Coworker Was Constantly Out and She Had to Cover — Then His Accommodation Turned Into Her Burnout

A woman in her first job after college said she understood that coworkers can have real medical needs. She was not angry that her colleague had a workplace accommodation. She was not trying to get him punished for being sick. She knew people need protection when health issues interfere with work.

The problem was that his accommodation had quietly become her workload.

She worked in a small department with only two people: herself and a coworker named Alex. He had been with the company for nearly four years, while she had been there about 17 months. Because of a mental-health accommodation, Alex could call in sick or leave work at any time without being penalized. On paper, that may have been exactly what he needed.

In real life, it left her drowning.

Whenever Alex was out, she had to cover the department. That meant handling her own work plus his, answering questions, dealing with delays, and trying to keep things running while management acted like the absence was just something the team had to absorb. The department was too small for that to work. There was no real backup bench. If Alex was gone, she became the backup, the primary, and the emergency plan all at once.

At first, she tried to be patient. She did not want to be the person complaining about someone’s accommodation. She knew accommodations are legally and ethically important, and she did not want to sound like she lacked compassion. But months of coverage began wearing her down. She was exhausted, stressed, and resentful in a way that made her feel guilty.

According to the Reddit post, she eventually reached the point where the situation felt unbearable enough that she considered quitting without another job lined up. That detail showed how serious it had become. This was not a minor annoyance over a coworker missing a meeting. It was pushing her toward leaving a job she otherwise might have kept.

The hardest part was that the company seemed to frame the issue as if the only two options were protecting Alex or protecting her. But commenters quickly pointed out that this was a management problem, not an employee-versus-employee problem. Alex’s accommodation did not mean the company could dump unlimited extra work on one coworker indefinitely. If the department could not function when one person was out, the department was understaffed.

That reframing mattered.

The woman did not need to argue that Alex’s accommodation was unfair. She needed to argue that her workload had become unsustainable. Those are different issues. The company could respect his accommodation while also hiring backup support, redistributing work, adjusting deadlines, bringing in temporary help, or changing department expectations.

Instead, management had allowed her to become the invisible solution.

That is a common workplace trap. One employee has a documented need. Another employee is reliable, quiet, and willing to help. Over time, the reliable employee becomes the permanent patch for a structural problem. Management gets to say they are being accommodating, but they are really just moving the cost of that accommodation onto someone else’s body and schedule.

As the conversation developed, the woman seemed to understand she needed to stop presenting the issue as “Alex is gone too much” and start presenting it as “my workload is not sustainable when I am required to cover two roles without support.” That shift gave her a cleaner way to raise the problem without making it about Alex’s private medical situation.

She needed documentation: dates Alex was out, what extra work she had to take on, how many hours it added, which deadlines were affected, and how the coverage impacted her own responsibilities. With that kind of record, she could go to management and HR with a business problem instead of an emotional complaint.

The company had a responsibility to accommodate Alex. It also had a responsibility not to burn out the only other person in the department. Both could be true at the same time.

By the end, the issue was not whether Alex “deserved” the accommodation. The issue was whether management had built a system that could handle it. And from the woman’s description, they had not. They had simply let one young employee carry the weight until she was ready to walk out.

Commenters were careful but clear. Many said Alex’s accommodation was not the real problem; the lack of staffing and backup planning was. A company cannot rely on one coworker to absorb someone else’s unpredictable absences forever.

A lot of readers urged the woman to document the workload impact rather than focus on Alex’s medical situation. They said she should track dates, tasks, deadlines, overtime, and missed work so management could not dismiss it as personality conflict.

Several commenters pointed out that accommodations are supposed to help disabled or struggling employees do their jobs, not silently transfer all hardship to another employee. If an accommodation creates a major operational gap, management needs to address that gap.

The strongest reaction was that she should not feel guilty for being burned out. Compassion for a coworker and frustration with an unsustainable workload can exist together. The person failing both employees was the employer that refused to staff the department properly.