Ask A Manager: Friend of my Ex Verbally Attacked Me At Work

[minoanmiss]

I have been working for a large corporation for a few years now.

Recently, Joe started a new job here; he is a friend of an ex-boyfriend I recently broke up with (and who is still bitter about the breakup, although I’ve moved on).

I got a new office space today and our senior Manager asked Joe and another new team member to come help clean up my new office for me. As we were standing in the office cleaning, I asked Joe if he could wipe a corner I couldn’t reach.

He raised his voice at me, telling me that he refuses to speak with me and he only takes orders from our senior manager. He is apparently still angry about my breaking up with his friend and holds a grudge against me.

He made an embarrassing scene and I told him he was free to stop cleaning; that I could manage it myself, since I’m not a big fan of drama; and that frankly, I felt disrespected by him and his sudden anger toward me in a professional setting.

I feel this interaction is a bad sign of things to come between me and Joe. While I have no problem working with him in a professional setting, it seems he will be having an issue with anything and everything I say from now on.

How would you handle this situation? Even though I have been at the company longer and he is new, I am fearful to speak up to anyone else in case I am the one who is blamed for the bad blood between Joe and myself.

I also don’t want to be see as someone who is involved with drama. I’m an average performer but nothing special and don’t want this to ding my reputation.

Oh nooooo, you’ve got to fill your manager in. This isn’t something you should try to handle by yourself.

I get why you’re hesitant to — you don’t want to seem like you have any part of this drama, and you’re worried you won’t be able to avoid that.

But this guy raised his voice to you and said he refuses to speak to you. That’s unacceptable at work. And it’s because of his loyalty to your ex? He’s an ass who needs to be seriously slapped down by his manager, and that’s if he’s kept on at all. (If a new hire did this on my team, we’d almost certainly be parting ways over it. It’s such bad judgment and so over the line that’s hard to imagine a situation where I’d keep someone new who did this.)

Your boss needs to know exactly what happened. You’re not going to seem like you’re involved with drama, because you’ve worked there for years so presumably they already know you’re not a drama llama. You’re going to seem like a normal person who is recoiling in a very normal way after a brand new hire exploded with hostility at you.

Frame it as, “I don’t know how to handle this and it seems like a really serious thing, so I want to fill you in and let you take it from here.”

It’s not causing drama to let your boss know about a raging fire down the hall. You are not the fire. You are the person concerned that there is a fire.

I think the drama worry is coming up because this is about relationships and exes and angry friends, and that feels very dramatic … but it’s not really about any of that. It’s about a new hire who attacked you without any provocation and announced he won’t speak to you. That’s it.

That’s not to say you don’t need to explain to your boss why he said it — you do, because she needs to know he has a grudge over you ending things with his friend in order to understand how messed up this is — but your role in this isn’t “drama-causing ex.” Your role is “professional employee reporting something serious and unacceptable.” In fact, the whole point is that you have no interest in bringing your personal life into work; he’s the one who does.

Tell your boss today. It gets weirder the longer you wait, and there’s a risk of this assclown causing more problems.

Comments

[likeaduck]

It's the right advice, but I so wish I agreed with AAM that LW won't be seen as creating drama.

[azurelunatic]

Same.

[jadelennox]

ditto. :(

[mirlacca]

Yeah, this.

There was someone else in the room when this happened, I hope? The other person that Sr. Manager directed to help clean the room? If nothing else, Joe probably spoke to this person about his feelings. That's corroboration, at least.

But yes, she definitely needs to go to her manager about this. If Joe gets away with this, it's only going to get worse.