Here’s some backstory, I’ve always been thin. When I was in 4th and 5th grade, I was in a clique of your typical mean girls. We were all thin and pretty or at least the boys made us feel like that. We were very popular ar among the boys. This made us really mean. We were arrogant assholes who thought the world revolved around us. There was this girl named Kristy ( not real name) who was on the heavier side and we weren’t the nicest to her.

We used to make fun of her and exclude her from things even made other people exclude her. The boys used to pretend to like her and make fun of her when she admitted she liked them. We made her school life really hard. Ik that. Eventually, we all went to middle school and I went to a private school with an advanced program so I was no longer hanging out with the clique. Kristy did go to middle school with them but I hadn’t heard anything since. I went through middle school and got my act together. Grew out of the mean girl phase and got some decent friends.

I went on to graduate college and open my book store/ cafe. I hadn’t even thought of my elementary school friends or Kristy in many years. Until about a week ago, that is. My book store isn’t really busy so usually it’s just me and one other person there. I run the cash register and the coffee orders. The other person is in the kitchen. We had a group of women come in about my age. I was friendly but one of the them was cold and rude straight off the bat. If you work customer service, it’s normal so I brushed it off. I look pretty similar to how I did in elementary.

My face hasn’t really changed. I’ve gotten taller and puberty happened. Once it was time for them to get the check, the rude women came up and to pay and told me , “ guess karma does exist “. I was confused and asked what she meant. She was like bullies usually get away with their actions but looks like you weren’t very successful. She told me I bullied her in elementary school and that my friends continued to do so in middle school. My heart dropped once I realized this was Kristy. I apologized for how I treated her and told her it wasn’t fair she suffered through that . I even offered to comp their bill. Kristy said no to the comp but wanted to speak to my manager or owner so they could know what kind of person they hired. I told her I was the owner and that again I was very sorry. She flipped out after I told her this. She said she went to years of therapy to help her self esteem. She suffered through most of her teens and to this day had trust issue in her relationships. She was screaming that bullies shouldn’t succeed and that I didn’t deserve a good life. Her friends triedd to get her to leave once she flipped out. They tried to apologize because they didn’t know me but I told them it was fine and that the bill was on me. My cook came out and was threatening to call the cops because Kristy looked like she would get violent but I told him it was fine. eventually the group managed to get her out. I closed my shop for the rest or the day. I was shaken and I just wasn’t in the right mind set to be there. Now Aita for not getting someone else to pretend to be Manager and let Kristy think I failed in life?

Edit: yes, the cook got paid the full day. So do not be concerned

Edit #2: a lot of you have been asking what the bullying was. So I’ll be clear we never laid a hand on her. A lot of it was name calling, all about her being fat. We’d get rest of the class to wear a certain color for a day and have everyone tell her a different thing so she’d be the only not included. We’d make pig noises when she talked. Or just ignore her and the other kids would join until she cried. If we knew a boy liked one of us, we’d have them pretend to like her and then make her cry to show how much they liked us. When she was running, we’d pretend there was an earth quake. I remember all these things. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t recall it laughing. It’s not a fun memory.