Coworker keeps pushing their work onto employee, they take leave and watch the project come to a standstill: 'I went to HR'

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Apr 4, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

There's nothing that will make someone miss you more than your absence, and sometimes, you need to make yourself out of the situation in order for them to fully appreciate you… Especially when that someone is your coworker who has been making you do all their work for them. If you're not around, who's going to do their work? This employee wasn't about to put up with being pushed around for too long, and after putting up with their coworker pushing their workload onto them for the first two months of a six-month project, they decided to take some leave and watch things come to a standstill.

When these things happen, we—most of us, at least—tend to want to avoid conflict, quietly complying with the unfair conditions that have been pushed onto us for fear of broaching the hard conversation. The reality is that, most often, putting the hard conversation off is only going to make things more difficult for us in the long run, and standing up for ourselves in the short term will avoid a far worse confrontation that will eventuate down the road anyway, causing more conflict and suffering for ourselves than we were trying to avoid in the first place…

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  • 01
    "[My] coworker was pushing all [her] workload onto me for months."
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    Her and me were made to be a team on a 6 month project. Every day. She would leave for 3 to 5 hours. Whenever I asked her about where she disappeared to. And every day I only heard nonsense. "The Manger needed help" "the new guys need help" "I'm doing this I'm doing that" 2 months
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  • 03
    into the project I was fed up. I could go to HR but I had a better idea. I'll take few personal days. Let's see how she does. You see every day you have to submit the amount of work that you got done with. And without me there for 4 days she couldn't finish on time. She even called me to ask when I was gonna be back. "Its not the same without you here" when I went back to work she was back at it same pattern. So now I went to HR. Now I have a new project partner. And it's someone who doesn't sla
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    Camel_Holocaust. 2h ago I did a similar thing with a past employer. I was a designer, but one of my main customers was one specific company. It was only me and 2 other designers dealing with this client, but I had to do like 90% of all their work, the others were for overflow. I got overloaded at a certain point and decided to be "sick" for 4 days. When I came back, it was chaos, nobody covered for me, their jobs stacked up and I had no time for any other projects, which I then got yelled at for
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    I did as much as I could during my shift, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the orders, overtime never got paid, so I never bothered doing it. I got blamed for it even harder and then they fired me for an unrelated reason, that was obviously because of this main reason. Once I left, they couldn't keep up with the orders and accuracy, so the client dropped them and started doing their own designs. Great job guys, really solved that problem. R ↑ Share 190
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    ronansgram . 5h ago What happened to her? 149 R ↑ Share
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    CaterpillarNo6795 2h ago I worked with someone like this years ago. He always told me he couldn't help on the project because he was to busy o a second project. But he was telling that person the same. My petty revenge was that when he wanted to present it to senior leaders at a Fortune 100 company and the managers wanted him to as well I let him. Why was it petty? Because after the presentation and during
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    questions, he answered everything wrong, and I politely corrected him. He had no clue what he was talking about, and it became clear. But the manager liked him and he got a promotion, in the end the manager was the only one willing to work on projects with him. And I have moved on to much sweeter pastures. 51 Rel ↑ Share
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    cold-twisted-nips • 1h ago I recently spoke to my boss about this issue. I share the reception role with another lady who loves to fluff about. I also just took two days off, so she covered and worked extra. I'm curious about how productive it's been when I go back in today. She's the one co-worker who makes my sanity drop and think about quitting. 15 Rel ↑ Share ...
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    Additional-Ad-9463 3h ago • You were far too nice to her 13 Rel ↑ Share ...
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    lapsangsouchogn . 39m ago Had a co worker who did clerical/light professional work. Any time I saw her she was drifting around the office looking out of it. Told everyone she had eyestrain and had to take frequent breaks, but always got her work done. Then one day I was chatting with the receptionist who confided that co worker was training her on
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    [coworker's] job. It turns out she had the receptionist doing all of her work while she just drifted along. Told our manager, but he didn't care enough to put any effort into getting that corrected. So I recommended the receptionist for the next level up job that came open. 12 Re) ↑ Share
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    18k_gold 4h ago If nothing changes, I personally maybe slack off for one day and let the boss complain. Why no work got done? Then you can say ex person was gone for 5 hours. That is why nothing got done. 28 Re ↑ Share
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terrible coworkers workplace discussion workplace-stories jobs hr job malicious compliance revenge work coworkers petty revenge workplace workplace malicious compliance employment in the workplace
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