Manager Backed For Writing Up Employee Who 'Catfished' Her

A manager said in a now-viral post that she was recently catfished by one of her employees.

Posting in Reddit's "Am I The A**hole" (AITA) forum under the username u/Life-Percentage-5567, the manager said she ultimately wrote the employee up for breaching her privacy. The post has garnered 8,100 upvotes and hundreds of comments slamming the employee for her "gross" behavior.

What is Catfishing?

Catfishing is a practice by which a person creates a fake virtual identity in order to "lure" people into relationships, Teen Vogue explained. Some people catfish because they want to create relationships they "don't believe they could have in real life." Others simply want to scam, "troll" and/or harass their victims.

The term was coined in the 2010 documentary Catfish, about filmmakers seeking to make a movie about an 8-year-old child prodigy and the director's romance with her 19-year-old sister—only to find out both the prodigy and her sister were actually the same person, a housewife in her 40s.

According to some experts, there are a few different ways to determine if an online dating or social media profile is being run by a catfish. For example, many experts warn people to be wary of accounts that only include professionally-shot photos.

"Red flags include only having one photo of a very good-looking, model-like person, or a profile that seems too good to be true," psychologist and dating coach Dr. Madeleine Mason Roantree told Bumble. "If a profile is showcasing images that resemble something from a glossy magazine, it's less likely to reflect a real person."

If a profile feels "off," Teen Vogue recommends users conduct a Google reverse-image search based on the photos the profile is using.

"If you find out the photos are linked to someone else's profile, you've likely exposed this person's lie," the magazine warned.

Other "red flags" include an inconsistent following and a small number of posts, Bustle said.

'Breach of Privacy'

In her post, u/Life-Percentage-5567 said her employee created a fake social media account to spy on her.

"I'm a manager in a work environment that's rather casual where employees get close and spend a lot of time together outside of work. I'm a little traditional when it comes to employer/employee relationships so while I do participate in some activities to build morale and camaraderie...I do not participate in social activities where things might get out of hand," u/Life-Percentage-5567 said.

"This is a personal policy that I also extend to social media where I keep my profiles private and do not add or accept employees on all platforms," she continued.

So when a new hire asked to follow her on social media, u/Life-Percentage-5567 declined, explaining that she likes to keep things "private."

"I thought that was it, but [the employee] went ahead and made a fake account to follow me," u/Life-Percentage-5567 said, adding that the account looked like it belonged to a former college classmate.

After u/Life-Percentage-5567 accepted the follower request from the fake profile, her employee took screenshots of her posts and sent them to their colleagues, along with several inappropriate comments about her relationship.

"It was a huge breach of my privacy...and I ended up writing her up," u/Life-Percentage-5567 said. "Since then, it's caused a huge drama at work with some employees thinking I can't take a joke and that I was taking things too far...AITA?"

Redditors React

Redditors agreed that the employee's behavior was "gross" and backed u/Life-Percentage-5567's decision to write her up.

"NTA [not the a**hole], she knew you wouldn't accept her following so she went around to maliciously dig into your life and—dare I say—humiliate you," u/juggerknotted said.

"She deserved to be written up, she violated your privacy, your consent, and company policy by harassing you at work. Sometimes the boss has to be the boss. Spying on your private life and reporting back to co-workers was crossing a hard boundary," u/VixenNoire added.

u/Noxx_Nyxx added: "NTA and what they did was gross. I find it concerning that anyone would think that behavior was appropriate."

Newsweek has reached out to u/Life-Percentage-5567 for comment.

More Catfishing Stories

In March, a Redditor shared that he'd gone on a date with a woman who mistook him for a catfish.

A woman said in February that she realized she was being catfished by a Bumble match after receiving green text messages from him. That same month, another woman went viral for accusing her boss of catfishing her.