I (27F) have had a good friend at work (45F) for the past two years, since I was hired. We work closely together on a daily basis and became close quickly. She is also friends with three other women we work with (we’ll call them A, B, and C), and they have been a tight knit group for many years – going on girls’ trips together, family vacations, some of their kids knew each other growing up…I have my own opinions on how these women treat each other and feel like my friend in particular is pretty constantly taken advantage of by them, but I realize that it’s none of my business and I have never let on how I feel.
More recently, though, I have started to feel tension from these women in our interactions at work. A is pretty consistently friendly to me, but B is very needy and possessive of our mutual friend and has expressed jealousy and nastiness on several occasions when we do something together outside of work. My biggest problem is with C, who for the last month or so has become very cold toward me. There are times that she is largely normal toward me, but other times, she will ignore me, refuse to acknowledge my presence in conversations or even look at me, or even full on turn her back to me. In instances that she does acknowledge me, it’s often with that blank, stone cold “you’re crazy” look that reminds me so much of mean girls in junior high.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of our jobs I have no choice but to interact with these women regularly, so simply avoiding them is not an option. My go to strategy up to now has been to behave totally normally toward them regardless of how they treat me, but with C in particular, the cold shoulder is getting annoying enough that I’m wondering if anyone else has any advice that I may not have thought of.