Employee grows tired of coworker who keeps "borrowing" their phone charger without asking, swaps it with an old charger to force coworker to stop: 'He finally brought his own'

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Sep 1, 2025 7:00 AM EDT

Every office has the 'Designated Coworker' who always has everything in their desk drawer. Need a pen? Here, just pick a color. Your phone ran out of battery? They have 3 different chargers. Your socks got wet on the way to work? They have a new pair and a heater to warm up next to.

For every designated coworker of this kind, you have one who arrives at the office with nothing but the clothes on their body. Everything they use is borrowed, and they have no issues with asking anyone in the office for anything, every single minute of every day.

At some point, the two coworkers must clash. There is no chance that the organizing employee is fine with their coworker taking everything off their desk because they fail to bring what they need with them. Some day, they must do something to force the entitled coworker to stop.

Which is exactly why the employee in the story below decided to take revenge on a coworker who kept stealing their phone charger.

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    The Coworker Who Always “Borrowed” My Charger Got a Surprise

    I work in a pretty busy office where everyone is glued to their phones and laptops all day. There's this one guy (let's call him Dave) who never brings his
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    own charger. Ever. Instead, he makes the rounds, "borrowing" other people's chargers off their desks without asking.
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    I can't count the number of times I've come back from a meeting and found my phone unplugged, his sitting there at 100%, and my charger tangled up like
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    it had been through a tornado. He'd always laugh it off with, "C'mon, man, I'll just be a minute." Except "a minute" was always like... two hours.
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    So, I decided I'd had enough. I dug out my old phone charger from home, one that was incredibly slow. I
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    mean, it would take 30 minutes to charge 5%. It looked identical to my regular fast charger, so I swapped it in and left it plugged into my desk.
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    Sure enough, Dave swoops by later that day like a vulture, unplugs my phone, and sets his up. I just sat back and watched as he kept checking his screen
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    every 10 minutes with a more and more annoyed look on his face. An hour later, he slams it down and goes, "Is your charger broken or something? This thing isn't charging at all!"
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    Businesswoman plugging mobile phone to a charger
    via Thanumporn Thongkongkaew

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    I just shrugged and said, "Weird, it works fine for me." Plugged my phone back in, let it crawl up a whopping 2%, and carried on.
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    For the next week, Dave kept "borrowing" my decoy charger and complaining nonstop about how "slow the outlets must be in this building." Meanwhile, I kept
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    my real fast charger in my bag and charged my phone privately whenever he wasn't around.
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    Eventually, he gave up and finally brought his own. And just like that, peace was restored.
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    TL;DR: Coworker kept stealing my phone charger. I swapped in an old, painfully slow charger and let him suffer until he finally brought his own.
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    ianb2626 Steal his new one and leave your old sy one in it's place
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    That_Cnote_Guy Start "borrowing" his charger now. Every time he gets up, unplug his phone and plug yours in.
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    theartofwastingtime Take the abandoned phone to lost and found.
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    lucwin2020 Maybe management should've had a talk with him but well played!
    via lucwin2020

  • Teaching someone a lesson doesn't have to include a confrontation. Sometimes these lessons happen quietly and without much drama.

    How do you think this employee should have handled it differently? Let us know in the comments below!

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Tags

boss workplace-stories employee manager job charger tales-from-the-workplace coworkers phone petty revenge workplace company funny entitled people
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