MovieChat Forums > Greta (2019) Discussion > I really enjoyed it and could relate

I really enjoyed it and could relate


When I was 27 I became friends with a lady at my work, unhappily married, two kids, 10 years older, and very accented... from Portugal.

I liked her and she asked me in a work email 'are we friends?' and I said 'yes' and she replied, 'wow, my first friend.'

It was kind of weird. Did she mean in general?

We'd chat at work and she wanted to have Japanese with me for lunch and sent me the details of a restaurant. The meals were like $40. This was a serious Japanese restaurant! I said "That's too much, I'm more of a food court kind of guy."

She was like "I will pay!"

So we had lunch a few times at different places.

But then things got weird. I asked 'what do you miss most about portugal?" and she said 'touching coworkers.'

I said "huh?" and she said "You enter and hug and kiss one another."

Later she had her hand on my shoulder. "See, I've touched you."

She later made comments "I could see you getting a young wife, having kids, but then wanting to be with someone older." I said "huh? Why is that?"
"Because you're mature. I think young girls would bore you."

Then one day she says "you're in a good mood, I feel like I could ask you anything, like your phone number, and you'd give it to me."

I said "no, I think facebook is enough."
and she said "I see, just one of those friends. Who'd want to be friends with the old immigrant?"

And I said "no you're a married woman, I wouldn't feel right."

She replied "well, I'll find your parents in the whitepages and ask them. There can't be too many with your name in that area!"

Then on another occasion, I left work with her at the end of the day. She was thinking we'd walk to the train station and catch the train together. I said "anyway, I'm off to do some shopping" and went the opposite direction. The next day she wrote to me "I'll be working late tonight, so no chance in hell of you having to walk with me!"

Then one day she spotted me on my morning train. I sat with a group of friends, about 5 or so. They were a bit younger than me so she was like 'what the?'

Then she started showing up. I said to her "i'd prefer just to be with my friends in the morning without you there. Is that okay?"

She said it was fine. But she kept showing up. One day I was standing on the train and holding the hand rail. This train was packed. I felt my hand being touched. I turn and she's holding my handle, pretending to be engrossed in the book she's holding in the other hand.

"Oh hi" she says.

I was furious.

I told her again, do not show up on my morning train. I'm with my friends.
She said "Oh I didn't know you own the train! Next time I see you I'll run and hide, because that's what friends do when they see each other!"

I eventually left that job, and to appease her, stayed in contact via email. She'd write these big letters and I'd write something short. She replied "good hearing from you but write more next time."

Eventually, she started showing up on the train again and trying to sit with me and my friends. That was the last straw. I told her by email that I didn't want anything to do with her anymore.

That was it. The end. No horror ending. But she was obsessive.

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Thanks for sharing your story!

When I was in my mid-20’s I befriended a lonely older woman at my office. The friendship started innocently enough. Going for coffee during breaks, chatting about the corporation etc. She ratcheted up the crazy really quickly. Calling me from her office with her number blocked (we had multiple buildings with many floors across the city, so it wasn’t uncommon for numbers to show up as blocked.)

“I just called you 2 minutes ago and you didn’t answer, when I blocked my number you immediately picked up. Why?”

I’m not very good at confrontation so I just said I had stepped away from my desk.

“No you didn’t. Now you’re lying to me. Stand up. Right now.”

At the company I worked for our cell phones were tied to our desk phones so the same number would show up for either. When I stood up she was standing at the entryway to my floor glaring at my desk.

Luckily, I transferred to another part of the city and simply refused to answer my phone if the number was blocked and set up a rule to mark her emails as read before I saw my inbox and to forward them to my boss. He was very supportive through the whole thing. About a year later she retired.

Everything was fine... Then she found my website (I do contract work on the side) which has my toll-free number, all of my social media and my email address. She flooded all of my inboxes, DMs and voicemails. I had to block her on every service.

Luckily I live in a high-rise with security, face-recognition cameras and a doorman who makes you sign in with the concierge. You can’t even push a button in the elevator, the concierge sends you to the floor of the apartment once you have approved someone to come up. The stairwells are locked too, so I feel 100% safe and luckily have never needed this level of security, but it’s a comfort knowing it’s there.

Perhaps this is why I overlooked some of what I considered the minor problems with the movie Greta. I just saw a nice person being nice and how that can go so bad so fast.

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Wow that's a vindictive lady. What was the age gap?

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Totally not normal behaviour that’s for sure. I was 26 or 27 and she was in her late 40’s or maybe her 50’s.

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Could be you might enjoy a short story 'An Incident at Kochetovka Station' by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

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