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When you work in the same place, and are at similar stages in your lives, it’s very easy to become good friends with your co-workers. In fact, as we grow up, it’s one of the more likely places to make friends – a place where adults (often with similar interests or situations) come together on a daily basis, and naturally form cordial relationships that sometimes blossom into real, lasting friendships.

That’s exactly what happened to the two servers in this story, who met as baristas at a coffee joint and then progressed to working at a newly-opened bar together. But when one of the workers got put in line for a promotion, it was about to test their friendship – particularly when the other worker saw this as an opportunity to immediately try to influence changes that benefitted her.

Read on to find out what happened here.

AITA for telling my friend to go work somewhere else?

So my friend and I have known each other for a few years. We met working together at Generic Seattle Coffee with a tip share system (important for later). Things happened and a new bar opened up that we both got hired for.

When we were hired, the owners told us all that they had never worked in the industry before and were willing to accept help from those of us who had.

They also told us we were going to start with a split tips system with an hourly rate above regular minimum for our state.

Awesome, friend was against this from the get go but went along with it in hopes she could get it changed later.

Let’s see how things went when this bar opened.

Opening week goes by pretty smooth all things considered. A few hiccups but nothing major. Day one of second week, owners are getting a divorce and one bails.

Alright cool, the staff were more concerned with getting paid than the drama there. Sure. New lady comes in to help get the bar set up to standards. Sounds wonderful, except she’s a micromanaging queen and upsetting my friend.

I’m used to it so I ignore it, but friend pulls me aside to scream and cry about it outside for a smoke break. I get her calmed down and went back inside to finish closing so I could talk to owner who stayed.

Then I found out another employee was sitting around for over an hour at the bar nursing a beer on the clock. I made a mental note to handle that with owner when I got a second to, since I was being put into a manager role soon and didn’t want to overstep bounds yet.

But then, the new job got between this worker and her friend.

Next morning, friend and I got into a decent sized fight over the fact she thinks she deserves all the tips and shouldn’t have to share with the not busy shifts, the bar, or the bussers. She blamed all of it on me and wouldn’t let me actually talk to her.

I snapped. I worked a sixteen hour shift the night before and had four hours of sleep before trying to get back to the bar to talk to the owner and get things figured out.

She complained that Steakhouse from The Star State pays their servers $15 per hour plus tips, and that they get to keep all their tips.

I yelled at her, “fine, then go work there then since you’re so stressed about it.”

Uh-oh. Let’s see how her friend responded.

She started being manipulative and spiteful saying things like, “oh, well I guess I misjudged you. Sorry boss. I’m just a worker so I’ll stop bothering you. I’ll put in my two weeks then if it’s necessary.”

So now I feel like a jerk for snapping at her since we’re both tired and stressed and there’s so much going on, but everyone I’ve talked to says I was in the right and she was acting like a child.

We’ve only been open just over a week and she’s already threatened to walk out over one bad night and didn’t give me the chance to try to fix it.

AITA?

This is a really difficult situation for one key reason: instead of just being friends and colleagues now, this worker has been put into a management position, which has changed the dynamic between the pair completely.

And sure, you might not really want to talk to your friend that way, in fact, you’d probably want to actively avoid it. But yelling at an employee that you’re line managing really isn’t cool, no matter who they are to you.

At the same time though, it’s clear her friend isn’t happy there, so why wouldn’t she go work elsewhere?

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that maybe her friend should be going to the steakhouse.

While others thought that her friend was the real issue here.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who is hurt she’s being blamed for not caring for her friend’s dogs, but no one asked her to.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that workers like her friend made things worse for everyone.

It’s clear that her friend is unhappy at the bar. Whether that’s purely financially motivated, or whether there are other issues – perhaps even jealousy that her friend is being lined up for a management role – she probably shouldn’t keep working there if she’s feeling that way. Because honestly, she’s just going to be making everyone else miserable. And given complaining to her friend isn’t changing things – which maybe she thought it would – now she’s making a big scene because things aren’t as she wanted.

Sure, it would have been better to stay more measured and regulate emotions on both sides, but that’s difficult sometimes – especially if both parties are immensely stressed and working on very little sleep. This is clearly a high-pressure time, and hoping that she will be able to change things right away, when the bar is in its first few weeks, and being upset that she can’t, is a little short sighted. But trying to manipulate her friend into making those changes on top of everything else? That’s not nice at all.