Helping a coworker hits different when they act as if they did it all alone.

So, what would you do if you spent nearly an hour walking a teammate through your carefully built workflow, but when asked, he took full credit for the report? Would you shrug it off? Or would you confront him and let him know you’re not okay with that?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this situation and chooses the latter. Here’s how it all played out.

AITA for not sending coworker my template after he basically used my stuff in a meeting and didn’t mention I helped?

I (28M) work on a small team, and there’s a newer guy who I’ll call Joe. We sit near each other, and our work overlaps a lot, so I’ve helped him out here and there.

A few weeks ago, he asked me how I put together this weekly report we have to do. Over the years, I’ve made my own template and a routine that makes it way faster.

He asked me to send him my template file. I told him I’d happily walk him through how I do it and explain the steps, but I didn’t really want to just hand over my exact file. It’s basically my personal workflow, and I’ve tweaked it forever.

When the boss asked, Joe took full credit.

So I stayed after work and spent about 45 minutes showing him everything. I shared my screen, explained where I pull the numbers, the order I do things, what to watch out for, ALL of it. He took notes, thanked me, and seemed totally normal about it.

The next week we had a team meeting, and Joe presented his report for the first time. And I’m sitting there, listening, like, this is basically my report. Same EVERYTHING, even a couple of little phrases I always use when I explain the numbers.

When our boss asked him how he put it together, Joe said something like, “I built a simple structure that makes it easier,” and left it at that. I mean, no mention that I spent time walking him through it at all.

Frustrated, he confronted Joe.

After the meeting, I pulled him aside and said, “Hey, I’m glad it went well, but it felt weird hearing you use my exact structure and wording and not even mentioning I helped you.”

He got defensive right away and said he didn’t think he needed to “credit” anyone for help and that I was being insecure for even bringing it up.

Since then, he keeps asking again for the actual template file, like “it would save time” and “I already understand it anyway.”

Now, a few people think he should just hand over the file.

I told him no and said I’ll answer questions if he’s stuck, but I’m not sending him the file.

Now he’s been cold to me, and I’ve heard he’s telling people I’m gatekeeping and trying to make him look bad. A couple of coworkers said I should just send it because it’s a team environment and “it’s not that deep.”

I dont want to be the difficult person, but I also feel like I already helped him a lot, and he showed me exactly how he’s going to act with it.

AITA?

Eek! There’s no wonder he doesn’t want to hand his work over to that guy.

Let’s check out how the readers over at Reddit would handle this issue.

This would definitely work.

For this reader, it’s his file, and he shouldn’t share it.

According to this reader, he should share it with the company.

This person thinks he should speak to his manager.

His coworker sounds terrible, and he should just make the workflow public, so people know he created it.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.