Dear Margo® by Margo Howard

LW1 - Go to the funeral and remind yourself that he is dead and you are alive; by definition, you won. If you love your cousins so dearly, then go to the funeral to show your support to them. They will notice whether you are there or not; your creepy uncle won't be affected in any way whether you show up or not. If you don't go, don't be surprised that your cousins will be hurt by your absence, and this may well affect your relationship, esp since you decline to give your true reasons.
LW2 - quite honestly, I can't imagine knowing or caring this much about any co-worker. How is it that you have enough free time at work to have heard all of this? When she starts talking about her personal life, tune her out and don't respond. Do your job, don't talk to her, and don't engage with her when she calls you her friend or when she talks about anything but her job. I don't know what you do, but if at all possible, buy some headphones so whenever she talks to you, you can let her know you didn't hear what she said. If they are noise canceling head phones, you actually won't hear what she said. When you think of her, make a deliberate effort to think of something else. You can't control other people, just the way you react to them.

LW1--Talk about a dirty old man! Stop being so damn nice. The next time your Uncle tries something sleazy, tell the disgusting old goat straight to his face to drop dead. Then, once he does tell every single person who will listen about his sexual proclivities.

LW2--Gosh, with a friend like you, who needs an enemy? It seems as though your coworker sees you as an ally and someone she can confide in. It's irrelevant that she clearly has mental health issues. If you're going to act like a two-faced phony back stabber, the least you can do is cop to it.

LW1: Funerals aren't for the dead. They are for the living. Go so you can support your cousins.

LW2: Like kai, I'm wondering why you are spending so much time focusing on ONE co-worker. Just do your job. If her social interactions with you affect your ability to do YOUR job, then YOU have to figure out a way around it. For example, I worked with one woman who talked at me all the time. I worked it out with my boss that I could work in another area (a lot of what I do requires concentration and writing, and I need quiet) when I had a deadline. I was even allowed to use conference rooms (a company no-no) only for myself so that I could complete projects. Headsets, like kai said, work wonders as well. Stay focused getting the job done.

PS: YOU'RE the one who sounds nuts to me!

LW2: Are you two the only ones working the night shift? If so, then I understand your plight. If there are a lot of people on staff at night, I feel you can slowly start ignoring her. Not overnight, but over the course of the next 2 months or so, just start breaking away. If she wants to buy you lunch, say you had some personal errands or a doctor appt do do during lunch, and use that excuse often. Say your budget doesn't allow you to reciprocate buying anyone else lunch, and you'd rather just pay for yourself, so there's no obligation to pay her back.

However, those are things you must do on your own. The only thing management can help with is the fact that you say she is not doing her share of the work. Document it closely, and if you are doing HER work, then that is not fair. You should bring up to management that you are doing extra work, and need a raise. Don't discuss any of the other stuff with them - it's all personal. You need to find a backbone and start creating distance between you two. If you don't see yourself as her friend, then stop making her believe that you are. It's bad for both of you, and that is largely the cause of your stress. You can control this situation.

And, why don't you apply to work the day shift?

I do not want to go to his funeral to show respect, as I have none.
*************

Few people, if any, are all good or all bad. Whatever your uncle attempted with you, he at least fathered two children you say you adore and who must be getting up in age themselves. Your choice to avoid the funeral is your business, but consider that however difficult sitting through the funeral would be for you, the funeral will be far harder on them, if only because they have suddenly become the oldest living members in their branch of the family tree.

LW1: I'm sorry that you have such a perv for an uncle. Fortunately, you had no problem standing your ground when you needed to. I like Margo's answer.

LW2: Get your resume together now and put it out there. In the meantime, do your best work and determine that you will not let her bother you.

LW1 -
It is not to show respect to him that you should go to his funeral, but to show support of the two cousins you love, who (hopefully) know nothing of their father's propensities.

LW2 -
1. Apply for day shift.
2. Find another job.

Wow, it's not often that I totally disagree with Margo!

Re LW1: Funerals are for the living. You say you love your cousins, but by skipping their father's funeral, you would only be punishing them. If you love them, go for your cousins' sake. You don't need to feign respect for your uncle, simply offer your shoulder to cry on.

Re LW2: Of course you should be able to work without the stress of someone else's drama, but trying to get your coworker fired because she apparently suffers from mental illness would be cruel and possibly illegal. If you feel the need to extricate yourself from the "friendship" by refusing to socialize with her, you are well within your rights. Using her illness (which might be a protected disability under the ADA) as an excuse to create a hostile work environment, not so much. I'd say just leave her alone, and leave her alone.

LW1, if you love your cousins, you'll go to the funeral to support them, and you won't say anything about your uncle's bad behavior. Just remember your love for your cousins, and focus on them, and push your memories of your uncle out of your mind. And just remember, a funeral is just an hour or two of your time... you can put up with that for an hour or two for your cousin's sake.

LW2, as others pointed out, you seem over-interested in your co-worker, even as you complain about her being too intrusive to you. And as for her invitations to take you out to lunch, has she held you at gunpoint? Do you not know how to say "no"? There are ways of standing your ground and still being polite even as you are firm. It seems to me that your desire to avoid any kind of confrontation at all has made your work situation worse, and rather than focus on trying to get this woman fired, you could spend the time learning to be a little more self-confident and assertive.

LW1: You should go - just to make sure he's dead.

LW2: You're not a victim - you're a doormat which is a choice. She can't force you to interact with her. Get a grip on reality.

Diana, you made me laugh so hard. Oh wait, I'm supposed to say, "ROTFLMAO"

Make sure he's dead!!! I'm going to have to tell my mother that one.

Do LW1's cousins have teenaged or adult daughters? If so, they need to be informed of their father's conduct so that they can protect their children. Major omission, and critical as long as he's still alive.

LW1 -- As others have noted, you go to the funeral to support your cousins. I think Margo's position was completely off base, but I can't say it's all that surprising that she doesn't get this. Her mother didn't want a funeral, and Margo very correctly complied with her mother's wishes. But apparently neither of these women -- both of whom I truly respect -- ever really got the fact that funerals are AT LEAST as much about the living as the dead, if not MORE SO for the living than for the dead.

As for telling the cousins...I'm on the fence on that one. If I really believed that this man was a danger to others, I would wholeheartedly agree with telling them. But it would seem he directed this behavior at her when she was in her 20s. This doesn't make it OK by any stretch of the imagination, but my point is, at that point he is accosting an adult -- and an adult who was, apparently, well able to fend for herself. While it is still sick for an uncle to come on tho his niece AT ANY AGE, I'm not sure I'm willing to assume from this behavior that he is a serial sexual predator, or whether he just has a sick obsession with her, in particular. He could be, which is why she should have said something when it happened. But if the guy is now 90-years-old and likes to prey on young ADULT women, it's unlikely he's going to be able to force a 20-, 30- or 40-something to do anything. Again, I am not condoning what he's done, and I do not mean to suggest that he should be let off on this merely because he's old and likely too infirm to accost anyone else. But to me, it's one of those things where you have to weigh the possible good and the possible bad.

What possible good comes of telling the cousins? If the reason to tell the cousins is so that they can protect themselves or their adult daughters (if they have any) from this guy, frankly that reason is likely moot at this point. This sicko may only have had the hots for this particular niece, and may well have seen it as "no big deal" because he didn't share blood with her, whereas he wouldn't go after his own because they ARE his own. Yes, it's possible that he would do this regardless of the blood relationship or not, but we don't know that, and since he apparently waited until she was married and in her 20s to accost her, he is NOT a pedophile. Again, his behavior is still sick and wrong, not saying it isn't. But I'm not convinced anyone else needed to be protected from this guy. And if someone else DID need to be protected from this guy, that need likely ended quite some time ago. A 90-something-year-old man could definitely still manage to molest a 3-year-old, but it would be awfully darn tough for him to succeed with a 23-year-old. My guess: the danger, if there was any, has long since passed. So, basically, the only possible good that can come out of this is maybe LW feels better for finally outing the sicko.

Now, let's weight the possible good of LW feeling better for finally outing the sicko with the possible bad of destroying her relationship with her cousins and likely causing a variety of rifts in the family as people take sides. If LW sustained emotional trauma that has followed her ever since the incident and has held her back from true happiness and this is the only way for her to deal with it and move on, then I guess that might make the possible good worth it. But if not -- and it's not clear from the letter to what degree this has haunted her or not -- then I would suggest the possible good probably doesn't outweigh the possible (and highly likely) bad.

Only the LW knows to what degree she was traumatized by this and to what degree outing her uncle is likely to help her recover (if she has any recovering to do). I would never want to tell a victim of a sexual assault not to tell "for the good of the family," particularly if in telling she was potentially protecting others from the same fate -- or giving others who shared her fate the strength to come forward themselves.

Wow, Nanchan, you're calling her nuts because a coworker of hers is driving her crazy? But please, go on about how you're so much better than her because you found a solution. Then again, nearly every response you have, is to criticize the LW and brag about how you handled the situation. LW is nuts? Pot, meet kettle.

I think if LW1 doesn't want to go to the funeral, she shouldn't have to go to the funeral. No one but her knows what will make her feel best in this regards. The other living people who actually wish to attend can go.

A actually think it might be good if she spilled the beans about this awful uncle, because if he tried to molest her, he probably succeeded in molesting others. If there are people in her family who were also molested by this creep, it would help them to know that there were people out there who would support them if they told.

@Mary -- Though I said LW1 should go to the funeral, obviously, she is welcome to choose for herself what she wants to do. But if she realizes and accepts that funerals are really more for the living than for the dead, and if she loves the living, it would make more sense for her to consider going to support the cousins she loves than to avoid it in order to somehow boycott the uncle she doesn't. The uncle isn't going to know she was there or not, so her boycott is meaningless, whereas being there to support her cousins is meaningful and helpful. I wasn't saying, "you absolutely must go," rather I was trying to open her mind to the idea that her going or not going shouldn't be based on what she feels for her uncle, it should be based on what she feels for her cousins. Since she loves her cousins, if her decision is based on helping them, it's a no-brainer.

As for "spilling the beans" -- again, it seems to me that it largely depends on what she really hopes to accomplish by it. Moreover, when we use he term "molest" we need to be a bit careful. My dictionary offers three different definitions: to bother, interfere with or annoy; to make indecent sexual advances to; to assault sexually. But because of the publicity around sexual molestation of children and some of the legal definitions surrounding that, when you say someone "molested" someone else, we tend to automatically go to the worst possible definition: the sexual assault of a child. First of all, she was not a child -- she was a married woman in her 20s. Moreover, there's a fine line between "making indecent (unwanted) sexual advances" and "sexually assaulting" someone. I've had strangers try to rub up against me and cop a feel -- I didn't consider myself to have been sexually assaulted. Rather, I felt someone had made unwanted sexual advances, and I put them in their place. End of story. I didn't need a support group of other women who had had the same thing happen to them.

Having said that, I do realize there's a BIG difference between a stranger -- who you are unlikely to see ever again -- doing this to you, and an UNCLE doing this to you (even though the uncle in this case isn't a blood relative). But again, this didn't happen when the LW was a child -- it happened when she was an adult. She was able to handle the situation herself. Presumably this uncle had access to her when she was a child, but he waited until she was married and in her 20s to come onto her. This isn't a pedophile from whom helpless children need to be protected. His behavior is inappropriate and repulsive, but he doesn't sound like he was ever a "dangerous predator" -- and certainly unlikely that he is a "dangerous predator" now, in his 90s. I don't think she needs to keep this a secret, but neither do I think she needs to make a federal case out of it. Nothing wrong with her saying something about it, but it doesn't need to be some big family meeting where she is "outing him" to the rest of the family. And I"m just not convinced that anyone needs to be "warned" about him or "protected" from him -- unless she has reason to believe he is doing this to anyone else who might not be able to handle the situation themselves (i.e. children).

@Mary -- Though I said LW1 should go to the funeral, obviously, she is welcome to choose for herself what she wants to do. But if she realizes and accepts that funerals are really more for the living than for the dead, and if she loves the living, it would make more sense for her to consider going to support the cousins she loves than to avoid it in order to somehow boycott the uncle she doesn't. The uncle isn't going to know she was there or not, so her boycott is meaningless, whereas being there to support her cousins is meaningful and helpful. I wasn't saying, "you absolutely must go," rather I was trying to open her mind to the idea that her going or not going shouldn't be based on what she feels for her uncle, it should be based on what she feels for her cousins. Since she loves her cousins, if her decision is based on helping them, it's a no-brainer.

As for "spilling the beans" -- again, it seems to me that it largely depends on what she really hopes to accomplish by it. Moreover, when we use he term "molest" we need to be a bit careful. My dictionary offers three different definitions: to bother, interfere with or annoy; to make indecent sexual advances to; to assault sexually. But because of the publicity around sexual molestation of children and some of the legal definitions surrounding that, when you say someone "molested" someone else, we tend to automatically go to the worst possible definition: the sexual assault of a child. First of all, she was not a child -- she was a married woman in her 20s. Moreover, there's a fine line between "making indecent (unwanted) sexual advances" and "sexually assaulting" someone. I've had strangers try to rub up against me and cop a feel -- I didn't consider myself to have been sexually assaulted. Rather, I felt someone had made unwanted sexual advances, and I put them in their place. End of story. I didn't need a support group of other women who had had the same thing happen to them.

Having said that, I do realize there's a BIG difference between a stranger -- who you are unlikely to see ever again -- doing this to you, and an UNCLE doing this to you (even though the uncle in this case isn't a blood relative). But again, this didn't happen when the LW was a child -- it happened when she was an adult. She was able to handle the situation herself. Presumably this uncle had access to her when she was a child, but he waited until she was married and in her 20s to come onto her. This isn't a pedophile from whom helpless children need to be protected. His behavior is inappropriate and repulsive, but he doesn't sound like he was ever a "dangerous predator" -- and certainly unlikely that he is a "dangerous predator" now, in his 90s. I don't think she needs to keep this a secret, but neither do I think she needs to make a federal case out of it. Nothing wrong with her saying something about it, but it doesn't need to be some big family meeting where she is "outing him" to the rest of the family. And I"m just not convinced that anyone needs to be "warned" about him or "protected" from him -- unless she has reason to believe he is doing this to anyone else who might not be able to handle the situation themselves (i.e. children).