What you are about to read may come off as paranoia, but I swear, it’s all true.
I have worked at my current job for seven months. When I arrived, I met a girl, oh, let’s call her “Amy”. Amy seemed like a nice girl at first. She is short like me, and was pretty friendly and flirtatious with customers. We confided in one another, and eventually I learned that she had a drug habit. She smoked and snorted heroin in the bathroom, and also regularly smoked pot at work, after the door was locked. It didn’t affect her work much, so I, being a “live-and-let-live” person, didn’t do or say anything about it.
A month ago, after she decided to give notice that she was quitting to go traveling at the end of March, everything went to hell. I spent one shift slacking off a little, caught shit for it when Amy complained to management, and afterwards I apologized and changed my behaviour. I’ve worked like a dog, and taken initiative on every shift since. Amy spent the next shift when she was scheduled to work not clocked in, not in uniform, but sitting in the office of the restaurant doing drugs with her friend, who is not an employee. I complained about this to management, mostly because I was stuck in the store for an extra two hours (for which I wasn’t paid, btw), doing her work for her. If I was going to get creamed for having a bad night, why shouldn’t she?
She went OFF on me. She told me that I had betrayed her, that I owed her because when I was taking longer to train than they’d thought and they were thinking about letting me go, she’d stuck up for me. She said that the owner had decided to lay her off two weeks early because he was tired of all the politicking that had been going on, which Amy blamed ME for. She told me that she no longer considered us friends. I felt awful about this. Afterwards, she told me that management had said they were glad that Amy had told me off, because I was “always bitching about my co workers”. Amy also claimed that two employees (who were perfectly civil to my face) had problems with me and had complained to management. That particular issue turned out to be a misunderstanding that we resolved face to face without any involvement from management at all.
Now, I have said exactly three bad things about my co-workers to other employees at my store: I described an undertrained employee as being “less useful than a sack of potatoes” during a rush, I told on Amy for uber-slacking, and I tattled (and I regret it now) that another employee lied to cover for Amy when she slacked. So now you can judge management’s alleged comment for whatever it’s worth.
I am beginning to suspect that Amy has been doing all the behind-the-back talking and the other people she fingered (including the two who had issues with me) were innocent. I am starting to think that Amy has been playing head games with me for a long time, and using me as a pawn. I know a few things about her. She has a pathological desire to be universally liked. She will tell two different versions of a story to two different people, according to what she thinks they want to hear, and not just in innocent situations either. I know lots of people “spin” things, but there is a big difference between spinning to spair someone’s feelings, and spinning something to CYA while throwing someone else to the wolves (no matter what Emmanuel Kant says. I ignore his usually excellent conclusions on this particular subject). Amy would claim to me that “[management] can’t even yell at me. I can do anything.” But then if she got a talking-to, she’d lash out at me. I started to wonder; If they never discipline her, what is there for her to be upset about?
Last night, Amy showed up at the store just before closing time. I was not there for most of her visit. She had bought food somewhere else, and was sitting there, eating it when I came upstairs to lock the door for the night. She is still working for our company, at another location for the week, so since she is still an employee of the owner, I didn’t shoo her out at closing like I would have anyone else in the store at closing time. I had a few fries, chatted for maybe five minutes, probably less, then went back downstairs to mop the kitchen floor. I was downstairs for the rest of her visit.
This morning, management called me to tell me that $500 had been stolen from the safe upstairs, at some time during the business day. I do not know the combination. As far as I know, the only people who do are management and the owner. It is possible that Amy could have figured out the combo, or gotten a higher-up to confide it to her. She’s very good at manipulating people.
Also, the past two nights, when I was the main closer at the store and she was nowhere to be found, the cash has been over instead of under for the first time in two weeks.
So far, she has smeared me, hurt my feelings and made me feel guilty, endangered my relationship with management and co-workers, and possibly stolen from the cash, specifically on a night when she knew I was the one responsible for the store.
And I still gave her $20 towards her trip money. :mad:
