When you’re the only woman on a team of six developers, dealing with a stubborn, shouty coworker can wear you down.

This time, when he yelled at her for emailing someone else for clarification, she finally snapped back—and the whole office went silent.

Read on for the story.

AITA: I was yelled at today by a male co worker and clapped back

I was yelled at today by a male co worker and clapped back. Still unsure if I did the right thing.

I’m part of a team of 6 developers and I’m the only woman in the team. We have several teams and I get along well with everyone.

I’m usually thought of us as nice to everyone, and joking around etc. I’ve heard several co workers tell me that they enjoy working with me.

Sounds all good so far…

Today I got into an altercation with one of my male co workers. He is stubborn and is known to have outbursts at people. Especially if we don’t do exactly as he wants us to.

He seems to struggle with nuances and gets mad at you if you don’t solve something code related in the way that pleases him. He has been working at this company for over 10 years, whereas I’ve been here for a year so there’s that.

I’ve never been micro managed by someone as much as him and he is not even my manager or boss.

Gross.

In short, the altercation was this: I was handed a document with descriptions of how certain software components in our code base is intended to work. Some of the descriptions are newly revised, so I have to rewrite code to fit the new description.

The descriptions were unclear, so I decided to email the engineer who had written the document. He is very well versed into the system design of these components, we can call him M.

As I was typing my email, my male co worker exploded and was yelling “I KNOW THESE THINGS, YOU SHOULD ASK ME. STOP BOTHERING ME”.

Uh, excuse me?

I’m usually cold in these situations and don’t really care about his outbursts, but this one really caught me due to his usage of the words “bothering.” I was typing a two sentence email, and he made it sound like I was sending M 100 of emails.

I looked back and responded “I’m sorry, are you my boss or something? I’m emailing him because I want his explanation since he has written this document.”

And he responded by saying “you’re so rude, that’s so rude of you” and I was like “yeah, then go and cry about it.”

HA.

When I said the last words, the entire landscape went quiet. Usually no one stands up to this co worker and he is having angry outbursts without anyone stepping in and this is the first time I stood up for myself.

Did I do something wrong in this situation? Like, is it normal to have these outbursts at co workers?

I’m second guessing myself all the time but I really feel like he is the unreasonable one.

Sometimes it takes one good clapback to show a bully you won’t roll over just because they’re louder.

Most people on Reddit agree…NTA, but poor choice of words.

This person says two wrongs do kind of make a right, though.

But this person says to just be careful next time…but still continue to stand up to him.

A two-sentence email, one big outburst…and an even bigger mic drop.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.