Annie – your post was interesting. You wrote it partly because of your own experience, and you bring up a lot of possibilities for reasons why things are going that way and some suggestions.
I would like to reply to a lot of things but i don’t want to make this post too long. I will try my best to keep it more or less short.

You say: there might be issues of helplessness or co-dependency..
I can only speak for myself: i think that i have an issue with co-dependency. I have a long history (from early childhood on) of supporting others, who often leaned very easily on me, and doing everything i could to help them. Until it made me completely empty and not caring about myself anymore. So it is important for me to learn to get to know my own boundaries and it will still be a long progress.
So when this woman came in at work, so nervous and anxious, and needing my help, i was going far beyond my own limits to support her, to reassure her, to tell her she doesn’t need to be afraid it’s a really nice place to work and everybody is nice… To show her how the work is done… Times and times again. Until i realised that i was doing that same old pattern again so i tried to stop it. But she was already so used that i was always available to her and that my patience was endless… And yes, of course it probably wasn’t nice to suddenly not reply to everything anymore, and if she shouted i sometimes ignored her for a short moment. But i think it was necessary to do something to try to stop this kind of contact.

I think i can say that i tried quite a lot of times to talk to her, and to ask her to communicate with me. Also the day after the incident with this post, i tried to talk to her how i felt about the way she went about it, without even talking with me, and she didn’t seem to understand. One day she just left, she told me she was going to so something for 2 minutes and left me with the rest of the work, later i heard that she had left a long time ago. I was angry. The next time i saw her i asked her what happened and she just said that she was finished, which she obviously wasn’t. I tried to ask her, if she wants to leave early, to just tell me and i wouldn’t mind, but this was strange. She kept telling me that she was done and that there was no problem. But i feel like shit if they do like that. And again, yesterday she did the same, so she doesn’t seem to care about how this feels for me. In the beginning, i tried to tell her a lot of times, to clean up things after herself because i was always doing it after her and didn’t want to do that. But i don’t like being a nag, so i do it a lot less. And because i’m so frustrated with this, i don’t know how to say it in a nice way. When i do she just tell me that it’s not true and give me a look of ‘what are you bothering about now’.

Yes, there might be issues with her and reasons or difficulties that she had, but is it my task, to find those issues and to support her with that? Don’t get me wrong, for a long time, i was always doing that: trying to understand why somebody acted to me in a certain way, trying to support them… I’ve gone way too for in that tendency and i usually don’t even know anymore if my boundaries are being stepped on. My therapist is making a lot of effort to make me see that it is not my task to think in other people’s place and to solve their problems for them – that is why i mentioned the co-dependency in the beginning of this post.

For a long time i told myself, she just can’t help it, she doesn’t think. She forgets everything, and often if they tell us what to do, when we are upstairs she has already forgotten it or messed it up. Often after work she forgets to bring the things back to the office like keys etc. So i have taken on the role to watch, to remind her the whole time about what we need to do and what we should wait, to ask her if she has given her keys back… Certain things i’ll just do myself because it is easier. I have never complained about her running off straight away and leaving me with the tidying and put things back or replenish things for tomorrow. I just do them – i don’t mind cause i’m paid for it, but i’m often anxious about what the bosses will think that i’m often finishing 15 or more minutes later.
But now, i don’t know about that: she just doesn’t know any better. I notice the different way she acts to me when we are alone and to me when there are other people around, and the way she does to other people. So i can only think, that’s because she knows very well, that i let her do that, that she doesn’t need to respect me because i clean up her mess anyway without complaining.

No, i don’t think that she is treating me badly, in her eyes, and she doesn’t realise how it feels for me, she doesn’t understand it. And i don’t want to bother about it because that’s just useless. She just seems to think about herself and want to make a good impression. I am the quiet one and quite shy, and she’s always talking and always saying to the boss like: look how wonderful i did, look how great i am, that kind of talk. But nobody sees how much i’m trying to help her in the background because i don’t go around boasting about that. And i am worrying about after summer, when it gets quiet at work, will they only keep one of us, so will they prefer her, because she is so good at talking? I know i shouldn’t worry about it. Unless i tell my frustrations to the boss, which i probably won’t. So then i think i should just keep doing my work good and see what happens.
Ok i think this post is way too long, and i have the feeling i am defending myself to you.

And it’s silly cause i’m trying to not think about her anymore outside of the work hours, and when she is not there, and here i am writing ages on a post about her.

I do think that in the first place i need to stick up for my own place, but in reality i’m moving in the other direction again. Giving her everything how she wants it and keeping all my frustrations for myself.
And i don’t seem to manage to have an honest talk because i feel that just gets taken advantage of or laughed away. So the easiest thing for me is to avoid and NOT stick up for myself.