Warning, some mention of domestic abuse and miscarriage. ((Please don’t share, repost, put on a website, whatever people have to say on this. It’s mine and I want advice.)) Sorry for length -\_-
Let me start by saying Hubs is a saint, and usually the one with all the patience I lack for our fellow humans. He has reminded me I’m not the most sensitive person, and not always the most understanding when emotions are involved, so I’m sure some of that caused issues with our friend. This is obviously from my perspective, so yeah.
\—Backstory starts 3yr ago
Gus (34m) and I (35f) met at work. I left a position and he took it. I spent 2 weeks training him and slowly backing off from my team so he could take over smoothly. You don’t spend 60hr twice with someone without getting to know them, so I thought he would be a good friend to Hubs (35m) and I. Work slowed down, and I introduced them, and we all decided we’re buds. Gus tells us he is fatally single and doesn’t understand why.
About 6mo in, I’m in my new position, him in my old one, and we’ve all hung out twice a month the whole time. Sometimes it’s just Gus and Hubs, and I see Gus at work here and there – still helping with some complicated systems or problem, sometimes just passing on a 15min break. We start to notice just how deep his insecurities are, and try to help him with his confidence. I think this is where it all started to unravel, Hubs thinks it’s always been there but hidden.
Time passes, we all keep hanging out, but slowly everything turns from talks about life, history, our hobbies, and the weird things we’ve all seen into how Gus’s rearing was, how awful his coworkers are, how he was never trained for his position (??we spent two weeks on it??), what kind of insanity his family all are, and how his life is a hell and its everyone’s fault. It happened gradually, to a point where we were on an overnight construction project for the company I was overseeing, and there was a person on the construction team who had a miscarriage. After I calmed person and sent them home (they were in no position to do this kind of work feeling like that), Gus and I went back to work on a small bit together and I decided to open up while we were talking about past work while working, haha. I also had a miscarriage, and didn’t know I was pregnant when it happened. The down-scaled version is; It was in a former workplace’s bathroom, and I blacked out after hitting my head on the stall. Bad enough experiences leading up, I left that company and didn’t drive near it or it’s sister locations for years. (I’m a lot better now, it just causes a twinge passing by now) So Gus finally learned why I never talked when we drove near those places, as it became a little obvious after a couple years. He immediately says, “That sucks pretty hard, but you should hear about how I was homeless for a couple months.” And that’s what me really start wondering, beyond the only-complaints.
I tell Hubs about it, and he tells me that he’s been trying very hard these past months to steer conversations away from complaining to just about anything, but it only works for a little while. Then, late last year I have an ideal spot for Gus’s talents on my team, and I take him in. Little did I know, this would turn into me doing half his work, my otherwise amazing team struggling to keep him afloat, and him causing so much stress that the team feels afraid to talk to me thinking Gus will have a meltdown and get hospitalized. Gus and I stop hanging out after work, obviously, and Hubs scales back a bit and decides he is going to focus on his money-making hobbies more. Hubs gets stressed out from talking to Gus on the phone. I’m stressed out from dealing with his negativity and constant battle of “this guy didn’t do his job, this guy caused issues with my job,” and finally my team tells me he is a toxic coworker. Same things, everyone’s fault he can’t do anything right, complains that I didn’t train him (this time, I was doing this position and invented the entire program we used, and he was handed an actual hand-typed manual on how to do everything and still have 2hr to spare on whatever project daily), and how our customers stress him out. I get admittedly firm with him at work about wasting time complaining and retrain him by hand how to do his job over a couple weeks. He then starts telling people that company wall fall apart without him, and we’ll fail if he leaves. I didn’t realize how passive aggressive Gus was. He did things around scheduling behind my back that caused me to get my hand slapped (I’ve never been in actual trouble at work, ever, so this shooketh me), he went around my authority and told someone I told them to do something that got them fired. Gus told off his equals as if he were their manager, not me, and when I didn’t back up his decision on the moment (didn’t know about these tile months later, but then…), Gus took my log in information and overwrote a bunch of things when I wasn’t at work (which my superior caught and saved me from possible firing). I stupidly downplayed it. I convinced my superior to let me handle it so it doesn’t get around in company and make my team look bad (by extension, superior look bad). I’m mad.
So I talk to Gus about it, and he breaks down into a crying rage. Then he breaks down into a regular rage, then he goes home and tells Hubs about the “birch tree” at work who blamed him for their department not doing well. This begins the end of my patience with Gus. Two months later, he gets into an abusive relationship, and it ends after about 3 months. The relationship partner beat Gus, wrecked his house, and tried to force herself on Gus. Gus called the police after locking himself in the bathroom, screaming for her to leave him alone. This person let his pets outside to run away, and kept screaming at him to let her in or she would slit her throat on his new carpet. Just absolute mess you only think you’ll hear about on t.v. And this breaks Gus, understandably. We try our best to be there for him, and he goes into a spiral of drugs and alcohol (sober at work) and just deflates that rage. I had been telling Gus for weeks to get out of this relationship, and he didn’t like that at all, and told me to keep my nose where it belongs.
Something amazing happens at work, and we upgrade financials. My position is now split, and they take two of my seven departments and make a new managerial spot. Gus gets one of these spots. I honestly thought this was a blessing, he is away from customers and only has two things to oversee. I train the new managers for two weeks, and all goes straight to hell as soon as they have control. Gus starts blaming the other managers for why he can’t complete any projects, everyone is against him and his peer managers, everyone else has caused issues for side project completion. Gus poisons the peer managers and they all quit. I go back in for a week and give training and retrain Gus. He takes this personally and tells me I have nothing to teach him, as he is more qualified and could do better than I did. I take this personally, and officially/professionally go off on Gus, requesting he only communicate with me or our superior on my work and what impacts he gets from it, and that if he didn’t stop doing his subtle sabotages I would report him to HR and senior management with everything I had collected over the months (my team is the information and money beginning to the company, and Gus’s team is the putting-it-where-it-goes, so it’s easy to try and make my team look bad but there are 4-9 paper trails showing who touched what and when). Weeks pass, Gus’s team then trains with me on a change at work on policies, and they tell me they expected me to bite their heads off (Gus is on vacation this week) and how they were surprised I actually walked them all through the changes in a practical manner. One of the females tells me she was told she should expect to get yelled at over being a slow learner, and how Gus was left to the sharks after he didn’t take to my training methods.
He has now spent months yelling and blaming everyone else for his lack of success, and then had the gall to somehow come to my house and tell Hubs about how I sabotaged his career. Hubs obviously told him to kick rocks, and tells me is done with this man. I see Gus again after a week, and tell him I can’t handle hearing about how awful I am anymore and have gone to our superior. That if we speak, its strictly professional at work until I can calm down about how things have been and we can all have a rational discussion because I was well past the end of common courtesy.
That was a month ago, and at most his passive aggressive sabotages cost me a couple hours of wasted efficiency clearly on camera. I’m sure you see how important my teams and their/my work is to me, and I know you shouldn’t take these things personally, but I do. It’s the bread on my table and the thing that enables Hubs to do his hobbies, and I love the people I work with/teams I’m around. Hubs’s happiness is more important to me than anything, and Gus being that way the last year has just devastated Hubs’s heart. We both want so badly to help him back up, but his other friends have walked away from him completely and Hubs/I don’t want him to be alone with no one. How can we help him?
TL,DR! Friend blames everyone else for his life, tries to sabotage me at work, pushed everyone else away, Husband and I are at the breaking point but want Friend to be better.
17 comments
oh god there is not much else to do here but tell him to get help and walk away yourselves. he will ruin your life!!
So…he’s an emotional vampire, always has to one-up people’s own miseries, totally sucks at his job, sabotages people’s work, and makes his colleagues incredibly unhappy.
This guy is toxic and poisoning your professional and personal life. He clearly doesn’t want to heed any help in changing his ways. Why the F would you call him your friend? Walk away.
Lmfao this person is NOT your friend have some self respect OP
Him using your login information at work is grounds alone for firing him. I think your company would probably understand if you let him go. Its worth reporting to HR – he’s trying to sabotage your career.
If you remove him from your workplace, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier getting rid of him in your personal life too.
Why have you tolerated this person for so long when it is clear they are hellbent on ruining your career and virulently dislikes you and your husband? I genuinely don’t understand. If a friend told you that their friend was treating them like this at work and outside of work, what would you tell them?
Please, please take this as a lesson about not elevating friends in the workplace over competent coworkers you aren’t necessarily emotionally entangled with. This man should not be in management, and you should have known that long before he got promoted. I’m sure you knew he was going for the job and did nothing to contain the toxicity. By the time you get rid of this guy, your workplace is going to be poisoned so thoroughly that it should be declared a superfund site. I hope you never intend to leave your job for another position because this man will slander you up and down.
You can’t help people with victim mentality. Coddling them to the degree you have actually reinforces their worldview that they should be catered to indefinitely. When you finally get sick of their BS, they immediately forget anything and everything you have done for them.
I would get therapy to find out why you put up with this for so long. I hope your husband doesn’t have a touch of the toxic positivity, it sounds like he encouraged you to do a lot of this… Does your husband work? If he does, is his work at all comparable to yours responsibility wise? I’m just curious if he’s armchair quarterbacking things he doesn’t understand. Either that or you are blaming him for being a terrible boss with a nearly fatal amount of favoritism.
This is narcissistic behavior. Not even sure a therapist would help. Keep detailed notes and record everything. Keep him at arms length…
> How can we help him?
JFC! Help yourself! You have no obligation to this person.
So Gus clearly has a personality disorder and most of the stories he has told you are either fabricated or greatly exaggerated.
It’s not your place to get him help, but it is your place to prioritise your family and work commitments. The only way you can do so at this point is by drawing more distance.
I think you’re looking at this backwards and it’s leading you astray. You’re seeing this like “Gus is my friend and over time he’s had more and more problems and I wish I could help him with them”. The reality looks more like “Gus has had huge problems since before we met and the more I get to know him the more he makes those problems mine as well”.
There is no good, healthy, normal, baseline Gus that you once knew that you can help him get back to. He has not gotten worse, he has simply revealed more of himself. At least, that’s how it sounds.
It is baffling to me that he was promoted into a managerial position after the shit he pulled as your subordinate. I have to question whether you sabotaged yourself here by refusing to enforce actual consequences for his bad behaviour, trying to protect your friend and give him the benefit of the doubt in a way I hope you wouldn’t for any other employee.
From the outside the straightforward description of this is: Gus is bad at his job, unwilling to learn, makes everyone else’s work harder, makes everyone else miserable in the process, freely lies to blame others for his failings, and knowingly and deliberately sabotages his coworkers and superiors out of spite. He should have been fired long ago. If you read your post back to yourself as if it were written by a manager looking for advice on a problem employee (and leave out the personal friendship angle) you will surely be yelling “holy shit, fire him!” at your screen within a paragraph or two.
When your coworker is an angry, lying trash fire who has torched your working relationship to the point that you’re having to communicate through third parties and HR, you cannot realistically maintain a friendship outside of work where you “help” them with their problems. Losing your friendship is the natural consequence of how badly he has treated you, just like losing this job should be the natural consequence of how badly he’s treated you and his other coworkers. You cannot protect him from those consequences at your own expense. You should not try. You need to recognize a lost cause and know when to cut bait.
You can’t help someone who blames you when you try. Enough is enough, leave him to his self-made mess.
Secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. You and your husband need to look out for yourselves and your own interests for once , regardless of what that means for Gus since it’s ABUNDANTLY clear he has no problem looking out for his own interests even if it screws you guys over.
Clearly Gus is desperate to feel like he is “above” someone, even if it means tearing the only friends he has down to the ground so he can stand on their bodies to feel “taller” (kinda graphic metaphor, but I hope you get what I mean). This is why he is sabotaging you at work. This is why he couldn’t just hold space for you and your miscarriage (so sorry for your loss, by the way).
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had complete strangers at the grocery store show me more kindness and respect than your “friend” has shown you.
I know you feel bad for him and you guys seem to be literally the only people who choose to remain in his life (which is very telling), but at some point you can’t continue to set yourselves on fire to keep him warm, and maybe losing the only friends he had left might be the rock bottom he needs to hit in order to for once in his life admit that the problem is HIM and that the only one ~victimizing~ himself is HIM.
> told someone I told them to do something that got them fired […] they take two of my seven departments and make a new managerial spot. Gus gets one of these spots.
How pray tell did this happened. Gus keeps to be toxic and keeps being rewarded for it. Meanwhile, all the good people in your team are punished and their concerns voiced months ago ignored.
> Gus poisons the peer managers and they all quit. I go back in for a week and give training and retrain Gus.
And again.
> We both want so badly to help him back up, but his other friends have walked away from him completely and Hubs/I don’t want him to be alone with no one. How can we help him?
And again.
Look, people working in your company having to put up with Gus all need help. So, you need to document document document, find HR representative or manager able to deal with social issues in assertive and fair manner and make your case against Gus. By all signs this post, the environment is thoughtfully toxic at this point.
What do all the lower level employees learned? First, acting like Gus makes you promoted. Second, if you cross Gus, you have to leave the company. Better not to cross Gus. Third, if you complain about Gus, nothing will happen except yet another training for Gus and possibly another promotion for him “so that he is not making damage at lower position”.
Gus may have personality disorder or other mental health issue. He might be narcissist. Or, he might be normal jerk. But, you are not mental health expert to diagnose and cure him. You are not psychologist to be able to analyze and deal with whatever makes Gus act this way. However, you can start protecting other people on your teams from Gus.
You can’t help him, he’ll bring you down. Document everything he seems like a scorched earth kind of guy
Sometimes the help someone needs is to receive consequences for their egregious behavior that helps reinforce to them that their actions are not compatible with the rewards of friendship, companionship, alleviation of loneliness.
I see you commented that some of your desire to help is coming from empathy from your own experience of loneliness. I understand that impulse completely! I too have felt heartbreakingly isolated sometimes in my life, and felt victimized by the world for it.
In retrospect and with maturity, I see I was undersocialized as a child and therefore entered into adulthood with poor social skills. While it was painful to have that deficit contribute to my loneliness, I eventually learned those skills and how to be a person other people enjoyed being around.
Now, I was not as malicious or destructive as Gus (just annoying) and Gus seems completely committed to victimhood in a way that goes into maybe clinical personality disorder territory. He might not ever hit rock bottom and he might not ever learn.
But I just want you to know that even with empathy, it’s not your job for Gus or anyone else to prevent them from experiencing the effect of their cause. And those consequences (as in my case) are sometimes critical for someone to grow. So it might be good for you to reframe your idea of “being there for a friend” to including the idea that sometimes what a friend needs is to experience the consequences of their own actions.
You can help (yourself and your husband) by stepping back. He is using you as a sound board for validation to his own woes. Would you ever treat someone else like he does you? You sound very compassionate in this post. He doesn’t sound like an actual friend.
This person isn’t your friend. He’s a parasite.