Trust

It's one word, five letters; yet so powerful, so important, so easily damaged and so hard to repair.   I’ve had trust issues for most of my life.  My father is an ass.  Always has been, always will be.  For the last 20+ years that he’s been completely out of my life has been a blessing.  My ex-husband lost my trust early in the relationship and never even tried to regain it.  He lied, a lot or he’d purposely leave out pertinent information.  I didn’t trust him and it was a huge part of the demise of our marriage. 

In business, I’ve seen a lot of young bucks say “fake it until you make it”.  I remember doing that, I’d make up answers that sounded plausible, but I really didn’t know.  That burned me a few times and one of my best leaders taught me that “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you” is a WAY better answer than anything else I could say if I didn’t know.  Once people peg you as a liar, you lose their trust, and that’s ridiculously hard to earn back.

TCW (Toxic CoWorker) is a liar.  I’ve caught her a number of times either blatantly lying to cover her ass or getting hyperbolic and blowing things way out of proportion.  Now, I simply ignore her.  I know I can’t trust her.  It’s a shame; a lot of people do trust her and end up getting burned by her over and over again.  I did, in the beginning, but I’ve since learned my lesson.  It really sucks, having to keep your eye on someone who will knife you in the back faster than she’ll even smile at you.  She’s not even subtle about it.  I walked past her bitching about me to FCW (Flakey CoWorker) in FCW’s office with the door open.  She’d not said a word to me, but she’d bitched about me to one of the sales guys (who told me) so I knew what she was complaining about. 

Two weeks ago TCW was out with that Sales Guy and one of our US colleagues.   She’d texted me in the middle of the day “Do you know where Staples HO is?”  *sigh* again, complete lack of manners drives me absolutely bat-shit.  I was tempted to simply ignore her text, but there was no need to punish SG or USC because she’s a cow.  I simply responded with “yes” but at the same time emailed the address to her and SG.  Apparently, she exploded in the car calling me all sorts of names (she didn’t look at her email).  She texted back “please” and I immediately responded with “already emailed it to you”.  She was complaining about what a bitch I was to FCW, I just looked at both of them, smirked and walked away.

She’s taught me that no matter how nice she can appear I cannot trust her.   She also reminds me that I don’t want to lose other people's trust.  It’s very important, and obviously more important that she knows.  I've finally got a marriage based on trust, love and respect.  I've built a reputation at work based on trust, respect and quality.  I know and respect its value.