Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Advice please

I’m wondering what to do about a situation that has come up.  I’m thinking about it a lot, so I guess you could say I’m struggling a bit. This is a rather long drawn out story, so I hope you'll bear with me. 

Background:

When I started with my department in 1988, I worked with a woman (I’ll call her Mary) who had been with the department since 1980.  Mary had some emotional issues...she was nice most of the time, but she could be a bit paranoid.  She often thought people were against her or didn’t like her.  But she and I got along fine, and I considered her a friend.

Around 1996, another woman came to work with us (I’ll call her Beth), and Mary and Beth hit it off.   They became extremely close, actually the three of us would do a lot of stuff together.  However, Beth had many emotional issues herself and was a bit unreliable.  Turned out she was not suited for the job, and she ended up leaving our department after about a year.  Since she and I were friends too, we stayed in touch, although sometimes it was hard because she could be so flaky.

In 1998, a supervisory position opened up in our department, and several people applied for it, including Mary and me.  It was a competitive process involving testing, interviews, etc.  Mary thought that since she had been with the department longer, she should get the job.  Instead, I was offered the position.

Mary was devastated and angry at everyone, but especially me.  She felt that she deserved the position, but for some reason I was being shown favoritism.  She told me that I must have done something unethical to get the position.  She even implied that I had … uh…used my feminine wiles to get the job.   Which was ridiculous, but as I said, she could be paranoid.  From that time on, she gave me the silent treatment.  She would only respond to me when necessary, and then in very terse terms.  Yes, no, etc.  She didn’t work for me, so for the most part I could avoid having to deal with her directly; but our cubicles were right next to each other, and the negative energy emanating from her caused me a great amount of stress.  Sometimes I could even hear her talk about me on the phone, and she wasn't even careful about whether I could hear what she was saying.  She'd say things like "...it's too bad you can't trust someone you thought was your friend."  I don't know who she was talking to, but it was pretty obvious she was talking about me.  This went on for two years until Mary retired in 2000.  She moved to the other side of the state and we had no contact after that.  That was just fine with me...I was just so relieved to not be subjected to her moods.

I still had contact with Beth, but it was pretty sporadic.  She lived near me, so we would occasionally walk our dogs together.  She was still off-and-on friends with Mary too, and Beth would tell me how Mary was still furious with me, how I had stabbed her in the back, and what an awful person I was.  

In 2008, Beth moved (without me even knowing) and I had no idea what had happened to her.  She didn’t answer emails or phone calls. I never could figure out where she went, but had heard rumors that she had moved to Oregon. 

Fast forward to 2011. Beth passed away unexpectedly at the age of 58, officially of a heart attack, but who knows...   Unbeknownst to me, turned out she had been living in an apartment not too far from my office.  I was on vacation at the time she died, so I didn’t hear about it until I got back from vacation, by that time the funeral was over.  Since we weren’t close anymore, I wasn’t really too upset and didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Fast forward again to yesterday.  I got a voice message from Mary who said she had been trying to get in touch with Beth, and when she was looking on line trying to locate her, she saw that Beth had passed away in 2011.  In her voice mail, she sounded very upset and wanted to know what had happened and asked me to call her.

So, after such a long drawn out story, my question is…What should I do?  Her call has brought up some strong feelings about how she treated me.  Should I call and tell her what happened to Beth and just leave it at that?  Or do I bring up, 14 years later, how cruel she was to me?  Or do I just chalk it up to her emotional instability and let bygones be bygones?

Any thoughts or input would be appreciated. 

6 comments:

  1. Hmm. I see your dilemma, Grace. I would be tempted simply let bygones be bygones and let it go. There's been a lot of water under the bridge in 15 years.

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  2. Do you have an e-mail address for Mary? Having been in a similar situation, my guard would also be up.

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  3. Personally, I would not call her and I would let her discover what happened to the friend you lost contact with years ago on her own. It isn't like you have any inside information and Mary hasn't been a friend to you so why put yourself through the unneeded stress of talking to her. If you do call, I would keep it brief and to that point (that you are sorry but you don't know the details as you haven't been in contact with Beth for a great number of years.)

    *hugs*

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  4. If I had an email, I would message her that way... if not I would call her but I would not let her treat me poorly... you did absolutely nothing wrong, this is all her issue. I hope whatever you choose eases your mind :)

    I am writing my email to you ... I should have one out to you shortly :)

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    1. Hi Grace, I am still writing it, I had a couple of things come up but I will get it finished and sent off sonn :)

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  5. Wow, an email for me would be the way to go too. If you do have to talk to her, I think I would treat it business professional. The truth is that the people who hurt us long ago will never understand exactly what they did, and in most cases they are certainly not sorry for it. There is no going back. So, going forward I would treat her request like an old coworker from the past that you have no interest in establishing a connection with. So... if she calls again, call her back with "I only have a minute, but how can I help you? This is the only information I have" and then go quickly if you can. Good luck with that!

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