I have been working in retail for roughly around seven months as i'm writing this, and to be completely honest, retail has been the best job for me ever since i quit my other job which was McDonald's and a local indoor waterpark. I was able to do my job while gaining a best friend that has been the most amazing best friend to me from that job as well! However, this job does not come without its downfalls, and most recently I had to deal with a coworker that is just too much for my mental health. But a little backstory before I go on with this reddit post.

This coworker (let's call her Aria) was actually part of the group orientation that I was apart of when I first started the retail job. We actually knew each other beforehand when we used to work together at the local indoor waterpark as lifeguards. Aria quit maybe a few months after I started the job as a lifeguard because she found a better job opportunity at the time, and then a few months after her (like roughly 7 to nine months) I was wrongfully terminated by management because a situation that happened at that job, but that's a reddit post for another day.

So fast forward to now, I have a best friend (lets call her Lucia) that I have been friends with me ever since I started the job in retail, Lucia is the type of person that goes out of her way to listen to you and and actually understand where you are coming from while also being very blunt too. She is a very honest and very great person to hang out with at work, at college, and outside of those environments as well. And on days where I would need a ride to college, she goes out of her way to come pick me up from my house so that way the both of us can get to college on time for our classes!

So recently last Friday as i'm writing this post, I post in a group-chat that my job has on Snapchat. I post in that group-chat requesting if someone could take my shift because I do not have my license, my mom was going to a good friday service, my dad was working until 6:30-7:00 at his job, and I had no money to buy myself an Uber to get to work or get back home. Aria looks at the group-chat and sends me a text saying "hey would you like a ride to work" and the problem with Aria is that she is more of a cash grabber rather than actually going out of her way to give me a ride like Lucia would do, plus, Aria cancels last minute on basically everything as well, including giving other people rides. I politely told her no and that I would just have to suffer the consequences of a write up.

Aria texted me after that and says, "I am offering to bring you, but u can tell you don’t want to go to work, but if you keep getting ppl to cover your shifts and calling out but then asking for more shifts it doesn’t make sense cause the shifts your getting your calling out of them if that makes sense" Keep in mind, I only called out once and that was using sick time, and I had other people cover my shifts because I had a bunch of college work that has been piling up and I had to do it. Aria then says "The other day I was talking to a coordinator and I asked him why your only getting like 1 day and he was like “when he gives up his shifts all the time and calls out they think he’s not reliable so there not gonna give him a lot of shifts.” The real reason as to why I am not getting a lot of shifts and this is also happening to everyone at the job I work at is because our payroll at the job is very limited compared to other stores around our area. So I texted Aria saying "but in reality it’s not that i’m not “reliable” i really am, it’s the fact being that things comes up like working with my mom (because I work with my mom as a second job) and also other things comes up as well all of a sudden as well. but if they perceive me as that then that is completely ok"

After I got that out of the way, I called Lucia, and told her everything that has been going on. Lucia said "Dude she is acting very toxic with you" and this is because (and I forgot to mention this) Lucia and I like to distance ourselves from Aria because she is the type of person that if you miss at least one day of school, she will list off every single assignment that is due, what the professor taught in class, etc, without even asking how the other person is doing. Lucia called me one time because she missed one day of classes because she was very sick and Aria just kept going on and on until Lucia reached her breaking point and said "Ok, I got it, just let me heal and let me feel better because I really haven't been feeling good as of recently" Aria then said "Hey i'm just trying to be a good friend you didn't need to be rude about it" and Lucia kept her peace and said "I wasn't" while Aria was just going off on her for no reason. And me and Lucia were on the phone for nearly 3 hours as this situation was going on.

So going back to the situation, I texted Aria, saying "tbh, I really didn’t ask you to speak on my situation at work, and I definitely didn’t ask you to ask that for me. going behind my back to ask the coordinator about my shifts honestly breaks my trust. he really wouldn’t understand when he’s not even a manager, so i don’t get why you’d ask him, he’s not necessarily the person to go to about that and that’s really not looking out for me that’s straight up crossing a boundary with me. if you had something to say, or ask, you should’ve just come to me, not going behind the bushes and ask someone else and then leave me on read when i asked a question. that genuinely is not your place at all to be doing that. that’s getting involved in something that you had no place in being involved, make that make sense for a second." Aria got furious and texted back saying "I was trying to be a nice friend cause you kept complaining to Lucia and I about not having enough shifts (Mind you, I maybe only complained once about it and then I stopped because I found out the reasoning behind it) and then you kept dropping your shifts and I hate ppl that do that and it wasn’t just the coordinator standing there it was the manager but the coordinator responded. But instead of you coming at me you could of easily been thanks for asking for me but you really didn’t need todo that tbh, I was but being a nice friend and you saying that breaks your trust is fucking crazy. Check yo self before you come at me like that again I ain’t the one" Now she's switching up the situation from the coordinator saying that to not both the coordinator and the manager saying that i'm unreliable.

And one boundary that I have and I even told Aria this is that if you go behind my back and essentially break my trust by doing something like Aria did, i'm not gonna tolerate it and i'm going to drop you as a friend because at the end of the day, it is not your place to even be doing that, if you asked if it was ok to ask a manager or coordinator about that, then I would not have cared about it. Another thing that should be mentioned too is that she skips school a lot of the times and asks ChatGPT to do her work most of the time. Aria then says "This is exactly why I’m not friends with people younger than me because you guys always take things out of proportion and y’all are so immature….. so you can go be friends with your immature friend cause i’m not putting up with BS like this all the time like I have been ever since I started school and started being friends with y’all. I’m not doing it no more I’m done." The only one that is acting immature in this situation is Aria because I called her out on something that she can't admit is wrong. So then we just go back an forth and the one thing that I will never forget is "And I can tell your sensitive." Which crossed the line with me.

So to conclude this reddit post today I spoke with my store manager about EVERYTHING, including some screenshots of Aria making TikTok's basically dissing me and essentially harassing me to go to work. The store manager essentially told me to just keep my distance from her (which i have because I blocked Aria off everything) and try to be mutual with her and if anything does happens from now to let her know ASAP. But she also said one thing that actually made me rethink the whole situation, she said "So, I did speak to the coordinator and the manager, and they both said that Aria didn't even ask that question to them." Which now has me thinking "Wait, was Aria just saying all this because she just desperately wanted me to come to work? Or was Aria trying to make a scene" So to end this reddit post, AITA in this situation?