Yes, things get better 
When I was a kid, my brother and I were new to chess. Well, one day he started studying. He got a book on tactics and a book on strategy. He solved puzzles and had read maybe half of the strategy book. He had been practicing against the computer.
So finally he decided to challenge me to a game.
Well, I could tell right away he had improved, and he was winning almost the whole time... but in the end I got lucky with a checkmate. He was devastated. I tried to tell him if we played 10 more times he might win 10, but we were just kids so he took the loss really hard.
I want to make two lessons from this story. The first is theory and practice are different. You can know more than your opponent, but that doesn't mean you'll win. The most dominant world champs in history gained the title when they were in their early 20s. They certainly didn't know more than the 30, 40, and 50 year old top players, but they knew a lot, and their performance was very high.
Second lesson is when people are still close to beginner level, flukes can happen. One bad move can undo 20 good moves. My brother was checkmated, but your opponent might swindle you by capturing a rook or queen early in the game (for example).
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So yes, it gets better, but especially for new-ish players, a big part of their results is consistency. You want to consistently avoid losing material for no reason, and you want to consistently punish your opponent by winning material when they leave themselves open to simple 1 or 2 move tactics.
Chess in the beginning is, unfortunately, somewhat tedious. You have to build up good calculation habits to make your play consistent... and this takes time and effort.
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Anyway, so your friend at work may have beaten you, and he may beat you again if you played today, but once things start to click for you, even if the games against him never feel easy, your results will start being overwhelmingly in your favor.
As for what to do about non-openings, just follow the opening principals. The point of the opening is to get a playable middlegame. In general it's not good to search for a way to punish openings like c6, d6, e6. Instead just develop and look for punishment much later, like on move 10, 15, or 20.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-principles-of-the-opening
So how long does it normally take before you show even the least bit of improvement? I'm in my 50's and just decided to learn the game so I understand I won't ever be great, but I would like to at least win a game that I earned and not because my opponent threw away the game out of pity.
The more I watch videos or read a book on chess the worse I become. I had the book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, recommended to me so I bought it and finished it and I would say was able to get the right answer probably 85% of the time if not more. I enjoyed working the problems out and the ones I missed I just completely blew. Problem is I play another person or against a computer and they just slaughter me.
Then you have people saying learn an opening and play it until you master it. I'm sure that is good advice but my opponents at least seem to have missed the memo on playing the correct counter moves. For instance 1. e4 pretty standard I guess, and according to all the sources I see the correct response is 1. ... e5 Except I played a coworker at lunch today my first 3 moves as white were: e4, Ng3, Bc4 and his first 3 moves as black were: c6,d6, and e6. I had no clue how to continue and as usual I left the board littered with dead white pieces and pawns. I don't know if you can get a negative number as a rating but I seem to be on the way to getting as close to zero as possible. I just need to know there is a point when things do start getting better.