LINK: cancelled! (rojie’s version)
Currently listening to: CANCELLED! – Taylor Swift
It’s a good thing I like my friends cancelled
(You know that) I like ’em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal
I like my whiskey sour
And poison thorny flowers (ooh)
Yeah, it’s a good thing I like my friends cancelled (cancelled)
I salute you if you’re much too much to handle
Like my whiskey sour (I like it)
And poison thorny flowers (I love it)
Can’t you see my infamy loves company?
Now they’ve broken you like they’ve broken me
But a shattered glass is a lot more sharp
And now you know exactly who your friends are
When Olivia first started, I was assigned as her preceptor. Within minutes, I knew she was going to be trouble. She didn’t listen. She didn’t take notes. When I reviewed her documentation, I had to highlight every error she made. When I told her that she spelled “cervicalgia” wrong, she had the audacity to ask me if I would just write down everything I told her so she wouldn’t have to.
I told her no. Writing it down herself would help her remember, and if she couldn’t handle that much initiative, how was she going to survive her six-month probation period?
She started buttering me up after the second day. “Do you want me to bring you Starbucks tomorrow morning?” she asked, all smiles. I politely declined. This wasn’t my first rodeo, I know when favors come with strings attached.
It didn’t take long before she got personal. Out of nowhere, she asked why I wasn’t married. I ignored the question and redirected her back to our queue of patients. A few minutes later, she told me that she had a son she could introduce me to. FML. My affect remained flat with my resting bitch face (RBF). No, thank you. The last thing I wanted was to be tethered to her in any way. Especially not through a man she described as “between jobs” but somehow managed to buy her a Louis Vuitton bag “just cause” and lives at home with his parents.
After three exhausting weeks of precepting her, I finally wrote my evaluation in the most PC way possible: that she was unresponsive to feedback and would most likely benefit from a different preceptor. Translation: she was a lost cause and she was wasting my time.
Once she was reassigned, I started noticing her forming her own little clique and full of compliments towards her new preceptor. She’d buy people coffee, lunch, brand name luxury gifts—and before long, she had her own following. Then the whispers started. Word got back to me that she was talking shit about me. I rolled my eyes. How old are we? She is considerably older than I am and yet, here we are. She could insult my looks all she wanted; I didn’t care. I didn’t spend a shit ton of money on BBL, liposuction, implants, fillers, or whatever else she had done. That was her business, not mine. But what she couldn’t say was that I was incompetent.
She’d often test me with random questions, then challenge my answers. Once, she asked something about arteritis in tertiary syphilis. I mansplained it to her, and she gave me that smug look and said, “That doesn’t sound right.” I told her, “Look it up and tell me what you find.” She did. When she realized I was right, she rolled her eyes and muttered, “I guess you’re right.” But that didn’t stop her from doing it again. Every. Single. Day.
Eventually, a few colleagues pulled me aside. “Hey, she’s been dragging your name through the mud. You should say something.” I shrugged. “Nah. Let her run her mouth. People will see her for who she is.” TBH, I didn’t care. I don’t lose sleep over her juvenile shenanigans.
Fast forward eight years. We’re both still there—coexisting, sorta. Some of her old “buddies” have defected and have now befriended me. They’ve told me the stories: how she’d text them early in the morning demanding coffee runs because they “owed her” for all the gifts she’d given them. All I could do was shake my head.
As of late, the past two weeks, she’s been trying to talk to me. She will approach me at LEAST two times a day, using her faux friendly tone with me and even texting me outside our work group chats about bag charms and what nots. I don’t know what her angle is, whether she’s fishing for gossip or just bored and wants to stir up drama, but my guard is up. High. Maybe she’s changed. Maybe she hasn’t.
Either way, I stay the course. I’m cordial. I’m professional. I’m cautious.
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