High school night-shift custodian snaps at a phone-obsessed coworker, Bill, then worries she crossed a line by judging his personal life, talking about his younger sister: ‘I'm starting to think I should have kept my mouth shut’

Night shift custodial work has a weird side effect on this woman, it turns a high school into a meditation retreat with fluorescent lighting. In that silence, every sound carries, including the sacred hymn of one coworker's phone at full volume. When a person scrolls while working, corners get cut, floors get re-dirtied, and everyone else starts doing math about how long a shift is. That is the simple version.

The complicated version is what happens when annoyance starts collecting trivia. You hear that Bill leans on his dad and his younger sister to handle life stuff, and suddenly the wet footprints on a freshly treated floor feel like a personality profile. It is hard not to root for the sister who seems capable and tired, and hard not to resent the guy who seems allergic to noticing other humans. And once you know that, every eye roll at work feels justified, even if it is only half true today.

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Still, workplaces are not courtrooms, and coworkers are not full biographies. The custodian who finally blurts out that the sister is more responsible may be saying what everyone thinks, but she is also stepping over an invisible line. Once a shift becomes about who deserves respect as a person, the mop closet turns into a comment section, and nobody clocks out feeling clean.
AITA for implying my coworker was irresponsible

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The trick is learning to aim frustration at behavior, not at backstory.
Bill can be asked to turn the volume down, redo work, and stop wandering into wet floors like he is live-blogging his own incompetence. His family situation, his excuses, and his general life management can stay in the category labeled none of my business.
Otherwise, every team ends up lugging two kinds of trash, the stuff in the bins and the stuff everyone knows about everyone else.
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