I (28f) am a supervisor at my job and a new employee (26f) we’ll call Lindsay began the other month. It’s been my responsibility to train her, so we’ve spent time talking and getting to know one another. My initial impression is that I truly like her, she’s nice and funny. She then invited me to a house party at one point where I’ve met her friends, and specifically connected with one of her friends, we’ll call Taylor (30m).
In the sort time Lindsay has worked with us (1.5 months), she’s disclosed to us openly that she has BPD and other mental health conditions. While I’m familiar with BPD through reading and have had friends with it, it hasn’t had a deep presence directly in my personal life, so my experience with it is limited to that. In the past month and a half, myself and my other coworkers have noticed some things that have interfered with how she shows up at work. No, not talking just attendance. And it has impacted my personal life.
The first thing that took place was she found a customer of ours she likes on social media. She asked if I thought it was weird, and to be honest I told her “I don’t think a little harmless curiosity is bad, as long as it stops at that”. The next day, she asked the customer for his number. At this point, she began heavily confiding in me at work about the nature of their connection. Then, she started calling me at home. I was polite and answered the calls, not thinking much of it. She basically explained how she met her future husband and was over the moon. As soon as that was said, the next day, I guess things didn’t work out with the guy. It was my day off and she began calling me back to back, numerous times. Basically, the guy ended up politely rejecting her and in her words “I may need to go to the hospital, I don’t feel safe with myself.” She left work early that day, saying it made her “want to harm herself”. I did everything I could to remain with her over the phone and I listened and gave support.
Days went on of this pattern- repeatedly calling me each day. But something I noticed was the calls were only ever pertaining to things she was going through or feeling. No questions about if I’m busy, how I’m doing, ect. I took note of this and encouraged her to reach out to other friends, as she has a lot of emotional, financial and physical support from them already and my plate felt full. Things subsided for a few days.
Then, she got in some course of disagreement with her friends circle and she again said she was escalating to the point of feeling unsafe. She once again left work early without permission. The reason being that she wasn’t invited to karaoke with them and it upset her, so she just left our other supervisor alone.
Well, she had another house party. She asked me to come, so I did. It was a great party, and once again this friend of hers “Taylor” and I really clicked. We’d been talking every day and building a connection since the last time we’d seen each other. At this point we were flirting, and I suppose Lindsay picked up on it. Taylor and I have plans this Saturday and the feeling is pretty mutual between him and I that something special is developing, though it could be platonic, who knows. It feels pretty casual.
A few nights ago, Lindsay called me because she was feeling emotionally unsafe again. She talked for a long time, almost 2 hours, about how unsettled she is about me and her friend being in a potential relationship. She said numerous conflicting statements like “I have feelings for him, he’s always been there for me, he’s such a good man” and “He’s already seeing so many other people, he just breaks people’s hearts, he’s a f-boy.” When I tried to reassure her that my main intention was finding friends because I need a sense of community and was happy I felt I’d found some of that with her friend circle, she got defensive and began telling me no one’s actually her friend except him, everyone betrays her, everyone leaves her. She then escalated and said “If you guys date I can’t be your friend and I can’t be his friend, I will disappear and you’ll never hear from me again. I have BPD and this is just what it does. And if you try to stay my friend I’ll hurt you.” She continued repeating the dire consequences of potentially being interested in her friend. She said she could not handle any more loss in her life (referring to the guy I mentioned earlier who had turned her down), and that everything had always happens to her, and good only comes into her life when bad news attached, nothing is good ever, and why continue living. I encouraged her to try and view things from another lense and she would reply with “sorry, that’s just how my BPD is. I’m gonna be crappy to you.” She then said “I was already feeling bad but after this conversation I’m feeling worse. You made me feel worse.”
This was incredibly overwhelming. All of it has been incredibly overwhelming. It feels like there is always something very serious going on, and I feel so confused how I got swept up as not only a primary source of support yet also a point of upset.
I explained to her that I have experienced a lot of loss in my life. In February my long term relationship and friendship of 10 years ended bitterly, I went through bankruptcy, moved and completely re-vamped my life. I’ve been working so hard to do well and heal, it’s been going good. It feels really bad to swept in all of this, and I don’t know how to navigate it going forward.
The other issue is, and this has been brought up a lot between myself and other supervisors- she does not do her job to it’s full extent. She has friendly customer service, but all of the grunt work is left to others. It feels like working alone without support. We ask her to do anything she’s slightly uncomfortable with and we are told “I’m not doing that” and “my hands hurt, I can’t.” Whether it’s packing up products, cleaning, opening/closing duties, organizing, anything. We ask her to do one thing, and eight hours later, it stays in the same spot untouched. She leaves early due to emotional crisis, falls asleep on the job, and hands out her number to customers, and once the customer leaves she will say “they were totally into me.” She has also, before becoming interested in customers, told me how deeply she is interested in ME as well.
Listen, I struggle with stuff too. I don’t understand the full scope of BPD. But something feels unfair about this connection. I do have autism, so sometimes it’s hard for me to discern certain behaviors. But it doesn’t feel fair or right. I understand having mental illness and how it affects daily life, but I don’t understand what’s going on at the present moment and really need some clarity from someone who’s been in similar situations. I don’t like that each phone call, each conversation, is entirely about her. For example, the other day I broke my ribs in an accident. She saw me and all she could say was “I ordered my lunch and I don’t get to eat it yet. Everything is so hard. I just want to d*e” and began crying. While I was sitting there after being released from Urgent Care. If anyone talks about something joyous it feels like she must have additional joyous information to top it. If anyone has any negative experiences it seems like she has to have experiences even more negative. I’ve noticed this a handful of times.
TL;DR New Coworkers behavior and mental health are deeply concerning me
Comments
Who is your manager? This all needed to be escalated weeks ago. She doesn’t do her job properly. She’s inappropriate with customers. She’s inappropriate with coworkers (e.g. you). She has threatened to hurt you. You need to write down every minor and major incident that has happened at work or related to work since she started, and take it to higher management.
I want to encourage you to set some more boundaries between your professional and personal life. You’ve known this woman for less than two months, and you’re her supervisor. You shouldn’t be going to her parties and dating her friends. You shouldn’t be talking to her for hours on the phone outside of work. You say that you’re confused by how you got sucked into this, but there were many moments here where you could have stepped back, and instead you stepped right into the fray (you went to a SECOND house party even after she’d been harassing you daily with threats to harm herself?).
I know all workplaces are different, and there are certainly circumstances where coworkers can become friends, but first and foremost you need to be professional, especially with a new coworker, especially with someone you’re training and supervising. That means not being her friend, and primarily talking about work-related things. You’re experiencing first-hand how things can go badly wrong when you immediately start trying to be friends with your coworkers. It’s important to feel things out and find out if they can be trusted in a work context (which she obviously can’t) before you consider trusting them in a social context.
Take this to management, let them handle it, and stop answering the phone calls. If she tells you she’s unsafe and is going to harm herself, you can call the emergency services and send them to her location. Take a step back, and make the choice to uninvolve yourself.