was saying behind your back. What’s even more troubling is that you learned this from her boyfriend, in other words, the woman didn’t even have enough courage to approach you face-to-face with her concerns.
I try to avoiding being pessimistic about workplace friendships in competitive businesses environments. I’ve heard of virtually the same thing happening to other people I know of in similar circumstances.
All I can say is it might be best to find a different job/assignment, somewhere away from this troublesome co-worker?
Wish I had better advice! :)
-Ben
Wow, that is horrible that somebody could act so two-faced. I can imagine the shock and disappointment you must have felt upon hearing the truth of what she was saying behind your back. It sounds like being promoted must have gone to her head but to go to the lengths of attempting to get you fired shows her true colors. I am sorry for your situation as it seems you were genuine in your friendship whereas she clearly was not. I would probably handle the situation in a similar manner by simply keeping my distance as she does not seem worth the time or effort it takes to repair the relationship.
ReplyDeleteHi Stephanie325,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your post, and I am sorry to hear about your negative experience with losing trust in your ex-friend. I agree with you that trust should be held at a very high value. Without trust, the relationship has nothing. Unfortunately with the situation you explained, the only way you would ever be able to trust that person again is if you risked trying to trust her and she proved herself. That would require you to let your guard down and be vulnerable to her actions, which at times is hard for us because we feel like that is not fair. Trust is weird. Someone breaks trust, yet in order to get it back, the person who was hurt has to risk being hurt again.