My entitled Toxic coworker is constantly trying to get me in trouble with my boss as she is constantly complaining about how I do my job and has even gone as far as taking secret photos of me that she is sharing with my boss just to try and prove that I'm not doing my job and now I feel completely overwhelmed and I'm considering quitting my job because at this point I seriously don't know what to do. Here's what happened.
I'm a 25-year-old female, and I started what I thought was my dream job in December. It was honestly amazing until about a month ago, when I was switched to working closely with another coworker who we will call Janice. Janice is not her real name. She very quickly started having problems with a job I was doing. For example, she would get upset about me not cleaning something thorough enough, or not maintaining our assigned area to her standards, which she never even communicated to me by the way, as well as a variety of miscommunications.
such as when she told me that she was going to take care of a task, and I didn't realize that she actually wanted me to help her finish up after I was done with what I was doing. Janus never directly told me that she was upset, but instead I just got pulled into a meeting one day with my boss, and he
She told me everything that was going on, and honestly I was a bit blindsided by this. As I thought I was doing a good job up until that point, and she had given me no indication that she was unhappy with the job I was doing. To be completely fair, a lot of these concerns were legitimate criticisms, which I have done my best to learn from and not repeat those mistakes. However, Janice has since started reporting every imperfection in my work to my boss.
Some of these issues have included an area getting dirty again, which is faster than she thought it should after I cleaned it up. And I even asked her if it was good when I was done, and she said yes, and she also just keeps complaining about stuff being dirty or not up to her standards. And just to be clear, I am constantly checking in with her whenever we are working together, asking if I had done things correctly, or if she would rather I do things differently,
and she always told me that I was good. Last week, I was working with one of my co-workers who we will call Carl, who is also fairly new, but has been here slightly longer than I have, and I was working with them on a large project that involved heavy lifting outside on a hot day. For reference, we live in Florida, so it's already pretty warm here. After working for a little over an hour, we took a breather to go to the bathroom and drink some water. Now, this was all during one of the allotted break times that we are all entitled to, and it couldn't have taken us longer than 15 minutes.
While drinking water and making small talk, we noticed Janice stick her head around the corner, hold up her phone, and take a picture of us. She did this again about five minutes later, after which we decided to cut our break short. She wasn't even trying to hide it or anything. It was almost like she waited for us to stop working, just so she could take pictures of us slacking off. I just don't know what to do anymore.
I'm so terrified to stop working for even a second. I'm scared to go to the bathroom except on my lunch break. In fact, whenever I'm left to work in private, I just break down in tears because I'm so stressed by this pressure to be perfect. Some of my other coworkers have started treating me differently than before simply because they know that Janice doesn't like me. Carl reported the picture taking to our boss, but I don't think anything will come of it because Janice has been here for so long. She's practically untouchable.
I've started applying to some other jobs, but leaving this job would be a huge step backwards in my career, and would also mean a pay cut that I haven't budgeted for. I guess I just want to know if all of these things are just normal bumps in the road that will eventually pass, or if I should start making my exit plan, because right now I seriously don't know what to do. Okay, first and foremost, Janice is a very toxic co-worker.
She's clearly trying to get you in trouble, and she obviously feels threatened by you in some kind of way. And she's obviously trying to get you fired or in trouble with management, and I can guarantee you if you continue to say nothing, then this kind of behavior will keep going. Like, she's not gonna stop anytime soon. She is going to keep taking secret photos of you, and she's gonna do everything she can to make your life a living nightmare. Like, she basically has you wrapped around her finger. You are literally under her thumb for cleaning things up and doing things perfectly, but she is not your boss. You don't have to do all that.
She's only doing that so she can have some kind of control over your employment. So if I was in your shoes, there's no way I would quit my job. I would go to my boss and tell them immediately what's going on, and then I would keep going until this behavior stops. Like, she can't just follow you around and take pictures of you instead of doing her own job. And when you say that she's untouchable because she's been there so long, trust me, that means nothing when she's doing something like this.
I've learned in my own life that anybody can be fired for literally any reason. I mean, I've seen people who have worked for a company for like, what, 20 years get fired the next day because of a mess up? Like, she is not untouchable. Her behavior is absolutely unacceptable, and if I was in your shoes, there is no way I would ever put up with that kind of treatment. If you like Am I the Jerk, you're probably going to love Am I the Genius. Check it out, link down below in the description. Also, go to amihejerk.com slash submit if you would like to submit your own stories.
Am I the jerk for never wanting to see my mother again? Because after the way she treated me throughout my childhood, as well as how she's treating me now, I'm seriously at a crossroads and I now don't know what to do. To start things off, I need to give some background. My main family consists of me, my mother, my father, and my half-sister, who is very mentally disabled, best described as Angel Man's Syndrome. My father is a pretty normal guy and I'm very thankful for him. My sister is mentally disabled and she can't really live her life so I try to give her the best one possible.
My mom has always been somewhat entitled, but she is very mentally unwell. My mother and father have been divorced for as long as I can remember. One night, he came home to her being drunk, and when he was trying to help her, she called the cops on him for some reason, and told the cops that he was mistreating her, and unfortunately for my father, the cops that showed up were complete idiots, believing my mother immediately without even letting my father speak.
Dad spent the night in prison that evening, and my father could have just accepted the punishment he was given, but here's the thing. At the time this happened, my mother was pregnant with me, and he knew that she would try to keep me after the divorce they were planning, and if he had been arrested for mistreating his wife, it wouldn't go so well when he tried to have some custody over me. So he didn't accept the punishment and fought in court for this false accusation against him.
One night, nearing the end of the court case, my mother called him just to try and manipulate my father into just giving up and that the court would believe a woman over him. My father then said back and I quote, I will be penniless and live on the street before I allow that boy to be living with you for his entire life. I won't be giving this up. And then he hung up the phone. Now, after years of fighting, he finally won the court over and cleared his name. And after I was born and he divorced my mom, the court allowed equal custody over me.
Now, with that bit of backstory out of the way, this story officially begins back when I was very little, specifically 6 or 7 years old. This is the year that my sister was born, and it is worth mentioning that my sister is not my father's child. I don't know most of the details, but I'm fairly certain she was an accidental pregnancy. Anyways, for my entire life, my mother was kind of awful at being a mother. She would make me a child. Take care of a disabled baby for the entire day.
including making sure the child is fed. She would yell at me constantly and then apologize later. And I always accepted these apologies because she is really good at making me feel guilty. These yellings included when I was trying to go to sleep and then actually making me get up and do work whenever she felt angry with me.
I don't even remember most of the reasons, because I heard so many rants, that eventually I just learned to ignore them. All in all, she was never the best mother, but she doesn't hate me. I mean far from it. I do know that she cares about me, and that's honestly the most annoying part about it. Anyways, my mother doesn't have a job.
and she was living off the money my father was sending her so that she could take care of me, as well as the money that she got from the government for my sister. Because of this, whoever is taking care of my sister is the one getting the money to take care of her, and this part will be important later on. This also eventually applied to me as I was diagnosed with ADHD, among other things at a very young age, with my mother being happy that I got diagnosed.
Eventually, my mother had to accept that she couldn't take care of my sister, even though I was the one doing it all the time, except when I was at school or at my dad's place. So she got a very nice woman and her husband to take care of my sister. My sister lived with them for a few years, and my life was going uphill. I still visited her every day that I was available, since the nice couple lived relatively close to my mother's house. Eventually, the nice couple started considering adopting my sister.
Even though she was a little bit of a troublemaker and kind of a crybaby, they loved her just as much, if not more than I did. However, whoever's taking care of my sister gets money handed to them, which is enough to take care of her needs and much more. And if the nice husband and wife adopted her, they would then keep getting that money.
So, my mother immediately took my sister back and manipulated me into thinking that they were bad guys who were trying to take my sister away. And you know what, I hate to admit it, but if it was not for my father, I would have ended up like an entitled brat because I believed everything she said as a child. And this was no exception. I deleted their contact info. I spoke badly about them and was very angry with them.
and I heavily regret this after learning the truth, and I really wish that I could apologize. So, with my sister now back in my mother's house, my mom thankfully hired a group of social workers who are basically multiple babysitters. They would be there every single morning from 9 a.m. until 11 o'clock p.m. except for Friday evenings and Saturdays. But honestly, while they did take good care of my sister during the day, my sleep schedule didn't change much because since I cared for my sister and my mother,
I took it upon myself to constantly wake up during the night to fix her machine whenever it stopped. And it's not a good idea for a young child to do that, but I cared and loved my sister, while also feeling pity for my mother. And also as a side fact, she never woke up to do it, so I felt like I had to. My father later described me when he came to pick me up on Saturday afternoons, that if anger could be a person, then that would be me. And honestly, he's right about that. I was not having a good sleep, and I was having to take care of my disabled sister, who
always was crying while also listening to my mom constantly yelling at me and I'm stressed out about schoolwork. I mean, none of this was making me any happier and apparently there were a few days where my father actually saw me shaking with rage. Around the time COVID was starting up, my mother's house caught on fire. I don't remember the exact details. It's all a blur as of now, especially considering I was the one who noticed it and got everyone out at about three in the morning.
It was either due to wiring or a candle burning that nobody put out. Luckily, nobody got hurt and nobody died and my dog was fine too. The only thing that really got lost was a lot of clothing and my mother's bed, so it's not a huge loss. For the duration of COVID, it was back to me and me alone taking care of my sister for a year or so.
I was trapped in a house yet again, with my mother yelling and my sister crying and me losing my mind. My mother's mental health wasn't getting any better as time went on either, causing her to have certain delusions. One of these included when the social workers were allowed to come back and help out, when COVID restrictions started to lift, and one of them ended up hurting her back when carrying my sister, and my mother for some reason blamed me for this. It took a while no thanks to COVID, but eventually my mother's house was fixed thanks to insurance.
And her mental wellness was at an all-time low, not to mention the delusions that she was experiencing. She eventually started hallucinating, but never spoke about it, even though she had the delusion that people were living in the attic. She even called me in and handed me her phone, telling me to be ready to dial 911 while she went upstairs to check.
Now, I didn't think much of it other than telling her that no one was there and to calm down, but I guess I didn't tell her that enough. On just another morning, I woke up at my father's house and headed downstairs to get breakfast ready. My father was already there, with a look that I'd never seen on him before. He then informed me that my mother's house had burned down again, except this time it was on purpose.
My mother had apparently set a fire in the living room, trying to smoke out the people she thought was in the attic. Thankfully, it happened on a Friday night, so there was no worker there, but my sister was there, sleeping soundly. Thankfully, instead of her and my sister passing away, my mother actually got her out of there. They were both fine, but at this point, 85% of my stuff was now gone for good. I was thankful my sister and mother were okay, but I now did not trust my mother.
both for almost taking out my sister and for destroying all of my memories and keepsakes for my entire life, as well as the year-long school projects that I'd been working on, and now I had to redo them with only a week left. Now, at this point, the details get a little bit fuzzy here.
mostly because I was a kid and my father tried to get details but he just couldn't get that many. My sister was thankfully taken away from my mother and was given to a little house for disabled people. She was the only one there and she had multiple people taking care of her. I visited her every week or so and she was fine. She has no mental comprehension of much in life and honestly considering what she had been through, I was sort of happy in a way.
My mother was apparently taken to a psych ward, and to this day, I still don't know the details of that analysis because she never sent it to my father. My father and I both think that she doesn't want us to know, which isn't exactly a good sign. Now, during this time, a court date was set up.
But eventually my mother and I started talking over the phone, and for a while it went okay. But every time she would start going off the rails, she would lecture me and yell at me, and I've heard so many of her ramblings that I just don't remember most of her words. She, like I said before, is really good at using the guilt card on me, and I'm not good at avoiding it. But thankfully my father was always there on standby, because he knew very well that one way or another, my mother would most likely go off the rails.
There were multiple times that he took the phone from me after she started rambling, and he did that just to shut her up with a quick one-liner of some sort, and then would just straight up hang up on her. Now, my mother also apparently did other odd things. For example, she once stole a car thinking that the cops were on her, and to this day, this is probably the biggest delusion she's ever had. My dad has a good friend who we will call Dave, that's not his real name, and Dave unfortunately lives somewhat close to my mother's house.
and while my mother occasionally has ranted at him in the past, he doesn't really care about most of it. He is a chill guy that doesn't get freaked out by much in life. Well, one day he pulled a letter out of his mailbox from my mother, and he didn't care at first, but after reading it, he was really freaked out.
I won't go into details of everything said, but she just apologized for a lot of things that didn't even happen, and one of those things involved my mother telling Dave that she didn't unalive his mother. And by the way, Dave's mom is definitely still alive. Eventually, the denying of unaliving transferred over to me with the phone calls, and in one phone call,
My father wasn't there, and she started to go off the rails, denying about wanting to unalive my sister, even describing how she could have done it if she wanted to. Now, knowing her very well, I simply took my phone and I set it to recording. Then I gave said recording to my father, telling him that he could use it if he wanted to.
Well, my dad apparently showed the recording to his lawyer, and this lawyer is a good friend of my dad's, and she was absolutely appalled. Fast forward and eventually a court date was set up, and she was charged for a number of things. But she evaded coming to court for so long, and the time it took for the court to even get it set up made it so that the court timer eventually ran out, and charges on her were mostly dropped.
After this, she immediately tried to start getting my sister back into her custody, and not because she loved her or anything like that. But again, it's because whoever's taking care of my sister gets more than enough money to take care of her. Through the three years this happened, and even to this day, she never even got a job.
He might be wondering how she survived that long without going homeless. Well, she ransacked my room, sold whatever she was able to salvage, and stole my wallet, which at the time was everything I'd saved up, which was maybe about a thousand dollars. And my father being the caring man that he is, eventually gave me that money to make up for what she stole. She stole a car and eventually had to sell her house because she just wouldn't get a job ever. She eventually, throughout the months of trying, did get my sister back into her custody.
But thankfully, people knew of her past with her, and she was assigned people to do random drinking and smoking tests on her, as well as check on my sister. They could come at any time, and could check whether she'd done either of these things. Well, let's just say that my mom didn't even last five months. She went to the hospital for reasons I'm unaware of, and lost custody of my sister again. I do know that she failed the test of checking on her smoking, and I'm honestly not surprised in the slightest.
Now throughout all of these years, my mother has always asked me to call and more so come to meet her in person. And with the court charges dropped, she persisted on that even harder. But I've never wanted to do that. My dad relays all of this to my mother over text messaging, because there is no way I'm telling her through my messages.
because then she would have my phone number. My mother has always blamed my father, claiming that he won't let her see me, which he doesn't even care about, especially since everyone but her has realized that this is my choice. Eventually, about a month ago, she asked my father if she could meet me in person. She's never getting my sister back now, by the way, so her only option is me.
because she really needed money because she just refuses to get a job. This was basically a last ditch attempt from my mother to see me, saying that if I wasn't going to, she would move away from my town. My father told me all of this and I thought about it, and I told him to tell her in no uncertain terms that I and me alone do not wish to see her. Well, he gave that message to her and she's been silent ever since. I do feel somewhat bad for her, but I feel like I shouldn't, but she is my mother.
I don't really miss her, but I do feel bad. So honestly, am I the jerk for not wanting to see my mother again? What should I do? First and foremost, you had a really rough childhood, and I'm so sorry you went through that with your mother. She does not sound like a good mom at all, and it really seems like she hit all the marks of being an awful mother. She didn't care about you or your sister, she left you to take care of your handicap sister the entire time you were a kid, and she's done all these crazy things at your expense. Like seriously, this is no way to treat a child or anybody.
So no, I don't blame you for cutting her off and saying that you don't want anything to do with her. You deserve to have a life that isn't chaotic in the way that your mother's made it, and I don't blame you for cutting her off in the slightest. Am I overreacting for wanting to break up with my girlfriend after she went camping with two other men? Because right now I'm feeling very anxious, and at this point I seriously don't know what to do. Here's what happened.
Okay, to start things out, my girlfriend and I have been together for two years. She's 22 years old and I'm 27. When we first met before we got into a relationship, she told me she wanted to move out of state. Her reasons were very valid. However, I wasn't looking to move just yet, since I have obligations to tend to for at least a couple more years. Now, the first year and a half were great. We had our ups and downs, and we truly went through a lot together.
And through it all, we formed a fantastic bond. Now, we have been long distance for half a year, and boy is it hard. I'm not gonna lie, it's taking quite a toll on me. However, I love this woman. I've seen her three times the past year and a half, with each time being about three or four days. And I'm currently putting my ducks in a row in order to move there in about a year. She lives there now, and of course, she has to make friends. And she made some friends playing volleyball at the park.
There's this one particular guy who I will call Mike, who wants to be her mentor for the job that she does. Now he is legit, however when I first met him he was almost caught off guard that she had a boyfriend. Something about the way he said, oh cool, when she introduced us. I don't know, their interaction
together was weird. I never want to be that kind of boyfriend, so I shelved it in my mind and then I moved on. And now she's telling me that she's going camping with some volleyball people. It's going to be two guys in her, and one of them is Mike. Now she could see it on my face that I was uncomfortable with it, but we got distracted with something else and didn't talk about it.
She came back a few days later and told me she convinced one of her girlfriends to come along with her, so everybody's gonna be sleeping in their respective cars. But honestly, it's not about the camp. It's about this mike guy. I can tell her that, but I just can't tell her what to do or not to do. They're currently back from camp and I'm honestly unhappy about this. Perhaps I'm jealous and frustrated because I can't be there, but these guys even paid for everything.
They got jet skis and paddle boards and the boat that they spent the whole day on. And I know her financial situation, so that's how I know they paid for everything. I don't know. I just feel like she wouldn't like it if I did that with two other women. So am I overreacting for wanting to end the relationship? Because right now, I seriously don't know what to do.
I can completely understand where you're coming from because the way this went about was really sketchy. Like she's going on this camping trip with these guys and had full intentions of only going on that trip with those two while bringing along a girl as an afterthought just to make you happy. Like it's hard enough that you guys are long distance as it is, but to go off on a trip like that all of a sudden is just really suspicious in my opinion and I don't blame you for being upset.
So hopefully you two are able to talk about this in some kind of way, because I completely agree with you. If you did that with two other women, I'm sure she would be very upset. And hopefully she can see exactly where you're coming from. When you subscribe, make sure to hit the bell to turn on notifications. To finish listening to all the stories, check out the playlist at the top of the description. And if you want some chill music to put on in the background, check out easymode.com. If you like Am I the Jerk, subscribe to Am I the Genius. Everything will be linked down below in the description.
