'Petty' Woman Applauded For Leaving 'Overwhelmed' Coworker 'In The Dust'

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Reddit users backed a woman who shared that she refused to help her coworker after her coworker declined to help her earlier that day.

In a post on the Reddit forum "Am I the A**hole" that amassed more than 7,000 interactions since it was shared on Tuesday, u/mediocre-millie said that she noticed many coworkers at an optometry office she works in tend to stick to one responsibility. You can read the full post here.

She said she offered to train a fellow employee to successfully complete another task, but her coworker said she did not want to learn how to do it. When her coworker became overwhelmed taking phone calls and asked u/mediocre-millie for help, she said that she declined to help.

Annoyed Coworkers — A woman received praise from fellow Reddit users when she declined to help a coworker after her coworker refused to help her. Above, a stock image of two coworkers having a disagreement. fizkes/iStock

Distributing Work Among Employees

A piece published by the Harvard Business Review said that managers should ensure that job responsibilities are evenly distributed among employees.

Different employees may present strengths that will help them achieve tasks.

And, it should be clear that all employees should complete their own tasks and be willing to help their co-workers.

"Am I The A**hole?"

In her post, u/mediocre-millie said that she recently started working at the practice but brought previous experience with her, allowing her to find quickly find her rhythm at the office.

She said that many coworkers work on a specific task that they prefer.

One coworker, for example, prefers to pre-test patients. If a phone is ringing, u/mediocre-millie said she will let it go to voicemail.

"I've asked the owners if there really are that rigid of positions and they said they want everyone cross-trained and jumping in to help where needed," u/mediocre-millie said.

She said that she is in the late stages of her pregnancy and was feeling sore one day at work.

u/mediocre-millie said was scheduled to work on a pre-test, which requires time spent on her feet, and was having a difficult time.

"I asked my coworker 'Melissa', who was scheduled today in billing, if it would be okay if I taught her how to do the pre testing so I could trade her for an hour to get off my feet for a bit," she said.

Melissa declined and said she did not want to learn how to pre-test, saying that if she learned how to do it, she would be "shoe-horned" in to pre-test every day.

For the remainder of the day, u/mediocre-millie said she was in pain. Although her boss offered to let her go home early, she said that she did not work at the office long enough to earn money for her time off.

Once she finished with her final patient, u/mediocre-millie said that she sat down and the pain began to subside. Meanwhile, Melissa was juggling phone calls and patients.

"I'm trained on billing and would normally have jumped right in to help, but I was feeling kind of petty and chose not to," u/mediocre-millie said.

Melissa asked u/mediocre-millie for help, to which she responded by saying she did not want to get "shoe-horned" into billing duties on a regular basis. She was given a dirty look before Melissa returned to her work.

"She was incredibly stressed and overwhelmed after that," u/mediocre-millie said. "As the cherry on top, my boss came up to tell me I was good to leave thirty minutes early and that he'd pay me for that time, so I left Melissa in the dust."

While u/mediocre-millie's husband assured her that she treated Melissa the same as she was treated herself, u/mediocre-millie said she worried that she may have created "drama" in the workplace.

Redditors React

"I appreciate your pettiness in this situation," a comment with nearly 10,000 votes read. "It is not cool to ask for help from somebody you declined to help earlier."

Another said that if someone wanted help from other people, they should be prepared to help when they are needed as well.

"Those 'It's not my job' people piss me off so much," a Redditor wrote. "Is it that hard to pitch in and help each other?"

Some said that the office managers needed to do a better job of supporting staff.

"Leaving it up to staff to figure out how to assign duties and what they have to do means that your conscientious and thoughtful people will take on the stuff nobody else wants and then they'll leave because they're not even getting recognized or rewarded for it," a Redditor wrote.

Another criticized the managers for not having an organized distribution of responsibilities.

"With this system, tasks/patients will start falling in the cracks," they wrote.

Newsweek reached out to u/mediocre-millie for further comment.