Some people just can’t help themselves and thrive on stirring the pot, dragging up drama, or causing problems. And usually in an office setting, there’s that one coworker who is constantly watching, waiting, and ready to run to the boss over the smallest thing, and she knows that that’s like.
On the worst possible week to pick a fight, her coworker started one anyway, completely unaware of what she was about to unleash.
This 26-year-old woman has a coworker named Mary, whose mission in life is to get all of them in the office in trouble. Today, Mary turned her wrath on her.
After she got back from taking her lunch break, her boss said she wanted to talk to her about a complaint a coworker had lodged against her.
Her boss went on to say that someone had taken issue with how much she was using the bathroom, which caused everyone else in the office to have to do her job.
She honestly used the bathroom for only 10 minutes in a four-hour span before lunch, and she took an additional 10 minutes on her lunch break above and beyond what she’s allowed. So that’s a grand total of 20 minutes in the bathroom.
“I was 8 weeks pregnant when I started miscarrying on Tuesday and called in sick to work. I was off yesterday since I am working Saturday, but decided to come into work today, to try and use work to distract myself instead of sitting at home wallowing,” she said.
“I ended up explaining the situation to my boss to end the conversation. She apologized to me and offered me a couple of days off, but I want to be at work to distract myself.”
“After the meeting, Mary was looking extremely smug, clearly thinking she had gotten me in trouble, and I was so angry. So I told her, sorry if she was so distracted by me being away from my desk for 20 minutes, but since I was miscarrying, I figured it was fine. Mary looked shocked but didn’t speak or even look at me for the rest of the day.”
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When work was over, one of her coworkers, whom she’s friendly with, agreed that Mary was super rude, but she shouldn’t have mentioned her miscarriage, as it made everything in the office awkward.
She’s not sure how she’s wrong for telling her boss and Mary the truth, especially since Mary should know by now that her attempts to control and manipulate everyone will result in uneasy circumstances.
However, she does see how things are now uncomfortable for all of her office mates, and she doesn’t want to make things harder on the people she likes at the office.
She’s left wondering if she took things too far by telling Mary she was in the middle of a miscarriage after she tattled on her to their boss.
She came into work while going through one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. The fact that she had to disclose a miscarriage to defend herself from a workplace bathroom complaint is genuinely infuriating.
As for whether she crossed a line with Mary, it’s hard to make that case. Mary set something in motion, and the truth of the situation came back to her.
The office awkwardness that’s resulting from that isn’t really on her shoulders; it’s on Mary’s. While her friendly coworker means well, the alternative was silently absorbing the humiliation while already grieving, and that’s not ok.
What do you think? Do you think she was wrong to tell Mary the reason she’d been away from her desk, or was Mary’s behavior fair game for that kind of response?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
