‘It's annoying to have to find ways to lock up your possessions because you might get robbed by a 40-something mother of 3’: Office worker discovers her seemingly sweet coworker is responsible for stealing $1,300, food, and spreading rumors

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
May 16, 2025 1:00 PM EDT

Every office has its characters: the guy whose soul left on day two, the spreadsheet perfectionist, the seasonal lunch thief. But every now and then, you stumble upon a true unicorn: a coworker so unhinged that HR's policies read like light suggestions in her presence. Meet today's unfortunate department's resident wild card, a 40-something mother of three who treats this five-person office like a lawless frontier town and herself as a one-woman bandit, gossip, and chaos dealer.

It started off with some classic workplace bonding. She seemed sweet, wounded by office politics, just a working woman scorned by a missed promotion. Cut to a few months later, and suddenly everyone's wallets are spilling cash like an open wound and snacks are disappearing like there's a cookie monster working the IT department.

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  • Our anti-hero won’t settle for petty theft. Oh no, she doubles as a part-time saboteur, full-time smear artist, prolific desk snooper, and, allegedly, an interior decorator with an enthusiasm for sharp objects as wall art. 

    Her loyalty is as fleeting as your sandwich in the office fridge, and her gift for drama rivals a reunion special. She torpedoed friendships, trashes reputations, and probably even your lunch, all before noon, then finds time to complain about coworkers’ maturity.

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    "Coworker is truly unhinged"

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    via AndreyPopov

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    Started this job in August and sorta fell into a friendship with this coworker. There are 5 of us in this department and after me (late 20s) she is the oldest (early
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    40s). She seemed genuinely sweet, I had a lot of fun hanging. out with her. I knew that she had had a falling out with our lead about a year prior because they
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    both applied for the lead position and this coworker didn't get it. She made it sound like she was hurt because our lead didn't tell her that they were also applying
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    via AlenaPaulus

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    and when she expressed this our lead just stopped talking to her. Obviously the lead would still have polite conversation etc, but nothing more.
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    Anyways, in December we started having money stolen from our wallets. I think collectively close to $1.3k was stolen (people had cash from Christmas and one
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    person had some winnings from the casino) over the course of about 4-5 weeks. Then food started going missing, including some snacks from an official's office. Since there are no cameras
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    in our department it was pretty difficult to figure out who it was. The badge swipes into the department showed no unusual activity or people entering so we hit a de d end.
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    via Real Window Media

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    In March, I find out that this coworker has been speaking incredibly badly about our whole department- me included. Saying we are all immature and childish, can't be trusted to do our work,
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    we're irresponsible, we're always sitting around on our phones. Needless to say, my personal friendship with them was over. Then I started talking to others
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    about this coworker because what the f ? Why was she being so two faced with me, pretending to be a friend while speaking poorly of me to others
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    in our office. It was so bad that people she spoke to about this began reporting it to our supervisors because it made them so uncomfortable.
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    The things I ended up discovering about this coworker would take ages to type out, so here is a brief list: ⚫ She is the prime suspect for the theft ⚫ She has been caught snooping through a supervisor's
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    desk on the same day that supervisor told everyone they were collecting money to buy a gift for another coworker undergoing serious surgery ⚫ She actually yelled at our lead
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    whenever she found out she didn't get the position • She has repeatedly tried getting our lead in trouble ⚫ She has tried getting others in our department in trouble or held back in training because she thought they "just weren't getting it"
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    She is probably the one who was leaving weird notes in the official's offices ⚫ She has thrown away our lead's food, rather blatantly Other's work has mysteriously gone missing when given to her for filing
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    And to top it all off, recently she decided to steal from the one person in our department who is still incredibly kind and helpful towards her. We all know it was her- she had the opportunity and motive- so an investigation has been opened.
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    Needless to say, it's been wild. I've never seen anything like it before. She can't be unaware of how disliked she is. The only two people who have remained friendly with her over her nearly 5
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    years here are just as awful as she is. Anyone else who has gotten close to her separates themselves entirely sooner or later. We're all just hoping she gets moved to an
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    entirely different office or fired. It's annoying to have to find ways to lock up your possessions because you might get robbed by a 40-something
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    mother of 3. It's irritating to not know if your lunch will still be in the fridge every day. Can't even leave snacks behind because they'll go missing.
    via jordanballz

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management boss workplace-stories hr toxic-workplace manager bosses work PTO managers supervisor workplace Horrible Bosses work-life balance
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