Ripple Effect
I was friends with someone at work. We were friends in the sense that we had each other on social media and went out with other coworkers after work. She sat close to me, so we’d talk at work too. There was nothing romantic about us. She wasn’t my type, and we both had partners. But her relationship ended at one point.
I helped her move into a new apartment because she’d always been nice to me and she had no one else to help. But that was a big mistake on my part. I wasn’t quite comfortable, but I brushed it off as just her dealing with her relationship troubles. After I took a break with my girlfriend, I mentioned my experiences with her to my friends.
Word quickly spread to my co-worker. She then went full force in trying to spend time with me. Once, she asked me to ditch work with her to go to the theme park. I declined for both obvious reasons (and because I didn’t like that theme park). I went to the gym at lunch the next day and got into my car with a text from her.
It was incredibly aggressive and mentioned how I was just using her and wasn’t her friend. I tried explaining that she was wrong and I needed space, but then she spent the next weeks texting me and talking to me like nothing happened. Occasionally, she’d sent an angry text asking me why I wouldn’t talk to her.
By that point, I was afraid that she would get me in trouble at work and set boundaries in place. And then things escalated. She sent emails with work-related subject lines, but the message was about us plus her relationship issues. Sometimes when she drank, she’d text me about being a jerk and hating everyone at work.
She also started sending explicit messages. At work, she changed the way she went to the washroom so that she could walk past me and glare at me. I asked her several times to stop contacting me and blocked her. Nothing physical ever happened between us, but I was still afraid that she’d make something up to get me in trouble.
So, I spoke to HR, but I kept the details vague. This went on for almost a year until one day when a colleague of mine was fired suddenly. I was asked to take over his accounts, which would’ve doubled my workload, but I was able to ask for more money. I also asked for a different assistant since he was the same creepy co-worker.
They passed me over, and when I spoke to the family about the situation, I told them it was because of my co-worker. They told me that my boss could think that I was being petty about my co-worker and needed to know what was happening. I printed out all of the strange texts and emails to prepare and ended up with 50 pages.
I put the worst five on the top to drive the point home. I talked to my boss and explained the situation and why I hadn’t taken the job. He reviewed the documents in shock stating that this was outright harassment. He involved HR who was upset that I didn’t tell them it’d been that bad. More higher-ups became involved.
A week after my co-worker was fired, they presented my copies of the messages to his assistant and fired her as well. It sent a weird ripple effect through our place of employment since the two incidents seemed related, and no one had any idea that I was involved. I felt such a great sense of relief after she was gone. Story credit: Reddit / Couchforsale3