NOT EVERYONE IS A FRIEND….

I contracted for a very large project; the only woman and eighteen men. I was drowning in testosterone… Finally, the manager hired three more women, one of which was TP.

From the very beginning she was whining about, well, everything, but I work with engineers, so I was used to that.

Everyone is different and I’ve learned over the years to accept and even embrace that.

TP was somehow sad and bitter. I treated her as a friend, even though she seldom smiled and never [and I mean never had anything nice to say about anything or anyone]. She was a real team killer. Luckily, I wasn’t on the same team, but the woman who is still my BFF, was. Just being around TP was draining.

Example: One afternoon TP and I were talking about a shoe sale at Nordstrom’s when the manager walked by on the way to a meeting, and she said in a very loud voice:

“Oh, my God, I’m so embarrassed! I can’t believe you said that!”

He stopped, looked back and from the bewildered look on my face, he kinda’ smiled.

All I could say was "what the hell?” TP scurried off without a word.

After the meeting, he came to me and asked ‘what the heck is wrong with her’?

I said my guess was she was trying to be funny. [This particular company didn’t allow end fighting, so I was being nice]

That was the beginning of a long string of that kind of behavior. It wasn’t just me, but pretty much everyone, and in earshot of management, and playing team members against each other. The classic political maneuver: ‘trying to make yourself look good by crapping on everyone else’.

What follows is totally MY freakin’ fault. I was offered a great job with a national company that would go perm within a few months, so I accepted and recommended my BFF. TP came to me crying that the manager hated her [true], he was going to fire her [probably], and she had nowhere to go. She begged me to recommend her….

Yep, I felt sorry for her and agreed with the following conditions: No throwing anyone under the bus, leaving the negative attitude at home, and no making yourself look good by denigrating anyone else.

She said, “Of course!” That should have been my first clue that she DID NOT make the connection of the conditions and her behavior.

The funny thing was that she fit right in, culturally. She crossed so many lines I can’t even see them in the rear view. I moved on to a better place in all possible ways.

Would I ever consider trying to fix that friendship? Hell no! As a wise man tells me all the time: “You can’t save them all…..”

 Amen!