I've stopped commenting on a wide variety of things, just because I realized the headache that would follow wasn't worth it. In the interests of having my post read and considered, I won't even use anything CF related as an example.

I work with a woman named Kathy. Now Kathy is in her late 50's, has been doing security for five years (A fair length of time, depending on your assignments), all at extremely low level, low paying, low priority postings. She's never so much as held a gun, she's not very bright, but she is reliable. She's what I consider a "concierge" type of guard. The kind who will sit at their little desk, follow the post orders TO THE LETTER, without ever questioning anything, without ever rocking the boat, without ever thinking outside of the box. The sort who goes into an absolute tizzy if there is any deviation from her post orders or daily routine, and who can't think for herself. She punches in on the dot every day (after showing up 20 minutes early, just to make sure she isn't late) punches out on the dot every day, and just sort of trundles on ahead. She's the type of guard who will probably still be making the same wage the day she finally stops working for us, than she was the day she was hired. Maybe a buck or two more.

Then you have me. I'm in my 20th year of security work. In that time, I've saved 4 peoples lives via CPR, been in charge of entire Districts for various companies, body-guarded for the Trump family (and their assorted friends, relatives, and business partners) I've been an area manager, field supervisor, site supervisor, facilitator, handler (don't ask), and I've been nominated three times for lifesaver awards. I've handled some VERY lucrative, very secret things for some very influential people, strictly because of my reputation in the industry, the letters of rec that I carry, and my ability to above all keep my temper in check while at work, and remember the assignment. Previously I've held jobs where I made in one month what she makes in a year. I'm considered a professional in this industry.

Due to my current situation, I work with this woman. We make the exact same wage (until March). We are the same rank, and hold the same title. we have butted heads on nearly every single topic it is possible for two people to argue about, all because she insists on making a huge federal case out of every single thing she possibly can. Where on the desk the pen holder should sit, what constitutes "late" to work, what are matters we go up the chain of command within our company for, and what are matters of real urgency we go directly to the client for, essentially every single aspect of this job. She INSISTS on everything here being set up HER way, and despite the fact that we work different shifts and are only together five minutes a day, I loathe this woman.

Now knowing what I know, I could make this womans working life hell. If all I cared about was getting my way and making sure I rubbed her face in the fact, I could do it all day long. (Our bosses bosses boss once called me on my private phone to ask me to come in five minutes earlier the next day, to beat the woman with a 2x4, he was so sick of all the nonsense she stirs up.)

We have been working together this way for about 6 months now. For the first month, we couldn't even be in the same room and be civil. These days, I come in, we have some pleasant and polite surface chit-chat, she relays any technical issues she may be having with the PC to me (very bad with a computer. Why they stuck her at a site with such heavy computer use is beyond me) and then if possible I fix it for her. We don't discuss ANY of the issues that we know we will butt heads on. Know why? Because I realized after the first few weeks of going higher up the chain of command, with nothing being done about her, that nothing WAS going to be done.

It never mattered how bad her mistake was, how right I was vs how wrong she was, or what the potential for HUGE liability for one of her mistakes was (mostly because I always catch them before they can become problems and head them off). The higher ups were just not interested in replacing her to fix the problem. So instead of trying to fix her issues, I just worked around her and kept my mouth shut as best I could. Yeah sometimes things would flare up and I would have to put on my Ass Kicking boots, but by and large I just shut up, spoke to her as little as possible, and did my thing.

Why did I shut up and stop trying to force them to fix things? Because in March, the client is putting me in charge of all of their locations, at the very least in PA, possibly nationally. I WON'T be her co-worker, I will be the one she has to come to who tells her what to do. The problem will resolve itself.

Iunna had no such light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sure there were any number of times she was certain she was right and Raybaer was wrong (Not saying she was right in every one of those cases, but the law of averages says she had to have been SOMETIMES) and went up the proper channels, just to get shut down. So I'm guessing what happened to her is what happened to me. She just shut the #### up, so even if she wasn't going to win, she didn't have to deal with the headache from the struggle before being told "It is what it is, deal with it". She probably did what I do, and just avoided her as much as possible, and interacted with her when necessary with formality and politeness.

If I didn't KNOW I had this promotion coming in March, I would have quit by now and moved on to something else. You can only bite your tongue, KNOWING you are in the right and the other person is in the wrong so many times, before something has to give. What you saw as them "getting along" was probably just Iunna trying to just not say anything to make the situation worse(because her efforts hadn't been taken seriously before), while she seethed inside. In this sort of situation, eventually something gives. If people saw me and Kathy interacting, they would probably assume we were great friends, because I just refuse to discuss anything more than surface chit-chat with her. I refuse to engage her. That does not make us friends, it just demonstrates my ability to bite my tongue.

In this case, what gave was probably Iunna's ability to tolerate any more, and she split. Which was a HUGE loss for CF. But it's like they say, you can't fight city hall.