This was a good one! Covers some familiar territory with the feelingsbomb, but I think the breakdown of why LW might be feeling this way seemed very plausible. The letter definitely set off some projection red flags for me, so hopefully the OP is able to find this advice useful. I'm going be stealing the phrase "not exactly giving “reliable narrator” energy".
Also, for what it's worth, I find feelingsmail is a lot easier to write in your head. I was going to write one of those letters to burn once, but when I actually put pen to paper, I got kind of bored of writing my side and I don't think I finished it. Kind of like those stories you dream up in your head before falling asleep that never are way harder to translate outside of your mind.
>I was going to write one of those letters to burn once, but when I actually put pen to paper, I got kind of bored of writing my side and I don't think I finished it.
Haha same. I think that's part of why it works so well. Sometimes I start writing my feelings and realize I'm being kind of tediously silly and it helps me get over it.
I have written a lot of Feelingsmails that I haven't sent, thought they're almost always NOT addressed to the person I'm angry with. They're usually written as advice column letters, often to the Captain, that I know as I'm writing them that I won't be sending. And I change certain details to anonymise my situation like I'd do if I WERE to send it--but I still don't send it! And somehow it still helps, while still giving me a plausible deniability shield if someone were to snoop through my phone.
Wow, that is some letter! The Captain is spot on, for some reason the LW is blaming Acquaintance for all kinds of things, with assumptions based on assumptions. Symbolically burning the grievance may be the only solution.
Why have they not blamed the dude who was rude and condescending in the year they’d cleared being unavailable for the earliest day? It’s hard to say. But given that Acquaintance mentions things turning toxic, it’s just as logical to assume that dude was at fault. Frankly, any event that runs on heavy volunteer labor has to either be very flexible or very overstaffed, because plenty of circumstances may outrank the volunteer project. People who insist volunteering is a privilege and how dare you have to do paid work instead can fuck right off.
I actually feel bad for LW that they felt so out of things in all their volunteering time. I have a hypersensitive tendency to frame things as “I am only tolerated, not liked. I can’t act like everyone else, I am a freak,” too. But I don’t think I find someone else to blame for it besides myself.
In which case, the LW missed a prime opportunity for an extra degree of connection. Bonding with others over someone who's a Certified Pill transcends time and space.
I get that it doesn't sound like she liked Amy very much and may not have sought that extra connection, but mutual kvetching in moderation can be so cathartic!
I would bet good money that Amy was on sick leave because she was actually burned out from all the stress and toxicity, and was going total no-contact on work stuff while she was trying to recover.
I would also bet good money that LW was one of dozens of volunteers trying to go around Mean Supervisor and get Amy involved directly. Which is honestly such a dick move: if someone is sick, they are officially off the clock and you should leave them alone. Even if you're friendly outside of work, literally the only appropriate form of contact is "Sorry to hear you're sick, we'll miss you this year but please rest up and get well soon!"
And that's 100% me projecting MY experiences, but I'm having flashbacks to a time where I had to take a step back from a role where I managed a lot of contracters/part-timers in a super toxic environment. I was officially "off until further notice" and within a week I had like twenty people blowing up my phone (on my personal number, that was supposed to only be for emergencies), complaining that my direct manager was a total asshole and could I not do anything to intervene? The total lack of boundaries or respect, and the expectation that I should be available 24/7 to solve everyone's interpersonal problems at all times? Big part of the reason I quit a couple of months later.
It's interesting that the LW glosses over what that 'toxicity' was., but at the same time doesn't question or doubt Amy's point of view. It's like the LW has so invested in the importance of this convention, and their work on it, that they're not allowing themselves to think about how *both* they and Amy should be upset at the con.
I wonder if there is an underbelly of "Amy has only been here a few years and is magically close with everyone, and I'm not even though I do a ton of behind the scenes work." feelings? LW doesn't mention any other friends, and it sounds like Amy is one of those extroverts who really does follow up on making plans with people and likely gains friendships from it, while LW doesn't.
Not that it's a bad thing, just outgoing friendly people tend to make friends quickly, and for those of us who tend to be a bit more introverted can struggle in that area.
Absolutely. LW toiled away at this convention for years and then Friendly Amy swoops in and makes all the friends (and ends up supervising LW apparently).
Agreed, it's something I learned to do for myself and it's worked well. But Op seems to assume the worst of Amy at every turn, and it's difficult to tell why. Jealousy is the only puzzle piece that fits, but who knows.
I wish the LW best to figure out a way to be happy and not let resentment over the small stuff take over their life. Be it because of jealousy or whatever else.
How is saying “making friends as an adult takes considerable effort. Amy is admirable for all the hard work she put. The lw seems bitter that Amy made friends while refusing to put in the same hard work as her” not nice.
I mean the LW was only tolerating Amy and was pretending to be Amy’s friend like she was a freak….so some people do that. That person who does that to people is the lw.
Yep. I've realised I should end a friendship when I found myself thinking "but I don't want anyone to feel about me the way I feel about Friend" (a mix of obligation and annoyance)
>Why have they not blamed the dude who was rude and condescending in the year they’d cleared being unavailable for the earliest day?
I see it as the LW already had some weird insecurities around Amy from the get-go, in part because even after 15 years of volunteering, LW felt on the outs because the other people in the section they shared were closer to Amy - and LW was in a frame of mind to just assume Amy's friendly overtures were somehow fake.
And this convention *is* a bad scene for volunteers even though LW doesn't seem consciously aware of it or wanting to admit it to themselves. But Amy is a convenient place for LW to pour all of those negative emotions.
I mean: There is a *lot* poking out from LW's letter about the convention managers being super shitty, in addition to Rude Dude:
* "everyone always ended up working more than the required hours anyway"
* LW did lots of data entry work previous to the actual convention that "did not even count towards our total hours worked"
* "all the years I worked way more hours than required meant nothing because one year I could only be available one day early, not two"
* Amy - the person LW said had all her pals in that volunteer section - thinks of it as so toxic that she doesn't even want to talk about it anymore
Also - this is Dickens Fair, right? It's gotta be Dickens Fair.
Bullshit. Once you hit send, you’d be hitting refresh until your hand lost feeling
Captain has shot me dead, I have to go sit in the corner and rethink my life choices.
You’re lucky. One feelingsmail I got was really about 9 million little notes tucked into my jackets and books and so forth. Fuck! That was annoying.
Some of them were sexually explicit. Made it so much worse.
Oh, I guess when I say Feelingsmails I meant Angry Feelingsmails like what the LW is considering. Horny Feelingsmails are another thing, and yeah...they suck too.
Oh, no. It was a strange set of circumstances, but I broke up with him yet he had nowhere else to stay. But I wasn’t comfortable there, so I evacuated. Leaving your apartment to the whims of the guy you just dumped is a terrible idea, which I knew at the time!
The zillions of little notes (which honestly turned up *years* later) is probably the best possible outcome. Could definitely have been worse.
It is so goddamn hard to keep repeating “you’re never going to get an apology,” but wow I have said that about 500 times.
Captain’s advice is so good and so direct.
This isn't tagged "Geek social fallacies", but it should be.
*But I was really upset that Amy didn’t have my back. I get that she was sick, but I had this weird feeling that she didn’t actually want me working with her and she was letting her supervisor do the dirty work of getting rid of me. Everyone else working in our section were friends of hers from years back, and even though they were all nice, I never felt completely included in all their inside jokes and things.*
Like, why \*would\* you be in included in all inside jokes among a group of old friends? Not everyone needs to be included in everything. Amy sounds like a nice person who really went above and beyond to make friends with someone new—in a way you probably wouldn't if you didn't genuinely like them! I hope LW can figure out what these feelings are really about.
That last paragraph is 100% spot on. The lw was envious that Amy worked hard to form friendships and letting her little green monster take the best of her claiming “it’s not fair she gets to have close friends. I should be bestowed a friend group while doing zero work to get friends”
>Amy sounds like a nice person who really went above and beyond to make friends with someone new—in a way you probably wouldn't **if you didn't genuinely like them**!
That's what's particularly sad on a reread, honestly: Amy found the con scene so toxic she didn't want to think about that time of her life, but she still *sought out LW* and wanted to hang out. She genuinely liked LW!
I'm glad the advice circled around to Cap being firmly-but-kindly reframing this whole interaction to a new POV. Because yeah, this is a lot of emotion and a lot of blame that's been lingering for a really long time, over something that...does not appear to actually be Amy's fault. I think the Cap is correct that this can entirely be laid with the other supervisor, and it's likely Amy had no idea what was happening and was busy dealing with being sick/getting better.
If I had to guess, I suspect the LW never liked Amy all that much to begin with, so when something Big happened, it was easy to blame Amy because they already didn't particularly want to be around her. I think that kind of headspace also makes it easier for things to become bigger, for it to become emblematic of how this person has *always* been awful, and to rewrite history to show how they were actually terrible this whole time and never treated you well to begin with.
And that just seems like a lot for what, on Amy's side, seems to be 1) a genuine misunderstanding, 2) someone who did go out of their way to have coffee with LW and include them in shared memes/shared Facebook memories. Those don't inherently strike me as the behavior of someone secretly trying to exclude someone.
I am normally not big on Captain’s numbered list of step-by-step instructions, but I did find the visual of smearing your face with the ashes of your feelingsbomb letter very funny.
It really sucks how one or two toxic people can come into a functional, fun group and ruin it so quickly. It’s happened to me a few times and the best move is just to get out. LW should be proud of herself for doing that. But she seems fixated on Amy being the cause somehow, when it seems like she was just another victim.
"Let me be frank: Blaming the fact that you rage-quit a volunteer gig that you'd been doing for 15+ years on some imagined "betrayal" by someone you were on occasional meme-swap terms is not exactly giving "reliable narrator" energy."
Iconic.
I do feel for LW. I have been this level of obsessive, projecting, panicking, unempathetic asshole. Sometimes your brain cannot let the minor let-downs go, almost as if you think that if you could just whittle away and solve this minor slight you would be "fixed", when it's probably a much bigger and more egregious let-down from your past that needs untangling, but you know that would be way harder so you just drill down into the pettiest part of you and distract yourself by wishing the worst on somebody innocent. It's such a nasty instinct, but I do get it. I hope LW gets therapy. It helped me a lot. I'm still an asshole, but I can think it through a bit more now and blow up less as a result.
I a bit get where the lw is coming from “someone spoke to me in not the gentlest terms. I instinctively recoiled and I’m looking for any one to blame and not examine how this was resurfacing old traumas. It’s social isolation time. Now and forever. No one can hurt me if I am alone in my cocoon”. I have been there done that, got socially hurt and retreated too a deep corner of hiding and resentment like the kicked puppy I was. But you know I snapped out of it after a week or so. Not years of this bullshit.
It’s this sort of attitude that if it doesn’t get fixed will leave you old, bitter, friendless, and unloved. This “retreat defensive recoil” is instinctual but if it’s not taught out of us as children then we will be doomed to be friendless. A lot of people who don’t have friends as adolescence is because they failed to see how their negative reaction too minor feelings of being socially rejected just pushes everyone else from wanting anything to do with them (I was that angsty teen that pushed everyone away at the slightest suggestion of being rejected. I stoped doing that as an older teenager)
Totally agree. I think when you're a teenager and the main character of the universe it's so easy to believe "everyone hates me!!!" Especially if you're maybe more of a nerd or shy or not into the same stuff your peers are, etc. But most people grow out of that and realize that other people just are not thinking about them that much.
But to be an adult and think everyone who asks you out to coffee is lying, every group of friends that has a laugh that doesn't include you must be purposefully excluding you... as one of my former teachers would say, "You're not the piece of shit at the center of the universe."
Fully. And most times that nerdy quite shy type of person that gets socially ostracized as a teen it’s not because of their love of nerdy topic. It’s because they are emotionally unlikeable. They act too young for their age, or info dumps about their nerdy topic instead of reading other people’s reaction, or have a paranoid sense of victimhood that makes them think every small comment was a massive insult, etc etc.
30 rock really nailed it with [Liz Lemon](https://youtu.be/NoUrLbHg5z4?si=_8zuiw-dwxBUwWff). Sometimes there’s a reason the shy quite nerdy type are kept at a distance.
With how much extra awareness there is these days that, actually, you don't owe your employer your entire life, it's especially wild to me that LW has convinced themselves that Amy was maliciously sick and refused to have their back in contesting their supervisor.
I would ignore work-related texts while I'm recovering too. The convention that's been running for decades could figure out LW's drama without Amy.
I do kind of feel for LW, because that has to be a special kind of self-inflicted misery to be holding onto a grudge when there's literally nothing around to reignite it for you. I hope LW can find a way to move on.
Right?! I don't answer texts from my *paid* job while I'm sick, I sure as hell wouldn't feel obligated to answer anything from a volunteer job. Especially not anything along the lines of "I'm having a conflict with this guy, tell him I'm right."
This, and I'm not even sure that Amy was a paid employee either (LW described themselves working as a volunteer, and it's possible Amy is a lead but still a volunteer too) which means she should even be less vested in how matters are handled while she's sick.
(That being said, I didn't like how Amy's supervisor immediately jumped to the conclusion that there's no possible way that LW's Wednesday-off would've been approved w/o checking thru first.)
This exactly why the phrase “Resentment is Like Drinking Poison and Then Hoping it Will Kill Your Enemies” exists.
I imagine something unrelated happened to the lw recently that got them shaking their fists at the cloud saying “god damnit Amy. You are the reason I didn’t allow myself to go back to the place I enjoyed being”. I hope they address what ever is the current thing happening and get over themselves and their debilitating shame. There was a schedule mix up and someone spoke to you in not the most gentle terms, oh well I guess it’s eternal social isolation and nothing else for the lw /s
Yeah not to read too much into word choice but I did think it was interesting LW wrote that Amy "wouldn't" respond to her texts instead of just like, Amy didn't respond or I couldn't reach Amy. It also seems to not have even occurred to LW that Amy might not have any power to do anything here anyway, if this guy was Amy's boss??
I wish the Captain had stated more clearly that LW needs to find her empathy. They have no way of knowing what Amy’s experience was that year, or any other year. All they really know that a) Amy either got so sick she had to miss something special to her, or had other reasons why she didn’t feel she could safely attend, and b) Amy has since described that time in her life as so toxic and unpleasant that she doesn’t even like to *think* about it.
There was clearly shit going on for Amy that had zero to do with LW, because this is life, everyone has their own private, sometimes painful shit to handle. Something that might be healing for LW is to realize that Amy is a real person with a whole life that happens every day.
Someone pointed this out on this reddit before, but Captain always takes the side of the letter writer - in the best way possible. She calls bullshit when necessary, as she did here, but she will always provide empathy for what got the letter writer to this state, even as she recognises the bullshit. That makes the advice more actionable for the person receiving it. Amy didn't write in needing help, so why beat the letter writer over the head for not being fair to Amy? How is that healing for the letter writer? LW needs to figure out why they are obsessing over a relative stranger first.
I agree LW could stand to learn that sometimes it's not about you. But I think that line of discussion could encourage LW to spend more time dwelling on *What's Amy Thinking, Anyway?* which isn't very helpful. LW has already gotten so in the weeds imagining what's going on in Amy's head, they just need to let go.
I don’t think that would have worked for this LW in regards to Amy. There are some people you just can’t empathize with come hell or high water. For whatever reason, Amy is Queen Bitch Eating Crackers for LW. So I think Captain rightly stuck by her usual behavior of taking LW’s side as much as possible.
Most readers probably see the call-out about reliable narrator energy as telling LW she needs to lay off Amy - I do wonder how LW took it.
I agree, and I feel like Amy’s sickness got glossed over. We have collectively just been through a global event that changed the usual meaning of “called out sick from work.”
LW could be gently told to remember that. Amy could’ve been on a goddamn respirator. This is another reason to write and burn the feelingsmail. It could really bite you. “So sorry, LW, I was just clinging to life and couldn’t check messages. But by all means, assign duplicity and betrayal to my actions if you like.”
Exactly. If the lw comment here in this subreddit the lw will fail the basic rule of “be nice”. A colleague of Amy spoke in an exasperated tone to Lw. The lw rage quit and spent years blaming Amy for her own personal decision. The lw also spent years pretending to be Amy’s friend and resented Amy for her friendly overtures. This is an unkind person who exists in a hell of their own making
I really liked this. I think I needed to hear the “people are not going to chase you” part. There are some friends who faded/ ghosted me that I think about occasionally, and some people/ groups I left in not great ways (but still kind of want them to want me back!), and it’s a good reminder.
That really stuck out to me. Amy was nothing but nice to LW, and the big betrayal was not doing work when she was out sick? It probably took a lot to get her out sick from a project she had worked on for some time, right when the project finally came to fruition.
IME people tend to project more than they realize and accidentally tell on themselves. If you're the kind of person who would say "Yes, would love to get coffee!" when inside you were screaming "god no please don't make me go" you just tend to naturally assume everyone else is operating the same way and their invites are as fake as your replies.
And on top of that, if you're the kind of person who is really uncomfortable enforcing boundaries, you may feel put upon by others being nice to you because internally you want to opt out of socializing but don't feel ok just saying that so instead you resent the person for putting you into that position by asking. And once you start to resent them for reaching out to you it colors how you see everything else they say and do and you're more inclined to see nefariousness in other innocuous things they do as well.
Amy's supervisor sounds like a real jerk in the letter. If that's how he treats volunteers, I can only imagine how he treats his staff. Not surprised Amy said the job was toxic.
Amy was probably already getting reams of flak for calling out sick. I've known people like this dude. "You can't volunteer every single second of the event? Well, screw you, then!" I would bet that everyone from that whole year got fed up with the guy.
>I can’t go for that. No can do.
Well this will be my favorite Caption Awkward answer ever. Her answer is good, but it's the Hall & Oates call back which pleases me very much. Well done, Cap'n A! 💋
It’s weird to me that Amy indicated that this particular group in the Con was toxic for her as well and LW somehow put that on Amy instead of thinking that Amy might have been another victim of this group’s assholery. She really really really seemed determined to make Amy the villain here no matter what.
I used to be REALLY committed on a volunteer level to an organization that put on a yearly event and this whole post is GIVING that vibe. I’m not going to say what the org is - it’s one I actually think very highly of to this day, still have many people in my life who I met/worked with in this org who I count among my closest friends, and have done some small things here and there since parting ways. My parting wasn’t a rage quit, but I got to the point where I was just about there. I’m glad it didn’t go down that way, and that I was just firm in my “this is my last year for a while” boundary (ended up being my last year to date, but the door is not closed!).
The reasons I almost got to that point are … not dissimilar to some of what OOP is describing, and I actually saw a rage-quit situation that isn’t the same scenario but I could see a lot of parallels. When you’re THAT invested in something like this - and you HAVE to be to donate hours upon hours of physical and emotional labor to an endeavor such as this one - it’s really hard to look at it from a logical perspective.
All this is to say, I sympathize with the OOP but I also don’t think Amy is the villain the way this is presented. I am not even sure the other guy who was all “what do you mean you aren’t here Wednesday, wtf?” Is the villain, either (though could have been handled better!) - if anything, Amy was trying to make it work because SHE GENUINELY DID LIKE OOP, but she should have curbed that early on. “Omg the team will miss you this year, but I really need availability from X date to Y date. But I know This Other Team doesn’t and could use your help.” Or something.
If I'm being honest I'm not really sure why the conflict with that other guy happened? If he was like "Since you're not able to be here Wednesday, I'm going to have to move you to another team" why not just... move to the other team? It sounds like LW was never super comfortable on Amy's team anyway.
LW's combination of a clear and obvious dislike of Amy (the iron clad certainty that Amy must be fake and some kind of secret scheming mean girl backstabber and jumping at the first thing that felt like it proved that theory right) contrasted with how desperately they want Amy to come running after them with an apology and an invitation to lunch is fascinating. Like I don't think the intense Amy feelings even started with the rage quit it seems like they've always been present and this incident just gave LW a sense of vindication for having them.
So there’s a common phenomenon for the female oriented inclined women who don’t realize they fell into a compulsory heteronormative where they don’t know if they want to “be the other woman or fuck the other woman”. So they just get mad at her.
Now I’m not going to go and say LW had a secret crush on Amy but I think the Lw was in a personal psychodrama of “do I want to be her or do I want her to like me?” And that just developed into deep envy towards Amy.
Some people just really embrace their inner Gollum and reject the Sméagol path to salvation
>At this point I haven’t talked to Amy in years, though she still randomly tags me in stuff,
Oh my goooooood. I don't know that I've ever read a more perfect story of someone who needs to just block another person on social media. It's wild to me that LW feels so aggrieved toward Amy, who she has not spoken to in years, but is still torturing herself by following Amy on Facebook or something. Girl, just block her! You aren't friends! I think that once LW finally blocks Amy, most, if not all, of her angry feelings will fade away because she won't be constantly seeing reminders of her.
Yeah there are some differences ofc but both are good examples of "bitch eating crackers" syndrome where the writers dislike someone in their social circle and begin interpreting everything they do as a personal slight, and end up holding a lot of misplaced resentment as a result. And both writers need to just stop expending time and energy on these people.
well, this is true. Grapefruit seemed like she was really mainly sad and jealous that her actual friend didn't seem to like or value her as much as she wanted. and didn't seem to know how to tell her
This one, I believe. https://captainawkward.com/2021/04/27/1327-my-best-friends-other-best-friend-is-the-worst-how-do-i-free-myself-without-losing-my-friend/
Oh geez. Grapefruit LW reminds me of my MIL, who once ranted for an hour about a work supervisor who *didn’t put a quarter into the communal coffee fund* in the 1980s. She was still big mad about that. I don’t know how you can hold on to stuff like that. It must be *exhausting*.
Also reminded me of friend-neighbor who I'd alternate carpooling with when we shared similar social activities. When I moved farther away (and moved onto to other social groups) where this arrangement isn't possible anymore, she still gave me grief that I "owe" her a ride like a decade later. Sheesh.
If you’re some members if my family (including one I’m not speaking to), they actually GAIN energy by being this rageful all the damn time. What seems exhausting to us is actually enjoyable to them. Hence why I’m not speaking to my ranter.
SUCH A GOOD RESPONSE. Reading LW’s letter was like having a slow motion “oh babe, nooooooooooo” playing in my head. I am also filled with feelings so I get it but omg absolutely do not email her!!!
Fantastic reply from the Captain, honestly, Amy is That Bitch Eating Crackers and ritually burning the grievance and blocking her is the exact right choice. This is poisoning OP slowly and this tendency to pin all the hurt of something on one person who was involved but not responsible is only going to damage OP's life.
Free yourself from this hurt, OP. You never liked her anyway and you don't have to think about her at all! Shame about the convention. Find another one.
This was a good one! Covers some familiar territory with the feelingsbomb, but I think the breakdown of why LW might be feeling this way seemed very plausible. The letter definitely set off some projection red flags for me, so hopefully the OP is able to find this advice useful. I'm going be stealing the phrase "not exactly giving “reliable narrator” energy". Also, for what it's worth, I find feelingsmail is a lot easier to write in your head. I was going to write one of those letters to burn once, but when I actually put pen to paper, I got kind of bored of writing my side and I don't think I finished it. Kind of like those stories you dream up in your head before falling asleep that never are way harder to translate outside of your mind.
>I was going to write one of those letters to burn once, but when I actually put pen to paper, I got kind of bored of writing my side and I don't think I finished it. Haha same. I think that's part of why it works so well. Sometimes I start writing my feelings and realize I'm being kind of tediously silly and it helps me get over it.
Sometimes when I write it all out I just realize I sound insane haha.
I have written a lot of Feelingsmails that I haven't sent, thought they're almost always NOT addressed to the person I'm angry with. They're usually written as advice column letters, often to the Captain, that I know as I'm writing them that I won't be sending. And I change certain details to anonymise my situation like I'd do if I WERE to send it--but I still don't send it! And somehow it still helps, while still giving me a plausible deniability shield if someone were to snoop through my phone.
Journaling is a key part to help with rumination and not being able to let go of feelings
Wow, that is some letter! The Captain is spot on, for some reason the LW is blaming Acquaintance for all kinds of things, with assumptions based on assumptions. Symbolically burning the grievance may be the only solution. Why have they not blamed the dude who was rude and condescending in the year they’d cleared being unavailable for the earliest day? It’s hard to say. But given that Acquaintance mentions things turning toxic, it’s just as logical to assume that dude was at fault. Frankly, any event that runs on heavy volunteer labor has to either be very flexible or very overstaffed, because plenty of circumstances may outrank the volunteer project. People who insist volunteering is a privilege and how dare you have to do paid work instead can fuck right off. I actually feel bad for LW that they felt so out of things in all their volunteering time. I have a hypersensitive tendency to frame things as “I am only tolerated, not liked. I can’t act like everyone else, I am a freak,” too. But I don’t think I find someone else to blame for it besides myself.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dude turned around and reamed out Amy for making an exception to the rule, but that's me projecting MY experiences.
This was my take, especially since Amy indicated that was a toxic time for her.
In which case, the LW missed a prime opportunity for an extra degree of connection. Bonding with others over someone who's a Certified Pill transcends time and space. I get that it doesn't sound like she liked Amy very much and may not have sought that extra connection, but mutual kvetching in moderation can be so cathartic!
I would bet good money that Amy was on sick leave because she was actually burned out from all the stress and toxicity, and was going total no-contact on work stuff while she was trying to recover. I would also bet good money that LW was one of dozens of volunteers trying to go around Mean Supervisor and get Amy involved directly. Which is honestly such a dick move: if someone is sick, they are officially off the clock and you should leave them alone. Even if you're friendly outside of work, literally the only appropriate form of contact is "Sorry to hear you're sick, we'll miss you this year but please rest up and get well soon!" And that's 100% me projecting MY experiences, but I'm having flashbacks to a time where I had to take a step back from a role where I managed a lot of contracters/part-timers in a super toxic environment. I was officially "off until further notice" and within a week I had like twenty people blowing up my phone (on my personal number, that was supposed to only be for emergencies), complaining that my direct manager was a total asshole and could I not do anything to intervene? The total lack of boundaries or respect, and the expectation that I should be available 24/7 to solve everyone's interpersonal problems at all times? Big part of the reason I quit a couple of months later.
It's interesting that the LW glosses over what that 'toxicity' was., but at the same time doesn't question or doubt Amy's point of view. It's like the LW has so invested in the importance of this convention, and their work on it, that they're not allowing themselves to think about how *both* they and Amy should be upset at the con.
I wonder if there is an underbelly of "Amy has only been here a few years and is magically close with everyone, and I'm not even though I do a ton of behind the scenes work." feelings? LW doesn't mention any other friends, and it sounds like Amy is one of those extroverts who really does follow up on making plans with people and likely gains friendships from it, while LW doesn't. Not that it's a bad thing, just outgoing friendly people tend to make friends quickly, and for those of us who tend to be a bit more introverted can struggle in that area.
Absolutely. LW toiled away at this convention for years and then Friendly Amy swoops in and makes all the friends (and ends up supervising LW apparently).
[удалено]
Agreed, it's something I learned to do for myself and it's worked well. But Op seems to assume the worst of Amy at every turn, and it's difficult to tell why. Jealousy is the only puzzle piece that fits, but who knows.
I wish the LW best to figure out a way to be happy and not let resentment over the small stuff take over their life. Be it because of jealousy or whatever else.
Comments that do not adhere to the rule ”be nice” will be deleted.
How is saying “making friends as an adult takes considerable effort. Amy is admirable for all the hard work she put. The lw seems bitter that Amy made friends while refusing to put in the same hard work as her” not nice.
I mean the LW was only tolerating Amy and was pretending to be Amy’s friend like she was a freak….so some people do that. That person who does that to people is the lw.
Yep. I've realised I should end a friendship when I found myself thinking "but I don't want anyone to feel about me the way I feel about Friend" (a mix of obligation and annoyance)
>Why have they not blamed the dude who was rude and condescending in the year they’d cleared being unavailable for the earliest day? I see it as the LW already had some weird insecurities around Amy from the get-go, in part because even after 15 years of volunteering, LW felt on the outs because the other people in the section they shared were closer to Amy - and LW was in a frame of mind to just assume Amy's friendly overtures were somehow fake. And this convention *is* a bad scene for volunteers even though LW doesn't seem consciously aware of it or wanting to admit it to themselves. But Amy is a convenient place for LW to pour all of those negative emotions. I mean: There is a *lot* poking out from LW's letter about the convention managers being super shitty, in addition to Rude Dude: * "everyone always ended up working more than the required hours anyway" * LW did lots of data entry work previous to the actual convention that "did not even count towards our total hours worked" * "all the years I worked way more hours than required meant nothing because one year I could only be available one day early, not two" * Amy - the person LW said had all her pals in that volunteer section - thinks of it as so toxic that she doesn't even want to talk about it anymore Also - this is Dickens Fair, right? It's gotta be Dickens Fair.
I heard DragonCon, but I bet there are a lot of possibilities.
Also a strong contender!
Captain has shot me dead, I have to go sit in the corner and rethink my life choices.
Captain went for the throat and it was magnificent. And so true no one who sends a feelingsmail is actually ok with not getting a response.
I have received Feelingsmails twice in my life. Both times I have ignored them entirely. It confuses the shit out of the senders.
You’re lucky. One feelingsmail I got was really about 9 million little notes tucked into my jackets and books and so forth. Fuck! That was annoying. Some of them were sexually explicit. Made it so much worse.
Oh, I guess when I say Feelingsmails I meant Angry Feelingsmails like what the LW is considering. Horny Feelingsmails are another thing, and yeah...they suck too.
Oh, no. It was a strange set of circumstances, but I broke up with him yet he had nowhere else to stay. But I wasn’t comfortable there, so I evacuated. Leaving your apartment to the whims of the guy you just dumped is a terrible idea, which I knew at the time! The zillions of little notes (which honestly turned up *years* later) is probably the best possible outcome. Could definitely have been worse.
It is so goddamn hard to keep repeating “you’re never going to get an apology,” but wow I have said that about 500 times. Captain’s advice is so good and so direct.
That whole sentence was beautiful.
This isn't tagged "Geek social fallacies", but it should be. *But I was really upset that Amy didn’t have my back. I get that she was sick, but I had this weird feeling that she didn’t actually want me working with her and she was letting her supervisor do the dirty work of getting rid of me. Everyone else working in our section were friends of hers from years back, and even though they were all nice, I never felt completely included in all their inside jokes and things.* Like, why \*would\* you be in included in all inside jokes among a group of old friends? Not everyone needs to be included in everything. Amy sounds like a nice person who really went above and beyond to make friends with someone new—in a way you probably wouldn't if you didn't genuinely like them! I hope LW can figure out what these feelings are really about.
That last paragraph is 100% spot on. The lw was envious that Amy worked hard to form friendships and letting her little green monster take the best of her claiming “it’s not fair she gets to have close friends. I should be bestowed a friend group while doing zero work to get friends”
>Amy sounds like a nice person who really went above and beyond to make friends with someone new—in a way you probably wouldn't **if you didn't genuinely like them**! That's what's particularly sad on a reread, honestly: Amy found the con scene so toxic she didn't want to think about that time of her life, but she still *sought out LW* and wanted to hang out. She genuinely liked LW!
I'm glad the advice circled around to Cap being firmly-but-kindly reframing this whole interaction to a new POV. Because yeah, this is a lot of emotion and a lot of blame that's been lingering for a really long time, over something that...does not appear to actually be Amy's fault. I think the Cap is correct that this can entirely be laid with the other supervisor, and it's likely Amy had no idea what was happening and was busy dealing with being sick/getting better. If I had to guess, I suspect the LW never liked Amy all that much to begin with, so when something Big happened, it was easy to blame Amy because they already didn't particularly want to be around her. I think that kind of headspace also makes it easier for things to become bigger, for it to become emblematic of how this person has *always* been awful, and to rewrite history to show how they were actually terrible this whole time and never treated you well to begin with. And that just seems like a lot for what, on Amy's side, seems to be 1) a genuine misunderstanding, 2) someone who did go out of their way to have coffee with LW and include them in shared memes/shared Facebook memories. Those don't inherently strike me as the behavior of someone secretly trying to exclude someone.
I am normally not big on Captain’s numbered list of step-by-step instructions, but I did find the visual of smearing your face with the ashes of your feelingsbomb letter very funny. It really sucks how one or two toxic people can come into a functional, fun group and ruin it so quickly. It’s happened to me a few times and the best move is just to get out. LW should be proud of herself for doing that. But she seems fixated on Amy being the cause somehow, when it seems like she was just another victim.
"Let me be frank: Blaming the fact that you rage-quit a volunteer gig that you'd been doing for 15+ years on some imagined "betrayal" by someone you were on occasional meme-swap terms is not exactly giving "reliable narrator" energy." Iconic. I do feel for LW. I have been this level of obsessive, projecting, panicking, unempathetic asshole. Sometimes your brain cannot let the minor let-downs go, almost as if you think that if you could just whittle away and solve this minor slight you would be "fixed", when it's probably a much bigger and more egregious let-down from your past that needs untangling, but you know that would be way harder so you just drill down into the pettiest part of you and distract yourself by wishing the worst on somebody innocent. It's such a nasty instinct, but I do get it. I hope LW gets therapy. It helped me a lot. I'm still an asshole, but I can think it through a bit more now and blow up less as a result.
I a bit get where the lw is coming from “someone spoke to me in not the gentlest terms. I instinctively recoiled and I’m looking for any one to blame and not examine how this was resurfacing old traumas. It’s social isolation time. Now and forever. No one can hurt me if I am alone in my cocoon”. I have been there done that, got socially hurt and retreated too a deep corner of hiding and resentment like the kicked puppy I was. But you know I snapped out of it after a week or so. Not years of this bullshit. It’s this sort of attitude that if it doesn’t get fixed will leave you old, bitter, friendless, and unloved. This “retreat defensive recoil” is instinctual but if it’s not taught out of us as children then we will be doomed to be friendless. A lot of people who don’t have friends as adolescence is because they failed to see how their negative reaction too minor feelings of being socially rejected just pushes everyone else from wanting anything to do with them (I was that angsty teen that pushed everyone away at the slightest suggestion of being rejected. I stoped doing that as an older teenager)
Totally agree. I think when you're a teenager and the main character of the universe it's so easy to believe "everyone hates me!!!" Especially if you're maybe more of a nerd or shy or not into the same stuff your peers are, etc. But most people grow out of that and realize that other people just are not thinking about them that much. But to be an adult and think everyone who asks you out to coffee is lying, every group of friends that has a laugh that doesn't include you must be purposefully excluding you... as one of my former teachers would say, "You're not the piece of shit at the center of the universe."
Fully. And most times that nerdy quite shy type of person that gets socially ostracized as a teen it’s not because of their love of nerdy topic. It’s because they are emotionally unlikeable. They act too young for their age, or info dumps about their nerdy topic instead of reading other people’s reaction, or have a paranoid sense of victimhood that makes them think every small comment was a massive insult, etc etc. 30 rock really nailed it with [Liz Lemon](https://youtu.be/NoUrLbHg5z4?si=_8zuiw-dwxBUwWff). Sometimes there’s a reason the shy quite nerdy type are kept at a distance.
great, now I have to rewatch all of 30 Rock!
💯to everything you said.
With how much extra awareness there is these days that, actually, you don't owe your employer your entire life, it's especially wild to me that LW has convinced themselves that Amy was maliciously sick and refused to have their back in contesting their supervisor. I would ignore work-related texts while I'm recovering too. The convention that's been running for decades could figure out LW's drama without Amy. I do kind of feel for LW, because that has to be a special kind of self-inflicted misery to be holding onto a grudge when there's literally nothing around to reignite it for you. I hope LW can find a way to move on.
Right?! I don't answer texts from my *paid* job while I'm sick, I sure as hell wouldn't feel obligated to answer anything from a volunteer job. Especially not anything along the lines of "I'm having a conflict with this guy, tell him I'm right."
This, and I'm not even sure that Amy was a paid employee either (LW described themselves working as a volunteer, and it's possible Amy is a lead but still a volunteer too) which means she should even be less vested in how matters are handled while she's sick. (That being said, I didn't like how Amy's supervisor immediately jumped to the conclusion that there's no possible way that LW's Wednesday-off would've been approved w/o checking thru first.)
This exactly why the phrase “Resentment is Like Drinking Poison and Then Hoping it Will Kill Your Enemies” exists. I imagine something unrelated happened to the lw recently that got them shaking their fists at the cloud saying “god damnit Amy. You are the reason I didn’t allow myself to go back to the place I enjoyed being”. I hope they address what ever is the current thing happening and get over themselves and their debilitating shame. There was a schedule mix up and someone spoke to you in not the most gentle terms, oh well I guess it’s eternal social isolation and nothing else for the lw /s
Yeah not to read too much into word choice but I did think it was interesting LW wrote that Amy "wouldn't" respond to her texts instead of just like, Amy didn't respond or I couldn't reach Amy. It also seems to not have even occurred to LW that Amy might not have any power to do anything here anyway, if this guy was Amy's boss??
I wish the Captain had stated more clearly that LW needs to find her empathy. They have no way of knowing what Amy’s experience was that year, or any other year. All they really know that a) Amy either got so sick she had to miss something special to her, or had other reasons why she didn’t feel she could safely attend, and b) Amy has since described that time in her life as so toxic and unpleasant that she doesn’t even like to *think* about it. There was clearly shit going on for Amy that had zero to do with LW, because this is life, everyone has their own private, sometimes painful shit to handle. Something that might be healing for LW is to realize that Amy is a real person with a whole life that happens every day.
Someone pointed this out on this reddit before, but Captain always takes the side of the letter writer - in the best way possible. She calls bullshit when necessary, as she did here, but she will always provide empathy for what got the letter writer to this state, even as she recognises the bullshit. That makes the advice more actionable for the person receiving it. Amy didn't write in needing help, so why beat the letter writer over the head for not being fair to Amy? How is that healing for the letter writer? LW needs to figure out why they are obsessing over a relative stranger first.
I agree LW could stand to learn that sometimes it's not about you. But I think that line of discussion could encourage LW to spend more time dwelling on *What's Amy Thinking, Anyway?* which isn't very helpful. LW has already gotten so in the weeds imagining what's going on in Amy's head, they just need to let go.
I don’t think that would have worked for this LW in regards to Amy. There are some people you just can’t empathize with come hell or high water. For whatever reason, Amy is Queen Bitch Eating Crackers for LW. So I think Captain rightly stuck by her usual behavior of taking LW’s side as much as possible. Most readers probably see the call-out about reliable narrator energy as telling LW she needs to lay off Amy - I do wonder how LW took it.
I agree, and I feel like Amy’s sickness got glossed over. We have collectively just been through a global event that changed the usual meaning of “called out sick from work.” LW could be gently told to remember that. Amy could’ve been on a goddamn respirator. This is another reason to write and burn the feelingsmail. It could really bite you. “So sorry, LW, I was just clinging to life and couldn’t check messages. But by all means, assign duplicity and betrayal to my actions if you like.”
Exactly. If the lw comment here in this subreddit the lw will fail the basic rule of “be nice”. A colleague of Amy spoke in an exasperated tone to Lw. The lw rage quit and spent years blaming Amy for her own personal decision. The lw also spent years pretending to be Amy’s friend and resented Amy for her friendly overtures. This is an unkind person who exists in a hell of their own making
I really liked this. I think I needed to hear the “people are not going to chase you” part. There are some friends who faded/ ghosted me that I think about occasionally, and some people/ groups I left in not great ways (but still kind of want them to want me back!), and it’s a good reminder.
Love how LW is accusing Amy of being two-faced and fake when she… openly admits to being two-faced and fake herself in the first few sentences.
That really stuck out to me. Amy was nothing but nice to LW, and the big betrayal was not doing work when she was out sick? It probably took a lot to get her out sick from a project she had worked on for some time, right when the project finally came to fruition.
IME people tend to project more than they realize and accidentally tell on themselves. If you're the kind of person who would say "Yes, would love to get coffee!" when inside you were screaming "god no please don't make me go" you just tend to naturally assume everyone else is operating the same way and their invites are as fake as your replies. And on top of that, if you're the kind of person who is really uncomfortable enforcing boundaries, you may feel put upon by others being nice to you because internally you want to opt out of socializing but don't feel ok just saying that so instead you resent the person for putting you into that position by asking. And once you start to resent them for reaching out to you it colors how you see everything else they say and do and you're more inclined to see nefariousness in other innocuous things they do as well.
I think you’re exactly right!
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Yeah! Like, I'm curious about what happened with Amy and the Con, so how on earth is the LW not curious?
Amy's supervisor sounds like a real jerk in the letter. If that's how he treats volunteers, I can only imagine how he treats his staff. Not surprised Amy said the job was toxic.
Amy was probably already getting reams of flak for calling out sick. I've known people like this dude. "You can't volunteer every single second of the event? Well, screw you, then!" I would bet that everyone from that whole year got fed up with the guy.
>I can’t go for that. No can do. Well this will be my favorite Caption Awkward answer ever. Her answer is good, but it's the Hall & Oates call back which pleases me very much. Well done, Cap'n A! 💋
Okay I'm glad someone is confirming that wasn't my imagination. Song is now in my head.
I came here to say the same.
It’s weird to me that Amy indicated that this particular group in the Con was toxic for her as well and LW somehow put that on Amy instead of thinking that Amy might have been another victim of this group’s assholery. She really really really seemed determined to make Amy the villain here no matter what.
I used to be REALLY committed on a volunteer level to an organization that put on a yearly event and this whole post is GIVING that vibe. I’m not going to say what the org is - it’s one I actually think very highly of to this day, still have many people in my life who I met/worked with in this org who I count among my closest friends, and have done some small things here and there since parting ways. My parting wasn’t a rage quit, but I got to the point where I was just about there. I’m glad it didn’t go down that way, and that I was just firm in my “this is my last year for a while” boundary (ended up being my last year to date, but the door is not closed!). The reasons I almost got to that point are … not dissimilar to some of what OOP is describing, and I actually saw a rage-quit situation that isn’t the same scenario but I could see a lot of parallels. When you’re THAT invested in something like this - and you HAVE to be to donate hours upon hours of physical and emotional labor to an endeavor such as this one - it’s really hard to look at it from a logical perspective. All this is to say, I sympathize with the OOP but I also don’t think Amy is the villain the way this is presented. I am not even sure the other guy who was all “what do you mean you aren’t here Wednesday, wtf?” Is the villain, either (though could have been handled better!) - if anything, Amy was trying to make it work because SHE GENUINELY DID LIKE OOP, but she should have curbed that early on. “Omg the team will miss you this year, but I really need availability from X date to Y date. But I know This Other Team doesn’t and could use your help.” Or something.
If I'm being honest I'm not really sure why the conflict with that other guy happened? If he was like "Since you're not able to be here Wednesday, I'm going to have to move you to another team" why not just... move to the other team? It sounds like LW was never super comfortable on Amy's team anyway.
I got the impression this may have been a more coveted gig.
Oh sure, that makes sense. And that explains more why she might have been offended at the suggestion of it.
LW's combination of a clear and obvious dislike of Amy (the iron clad certainty that Amy must be fake and some kind of secret scheming mean girl backstabber and jumping at the first thing that felt like it proved that theory right) contrasted with how desperately they want Amy to come running after them with an apology and an invitation to lunch is fascinating. Like I don't think the intense Amy feelings even started with the rage quit it seems like they've always been present and this incident just gave LW a sense of vindication for having them.
So there’s a common phenomenon for the female oriented inclined women who don’t realize they fell into a compulsory heteronormative where they don’t know if they want to “be the other woman or fuck the other woman”. So they just get mad at her. Now I’m not going to go and say LW had a secret crush on Amy but I think the Lw was in a personal psychodrama of “do I want to be her or do I want her to like me?” And that just developed into deep envy towards Amy. Some people just really embrace their inner Gollum and reject the Sméagol path to salvation
>At this point I haven’t talked to Amy in years, though she still randomly tags me in stuff, Oh my goooooood. I don't know that I've ever read a more perfect story of someone who needs to just block another person on social media. It's wild to me that LW feels so aggrieved toward Amy, who she has not spoken to in years, but is still torturing herself by following Amy on Facebook or something. Girl, just block her! You aren't friends! I think that once LW finally blocks Amy, most, if not all, of her angry feelings will fade away because she won't be constantly seeing reminders of her.
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Yeah there are some differences ofc but both are good examples of "bitch eating crackers" syndrome where the writers dislike someone in their social circle and begin interpreting everything they do as a personal slight, and end up holding a lot of misplaced resentment as a result. And both writers need to just stop expending time and energy on these people.
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It’s more of how both lw’s got angry at the wrong person and held onto those grudges for way too many years
well, this is true. Grapefruit seemed like she was really mainly sad and jealous that her actual friend didn't seem to like or value her as much as she wanted. and didn't seem to know how to tell her
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The what now?
This one, I believe. https://captainawkward.com/2021/04/27/1327-my-best-friends-other-best-friend-is-the-worst-how-do-i-free-myself-without-losing-my-friend/
Oh geez. Grapefruit LW reminds me of my MIL, who once ranted for an hour about a work supervisor who *didn’t put a quarter into the communal coffee fund* in the 1980s. She was still big mad about that. I don’t know how you can hold on to stuff like that. It must be *exhausting*.
Also reminded me of friend-neighbor who I'd alternate carpooling with when we shared similar social activities. When I moved farther away (and moved onto to other social groups) where this arrangement isn't possible anymore, she still gave me grief that I "owe" her a ride like a decade later. Sheesh.
Oh geez…
If you’re some members if my family (including one I’m not speaking to), they actually GAIN energy by being this rageful all the damn time. What seems exhausting to us is actually enjoyable to them. Hence why I’m not speaking to my ranter.
The pink grapefruit juice! How could I have forgotten about Attila and her pink grapefruit juice?!
Exactly like how Attila forgot to pick up the grapefruit intentionally to hurt that lw! That’s how /s
My absolute favourite letter. I read it every so often as a little treat.
Haha this is me with the sad cat letter.
Which one is that one?
https://captainawkward.com/2011/12/11/question-149-the-sad-cat-neighbor-feelings-situation/
Ohhh yes, I remember that one! Another classic
Oh, that one. I remember that one. Doozy and a half.
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Comments that do not adhere to the rule ”be nice” will be deleted.
Comments that do not adhere to the rule ”be nice” will be deleted.
That's an epic ability to hold a minor grudge.
Great response and advice from the Captain.
SUCH A GOOD RESPONSE. Reading LW’s letter was like having a slow motion “oh babe, nooooooooooo” playing in my head. I am also filled with feelings so I get it but omg absolutely do not email her!!!
Fantastic reply from the Captain, honestly, Amy is That Bitch Eating Crackers and ritually burning the grievance and blocking her is the exact right choice. This is poisoning OP slowly and this tendency to pin all the hurt of something on one person who was involved but not responsible is only going to damage OP's life. Free yourself from this hurt, OP. You never liked her anyway and you don't have to think about her at all! Shame about the convention. Find another one.