I definitely need coffee in the morning, and if you can relate, you can probably relate to how the man in this story felt when he accidentally spilled his coffee at work.

Not only was he upset about the mess, but he was mourning the loss of his caffeine fix.

The situation escalated quickly when a coworker inserted herself into the situation, and now he’s left wondering if he overreacted.

Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for snapping at a coworker for being an obnoxious busybody when I dropped my coffee?

Last week when I (35M) was walking back in to work from my break the lid popped off of my large iced coffee and the entire drink spilled in the front doorway of my lab building.

I looked down, sighed “**** me” because I really needed the caffeine, and started walking to the bathroom to grab some paper towels.

A friend (24F) from my lab was walking in at the same time and she also darted off to grab some paper towels, but the second that I dropped it another older woman (~55F) from a different lab who was on her way out for the night started loudly yelling “OP you need to clean that up!” in a condescending tone down a hallway of private offices.

This escalated really quickly.

I kind of raised my eyebrow and kept walking to the men’s room to grab the paper towels, but a couple seconds later when she got to the doorway she yelled “OP! OP come back and clean this up right now!”

And I turned around and yelled “with freaking what, Kim?! Did you want me plop down and sit on it? I’m getting paper towels!”

She started yelling back “oh yeah well you better be!”

But I cut her off and loudly said “BYYYEEE!” with a hand wave and all of the energy of “get right off to hell!” and she went on her way.

His friend found the situation funny.

This was when my friend popped back out with some paper towels and asked “what the heck is her problem?”

She laughed when I told her about the exchange and said it was wild behavior on her part.

But I still felt pretty embarrassed that I snapped at an older lady and childishly yelled “BYYYEEE!” in a singsong tone and waved her off. AITA?

Preschool teachers tell kids to use their words, and that really would’ve helped in this situation. Instead of yelling, the first time the coworker said to clean up the mess, he could’ve simply responded that he’s on his way to get some paper towels to do just that. Instead, he got pretty defensive about it. For all the coworker knew, he was just leaving the mess.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks the coworker was being childish.

Another person hopes he can give her a taste of her own medicine someday.

She really did jump to conclusions.

This person clearly likes coffee.

I completely agree with this comment.

Let’s take a moment of silence for the spilled coffee.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.