Lab Worker Says a Coworker Spread an Affair Rumor — Then Sent Her a Photo of Her Friend Crossing the Street

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A 27-year-old married woman says her research lab used to feel friendly and easygoing, but one senior coworker slowly made the workplace feel uncomfortable by mocking her body, fixating on her friends, spreading a rumor about her marriage, and then sending a photo that made the whole thing feel even creepier.

She explained in a Reddit post that she works in a research lab where people are generally warm and open with one another. They share little details about their personal lives, and the environment had been friendly enough that she did not initially see every odd comment as a serious problem.

Then a 34-year-old coworker she called Tom joined the company in a position senior to hers.

She said Tom was kind for the most part, but she also described him as a “yes-man” who seemed to have no real opinions of his own. Over time, though, his comments and behavior started crossing lines.

The first issue was the gym.

The woman said she used to go to the gym regularly, and people at work knew that. After a personal tragedy and setback, she lost the motivation to keep going. Tom had recently started going to the gym himself, and after that, he made a point of asking her — and only her — whether she had gone.

If she said no, he would make comments like calling her lazy or saying she would get fat.

At first, she tried to take it as harmless joking. But it became a pattern, and the jokes were nearly always directed at her. She could handle normal workplace teasing, but this felt different because it kept landing on her body, her habits, and her specifically.

Then Tom’s attention shifted toward her friends.

The woman said she is close with two male friends who are her cohort mates. They work in the same building, and she sometimes works with them in common areas. She likes having friends outside her lab and tries to keep her social circles somewhat separate.

Tom saw the friends and later told her he found both of them attractive.

She told him they would be flattered, but they were straight. According to her, he replied, “Are you sure, you never know.”

Again, she tried to take it as a harmless joke at first. But Tom started getting weird whenever she spent time with those friends. He seemed annoyed if she left to have lunch with them or hung out with them on weekends. He would act slightly offended that she had not invited him.

Soon, he was asking her in the mornings whether she was having lunch with her friends and whether that was why she was “dressed up.”

That made her so uncomfortable that she stopped sharing stories involving those friends around the lab. She worried Tom would latch onto them and say something inappropriate.

Then the “jokes” got more damaging.

The woman said Tom told a newer lab member, Emma, that she was having an affair with her male friends. He claimed it was a joke. But Emma took it seriously enough to ask one of the friends whether it was true, telling him people in the poster’s lab were saying it.

The friend reported it back to the poster.

She was angry enough to confront Tom by text. His response, according to her, was that it had only been a joke and that he knew they were just good friends. He blamed Emma for lacking social cues and being “stupid” enough to believe it, then apologized repeatedly.

But the damage was already done. A senior coworker had made a joke about her cheating on her husband, and that rumor had traveled outside the lab to one of the people named in it.

After that, the poster tried to give Tom less attention. She still had to work near him, but she decided to mind her own business and go home.

Tom noticed.

He began questioning why she seemed delighted to see other coworkers but not him. He sighed loudly or clapped his hands out of nowhere to get attention. The whole situation kept getting more uncomfortable.

Then came the photo.

Two days before she posted, Tom texted her a picture of one of her male friends crossing the street. The caption said, “guess who I am seeing.”

The woman was stunned. After everything that had already happened — the gym comments, the fixation on her friends, the affair “joke,” and the tension when she pulled back — he had photographed or at least captured an image of her friend and sent it to her like it was funny.

She did not respond.

The next day at work, Tom came to her desk and asked why she had not responded to his text. She told him the truth: she found it creepy.

He tried to justify what he had done.

She repeated that it was still creepy.

He laughed and walked away.

By the time she posted, she said she did not know what his deal was, but he was making her workplace uncomfortable. She wanted to tell a close friend in the lab, but she worried about forcing her friend to choose sides or disrupting the lab’s good rapport.

That was why she asked if she was overreacting.

The issue was not one awkward comment. It was the slow build. Body comments. Possessive behavior around her friendships. A rumor that could damage her marriage and reputation. Attention-seeking when she withdrew. Then a texted photo of her friend like Tom was tracking the people in her life.

At that point, it was hard to treat the pattern as harmless workplace weirdness.

Commenters overwhelmingly told her she was not overreacting. Many said Tom had crossed into HR territory, especially after spreading the affair rumor and sending the photo of her friend.

Several people said the affair “joke” was not funny or harmless. It could damage her marriage, her reputation, and her working relationships, especially because another coworker believed it enough to ask one of the friends directly.

Others focused on the photo. Commenters said texting her a picture of her friend crossing the street made the situation feel more like surveillance than joking. Some also said it suggested Tom might be watching or tracking her friends too.

A lot of commenters encouraged her to document everything, including the texts, and report the behavior through formal channels. They said she had already confronted him, and he had not stopped. Instead, he seemed to double down and laugh off her discomfort.

Several people also warned that trying to quietly manage his feelings would not fix the problem. He had already shown he could twist things into “jokes” and blame others when confronted.

The clearest advice was to stop protecting the lab’s comfortable atmosphere at her own expense. Tom was the one disrupting the workplace, not her.