Fair accommodations are meant to level the playing field, not tilt it in one employee’s favor.

One worker grew fed up with a coworker’s frequent absences and missed deadlines that always seemed to land extra work on her desk.

But when the coworker blamed her shortcomings on a chronic illness, their lawsuit-averse boss refused to hold her accountable.

Keep reading for the full story.

My coworker eats foods she knows will make her sick and makes it everyone else’s problem

My coworker got hired around 6 months ago and disclosed that she’s diabetic and needs accommodation.

Mainly, that she needs to be allowed to take frequent bathroom breaks and may need time off for doctors appointments.

This employee was fine with this arrangement, until her coworker quickly started taking advantage of it.

Sounds easy enough and fair.

In reality, she probably spends 2–3 hours of her 8-hour shift in the bathroom, meaning she is constantly falling behind on her workload because she can’t do 8 hours of work in 5–6 hours.

I don’t really care how much time my coworkers spend in the bathroom, but I do care when they don’t get their work done on time and then my supervisor makes me do it instead.

She wouldn’t care so much if it weren’t for all the extra work being added to her plate.

She frequently misses deadlines, and when that happens, it gets assigned to me on top of my already super high workload, and I end up having to do overtime.

And when I get assigned her work, I get told I need to drop everything and do it right away because it’s past due, so then I have to drop all of my work to do her job.

She tries to complain to her boss, but he’s too cowardly to take action.

I complained to my boss that this isn’t fair, but he’s terrified of lawsuits and doesn’t want her to sue us, so he won’t do anything or punish her for missing deadlines other than saying, “Don’t let it happen again” (spoiler alert: it ALWAYS happens again).

This is the part that infuriates me: she constantly eats food she probably shouldn’t be eating as a diabetic.

Her coworker doesn’t seem to care much about her health at all.

She comes in with McDonald’s, Wendy’s, donuts, Starbucks Frappuccinos, etc., multiple times per week, makes a joke like, “Hehe, I shouldn’t be eating this, but I can’t help myself,” and then a little bit of time goes by and suddenly she’s nauseous or not feeling well and she either:

A) goes to the bathroom for 30+ minutes or

B) says she needs to go home because of her diabetes.

This employee understands better than anyone else the sacrifices required for managing a chronic illness.

As someone who also has a chronic illness that is greatly affected by what I eat, it ticks me off so much to watch this happen.

I can’t eat fast food. I gave up so many of my favorite foods due to my illness, and yes, I do eat them every so often, but NEVER when I am at work because I know they will send me into a flare-up.

And even when she slips up, she knows how to actually take accountability.

And on the rare occasion when I do something crazy like have a glass of wine on a Saturday (alcohol is a big no-no for me), if I’m dealing with a flare-up on the Monday, I suffer through it and show up to work anyway because I know it’s my own fault I’m feeling like crap.

I felt bad for her at first because I know how hard it is to maintain a job when you’re chronically ill, but this woman does NOTHING to help herself and makes it everyone else’s problem.

This doesn’t sound like a fair situation at all.

What did Reddit have to say?

Her coworker’s story isn’t even really adding up.

HR might need to get involved here.

No employee should be expected to pick up 100% of their coworker’s slack.

This commenter doubts whether her ailment is really diabetes.

If her coworker really didn’t care about her health, then that’s her decision, but she needs to start taking a little more accountability.

If she refuses to take her job seriously, it’s time for her to hang up the towel.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.