a problem at work
09/10/01 ~ 1:02 p.m.
okay, so i've long since decided that working with friends is not usually a good thing. you think it's going to be, cuz you'll see them all the time, but it inevitably goes bad. the same goes for living with friends. the friends-at-work thing was demonstrated when i worked with carly (should i even call her that anymore? ok, i'm not going to). jenn and i worked side-by-side for a few months. it was great at first, because we got to talk a lot and we saw each other every day. but then small problems that occurred in the work environment would carry into our friendship. if i got mad at something she did that was work-related, i had to try to separate our personal feelings from the issue at hand. i actually think we did a pretty good job with that. the second bummer of working with friends is that, although you see each other a lot, it's not quality "friend" time. it's work. this happened with jenn and i. we'd feel like we'd spent so much time together and we stopped hanging out outside of work. we recovered, don't worry. i'm just using this as a parallel.
brooke and i didn't have this problem for a long time. we met through work, so it was natural to work together. but we've become good friends and now little things that make me mad at work are bothering our friendship. the problems:
*she's decided she hates doing the receptionist's breaks. her boss let her off the hook for a few weeks and had me and sarah cover for her, and ever since she makes me and sarah take over even though she's not as busy at all.
*she complains about how much worse the copy room is now for her than it was for me. she had some people yell at her over mistakes. i never had that happen; but i never made mistakes like those. and i am the type of person who gets along with everybody. so i had no enemies.
*when i ran the copy room, i made $7.50. when she ran the copy room, she made $9.00. (not her fault, but still a wedge).
*she recently got promoted to the same level position as me. despite the fact that i have been here 2 years and she's been her less than one year, she now makes the exact same wage as me. (same deal).
*the BIG one. because she got promoted, they hired someone new to work the copy room. she expects ME to train him. because she's being trained to do what i already know how to do. i have to do this in between working on the phones. never mind i have my own stuff to do!!!
elaboration on that last one: the copy room person's duties include copying everything, ordering supplies, phones, and training the next person. brooke is shirking those responsibilities onto me, the previous copy person. i left the copy room last december and i STILL have to do all of this. this should not be my responsibility anymore. i passed the torch. she's trying to give it away before she gets to the next person.
from her point of view, i see that she is in training. she does need to learn what we do. however, she is not expected to get any actual work done during the training because i (or the other assistant) can get the work done on our own. she is just using it as an excuse because it all boils down to:
she doesn't want to do it.
well neither do i, but look who gets stuck with it? i'm getting mad typing this out. but the problem is, we're friends. and so if i say something about it, she regards it as a personal attack on our friendship, rather than a business relationship. jenn understood this; in fact, when i confronted her about it i said something like, "as your friend, there are no problems. but as your coworker, i am pissed off. there is a distinction." and she apologized in our work relationship, and our friendship wasn't affected.
i wish this could happen with brooke. but it won't. some people you just have to treat differently.
*sigh* when you're a low maintenance person, you always seem to have high maintenance friends. why oh why do opposites have to attract????
~holly~
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