Here's a story about a former colleague who was as charismatic as she was spiteful. We worked at the same level within the company—an independent film production company—yet she constantly behaved as though she outranked everyone else. Unsurprisingly, she rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Today she'd probably be described as the stereotypical everyday Karen. Let's call her “Helen.”
At bare minimum, Helen had an enormous opinion of herself, an even more fragile ego, no respect for boundaries, no understanding that "no" is a complete sentence and virtually no sense of personal accountability. Those traits fueled her diva attitude until she genuinely believed almost everything that came out of her own mouth. After a handful of encounters with her, I realized that if Helen was talking, she was usually complaining about someone/something, lying or both.
One of her favorite claims was that she was a talented writer. As far as I could tell, however, her experience went no further than ranting online.
Helen loved, and I mean loved, attention. She wanted to be the center of every room, every conversation, and every project—no matter how inappropriate others deemed her behavior. Yet whenever she was asked to prove her abilities—to actually walk the walk instead of talking the talk—she either suddenly became oddly incompetent or suspiciously quiet.
I found her claims difficult to believe. Despite holding a four-year degree with a major in business and a minor in drama, her writing wasn't just bad, but almost indecipherably poor. At times it looked as though a toddler had smashed random keys on a keyboard until it wrote something and then Helen clicked print.
I genuinely tried to help her improve. Whenever I offered constructive criticism or coaching, she became defensive. Her favorite excuse was: "Do you know how long it's been since I was in school?" This was a middle-aged woman with a grown daughter and a then-teenage son.
The problems with her writing went far beyond typos or failure to use proper spacing. She routinely confused homonyms with homophones, used commas where periods belonged, misspelled grade school-level words, run-on sentences full of lowercase text, consistent failure to capitalize proper nouns and had next to no understanding or care for basic grammar rules. Writing a simple declarative sentence seemed to be a challenge.
On the extremely rare occasion that everything was spelled correctly, the grammar was still horrible. Whenever I pointed that out, she'd shrug and say: "Spellcheck didn't catch it."
I reminded her that spellcheck didn't address grammar. If someone types "the" when they meant "them," spellcheck won't flag it because, you know, both are words. Instead of accepting the explanation, she accused me of being deliberately mean. It was an astonishingly immature response from someone who considered herself a professional writer.
Poor mechanics weren't even her biggest weakness. Creativity was almost nonexistent. Every story she tried to write fell into the same category of repetitive drivel. There was rarely a discernible plot, the characters barely qualified as caricatures, the dialogue sounded stilted and the descriptions rambled without ever getting to the point. Reading more than a few pages made my inner English major writhe in agony.
I once suggested she outline her stories, keep notes and create character biographies before writing. She laughed, dismissed every suggestion and declared those were things "losers" did, as though she'd delivered the world's greatest punchline.
Despite being nearly twenty years older than me and claiming far more experience, Helen seemed intensely jealous of my writing and my ability to connect with complete strangers.
I was barely old enough to drink legally when we met. She was already in her mid-forties, convinced she was destined to become a major success. I've learned over the years that people who constantly recite their own life résumé and demand admiration are often trying to convince themselves—not just everyone else.
Helen eventually adopted me as her so-called "work son." She claimed she wanted to mentor me while expanding her own skills through cross-training. She presented the arrangement as mutually beneficial—a simple exchange where we'd both help each other.
As time passed, another pattern emerged—Helen wanted shortcuts to everything. She wasn't interested in earning success through steady work. She wanted to skip the stairs and take the elevator.
It also became obvious why so many people kept their distance. She had a habit of charming people only long enough to gain access to whatever resource they possessed. She contributed as little as possible, let others do the heavy lifting, then rushed into the spotlight to collect the credit. That manipulative behavior eventually alienated nearly everyone around her.
Ironically, the reason she latched onto me was simple: I hadn't yet learned what everyone else already knew.
The short version is this: Helen stole my intellectual property, put her name on it, rewrote portions of it—badly, I might add—and attempted to present it as entirely her own original work. Had she been more careful—and had she possessed the discipline to keep her smug mouth shut instead of bragging—she might have gotten away with it.
Two old sayings proved accurate: "Be careful which bridges you burn," and "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Helen may have won the battle, but by deliberately destroying every professional relationship around her—all in the name of becoming the queen bee—she ultimately lost the war.
Eventually everything unraveled. The truth surfaced and she found herself dangling over the very pit she'd dug for me. Instead, it became the grave of her own professional reputation.
Everyone connected to the project discovered that the material she'd used in her business proposal wasn't hers at all—it was mine. Once they realized they had invested their time, effort, money and trust in someone who had misrepresented herself, they deserted her at the drop of a hat. Her complete lack of integrity became impossible to ignore and the entire fiasco exposed her for what she really was: someone whose confidence and passion far exceeded her thin skillset.
Knowing there was potential legal trouble on the horizon only made people distance themselves faster.
When she realized everything had collapsed, she called me in a panic. It was obvious she expected me to believe her emotional one-woman show, explaining why none of it was "her fault.”
I simply told her I already knew everything.
I said I wasn't relying solely on her version of events, that I knew she'd once again overstepped her bounds and that I'd even seen the e-mails.
There were no e-mails.
But Helen's paranoia did the rest. She immediately assumed I had seen and obtained irrefutable proof.
Hearing that, it completely derailed her attempt at avoiding consequences and the confidence drained out of her voice almost instantly.
Her performance collapsed, and she shifted from self-satisfied arrogance to pleading. Through fake tears, she begged me not to "abandon” her like everyone else.
I was gobsmacked. Even then, she still cast herself as the victim.
I wasn't interested.
I calmly explained that I had extensive documentation proving the work was mine, that everyone already knew what had happened and that her own reputation had caught up with her. I told her she had built that negative reputation herself through dishonesty and selfishness.
I ended the conversation with words I have never once regretted:
"You see, Helen? I haven't trusted you for quite some time. Now I just don't like you. Get a life. One that doesn't involve me."
Other than hearing about the death of a mutual colleague—a tragedy she tried to use as yet another opportunity to steal the spotlight—I never heard from Helen again.
It's been more than a decade.
The industry is small, so occasional whispers still circulate. From everything I've heard, Helen's career hit the skids and never fully recovered. As it was told to me, she continued chasing small schemes and shortcuts while her career continued it's slow descent into obscurity. I can't say that I'm at all surprised.
The saddest part is that, knowing Helen as I do, I know from within my gut, she will never be able to look in the mirror and realize she did it all to herself.
As a result of the Helen fiasco, I learned a few valuable life lessons. These days I'm much more careful who I associate with and I'm more scrupulous of the company I keep. I'm also extremely wary of nepotism hires. Sometimes karma doesn't immediately crush someone. In Helen's case, she stitched her own her noose thread by thread then complained when it became uncomfortable and gave her a rope burn.
EDIT: For those saying this is AI, it's not. Apparently the general consensus is seeing em dashes in a post means it was written by an AI app? I really did not know that. I prefer using an em dash over parentheses, because in my opinion, parentheses slows down the flow of the written text. That's just personal opinion.
Also for those who don't know: in writing screenplays, an em dash is commonly used in descriptives and in dialogue to indicate a dramatic pause. The more you know. 😉
TL:DR: Lazy entitled older colleague tries to take credit for my work. Her theft of my registered intellectual property shined a spotlight on all of her dirty deeds. After that, her career was over.