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Illustrative photo of the worker who refused to help her colleague, showing a model looking satisfied after getting even.
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AITAH for refusing to help my co-worker after she refused to help me when I was sick?
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I (34F) recently had a bad case of flu over a public holiday in my country. I lost my voice completely due to a severe sore throat and was in a lot of pain. I had planned to use the holiday to rest.
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On the first day of the holiday, my boss called me to say there was an urgent client task that needed to be done. He and my other supervisor were both out of town, so it was just me and my coworker (let’s call her Melinda, 34F). The task is normally a two-person job because of the workload involved.
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I texted Melinda to inform her, and she responded that I “shouldn’t have answered the call” and basically wished me luck but did not offer any help. So I ended up doing the entire task alone while heavily medicated and unwell.
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Representative photo of the worker who refused to help her coworker, portrayed by a model looking satisfied with her decision.
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The next day, we had to present and implement the work. My boss asked her to assist me because I was unable to speak properly. She refused, didn’t answer calls, and even said she was out of town, although her location suggested otherwise. She also said she couldn’t help because she hadn’t drafted the work, even though it was a joint responsibility. I ended up having to ask someone outside the company to assist.
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Now she has a project coming up on Wednesday. She has never done it before, and it’s her file, one I also don’t really know. She is now asking for my help. I told her I’m not in a position to assist as I have a lot of deadlines due (which is true), and I did explain the steps she needs to take to execute it. Despite that, she is now going around huffing and puffing and slamming doors because I haven’t helped her. What she really wants is for me to sit with her, go through the entire file, and figure it out with her as we go, which I simply don’t have the capacity to do.
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I also realise I don’t really feel bad about refusing this time. She has a pattern of subtly not being supportive, and I’ve always given her the benefit of the doubt or brushed it off. But being sick, in pain, and genuinely needing help, only to be dismissed like that, changed something for me. It made it very clear where I stand with her, and I don’t think I can keep extending the same level of support I used to.
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So… AITA for refusing to help her now after she refused to help me when I really needed it?
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Illustrative photo of a worker who looks satisfied she refused to help her coworker. as shown by a model
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The part that really does it is the timing. She did not disappear during some minor inconvenience. She disappeared during a public holiday when her coworker had no voice and needed backup on a task that was supposed to be shared. And then she had the extra audacity to claim she was out of town while her location said otherwise. That is not being unavailable. That is being available enough to lie about it.
So now it is Wednesday and suddenly the tables have turned and the door slamming has begun. That is always the tell. People who treat help like a resource they can borrow without returning never seem to understand why the bank eventually closes. The coworker did not get stonewalled. She got a clear explanation of what steps to take and a genuine heads up that there were deadlines. That is more than she offered when the situation was reversed. Arguably it is way more.
The thing about people who have a pattern of being subtly unsupportive is that they rely on the other person never adding it all up. Every individual moment seems small enough to brush off. But they accumulate. And once you do the math on someone, it is very hard to go back to pretending the numbers do not exist.
Nobody owes endless patience to someone who made their priorities crystal clear the moment those priorities stopped including you.
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