Work is supposed to be a place where you get your job done, you get paid, and you go home. It's certainly not a place where you should expect to be hit on, flirted with, or asked on dates– it's not the club– and if it ever starts to feel like every frat boy with his collar popped up is staring at you, it's time to call HR, girlfriend.
A clueless creeping coworker recently described his latest encounter with a hot new employee in his workplace, a beautiful woman who was only 20 years old. u/throwawaycoworker4, let's call him Tom, asked Reddit if he was in the wrong for simply thinking that his coworker was attractive, but then the plot thickened as he described their "relationship" in detail. Tom seemed smitten with his coworker first when he started buying her unwarranted gifts, doting on her in the workplace and attempting to coerce her into falling for him.
When his gift-giving plans flopped, Tom changed his commuting schedule, adjusting his own route so that he could take the same bus as her. After weeks of essentially following her home on the bus, Tom started calling her his 'bus buddy'. As if she had a choice.
Next, Tom thought it was appropriate to go sleuthing for her phone number in the company-wide database, which is a huge violation of privacy. He claimed that all of their numbers were public, but unless it's offered to you, buddy, you don't just have a free invitation to text somebody after office hours about matters that have nothing to do with work. Red flag.
To Tom's surprise, the younger woman quit a few months afterwards, blaming the fact that he had made her uncomfortable in the work place. He literally scared her so badly that she quit her job to escape from him. Redditors weigh in on everything Tom did wrong, and all the ways his toxic masculinity blinded him to his creepiness.