Competitions in the workplace can be fun, but often they will backfire.

In this case, everyone was having fun with the company’s walking competition, until a coworker started cheating and counting her bike rides as “steps”.

The woman who shared the story reported her behavior, but now she’s wondering if she was in the wrong for doing so.

Let’s analyze the situation.

AITA for reporting my coworker for cheating in the company walking competition?

At our last company meeting, they announced there would be a step competition.

Participation was voluntary, if the average number of steps is greater than or equal to a 5K per day all participants get a Friday half-day.

The person with the most steps overall wins an Apple Watch.

Nice! The employees were actually excited about the idea.

We would log our steps during work days only for 20 days.

I’ve been in a funk lately and was glad for an excuse to get back into my fitness routine.

I love running and asked if steps from running could be counted.

Matt, who volunteered to manage the competition said it did.

She had a plan and wanted to win.

My goal was 20,000 steps a day thinking this would easily put me in the lead but on day 1 this guy Dave posted 23,000.

I sent him a message on Teams, saying something along the lines of “It’s on!”

The next day I put up 24,000.

He answers back with 25,000.

Another coworker Jenna also joined in.

The 3 of us started having daily chats about our workouts.

By week 2 it’s looking certain 1 of us will win and the whole group is absolutely getting a half day off work.

This sounds lovely, but someone had to ruin the fun.

Then I checked the log and out of nowhere, Tiffany, who’d been posting 10-15,000 per day, posts 65,000 steps.

For perspective, a marathon I ran resulted in 52,000.

That’s a jump!

So I’m skeptical but also, maybe Tiffany ran a casual ultra marathon on a workday?

Who knows.

I sent her a Teams message: “That’s a lot of steps, what’s your secret?”

She said she plays volleyball and wanted to count the steps from her games but can’t safely keep her phone or watch on her to keep count.

To solve this problem, Matt looked up a chart online that gives a step equivalent for other activities.

Ex: volleyball = 89 steps per minute Tennis = 133 spm Etc

Fair enough, but the math still ain’t mathin’, so I said: “Wow, you must have played for like 8 hours!”

That’s when she revealed what she had been doing.

Her reply: “Well, I also rode my bike.”

Now this is where I call it like it is, so I clarified: “You counted riding your bike?”

Turns out she didn’t just use the chart for volleyball, she used it to count everything she did and convert it into steps.

Bike riding, stretching, yoga, washing the dishes.

All great but those are not STEPS.

*Checks notes* It’s a STEP competition!

This seemed pretty lame to me and I just said: “I don’t think that’s really in the spirit of this competition”.

And immediately went to Matt to ask about this chart.

Specifically, if bike riding counted towards steps.

He said bike riding didn’t count, it was too different and also unfair since not every employee has access to a bike.

I thanked him for clarifying and told him that Tiffany may also need some clarification.

Fair enough. But she did not like that at all.

Not 2 minutes later, I get this message from Tiffany:

“Really, you complained about me? That’s actually not in the spirit of the competition. I lost a pet recently and have been so depressed.”

“I’ve been struggling to lose weight and I was so proud of my steps from yesterday! Not everyone can be a marathon runner like you, really uncool.”

I knew I was being a little cheeky going to Matt but Tiffany’s message really took me by surprise.

AITA?

It’s like wanting to win a race by driving your car to the finish line. Indeed, the math wasn’t mathin’.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

…I agree.

Yup.

True.

A reader shares their thoughts.

Why not?

Another reader chimes in.

Exactly.

It could’ve been good, but they lost it somehow.

This quickly turned into a dystopian Corporate Hunger Games.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.