What comes around goes around...

There's this lady at work, someone I supervise, who always feels that everyone is out to get her. She is eternally suspicious of everyone and doesn't believe that people sometimes can do nice things just to be nice. It's frustrating and one of her character flaws that can be very annoying. However, that being said, she can also be extremely funny and personable at times which endears her to me in spite of her paranoia. She often seeks out people to "take sides" and likes to hole up behind closed office doors to "chat" even though there's really nothing to "chat" about. At one time, there was another case manager there who fed right into all of her fears. Together they created a tiny world of paranoid delusions and caused all manner of distress for their co-workers.

Her cohort up and quit one day. Despite her personality, she was treated very well by me and the upper management but when she quite she chose to walk out without notice which, I'm sure, she felt "taught" us a lesson, though we are hard pressed to know what that might be. Her departure, naturally, left the other one high and dry without a cohort and office collaborator. For a time, she came and went from work in a huff as though we had all been responsible for the other's leaving. Then she started to calm down and started to actually interact with the others and found out they really weren't all that bad and no one was really out to get her. She kept in touch with her former co-worker and, occasionally, I would overhear phone conversations between them where, at least for the one side I could hear, I and the other were being fairly trashed. I shrugged it off because that stuff just doesn't bother me.

Lo and behold, today the worm has turned. Apparently, the other one - the one that left - was now calling Ms. Paranoid Case Manager and asking - no, demanding - certain business related favors that would benefit her new employer. Though paranoid, she's not stupid, and she quickly reminded her former co-worker that it was hugely unprofessional to even ask. This led to a quick exchange of nasty words which completely shocked her. She was completely thrown that her former co-worker, commiserator, and friend had not only laid into her but then hung up abruptly.

She came to me to tell me this had happened. She was upset and very hurt but she was also very pragmatic and good about the whole thing. After our talk, she turned to me as she left my office and said "Well, you could have told me what a snake she was!!" I just laughed and reminded her, "It wouldn't have made any difference if I had!"