I’m a 25 year old female. There is a serious issue happening at our work office right now. Sorry in advance for the long post.
“Courtney” has been causing drama among the employees at the office. Here are just a few examples of what she has done. She told Coworker A that Coworker B told her in a private convo that she hates working with her and that she doesn’t like her and that she wishes she would quit. She told Coworker B that Coworker D told her in a private convo that he wants to dump his girlfriend and date her. She told Coworker C that she saw Coworker A steal money from her bag. She told Coworker E that Coworker F told her in a private convo that he finds her unattractive, unsexy, and ugly.
None of this is true and it’s just causing so much drama for no reason at all. I’m 100% convinced that Courtney TRIES to start drama and thrives on it for whatever reason. She betrays people, stabs people in the back, etc. She thinks it’s funny and claims that she’s just trying to help us. She also says she’s trying to by liven up the office and having some fun and that everyone is taking her behavior way too seriously. She says we’re overreacting and that it’s not that “deep”. She says we need to loosen up. Her behavior is not “fun”. It’s sociopathic. And it’s not helping us at all. It’s causing drama and stress and it’s so so so annoying to no end.
Courtney has now zeroed in on a shy employee, Anne, and is targeting her with her antics. Courtney told Coworker D that Anne told her in a private convo that Anne wants to sleep with him. Courtney fabricated text messages between her and Anne (using a fake number and pretending to be Anne) and screenshotted the fake text thread and showed it to Coworker D. She also showed the texts to several other people at the office. This false info of course, ended up spreading around the office. Courtney was laughing about it and mocking Anne in front of everyone. The whole incident was so, so humiliating for Anne. I felt terrible.
A few days ago, Anne vandalized Courtney’s laptop for what Courtney did to her. Courtney wasn’t present at the time she did it. Anne was in the office by herself at the time. Of course, given the day’s previous drama, Courtney immediately knew Anne had done it. She is now threatening to sue Anne and press charges and is demanding money from her to pay for her damaged laptop. Anne has given her the money, reimbursing her for the damage. Courtney is playing the victim.
Another problem with all of this is that the manager has told Anne that she will be terminated from her position because of the vandalism. I don’t feel this is fair because Anne is the victim here. Why is she being fired over something that Courtney caused?
Anne is very shy and non-assertive. She has problems speaking up for herself. I feel that she honestly didn’t know what to do when Courtney targeted her and was scared that if she spoke up to the manager about Courtney’s behavior, Courtney would retaliate or try to alienate her from the rest of the coworkers or make the other coworkers turn against her.
Anne is being painted as the bad guy here when she really isn’t. She was only trying to defend herself from Courtney – who LOVES creating drama and chaos. Anne is a great worker. She minds her business, does her work effectively, is punctual, etc. I’ve never had any problems with her and neither has anyone else in the office.
I’m thinking about speaking up to the manager myself about this because honestly, this just isn’t right. It’s downright wrong. Courtney is getting off completely while Anne is taking all of the heat and punishment. There needs to be serious consequences for Courtney’s behavior. It seems that the manager is siding with Courtney and showing bias to Anne during this issue.
Advice would be appreciated.
TLDR: coworker causing problems
4 comments
>It seems that the manager is siding with Courtney
So does the manager know about all this other stuff she’s done? Like making allegations about affairs and theft and so on in the workplace? Because that’s all so, so wrong. The other people involved in her ridiculous games could probably go to HR and file a collective grievance against her. And they should.
Anne is an idiot. Vandalizing somebody’s property creates physical evidence and just generally being a dick doesn’t. Anne should have figured out how to act like an adult.
I’d stay out of it. When the termination process starts, it’s very difficult to stop. If you put yourself in the mix, it’s your job on the line.
But that said, Anna deserves to be fired. So does Courtney. Neither of them behaved acceptably here, but only Anna broke the law and did physical damage. I’d report Courtney to HR and just steer clear from her as much as possible. But don’t get involved with Anna.
Anne may be shy and doing something because of what Courtney did, but she destroyed Courtney’s property. Courtney can deal with that how she wants, including to make legal proceedings or bring it up at work to upper management.
A similar example would be that all of you, can deal with Courtney as well in some way, but so far, no one has done much, including to bring it up to management or HR, and that’s why Courtney keeps doing what she does.