Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena and Elizabeth here. (It’s anonymous!)
Dear Pay Dirt,
How do I tell a friend that I’m tired of hearing her complaints when she does nothing to help herself? “Agatha” works in a job where she deals with really shitty clients.
She says she doesn’t have a choice because if she turns down business, her employer will be upset. Except, she could easily get another job in her field that doesn’t require putting up with the blatant misogyny and general patronizing attitudes she faces every day (not saying the other jobs are perfect but not nearly as bad as hers; I’m in one of them and don’t face nearly as much of this crap as she does). But, she won’t, because those jobs pay less money. To be clear, they pay absolutely well enough to live a comfortable life, especially when, like her, there are no extraneous financial obligations like loans, children, supporting elderly/other family members, etc.
Agatha, however, likes to travel a lot and has gotten used to flying first class and staying in luxury hotels. She likes to go out to eat at really nice restaurants, and she takes rideshares to go just a few blocks. I’m not judging any of those things, just saying that she’d have to give up/scale back on them if she took a lower-paying job, and she doesn’t want to. I know we can say: Why should a woman have to leave a well-paying job just because men are trying to make her miserable? And I would totally understand if she was trying to stand up to the people treating her poorly, except she isn’t, because, again, she says she has to just take it or she’ll lose business. The other day, she told me how a new client actually said to her, “Honey, maybe this is just over your head, let me talk to [male colleague], I trust he’ll be able to handle this.” I asked her what she said in response, and she told me she didn’t say anything because the client was bringing in a contract worth a huge amount of money. I don’t know how much longer I can listen to her complain without snapping. Is there a tactful way of saying, this is how you’re choosing to live, and that’s fine, but you need to stop whining about it if you aren’t going to change it?
—Pass the Caviar, Please
Dear Pass The Caviar,
It sounds like your friend just wants to be heard about how shitty her job is but doesn’t actually want to do anything about it. She’s not the first nor the last person who will do this. She’s made her decision and you can’t change that. It’s not on you to convince your friend to change her approach at work or to completely alter her lifestyle.
What you can control are the boundaries you set with her about how much time you’ll listen to her complaints moving forward. It’s hard to tell your friends you can’t listen to them anymore and expect them to not take that personally, but you can subtly steer the conversation away from the topic when it comes up. Next time she seems ready to launch into a rant, offer an observation that can help turn the conversation in a different direction.
But if you really want to be upfront with her, you can determine a limit for how much you’re willing to listen to the endless job complaints. Decide a length of time that feels doable and share your boundary with your friend. You could start with, “You know I love and care about you so much, and this is why hearing about your job makes me angry because I don’t want you to be experiencing such mistreatment. Moving forward, can we limit the job talk to one day a week? I want to be able to support you, but this is just weighing on me, and I don’t want that to come in between us.” Only you can determine which approach your friendship can handle.
—Athena
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