real life mean girls at work

Hi everyone,

First of all, I want to say that I don’t do drama — I have neither the time nor the energy for it. With that said, I genuinely can’t understand how grown women can behave the way I’ve experienced.

Through mutual friends/family, I heard that an acquaintance was going on maternity leave and that her office was struggling to find someone they could trust. They had a bad experience during her previous maternity leave and didn’t want to hire a stranger. I wasn’t actively looking for a job, but I also didn’t have official employment at the time. As a mom of two, I thought I’d be happy to help for the 6–12 months she’d be away.

For the first month, while working alongside both women, I was only allowed to watch. I wasn’t allowed to physically help, which was difficult because I learn best by doing. Still, I wrote everything down in a notebook as a reference. When I was finally allowed to start doing actual work, I naturally made a few mistakes. One of them was forgetting to scan a single proof-of-delivery docket and accidentally marking it as scanned — not exactly the end of the world.

But the two women, who are also close friends outside work, started discussing the mistake in their native language right in front of me. How do I know? My husband is from the same country, and I understand the language fairly well — and they know this.

Now that the pregnant colleague is on maternity leave, it’s just the two of us, and the passive-aggressive behaviour hasn’t stopped. She tells me the boss is unhappy that I finish an hour early (which he offered because I live 40 km away) and that he’s upset I don’t finish work from home after collecting my kids. I doubt that — if something was an issue, I’m sure my boss, a grown man in his 60s, could say it to me directly instead of sending the message through her.

She also doesn’t CC me on emails, which leads to duplicated work because I’m unaware of what’s already been done. We’re supposed to CC the office email on everything — usually. She double-checks everything I discuss with the boss, almost as if she’s trying to catch me out or undermine me. And she’s blamed me for mistakes that are clearly hers, even though I’ve completed my part correctly.

What frustrates me the most is that I took this job to help them out. I knew it wouldn’t be permanent, and I stepped in with the best intentions. With the amount of workload there is, if I left tomorrow, she would struggle — that’s just the reality. So how can someone be so disrespectful to a person who offered a helping hand?

I’m exhausted. The boss has hinted at a permanent role, but for the sake of my mental health, I will have to decline. I’ll explain the reasons on my last day. Only another six months to go.

Thanks for reading, and thank you in advance for your comments.