Worker Says a Coworker Started Judging His Relationship in Front of Everyone — Then Grabbed His Girlfriend in the Parking Lot and Blew Up His Own Job

Source article: Reddit thread

In a Reddit post, a 22-year-old man said a quiet weekend at the office during tax season turned ugly after a coworker decided to make his relationship everybody’s business. According to the post, the accounting team was waiting on documents from another country and chatting to pass the time when he mentioned that he and his girlfriend had tried a new restaurant and liked it enough that he wanted to cook food from that country for her sometime. One of the coworkers, Jesse, asked how long they had been together. He said almost three years. Then Jesse asked why they did not live together. The man answered that because of their religious beliefs, they were waiting until marriage to live together or have sex.

He wrote that he said it casually and without judgment toward anyone else. But according to the post, Jesse took it personally almost immediately. He asked whether the man judged people who did live with their partners before marriage, and the man said no, that other people were free to live however they wanted. That did not calm him down. Jesse reportedly launched into a rant accusing him of being controlling, of not letting his girlfriend “express her sexual self,” and of acting like what he said in the relationship was law. The rest of the team looked confused, and even the supervisor had to step out of his office when the noise escalated.

The man said he tried not to feed the confrontation and went back to his cubicle. But Jesse did not let it go. For the next few hours, he kept walking past and making passive-aggressive comments. Then at the end of the workday, things got much worse. The man went outside to wait for his girlfriend Morgan, who had borrowed his car and was picking him up for a date. When she pulled in, she got out of the driver’s seat so he could drive, and Jesse apparently decided that was proof of everything he already wanted to believe. He came back over and started berating him again, loudly accusing him of not “allowing” Morgan to drive.

Morgan, who had no idea what was going on, told him she was fine. But Jesse kept going. According to the post, he started ranting about how the boyfriend was abusive and controlling because he would not “allow” her to have sex, and said she deserved a better man more like him because he lets his own girlfriend express herself sexually. The man wrote that Morgan was visibly confused and wanted to get out of there. He opened the passenger door for her, but before he could get around to the driver’s side, Jesse grabbed Morgan’s arm hard enough to frighten both of them.

That was when the man finally snapped. He yanked Jesse’s hand off Morgan, got her safely into the locked car, and then turned on him. According to the post, he told Jesse that if this was how he treated his own girlfriend, he felt sorry for her, and that Jesse was the abusive one. He also warned him that if he ever spoke to Morgan that way again, he would file an HR complaint for harassment. Then he left. The next morning, though, things were not over. He woke up to an email from HR telling him he had a mandatory meeting with his supervisor, Jesse, and an HR representative because Jesse had filed a complaint accusing him of “blowing up for no reason.”

In the update, he said the HR meeting went much better than he expected. He explained everything, told them the incident inside the office had been witnessed by multiple coworkers, and made it clear that Morgan was filing a police report because Jesse had grabbed her violently. HR also reviewed security footage from the parking lot. After about 45 minutes, they told him they found no wrongdoing on his part and offered him the rest of the day off with pay. Later he learned Jesse had been suspended while the company investigated further. By Wednesday, Jesse was gone from the company entirely, and police had already collected statements and footage. The man said he and Morgan were still shaken, but relieved he had been terminated and was no longer around them at work. He also said he ordered doorbell cameras for both of their homes because Morgan was still nervous he might try to find them.