Complicated nightmare work situation.....

[tkip]

Try to make this brief. I was friends with 2 women at work. Both are cousins. You can probably see what's coming already. I confided in one that I had concerns about her younger cousin. Stuff along the lines of behaviour in general and loose attitudes towards sex.

Her cousin has bragged about this at work on occasion.

I know and she knows that her cousin sleeps around especially on vacations with strange men usually when there is alcohol involved. She is extremely bratty, self asborbed, plays men like crazy and tries to get freebies out of them and acts badly at work in general.

Been suspended and kicked off her floor. Lots of trash talking, swearing in general. Anyway. So recently, I found out my younger co-worker was planning on taking off for South America to teach. Funny thing is that her english skills are non-existant. She can't spell or put a sentence together properly on paper.

I really started to worry about the trouble she could get into since I KNOW about her reckless nature and attempts to take advantage of men. So I confided in her cousin about my concerns and she gave me advice. I know, not the best idea in the world.

I obviously learned something this week. Keep your mouth shut, let people make their own mistakes and just nod your head or leave the room.

A couple of days later, the 3 of us are on diner break and I tell then about something disturbing that happened to a friend I knew years ago. (my friend had worked as a bartender at a local strip club to pay her nursing tutition and one night was verbally attacked by cops in the lot as she left the club)

We argued and it became intense. To be honest I've becoming increasingly frustrated with the crap coming out of their mouths leading up to this....

My co-worker insisted that my friend or any women working there had it coming and this is what you get for working in a whorehouse. I bolted from the room in disgust. She talks just as bad as her cousin. Get them together and its pretty foul language that comes out.

She was cool to me later on and my younger friend told me I was out of line and it was all my fault. She also 100% supported what her cousin had said which is funny since she herself suffered the exact same treatment clubbing this summer.

Standing in line with her friends and a few guys called them whores for what they were wearing out of nowhere. Nasty comments were made to them. She was outraged, insulted and humilated.

I fumed at home and sent messages to her online about her cousin's bad behaviour and the insult to my friend and she finally cracked. Informed me that I was completely wrong, my friend had it coming and that she knew I had ratted on her to her cousin about my "concerns".

The rest is history. Obviously we're not friends anymore and while I know I created this situation, both women ratted me out when they were pissed.

Question..........

Who's wrong and right in this scenerio? Friends are telling me I was stupid for talking with the older cousin but think both women are trash anyway. And it was pointed out that what they did was no different what I did. Basically we all ratted each other out because of anger.

In the end, we all acted badly but for different reasons........ Does this make sense?

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

It's late and I'm *really* drunk while posting this, so I don't know what else to say and I don't know who's wrong and who's right except to say that you should've gotten a threesome when you had the chance.

 

[tkip]

That is funny.......

But while the younger cousin is quite cute her cousin is..... not easy on the eyes. Wasn't going to happen. They don't think I'm hot anyway...

 

[AndreaPalladio]

It's a nightmare situation of your own creation. Who your co-workers sleep with is no business of yours. And if you don't want your co-worker's comments about your life or that of their friends, don't ask for their opinion.

 

[tkip]

True......

Except when you go bragging around work about it and people talk behind your friend's back, it doesn't look right. She never knew this. And to be blunt, these two on more occasions than I can count have talked about people's pesonal lives when others aren't around.

When the older cousin wasn't around, the other was making comments to me and others. And I know that when I wasn't around, they were talking about me too. Oh well. I learned a lesson. Not sure how this is going to go over at work though. They're going to bad mouth me no doubt.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Where about in South America?

 

[tkip]

That's the funny thing....

She's leaving in Jan and still hasn't picked a place yet.

She doesn't seem to know where she where she will be going. Another reason I was concerned. One more thing. I had another friend tell me about how she was raped last year when she hooked up with guy she had just met that night. This might explain my reasoning for approaching the other cousin more.

 

[AndreaPalladio]

Except when you go bragging around work about it and people talk behind your friend's back, it doesn't look right. She never knew this. And to be blunt, these two on more occasions than I can count have talked about people's pesonal lives when others aren't around.

When the older cousin wasn't around, the other was making comments to me and others. And I know that when I wasn't around, they were talking about me too. Oh well. I learned a lesson. Not sure how this is going to go over at work though. They're going to bad mouth me no doubt.

Who your co-workers sleep with, and who they talk about sleeping with, and how they look because of it, is none of your business. Work is for work. If other people want to spend their workday gossiping, that doesn't mean you have to.

 

[ITcomputer]

I'm confused, Did Mr. Roper find out that Jack was gay?

 

[Urban Shocker]

They say Paraguay can be nice at this time of the year. She'll catch their summer ( and goodness knows what else ) if she goes now, though it's also the rainy season in the east.

 

[Hypnotoad]

That's the dicey thing about building interpersonal relationship with co-workers - you need to understand that there are different boundaries than with real life friends even if you work in a very social setting (say a resturant or club or something) Aside from the characterization that these girls are complete idiots (very unsure of where you work if her attitude and skills are so poor and she's not fired), AP is 100% right - it is none of your business who these girls sleep with, even if she blabs to everyone at work about it.

So I'm not saying she's wrong for getting all huffy about something completely ridiculous. And I'm not saying you're wrong for having an opinion. However, neither of parties involved sound right to me based on, what I would call, the use of extremely poor judgement.

Furthermore, I'm not convinced this qualifies as a nightmarish work situation. It is gossip and interpersonal relationships disolving - nothing to do with work.

 

[Jdot]

Never give women your opinion. It always ends up badly.

 

[Jonny5]

I don't think you did anything wrong per se.
I have no issue with commenting on someone's public behaviour to someone else. Only if you're two faced about it and when you're with them in person and suggest their behaviour is the opposite of what you really think is it wrong. For example, if when the girl told her stories about drunken hook-ups you laughed with her and never mentioned you thought it was bad, then went to her cousin and complained about it, that's wrong.

The only question I have is why did your argument blow up the way it did? It sounds like they were way too immature to deal with the situation. I think your nightmare ended when your friendship with them did.

 

[tkip]

It kind of complicated....

I did try to drop hints about the dangers of women sleeping around with strangers (after hearing her stories at work/outside work) long before I went to her cousin. I would try to give examples of what can happen regarding personal safety and so forth. Of course, to no avail.

I only went to her cousin as a last resort because I knew she wouldn't listen and was going to throw herself into dangerous situations. Especially with the way she plays men and tries to exploit them.

For example with men at work. Bear in mind, our work is a huge organization with thousands of workers under one roof. So this isn't occuring within a small office on one floor. Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig department......

She did this with a guy at work in front of some of us. She went out with him only to get a free meal but bragged to us about this and when he found out at diner (she actually tried to dump the poor dude after ordering her meal) he made her pay her share of the meal and she freaked out.

She reacted by calling him a long list of names that I won't mention here. I tried to point out (not very bright am I) the why's of his actions and she actually admitted to understanding why he was upset and how diner ended but she insisted she was right to be upset and act the way she did. Her logic.

I think you get the general idea of what she's like. Its no secret how she deals with men and some of us on the sidelines could see where this was heading. Some guy is going to react very badly at some point. So my concern is two-fold.

So................... here is the younger one about to take off for a continent on her own with these wonderful traits and attitudes and I personally knew of someone who was assaulted when she wandered off with a strange guy and yeah, that's when I approached the older one.

The big bang occured when a couple of days later afte confirrming my fears to the the older one that she and I got into a heated argument about something that had happened to a friend of mine years ago (mentioned in my opening post).

It was only after telling the younger one online about how I was really upset at her cousin about what she had said that she became upset and ratted me out to the other one who then ratted me out to the younger one.

So....... Follow? This is how it went down. And one last thing...... This cousin who is furious at me for talking with her cousin behind her back had also come to me on several occasions prior and talked about her cousin's lousy behaviour.

Whew!!! That's quite the drama unfolding here. To be honest, in the end I learned to keep your mouth shut and and let people endanger their lives on their own. End of story...... Hope this was entertaining.....

 

[Hypnotoad]

Whew!!! That's quite the drama unfolding here. To be honest, in the end I learned to keep your mouth shut and and let people endanger their lives on their own. End of story...... Hope this was entertaining.....

"Keeping you mouth shut" should be just one of the lessons learned. You might want to also keen in mind the level in involvement/intervention you have with coworkers. Interpersonal relationships at work, even if 'big department' are key component of any job. What you haven't demonstrated here is your ability to manage this skill.

Also, instead of stating that you should let people endanger their lives, you should mention that it is important to let people 'live their lives' - a less values-laden comment.