Employee steals coworker’s idea and gets praised by boss, but flops and misses tight deadlines when original idea-owner refuses to help: 'She says were a team and should help each other'

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Isabella Penn
Jul 23, 2025 7:00 AM EDT

Making friends at work feels like speed dating with LinkedIn profiles. You're thrown together by circumstance, forced to make small talk over stale coffee, and hoping someone shares your love of memes or at least your hatred of the printer. It's hard to know who someone really is when your main bond is complaining about work. Just because you get along during lunch doesn't mean they'd be your friend outside the office. Sometimes, you're lucky and those relationships blossom into real friendships. Other times, the coworker bestie vibe doesn't always hold up under pressure.

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    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • This marketing employee learned this the hard way after striking up what she thought was a solid work friendship, until her coworker turned around and stole her idea, pitched it as her own, and got rewarded for it. But after landing a major client off the back of this stolen idea, the coworker came crawling back asking for help meeting the deadline. 

  • "AITJ for not helping my coworker with her project after she took credit for my idea?"

    I (24F) work at a marketing agency with this coworker Rachel (28F). We started around the same time and were pretty friendly until last month.
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  • We were both working on separate campaigns for different clients. I had this idea for a social media strategy that involved partnering with local businesses. I mentioned it
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  • to Rachel during lunch and she seemed interested. Two weeks later, Rachel presents "her" idea to our boss - and its literally the exact same strategy I told her about. She got
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  • praised for being innovative and got assigned to a bigger client because of it. I confronted her privately and she said "great minds think alike" and that she came up with it independently. I know
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  • thats BS because I had already started researching local businesses before I even told her. Now she's working on this huge project with tight deadlines and keeps asking me to help her
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  • with research and brainstorming. She says we're a team and should help each other out. I told her I'm too busy with my own work to help. She's been
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  • struggling and our boss. asked me why I'm not being more collaborative. I just said I have my own deadlines to meet. She's been passive aggressive ever since and told other people I'm being uncooperative. But
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  • why should I help someone who stole my idea? TL;DR: Coworker stole my idea and got credit for it, now wants my help with her project that resulted from my stolen idea, I refused to help.
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  • Neweleni7 Unfortunately you're going be the one that ends up looking bad.
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  • You should be direct with your boss, maybe under the guise of feeling guilty for not being more helpful, and tell him what Rachel did and why that's made you reluctant to cooperate as much as you normally would
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  • NobodyKillsCatLady NTJ but she's going to paint you as the bad guy as long as your projects show work that keeps you off her project you're fine but be careful. And never ever give her an original idea for any project again.
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  • I think we're all in agreement here that the original idea-owner is not the problem here. However, her response might be a problem for her. Keep reading to see what people in the comment section had to say. 

  • RanjitKumarSingh You should've told the boss when they asked you. NTA.
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  • Jazzlike-Bird-3192 NTJ, but you've made 2 mistakes.
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  • 1. Keep new ideas to yourself until you are ready to present them formally, or if you need to bounce ideas, speak to a person you would be presenting to rather than someone at your level.
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  • 2. You didn't tell your boss the truth when you had the opportunity. Instead you lied to him. While you aren't wrong, you aren't helping yourself.
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  • Usual-Canary-7764 Oh meet your deadlines and keep track of anything slanderous Rachel says. If need be HR...
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  • She came up with the idea independently. She can also independently brainstorm and complete her projects...
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  • andmewithoutmytowel You should have been direct with your boss. Tell them you came up with the idea, bounced it off of her, and she stole it and landed a bigger client because of it. she wanted the praise, but now wants you to do the work.
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  • javel1 I would pull your boss aside and just say you have always been a team player but Rachel took credit for your idea and benefited from it and is now struggling to come up with her own ideas.
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  • You don't want to help because you want to focus on your own projects at this time.
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terrible coworkers promotion deadline employee campaign marketing work coworkers client backfired entitled people karma bad bosses
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