Toxic workplaces often thrive on silence until someone finally breaks it.

So when one employee, already overwhelmed by mental health struggles, reported a coworker’s problematic behavior, HR was forced into action.

Keep reading for the full story.

AITA for reporting a coworker to HR for things said when I wasn’t around?

The pandemic year hit me (26F) really hard. I’ve been struggling with depression and anxiety really badly this year, and I’ve been a mess of emotions.

She has a cruel coworker who continues to make work even worse for her.

I have a coworker who is a textbook narcissist. He doesn’t care how his actions affect other people and often goes out of his way to harass people to make them miserable.

It’s relevant to say that his mom also has various medical conditions.

Lately, he’s taken his cruelty to new levels.

Within the past couple of weeks, he’s constantly been using hurtful terms against me (I’m Hispanic) and recently made fun of me for an injury I sustained at work. He believes I am faking it for attention.

All of this stuff was secondhand information. My coworkers came to me and told me what was said.

Finally, the boss realized what was happening and HR soon got involved too.

Since I have been a mess of emotions, I started crying, and my boss happened to walk into the room at that time. I broke down and told her everything.

She forced me to go to HR.

It seems that HR took action because now this coworker is guilting her hard.

HR must have threatened to fire him because he won’t talk to me at all anymore. I’m not complaining at all.

But now he’s saying that if he loses his job because I reported him, his mom is going to lose her health insurance and cannot afford her treatment.

AITA? I really didn’t think so, but everyone says I should have left him alone because of his mom.

Of course the convenient sob story comes out when he’s finally faced with consequences.

What did Reddit think?

HR exists for this very purpose.

This guy did it to himself by behaving so badly.

It’s possible this guy had other infractions on his record.

It’s safe to say this guy was far from a model employee.

She spoke up about harassment, and HR did their job.

You don’t get to play the victim after acting like the villain.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude cusfacetomer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.