'I was still on the receiving end of pettiness':: Employee moves away from coworkers, they leave an urn on her desk with the message 'ashes of problem employees'

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Aug 20, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

It's giving middle school behavior, not workplace professionalism. When it comes to office dynamics, it can be common for some healthy, playful teasing among coworkers. This kind of behavior is always risky, though, since there's a fine line between teasing and bullying. Furthermore, this is a work environment and not a friend group hangout. Teasing of any kind can be quickly misinterpreted.

Now, when it comes to this group of terrible coworkers, we think it's crystal clear that this goes far beyond innocent teasing. This Redditor shared her story via this thread and expressed that after a few unfortunate bullying encounters, things really escalated after her mistake to volunteer and help with a coworker's birthday decorations. After a bit of back-and-forth arguing, she decided to move to another desk away from the group so she could get some distance from the fray. However, the next day, the arguing over the decorations resurfaced and led to OP breaking down into tears. It only got worse when she discovered an urn shaped like a gravestone with the message "ashes of problem employees" sitting at her former desk.

First of all, does anyone at this company get work done? Who has this much time to be this mean? Second of all, it sounds like the lack of boundaries within this workplace culture (OP admitted that there was a lot of socializing and going out after work) helped foster an environment that could veer into toxicity quickly and easily. The fact that her supervisor was never present for any of this certainly made it easy for OP's coworkers to bully her. Something tells me that this place of work is a startup that will go under in five years.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the reactions in the comments section. For more, here's another story about an employee who was taken aback by their confrontational CEO in the elevator.