This woman works the night shift at a high school and generally gets along with her coworkers—except for one.

One particular colleague has a habit of cutting corners, staying glued to his phone, and creating extra work for everyone else. Over time, she’s also seen how his irresponsibility spills into his personal life, especially at the expense of his younger sister.

Eventually, a casual comment pushed her past her breaking point.

AITA for implying my coworker was irresponsible

Some background: I (35F) work as a night shift custodian at my local high school. Most of my coworkers are actually pretty cool, except for one.

This one dude, we’ll call him Bill (25M) is constantly glued to his phone which he keeps the volume turned up without headphones, even when he’s working.

Bill cuts corners, lies about work he’s done, rants about politics to anyone too polite to tell him to go away, and is completely unaware of his surroundings due to his face always be glued to his phone.

Bill’s not a good dude, is he?

The kids were out for school, so we all took advantage and did some deep cleaning of the school while there were no kids.

Another coworker had just mopped the cafeteria with a product that works like floor wax in that you have to let it dry before you can walk on it.

Bill was walking around the school with his face in his phone and walked right across it while it was wet, leaving footprints and causing other coworker to have to go over it again quickly before it dried with footprints in it.

C’mon, Bill.

That’s just one example of the piece of work he is. Another piece of background, he and his sister (lets call her Carol 22F) live with their dad. She’s 22 and works harder than he does.

One of our roommates is moving out in February so we have a room opening up. I asked Carol if she wanted to move in with us and she turned it down, stating that she can’t because she helps their dad with the bills and keeping the house running because her brother won’t. Her words.

Knowing all this and my own personal experience with Bill, I already have a little resentment because Carol is a sweetheart and I hate that she’s in that position.

Woof.

Anyway, onto the story. So we were all on rest and Carol makes some comment about some responsibility she has that week (I don’t remember what. I think it had something to do with laundry.)

Then Bill made some comment about her doing her house jobs or something, I don’t remember exactly. I only remember that I couldn’t stop myself from saying something this time. Before I could talk myself out of it, I blurted out to him, “Why is your 22-year-old sister more responsible than you?”

His response? “Because I was never told how to do anything. I was told just to figure it out.”

Really?

That comment only made me resent him more because that just sounds like an excuse. Like, then why the heck didn’t you ever figure out how to do anything?

He lives with his dad and sister and basically lets them do everything for him. What does he do with his time and money? Video games, gambling, and binging the news on the very phone he’s constantly glued to.

I meant what I said and it did feel good at the time, but I’m still regretting it because 1) I learned more about who he is that I didn’t want to know and 2) I still have to work with this dude and I don’t want this to affect how we work together. I’m starting to think I should have kept my mouth shut. So I’m wondering AITA?

While she doesn’t regret the truth behind what she said, she does worry about the fallout of calling him out in a shared workplace.

Now she’s asking Reddit whether speaking up made her unnecessarily harsh, or if it was long overdue.

Everyone has a difference of opinion.

This person says YTA.

This person says ESH.

And this person says NTA.

When someone keeps tripping over their own lack of responsibility, eventually someone’s going to point it out.

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