Our Friendship Couldn’t Survive the Workplace
Trying to help ruined everything
You were one of my closest friends for over twenty years. You were my Maid of Honor at my wedding. Our friendship had survived a variety of questionable boyfriends, lengthy road trips, and long distances — even living in separate countries at one point.
But it couldn’t survive the workplace.
I was trying to help. You were out of work and I was taking a year-long maternity leave. We met in college, in the same communications program, and you were qualified to step in. It felt like serendipity.
I love my job. Sure, it’s got its ups and downs, its frustrations, its challenges, but I’ve been at the same workplace for over thirteen years, and it’s been good to me. I started there when I was single, carefree and painfully naïve.
It was at work that I received twelve roses on Valentine’s Day from that big guy I started dating — the same guy who became my husband. It was through work that I travelled the world, exploring hidden crevices of the planet to tell the stories of people who touched my core. It was at work that I grew up, found myself, matured.
And it was at work that I made my biggest mistake yet.
I can’t remember when I got the first inkling that our new arrangement was going sideways. I had a newborn and my life was a blur — my new son suffered from an undiagnosed health issue that meant he couldn’t eat or sleep properly, and I was a rattled, frazzled, frantic mom, desperately wanting to nourish my child, anxious about everything, utterly exhausted.
I remember I heard a few disgruntled comments from colleagues. Everything is taking a long time, seemed to be the general complaint, but it didn’t sound serious and I didn’t have the capacity to care.
Returning to work after my maternity leave nearly broke me. On one level, I was glad to be back at the office, where I felt supported and genuinely missed — and where I could focus on adult issues for a change.
But on the other hand, my life consisted of fragments of micro-naps while soothing an unhappy child, caught in the cross hairs of a baby’s relentless demands, and I didn’t have much left to give. Somehow, I muddled along and gradually got back into the swing of things as your contract came to an end.
When a full-time job on my team became available and you applied, you assured me you had no problem being my subordinate. You said you thought it would be fun. You said it would work out great. And I believed you.
Pretty quickly I could see that you didn’t like taking direction from me, or anyone. And if I’m honest, I already knew this about you. I guess I assumed we would find a way through it.
It was only ever a job to you. A paycheck. A friendly, convenient workplace that you could ride your bike to, do your thing, and return home to continue your real life.
Work is more than that to me. It always has been. For better or worse, I take my job seriously and see a big piece of who I am reflected back in my career.
I admit I wasn’t at my best during the year we worked together. I went to my doctor once to nervously inquire if it’s possible for a woman to suffer from post-partum so long after delivery. I was on the edge, trying to do it all, trying to be it all—like all moms have to do. At a time in my life that I had assumed would be magical, I was struggling.
You weren’t at your best either. You confided in me during a lunch break together that you and your husband had separated during the year I was off. You cried, and I hugged you and promised things would get better. But I won’t lie, I was hurt. Why had you never told me?
For months you’d been living in an apartment on the other end of the city, and you never even hinted at it. Once you had come over to my place with your husband to see my son and pretended like everything was fine. I had thought we were close, and yet you didn’t share this with me.
As for you and me at the workplace together, things went from uncomfortable, to frustrating, to openly hostile. You resented my leadership, you pushed back, you defied, you argued. And I fumed at your audacity.
Look, I know I played a part in this mess. If the bad dreams that continue even now, years later, can attest to anything, it’s that I made mistakes too. I avoided confrontation. I was upset and complained to my husband instead of calling you out. When you and I discussed your lagging performance, I clearly didn’t speak loud enough, firmly enough, or soon enough.
Maybe you thought that, with your manager as your friend, you could get away with more.
We both fucked this up.
After a year of unsuccessfully struggling to find a way to work together, you were let go from the role. It was done in as decent and considerate a way as we could. And you fought back yet again, refusing to sign papers, demanding retribution.
We’ve never spoken since.
After you were gone, I was relieved. I felt like I had finally taken assertive action, that I had confronted a problem and done what had to be done.
I am furious with you. I felt betrayed by your actions at work, and then miserable that I felt forced into this position, that it had to get to this point.
And I love you. A part of me will always miss our friendship. I miss your quirky perspective on things, your generous laugh, and reviewing the challenges you faced—which we always tried to solve over drinks and homemade hummus.
I miss what we had when it was just us girls together, taking on life with gusto.
Would our relationship have survived the workplace if I wasn’t dealing with a baby and you weren’t going through a divorce? Maybe. But honestly, I doubt it. We were incompatible at work, and we scraped against each other like rusty parts of an old machine grinding together.
You won’t speak with me. I wanted to have a phone call together, to try to move past this, but you asked me to stop. I asked you to reach out when you’re ready, and I fear that day will never come.
Once I saw you ride your bike past me on the sidewalk and you didn’t wave or even slow down as you went by.
Still, I pray that, one day, we may continue to have some form of a friendship.
But I never, ever, want to work with you again.
