Imagine working at a company with a break room where you and your coworkers often take your lunch break.

If you were enjoying your lunch break by looking at your phone, what would you do if another coworker criticized you for looking at your phone instead of having a conversation with them?

In this story, one woman is in that exact situation, and she responded by reporting the coworker to their manager.

Now, she’s wondering if that was the wrong thing to do.

Let’s read all the details.

AITAH for snapping at my coworker (45F) for her attitude with me (27F) during my lunch break?

I’m 27F, my coworker is 45F and her name is actually Karen.

I’ll be honest. We do not have the best relationship ever since she started working here a few months ago.

She is totally new to the field and asks me a lot of questions, then dismisses what I say because I‘m younger than her.

Then she asks our manager the same questions and gets the same answers I gave her.

Even though our manager is younger than her too, Karen listens to her because of her authority.

Karen even came up with a nickname for herself.

She has made comments saying even though I have more years of experience than her, the experience is a mama bear knows a lot more.

Yeah, she called herself the mama bear of our department on her second day after seeing how everyone in our department is younger than her.

No one likes that stuff and never call her that when she asks us to.

This seems like a pretty typical lunch break so far.

Going on, I went on my lunch break earlier this week and Karen comes in for hers a little after I started.

I’m the type to be on my phone, watching videos and just having a little time to decompress while I eat.

Another coworker Kevin (38M) was with us in the lunch room and he was just eating his food without looking at his phone.

Karen comes in and sees me, waving hi.

I wave back and turn back to watching my video. Karen starts talking a bit with Kevin, I just keep eating with my head down.

Karen is very rude.

Karen says loudly to my coworker, “Kevin, doesn’t it seem funny to you that us old people are able to hold conversations but the younger generation are glued to their phones and not talking to people in the room?“

Every condescending thing she says about me is always in my earshot like she wants me to hear it.

So I shut my phone and asked her why me being on my phone bothers her so much when I’m minding my own business.

She froze like she thought I’d never say anything.

Kevin does not side with Karen.

Kevin immediately looks down on his phone and doesn’t say a word.

Karen tried to say she was just joking around and that she thought the younger generations are always addicted to their phones rather than having meaningful conversations with each other.

I told her “I’m on lunch, Karen. It’s none of your business that I’m on my phone during my lunch break. Stop being rude about something that has nothing to do with you. Keep it to yourself and mind your own business.”

Karen asked Kevin if what she said was rude, but he agreed and said nothing else when she tried explaining her perspective to him.

The manager got an ear full.

I left the break room to report what happened to my manager before Karen could since she has tried putting in a complaint about another person not being friendly enough with her.

My manager got all sides of the story from me, Karen and Kevin.

Kevin defended me and said Karen was singling me out for no reason. He’s also really mad that she called him old.

Manager determined that Karen was out of line and needed to stop making remarks like what she said to me towards others at work.

Karen is mad at OP now.

She’s been on thin ice since then from an accumulation of other incidents.

Some of my coworkers came up to me every so often to tell me how Karen thought I was a jerk for telling my manager about what happened rather than settling things like reasonable adults.

Now I was getting her in trouble for a joke.

I beg to differ, but obviously I’m biased.

Maybe I should’ve worded things differently. Maybe I was being too harsh because I don’t like her. AITAH?

Karen needs to learn to mind her own business and stop criticizing people.

Hopefully, suffering some consequences will help that lesson sink in. She did nothing wrong.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person thinks she did the right thing.

Another person suggests reporting Karen again.

It’s not about how old you are. It’s about how you want to spend your time.

Karen is a gossip.

Karen needs to mind her own business.

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