Finding a job with a team you can trust is easier said than done. So when a co-worker or a boss backstabs you at work, it can be incredibly heartbreaking and frustrating, especially when you considered them to be a "friend."
And since this unfortunately happens to a lot of people, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about a time when someone backstabbed you at work. Below is a sampling the answers we received.
1. "When I was pregnant with my first son, my co-worker/best friend texted me saying that she and our boss at the time were discussing my position and if it was even worth having since it was something she could be doing herself. Mind you, I was out for a doctor's appointment when she told me this, so I brought it up to our boss and to his and my surprise, he had no clue! From that day forward, she knew nothing about what was going on as I reported directly to him. To say she was angry is an understatement."
—Anonymous
2. "I had a supervisor who was just a vile person. I worked a hybrid in-office/remote role, and this seemed to anger her more than anything else. Because I lived in a different city, I would plan to be in the office every third week around critical meetings or deadlines where being at the office in person would be more effective for my role. In one of her worst backstabbing plays, she emailed me one week to tell me I didn’t need to come to the office the following week for a fairly critical meeting, as it was being rescheduled. I double and triple-checked with her that this was correct, and she insisted for me not to come in that week, but the week after. I complied because, well, she was my boss. Cut to: me coming to the office the following week as directed, and HER boss sat me down to reprimand me for 'skipping' a critical meeting the previous week that did in FACT happen and was not rescheduled."
"My supervisor told her I was instructed to be there but that I was 'complaining about having to come in so much and that I had said I would decide when I was or wasn’t needed in the office.'
I was flabbergasted but was able to explain the situation and back it up with the WRITTEN EMAILED RECEIPTS from my supervisor. Did I mention my supervisor was an idiot? I got an apology, and she got disciplined for a variety of infractions but managed to keep her job. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there shortly after. No one needs that kind of unnecessary drama."
—Anonymous
3. "I had a friend who I helped get a job where I had worked for four years. Well, after my fifth year, I had decided that I was going to quietly start looking for a new job. I had an interview one afternoon that I had only told my friend about. The next morning, I went into work, where I was sure everything was fine, and was immediately called into my boss's office with HR following behind me and closing the door. He said, 'So, we know you had an interview yesterday and clearly you are not happy here, so we are just going to go ahead and cut ties now.' I laughed and walked out, and as HR stood over me at my desk while I grabbed my stuff, my so-called two-faced 'friend' was then called into my now ex-boss's office, and he handed my job to her. Is it karma she was fired six months later for sucking?"
—Anonymous
4. "I worked at a fast-food restaurant that opens later in the day, so in the morning, I would prep for hours with another person. After about two months off working every morning with the same sweet grandmother and learning about each other, I confided in her that I had been in recovery for a few years. Towards the end of my probationary period at this job, I got sick, like really sick, with the flu. I had to call in since I had a fever and couldn't keep anything down. The trusted grandmother that I worked every morning with told our boss that I was a heroin addict and that's why I didn't come in. I called later in the day to say that I wasn't sure if I should come in the next day because I was still throwing up — but to my surprise, I was told that I was being let go because she was informed about my 'heroin problem.' I explained that I was in recovery for three years, but she wanted no part of my story."
"I know that it's not right, but it's been even longer since I went into recovery — and I don't tell anyone about my history now. People are always looking for something to judge you on or use against you, so I am very private about my life now."
5. "I worked graveyard shifts for a start-up company with one other person. Since the company was brand new, we had NO business during our shift. My co-worker slept all night, while I stayed awake just in case we got a call. I covered for her when the boss called and asked to speak to her (i.e. if she was sleeping, I would say she was in the bathroom). When they decided to cut one person, she told the bosses that I was the one sleeping all night. I got laid off."
—Anonymous
6. "I was backstabbed by a boss. I worked at a med spa that had two owners: Boss A and Boss B. We had different locations, and Boss A was really bad about moving expensive products back and forth between offices without making the necessary changes to inventory records. She and Boss B had apparently had words over it, and she agreed to stop. Well, I go to do inventory one day and give the numbers to Boss B. She calls me to ask me about the count and asks multiple times if I’m sure, to which I keep replying, 'Yes, you can check the supply closet.' Turns out we were over because Boss A had once again moved around the product without doing the necessary paperwork. What I didn’t know was that Boss B secretly had me on a three-way chat with Boss A."
"After I gave Boss B the same story three or four times, Boss A suddenly speaks up and flat out calls me a liar. She says I am incorrect and I need to stop insisting on giving this incorrect info. I couldn’t believe that she was being so completely dishonest, denying the whole thing while trying to blame me!
I quietly reminded them both that I wasn’t responsible for ordering products or stocking the supply shelves, just counting them, and that I had nothing to gain from lying. Then I hung up. Boss B later came to me privately and apologized and reassured me that I didn’t do anything wrong, which would have been nice to hear had she said it in front of Boss A when we were having our Mean Girls-themed phone conference.
The whole situation was beyond the pale. I’ve never been angrier in my life. I stayed for a few years because outside of management, the staff was incredible, and the pay and hours were good, but after a while, my hatred of Boss A and her constant lying got to be too much, and I left. Both of those bosses can rot in hell."
7. "I briefly worked at a college. I asked if I could do a second-hand book sale for charity on World Book Day. My boss said it wasn't a good idea, but if I organized it and collected donations in my own time, I could do it. She was dismissive of it every time I updated her on how it was going. Everything is going really well on the day of the sale. People are snapping up books. She comes over to tell me I can have a 10-minute break. She never gave us extra breaks, so I should have been suspicious."
"A week later in the college newsletter, there was a lovely photo of her in front of the stall with a big smile on her face and an article about how much money was raised for charity. My name wasn't mentioned once.
I spoke to the photographer later and said what a coincidence it was that he came in on my 10-minute break. It was not a coincidence. He'd called my boss asking if he could come over and arrived five minutes later.
She deliberately sent me on a break so she could be in the photograph."
8. "I had two co-workers who constantly competed with each other. I was friends with both, and they constantly talked about each other. One time, I worked hard on a large project but couldn’t finish the very end of it because of a family emergency. They both jumped at the opportunity to assist, and I walked away confident that the job would be done. The following week, a large corporate email went around, and their names were being praised...next to the project I’d worked my ass off on. Seeing the co-workers print those emails and pin them to their desks hurt my feelings — but I sucked it up and congratulated them anyways, and they said nothing about the part that I’d played. The next month, I made a huge mistake in the office and had several superiors working with me to fix the mistake. I felt so embarrassed, and when I told these two friends, they had nothing to say and offered no help (even though they could have)."
"The following week after this incident, we had corporate and the VP in our office. It turns out that mistake highlighted my name and brought to attention a multitude of different projects I’d handled or completed. I was called into an office, along with my two friends, and they watched in complete silence as I was praised for my hard work by our VP and corporate officials.
I couldn’t print their praise in real life, but their kind words soothed my soul. My friends never congratulated me or said anything after that meeting. They still show off the printed email any chance they get, but I get the deeper satisfaction of knowing that I rock in all areas of my job while they can only excel in what I have a hand in."
—Anonymous
9. "My direct boss, who was usually pretty ok to work with, instantly turned into a super petty and jealous person when I got the opportunity to leave her team to join a different one (which was basically my dream job and a MAJOR career move for me). When I told her I wanted to take the opportunity, she was super supportive and sweet to my face, but immediately 180'd and did everything in her power to try and stop me. She delayed my transfer by almost two months, citing that she 'needed more time to replace me.' And then during those two months, she made my life on her team hell, even going so far as to 'write me up' for a BS, borderline-fabricated reason. She marched into my new boss's office with the write-up to try to deter him from wanting me on his team. It didn't work at all, and she came out of it looking like a complete idiot. But wow, never seen an adult woman act so immature."
10. "I worked for a nonprofit animal shelter for four years and loved every minute of it. The first three years I never called in, never took vacation time, was regularly promoted, and never got a bad review. Plus, three years in, I was selected to manage a team that took over the local animal control. Then last year, my mother died in February, and my dad died in May, and I had to go to part time temporarily to sort out their houses. (I’m an only child.) My supervisor threatened to fire anyone who reached out to me during that time, and my co-manager — who I had always gotten along with — had everyone quit speaking to me. When I asked for a meeting with him and our supervisors in June to find out why the hostility, he said that the team resented me because I wasn’t working as hard as I used to."
"I went to the CFO in July and told her I had to come back full-time to alleviate the ongoing conflict with my team. With a big smile on her face, she told me it would be 'really great' if I could 'take a break' and come back in November or December when donations picked back up. I agreed to this arrangement and to take on the last set of obedience classes as a volunteer, in essence, working an additional six weeks for free. I should have suspected something was up when I would run into other employees during training classes. They'd look surprised and say, 'What are YOU doing here?'
I found out in October that the second I was out, the co-manager told people I was no longer affiliated with the company. They took the six weeks of volunteer work and screwed me out of five weeks of PTO I had accrued. Since I thought I was coming back, I didn’t cash it out, and when I realized what was going on, it was too late.
I found out later my co-manager was having an affair with one of our bosses, who was in charge of my reviews. They are the ones who complained to upper management in the first place and got me fired.
In six months, I lost my mom, my dad, a job I adored, and the support system of work friends and people I had considered family. I will NEVER forgive them for what they did and how they did it."
—Anonymous
11. "After his first year as a principal, my co-worker (and supposed friend for years) asked me how I thought he, the new principal, had done. Now, in his defense, the new principal followed someone who pretty much walked on water and was given a HUGE promotion — so no matter what he did, in my mind, he wouldn't have really measured up. Well, I pondered a bit and said, 'I guess I would give him a 'C,' but, you know, following [unnamed previous principal], he had big shoes to fill.' Well, I kid you not, my co-worker ran and told the principal what I thought! She also neglected to share that I thought he had the misfortune of following this other amazing principal. Her little plan worked! The new principal relied on her to be his 'spy' on all of us from then on. I continued to work with her and just took it as, 'Well, you really don't know people like you think you do.'"
—Anonymous
12. "When I worked as a meat cutter, I was one of the people responsible for making burgers, kebabs, etc. On a holiday weekend, we were absolutely SLAMMED. I had no one helping me, and I got to the point where I literally had no more product ready for customers. One night, someone was looking for beef kebabs, and out of pure exhaustion, I told him we were sold out. My supervisor (who I trusted at the time) said that he could make some. The next day, he had me written up for 'not helping.' I felt betrayed by him, especially because he knew that I had zero support and had to stop whatever I was doing to help customers at the main meat counter. Also, I had returned to work after a three-month leave of absence due to depression. I ended up asking for a two-week leave of absence to figure out my life."
13. "I told my supervisor that there should be a 'trainer' position at my work so that each new hire gets the same training rather than shadowing random people and hoping for the best. She thought it was a great idea, but I didn't hear anything else about it. I happened to be pregnant at the time of the suggestion. But while I was on maternity leave, the position was suddenly created, and a person — other than myself — had been promoted. I was never even given a chance at applying for the position because my company does not allow you to change jobs while on leave. The person who was promoted is a nice enough person but is a terrible trainer. And I still end up having the new people follow me around all day to learn the job. I just don't have the pay to show for it."
14. "I worked at a 911 communication center at a police department, and I was the first one there. I recommend my old co-worker from another job to be hired. She not only got hired, but they made her the SUPERVISOR over me. To get that supervisor shift, she lied and told the chief she was my supervisor at my old job; she was not. She also told them she had 20 years of dispatching experience at a police department; she did not. At any rate, when she came in, she expected me to train her on my own time. She would come in late every morning when I had worked the midnight shift, then she wanted me to train her, all the while she wouldn't stop talking about her personal life. Since we had to clock out at the moment our so-called relief person came in, I never got paid for it. Down the road, I found out she was deleting all my computer entries of tickets and reports from the computer, thus showing I wasn't doing my job."
"I get called into the chief's office and get fired. I had witnesses to the fact that I did put them in the computer, but somehow, they weren't in there. Officers figured out she came behind me and deleted all of this stuff and went to the chief with lies. She was supposed to have been my friend. In reality, she was the worst enemy I had in my life."
—Anonymous
15. "My old manager told me to try a test of removing something from our marketing plan for a month. When it came time to review that month, and it had negatively impacted our revenue, she played dumb in a multi-department meeting and publicly asked me to 'explain myself' and why *I* made that decision. She then followed it up by telling me, in front of everyone in the meeting, that I did not have the authority or autonomy to make potentially revenue-impacting decisions. I quit shortly after, and she was fired from the company not long after that."
—Anonymous
16. "I used to work in a specialized role at a very prestigious boarding school. After being there for about a year, enrollment dropped, and the school ended up having to make budget cuts. They decided to eliminate about 15 job positions, including mine. I was blindsided and devastated, but I live in an 'at-will' employment state, which means your employer can terminate you at any time and without any advance warning. In the days immediately following my layoff, I focused on applying for new jobs and figuring out how to apply for unemployment. While trying to figure out the process, I complained to my close friend and former co-worker."
"I made a joke saying, 'Maybe I should sue the state for making the unemployment process so hard lol.' This was a very clear joke; I had no grounds for a lawsuit, and no means to obtain a lawyer. About a week later, I reached out to her and asked if it was okay for me to use her as a reference for a job I was applying to. She told me she wouldn't be able to as she was told by administration she wasn't allowed to be in communication with me anymore or she would lose her job.
I immediately called the headmaster (he was my former boss's boss) in a fury and asked why he would prohibit any employee from speaking with me? The headmaster confirms that he had instructed staff members to cease communication with me. But why would he do that?
Well, for reasons unbeknownst to me, my dear friend Liz decided to tell the school administration that I planned to sue the school for wrongful termination.
I had the text messages of our exchanges, which I immediately emailed over to the headmaster. To this day I am not able to make sense of why a seemingly close friend would go out of her way to lie about me, cause serious damage to my reputation, and affect my livelihood.
In the end, I found my literal dream job, and am so thankful I was laid off. As for Liz, she was fired from the school a few months after this fiasco for poor job performance. Gotta love how karma works things out in the end!"
—Anonymous
17. "I had been leaving at my normal time from work, and a co-worker stopped me to ask me what I thought I was doing. I said going to pick up my children from the daycare, and she told me that she wasn’t sticking around, and I needed to. The next day, she had another co-worker nonchalantly ask me what the name of my daycare was. The moment I said the name out loud, the other co-worker got up and went into our warehouse and made a phone call to my daycare. She was asking what time they closed, and within two minutes of her coming back, I confronted her in a conference room, and she justified what she did. I felt betrayed, and it has caused a strain in our relationship. It’s none of her business."
—Anonymous
18. "I was working as a long-term substitute for one semester at a charter school. The whole setup was bad from the start because I had to use four different classrooms. I was told to consult with this other teacher about the curriculum for one of the courses. She told me quite clearly not to worry about a couple of topics, which, of course, turned up on the standardized exam! The bewildered students were asking me what to do about those questions. Words cannot describe how angry I was, especially for the students. Of course, she was trying to make me look incompetent so she could look better. She had been giving me the same story from day one, before she knew me, so it wasn't even personal. She was fine with hurting the students."
—Anonymous
