Feelings of Betrayal. She Was More My Friend Than I Was Her's

Part Two...

That wasn’t going to happen. Was I supposed to go from FOM to front desk clerk? Basically an in charge position to a nothing position? I thought I’d make the best of it. After some thirty years on the desk I’d take advantage of the opportunity anyway and learn some new skills. Except it turns out that a high school kid can do this job. I spend days putting in invoices and responding to emails. I haven’t learned anything about budgets and forecasting despite the regional manager telling me otherwise.

So I’m making the best of it. Kennedy becomes a fast friend. We work together as we transition from me being the FOM to her being the FOM/AGM (it’s a small hotel so she’s going to do both). It’s a lot of work this hotel, so I do what I can to help her. She lights up my world. Kennedy is married, I knew that before I even first met her. But she smiles at me. She pays attention to me. She talks to me. She becomes my fast friend. She peaks over the cubicle at me and asks for a favor. She’s called me to inquire about something for work and we’ll just talk about things. She’s called me in the middle of the night about her husband going through something and I talked to her for a few hours. I know all she can offer me if friendship but for an introvert with no friends who’s trying to make friends I thought she was my girl and my close friend…

I’d do anything for her. I’ve been at her beck and call. I’ve been there to assist her. I’ve only ever had her best interest at heart. I’ve actually worked extra shifts, worked the overnight shift as we haven’t had an auditor just so she can be home to spend time with her baby and her husband. She has barely been here a year and I’ve watched as she’s slaved away so much so that her husband is already fed up with the hours she works here, hours she can work at home when she has to and how it takes her away. So if I, who am single and no one is going to miss me if I pick up extra shifts, if I can help her by giving her family time then I want to do that for her...

Apparently I thought she was more my friend then she thought I was. I mean when you call for work and then talk, when you trade lengthy text messages, when you call crying about your husband and talk for hours, then that has to mean something right? She got pregnant briefly and miscarried. I let her have her time but finally had had enough. There was a problem with transportation I was trying to help with. I told her five days in advance we would have a problem when I learned of it. Instead of a grunt of acknowledgment I got my ** handed to me by her and stormed out for the day like a child when I said something standing up for myself. Friends don’t hurt friends. Then she seemed to become distant. I thought we needed to talk and we did and she said we were good but she kept her distance. She stopped responding to my texts, benign and generic in nature nothing that would get her in trouble with her husband.

We talked again yesterday about my career and our friendship. She says she’s focusing on getting a new supervisor under her started and getting a new auditor started. So she doesn’t have time to even show me basic skills. This is a woman whom at twenty-nine was offered the GM positon when our original GM quit. She says she’s not qualified for the position but I beg to differ. She turned it down for the sake of family, but our friendship was such that she called me to tell me about it and I told her she needed to take the job. That I would move back into the office and back her up with whatever she needed and find time to do my own job while supporting her. She still turned it down.

Our new GM started. I know the guy. The two of them work well together. That’s great. I’m trying to make the best of it in Accounting, being off the front desk after thirty years and learning what I can learn. But Kennedy has stopped returning my texts and even my calls. Our talk the other day, she says she’s putting a boundary in her life separating work from home. I can understand, work is stressful and costing her her family. Her husband already wants her to quit. If she doesn’t want to respond to everyone then that’s fine. But she’s stopped responding to me. She sees me as a work friend only. Not someone she’s willing to call after hours. Not someone she’s willing to take calls or texts from after hours. I see her every day so I’m not going to bother her relentlessly. I don’t expect to be invited over to hang out. But I had thought our friendship was such that she’d answer my calls and texts; that I if anyone would be granted the privilege of not being subjected to DND when I did reach out to her however benignly. She’s more of a friend to me then I am to her apparently and after I let her into who I am, after all I’ve done for her to support her, after all I’ve done to give her time with her family cause I know how stressed she is, to have her decide I’m nothing but a work friend that just hurts….

She told me that she appreciates me working the extra shifts, particularly the extra overnight shift on Saturday so she doesn’t have to. I told her I know it helps her to unwind, relax and spend time with her baby and husband and being I have no one I’m happy to do it. That was yesterday. I just told her I can’t work that overnight anymore. If she wants to make me a work friend then that’s fine, I don’t help work friends the same way I help close friends. I’m not part of the front desk anymore. I should’ve separated myself. I got called out about it to the aforementioned one of two bosses. But I was willing to help her by working the shift. I did that because she was a close friend. She told me that if she had to work six days a week, M-F days and Saturday overnight that she’d have quit by now. I’ll still treat her as a friend and hopefully we’ll get past this. But let her figure things out (she had expected to go out of town on an upcoming Saturday with family, I just put the kybosh possibly on that). I help close friends, not work friends.

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