I apologize if this isn’t allowed, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to put it. Just let me know if it’s inappropriate and I’ll delete. Thanks.
I’m a loner, so my life is basically just work and the internet. Two of my coworkers are among my favorite people in the whole world, but one of them doesn’t like the other one and will complain to me about how they don’t like them.
We work incredibly closely together…only a few feet apart for hours on end. Our job also necessitates that we frequently communicate with one another. In the beginning, I absolutely loved it and there was no conflict.
Now, I often get my one coworker complaining to me that the other is lazy. And I’m not going to lie, the “lazy” one definitely takes more breaks than everyone and doesn’t at all work as hard as the others. But that doesn’t really bother me because she’s a super incredibly nice and friendly person.
But over time it has bothered my hardworking coworker more and more and driven a wedge into what I would have once considered to be a friendship between the 3 of us.
It never gets to the point where there is yelling or arguments or anything, but it absolutely ruins the mood and then I hear about it later.
I interact with these people for hours on end every single day and I’m just not sure how to handle it. I’ve been struggling to know how to deal with it for months now.
To top it all off it gives me endless paranoia that the hardworking coworker secretly resents me and hates me too. This stuff never used to happen before, but know I feel like it’s all that happens.
The best way to handle it is not to. Don’t agree or disagree, don’t discuss, don’t offer suggestions or commiserate. Your responsibility is for you to get through the workday. Your job is your job, which I assume is not to be A’s sounding board or to hound B for slacking. If A keeps removed about B, ask A not to. If A asks you why, be honest and say that the constant complaining is stressing you out and you’re not the proper outlet for this. If B needs to pick up the pace, that’s for her manager to deal with.
in all cases, be professional.
That’s essentially what I’ve been doing this entire time. I don’t really respond or say much to either of them about it. It hasn’t been helping me.
I don’t tell A that I agree that B is lazy. And I don’t tell B that A doesn’t like her or think she’s lazy.
It might be “just a job” to most, but over time I had really grown to love and care about these people. They are almost my whole world, even though obviously they didn’t ask to be and really shouldn’t have to be responsible for the way I feel.
How do I alter my own feelings? How do I transition to not caring? Do I have to stop speaking to these people and stop having fun with them? I just don’t know what to do about it.
If it were like this from the very beginning, I think I would have been able to handle it just fine. But since it has been a progressive change for the worse when it used to be a great situation, it’s difficult for me to handle.