Warehouse employee tries to blame 22-year-old coworker for missing $1,200 in equipment, only for security footage to expose his months-long stealing scheme: 'He’d been selling them.'

Author image for Cata Holmes
Cata Holmes • Writer
Aug 15, 2026 4:00 PM EDT

Trying to make a coworker take the fall is risky when the cameras tell a very different story.

A 22-year-old warehouse employee spent months picking up the slack for an increasingly lazy coworker. Things changed when $1,200 in equipment went missing, and that same coworker claimed he had handed it to him. The item was eventually found, but the betrayal stuck. Later, suspicious behavior prompted a camera check that exposed the coworker stealing company property and apparently doing it for months. 

I've always said that having a good relationship with your coworkers is fundamental if you want to have a good time at work. And I think that in this case, both employees were actually good buddies. They would talk about personal stuff, go and grab pizza every day… all in all, they had a good bond. That's why the betrayal feels very hard on u/Enough_Excitement121.

Now, the people we work with don't stop being just that: people we work with. And even though there're cases when we can find very good friends at work, there're others where coworkers and employees just want to protect themselves and want to keep the job as much as possible, and this is what Mason did. I don't think we wanted to blame the OP, but he protected himself by blaming him for the stolen equipment he had been taking home and selling. 

What makes everything even worse is that the OP had spent months helping Mason whenever he fell behind, even when it became obvious that he was taking advantage of him. He could have reported the long breaks, the unfinished work, and all the excuses much earlier, but he chose not to. In the end, Mason wasn't fired because someone wanted revenge. He was fired because the cameras finally showed what he had been doing when he thought nobody was paying attention. 

Anyways, this is a valuable lesson for all of us. While we can find some good coworkers, maybe there will be others a bit more selfish and will only focus on their behavior and performance, and won't hesitate to blame us if they have the chance.

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  • A warehouse employee operates machinery during a shift, while behind the scenes a coworker had allegedly been taking company property home to sell.
    via Unsplash+ (via National Cancer Institute)

    A warehouse employee operates machinery during a shift, while behind the scenes a coworker had allegedly been taking company property home to sell.

    Image shown for illustrative purposes; the person depicted is a model.

  • This happened a few years ago when I was 22 and working at a warehouse outside a smaller city.
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  • Nothing exciting. Mostly receiving shipments, checking inventory, scanning stuff into the system and making sure everything ended up where it was supposed to go. Pretty boring job honestly, but it paid decent and I needed the money.
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  • I'll call the guy Mason. Mason was probably around 30 or 31. I never actually knew his exact age. We had the same position, but he'd been there for like 4 years before I started, so when I first got hired he
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  • This is how a good relationship with coworkers begin.

    was actually really helpful. He showed me which scanners were complete pieces of sh, which loading door would randomly jam, and little stuff that made the job easier.
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  • There's always a classic lunch when working.

    We also got lunch together pretty often. There was this pizza place like 5 minutes away that did two slices and a drink for around $6. The pizza was very mediocre.
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  • The cheese would sometimes come off in one giant sheet when you took a bite. Still ate there constantly, because there wasn't much else.
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  • Money was a big deal for me at the time. My family barely had money as it was, so once I started working full time I tried to do pretty much everything on my own. My parents would've helped me if I absolutely needed it, but that was exactly why I
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  • tried not to ask. I knew if I called my mom and said I needed $300 for something, she'd somehow find $300 even if it meant herself over for the rest of the month.
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  • We weren't starving or anything. We always had food and a house and all that. There just wasn't much extra. If something expensive came up out of nowhere, everybody felt it. So I paid my own bills, food, insurance, whatever I could.
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  • I was also driving an old Buick at the time that had a sh ton of miles and always seemed to need something fixed. It ran, but barely, and I definitely didn't have money sitting around for repairs.
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  • So, both employees were talking about personal things, too. Almost friends.

    Anyway Mason knew most of this because we'd talked about family and money and stuff at lunch. For the first few months we got along great. Then Mason slowly discovered something about me. If
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  • Warehouse workers move inventory through the facility where one employee’s suspicious behavior would eventually come under scrutiny.
    via Unsplash+ (via Getty Images)

    Warehouse workers move inventory through the facility where one employee's suspicious behavior would eventually come under scrutiny.

    Actor performance of story events.

  • there was work that needed done, I would probably just do it. And apparently to him that meant he'd lottery. won the
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  • We usually had our own sections to take care of. If you finished yours early you were supposed to help wherever things were backed up, which was fine. The problem was Mason started being "backed up"
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  • Mmm... things start to get weird with the coworker.

    every single day. First it was long bathroom breaks. Then he'd disappear to get a drink. Then he'd go talk to someone in shipping for 20 minutes. Then he'd need to
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  • make a phone call. Then somehow he'd come back at 3:30 looking exhausted like he'd just returned from fighting in Vietnam.
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  • "Man today has been crazy."
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  • Crazy for who, dude? Because I just watched you spend 15 minutes showing somebody a bass boat on Marketplace.
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  • But I still helped him because at the time I figured work was work and the day went faster when I stayed busy. Then he started taking credit for it. Our supervisor would come by and say something like "nice job clearing everything out yesterday."
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  • A warehouse employee works at a computer as inventory issues begin raising questions about missing equipment.
    via Unsplash+ (via TheStandingDesk)

    A warehouse employee works at a computer as inventory issues begin raising questions about missing equipment.

    Model portrayal.

  • Yeah, I don't like when people take credit for other's work.

    Mason would go "yeah we were getting after it." We.
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  • There was one Saturday where it finally got to me. My younger sister was turning 16 and my mom had planned a birthday dinner for her. Nothing huge, just family at this Italian place she liked. I told Mason that morning, "I have to leave on time today, so I can't stay and help if you fall behind."
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  • He goes "yeah dude you're good, I got you."
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  • What?! He said he would cover him...

    Around 2 PM Mason disappeared. At first I assumed bathroom. 15 minutes goes by. Then 30. Then close to an hour. Finally I went outside looking for him and he's sitting in his truck watching TikTok.
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  • Not on the phone with somebody. Not s ck. Not having some family emergency. Just sitting there scrolling.
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  • I knocked on his window and he jumped like I'd caught him jerking off. He immediately locks his phone and goes "what's up?"
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  • I asked what he was doing and he goes "my head is killing me, I'm just taking a minute." A minute.
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  • Apparently Mason lived on a different planet where a minute was 50 minutes long.
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  • I just said alright and went back inside because I was already p ed and knew if I kept talking I'd probably say something stupid. End of the day comes and, shockingly, Mason has a bunch of work left. He comes over and goes “you mind helping me bang this out real quick?"
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  • I said no. He looked genuinely surprised. "Seriously?"
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  • Yeah... horrible attitude from the coworker.

    I reminded him that I told him that morning I had somewhere to be. Then he goes "dude it'll take like 20 minutes."
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  • Rows of warehouse inventory sit in storage as thousands of dollars' worth of equipment begins to disappear mysteriously.
    via Unsplash+ (via CHUTTERSNAP)

    Rows of warehouse inventory sit in storage as thousands of dollars' worth of equipment begins to disappear mysteriously.

    Picture does not depict real parties.

  • So I left. I got to my sister's dinner like 10 minutes late because traffic sucked. She saved me a seat next to her anyway and spent half the night giving me sh_for being late, so everything was fine.
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  • Then Monday morning my supervisor pulls me aside. Mason apparently told him I'd left while we still had a bunch of unfinished work. I explained what happened and my supervisor gives me the classic "you guys just need to communicate better."
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  • After that Mason and I weren't really friends anymore. We weren't openly fighting or anything. We just stopped hanging out. Then little annoying sh started happening. If there was some awful task nobody wanted, Mason would somehow suggest I do it. If he screwed something up he'd say "I thought Evan told me to do it that way."
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  • Twice he told our supervisor I was late when I wasn't. One of those days I literally clocked in before Mason. Then he'd leave early sometimes. He'd say he had an appointment or something and later that night I'd see his Snapchat story and he'd be sitting at home playing Call of Duty.
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  • I didn't report any of this though. I hate being the coworker who runs to management over every little thing. I figured eventually someone would notice. They did not.
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  • Here's when things start to get really messy with the coworker.

    This went on for a few months. Then one day something expensive went missing. I have to be a little vague about what it actually was, but it was worth around $1,200. Not enough money to bankrupt the company obviously, but enough that people suddenly gave a sh .
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  • The system showed Mason had received it. Supervisor asks him where it went. Mason immediately says he handed it off to me. He did not. I hadn't touched it.
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  • So now I'm sitting in the office while my supervisor asks me where I put this thing. I tell him I never had it. He asks again. I say the same thing. Then he goes "Mason is pretty sure he gave it to you."
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  • And that's basically the exact moment I stopped feeling bad for Mason.
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  • Because this wasn't him being lazy anymore. He was trying to save his own a by handing me the grenade. And he knew I needed that job. He knew my family didn't have money. He knew I was trying to handle everything myself.
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  • About an hour later they found the equipment. Mason had put it on the completely wrong rack and never scanned the new location. So yeah. Mystery solved.
    via Enough_Excitement121
  • That was when I decided I was done covering for him. I didn't come up with some genius revenge plan. I just stopped saving him from himself. If Mason disappeared for 40 minutes and someone asked where he was, I'd say "no idea." If he left early, I didn't make excuses. If his work wasn't finished when my shift ended, I clocked out.
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  • Within maybe 2 weeks our department numbers got noticeably worse. Supervisor asked why. I said "you should probably ask Mason." And that was it.
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  • Then the actual revenge part happened almost by accident. Mason was really into reselling stuff. Phones, tools, consoles, car parts, basically anything he thought he could flip for money. He was constantly on Marketplace.
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  • Mmm... weird comment.

    One afternoon he was showing another guy a cordless drill he was selling. The guy asked how much Mason paid for it and Mason goes "basically nothing, I got this one through work."
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  • I looked over and asked "what does through work mean?" Mason immediately goes "nothing." Which, obviously, is the least suspicious answer possible.
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  • A few days later I saw him put something into his backpack before leaving. Didn't really think much of it. People brought their own stuff in all the time. Then about a week later I saw him do it again. Different item.
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  • Except this time I knew it belonged to the company. There was absolutely no reason it should've been going into Mason's backpack.
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  • Boxes fill a warehouse floor similar to the workplace where a 22-year-old employee was blamed for missing company equipment.
    via Unsplash+ (via Getty Images)

    Boxes fill a warehouse floor similar to the workplace where a 22-year-old employee was blamed for missing company equipment.

    Stock photo unrelated.

  • Good call. Id have done the same thing if I had a bad coworker.

    Then I went to our supervisor. I didn't say "Mason is stealing." Partly because I wasn't 100 percent sure and partly because I wanted them to see it themselves. I just said "you might want to check the cameras around 3:30 yesterday."
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  • Supervisor asked why. I said "just look." He gave me this annoyed look.
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  • Then around lunch our supervisor and some guy I'd only seen a couple times showed up. I think he was loss prevention or some regional guy. No idea. They called Mason into the office.
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  • He was in there for probably 45 minutes. Then the door opens. Mason walks out carrying his backpack. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't look at anyone. Just leaves.
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  • Later our supervisor told us Mason didn't work there anymore.
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  • Obviously everybody immediately started gossiping. Apparently once they checked the footage I mentioned, they started going back through older footage.
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  • Mason had apparently been taking stuff for MONTHS.
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  • The funniest part though is even after Mason got fired, our department was still able to finish on time every day.
    via Enough_Excitement121

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