Coworker keeps stealing ergonomic chair from another employee until she breaks it, owner decides to lock it to the desk: 'It’s a chair I bought with my own money'

Author image for Giuliana Tiscioni
Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer
Oct 15, 2026 6:00 PM EDT

Some people are never taught to respect personal property.

No one likes to feel like we're not being respected by the people around us. We can feel that in a few different situations, but especially when people insist on borrowing items from us without our permission. 

That's something that can happen a lot within a family. Siblings taking things from one another is not unheard of. My mom has 7 siblings, three of them who are women, and when they were young, they involuntarily shared closets. One of my mom's sisters would take her new pair of white shoes to go gardening in the dirt, use her perfume, and take her phone to talk with her own boyfriend. It was a time when most people had a single phone in the house, so privacy was scarce. My dad had given a personal phone to my mom as a gift when they were dating so they could talk freely, and that's the phone her sister used to take without permission. My mom hated that, of course, but there was little she could do to avoid it. My own brother used to enter my room and take things, and we never even shared clothes! That proves that no matter what era it is, or if they are all girls or all boys, sibling will go ahead and take things from us. 

Until a certain point, that can be normal. After all, we share a house, a space, and a family with our siblings, so it's natural to feel like there's enough truts between us not to be necessary to ask for every single little thing. We can always set some boundaries with them, and even though it is annoying, it's not nearly as invasive as if someone outside of our family went through our private property. 

Unfortunately, for this employee, it wasn't an annoying sibling taking stuff without asking; it was a coworker. That is even worse, because it's not like they live together or have built anything remotely similar to familiar trust, and yet, she thought it was a wonderful idea to go ahead and take important items from his office without so much as asking if it was okay. 

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  • AITA for putting a bike lock on my own office chair so my coworker would stop using it on my days off?

    I have a bad back and the chairs at my office are awful, so a few months ago I bought my own ergonomic chair for $380 and
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • Ο
    via EFFYDESK for Unsplash+

    The ergonomic chair for the office.

    Image for illustrative purposes.

  • brought it in. My job is hybrid. I'm in the office Tuesday through Thursday and I work from home on Mondays and Fridays.
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • A few weeks ago I started noticing on Tuesdays that it was set all wrong. It'd be lowered all the way down with the back tilted and
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  • there'd be crumbs in the seat. Then one Tuesday I came in and found it over at the desk of a woman from the team next to ours.
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • When I asked her about it she said she's been rolling it over to her desk on Mondays and Fridays because "it's just sitting there when
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • you're not even here." I said it's my own chair and that the lever that adjusts the height had literally snapped off the week before. She
    via u/Low_Discipline9946

  • Saying “you're not even here” is a pathetic excuse to justify bad behavior. Under that same logic, we could just go inside people's houses and take whatever we need from inside, since, you know, they're not even there. The presence or lack thereof of the owner of an item does not erase the fact that they are, in fact, the owners. If she felt so uncomfortable sitting in her own chair, she was free to go ahead and buy a better one herself, just like her coworker did. Not only did she take it without asking, which is bad enough as it is, but she also broke it and never acknowledged it. Maybe they should have implemented the principle of “you break it, you buy it” with her. I'm sure that if someone did this sometime, she would learn her lesson and never steal from her coworkers or anyone else again. 

  • said it's in the office so it's basically office furniture, and she didn't know anything about the lever.
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • Cheezburger Image 10671157504
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The office.

    Representative only.

  • So I bought a $12 bike lock and now I loop it through the chair base and my desk leg every Thursday before I leave.
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • About a week later my manager emailed me. She'd told him I was making the office feel "hostile." He asked me to take the lock off
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • Cheezburger Image 10671158016
    via Vitaly Gariev for Unsplash+

    The coworker stealing the chair. 

    Not actual story subjects.

  • because it "doesn't look professional" and said everyone should "be flexible with shared spaces."
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • I wrote back that it's a chair | bought with my own money because of my back, and that the height lever's already broken from
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • her using it. I said I'd happily take the lock off if nobody else uses it, or I could take it home if the
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • company gets me a chair I can actually sit in all day. He hasn't replied to that email at all. AITA?
    via u/Low_Discipline9946
  • According Manager400 NTA lol she broke the lever, left crumbs in it, and then ran to ur manager saying ur the hostile one?? a $12 bike lock is honestly the nicest possible response
    via According_Manager400
  • Competitive-Car-3009 nta. get a doctors note and ask HR for an ergonomic chair as an accommodation, a lot of companies will cover it for a back issue. and save that email about the broken lever in case she ever acts like she didnt do it
    via Competitive-Car-3009
  • GetOffMyUnicorn 70 You are not legally required to share your own property.
    via GetOffMyUnicorn70
  • ObligationNo2288 I would be wheeling my personal chair back and forth on my work days.
    via ObligationNo2288

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