In almost all work environments you will have some people who you really like, and others that you just don’t get along with for whatever reason.

What would you do if there was one employee who nobody really liked because he was awkward and made them uncomfortable?

That is the situation that the woman in this story is in, so she wants to get him fired but she is worried that this would be going to far.

AITAH for wanting my “autistic” coworker to get fired

I (31) female have been working at my current job for almost a year now.

Great coworkers can make a good job even better. But one bad one can ruin everything.

I am very happy to have met a lot of wonderful people in it but unfortunately there is one coworker who can’t seem to understand that no one likes him and with good reason. Let’s call him John.

I started my training in 2025 and John was my trainer. I quickly noticed that he had his own way of doing things and if I didn’t do it like him exactly he would get frustrated.

I mean, that is part of training.

He always found mistakes even though I did everything how it’s supposed to be. For example: “Don’t say this, say that.” “That’s not how I would do it.” You did great but…”.

I thought I was going crazy but even the customers told me I did great. I was supposed to be training with John for two weeks before I had to start doing it by myself.

This sounds very frustrating.

I started dreading going to work and my anxiety was getting worse. The last day of my training even though I was trying to imitate him like he wanted me too he still had something to say. I got so overwhelmed I had to go to the back office and cry because I felt useless and thought I wasn’t going to fit in.

Fast forward to a few months, I got the hang of the job pretty easily and I felt confident about myself. I was fitting in with my coworkers very well and I started noticing they ignored John and avoided him.

Ok, so everyone knows that he is hard to get along with.

One of them asked me how my training went and I just went silent because I didn’t want to complain. She looked me straight in the eyes and said you’re not the only one who he treated poorly. And that’s when she told me to be careful around him.

Here are a few situations that made me uncomfortable:

He likes to eves drop on other peoples conversations.

Kind of creepy.

In my job there’s a lot of people whose main language is Spanish, including me. John speaks English and Portuguese.

I started noticing that every time he heard us speak in Spanish he would start eves dropping on us and wait until my coworker left to tell me he translated a few words and wanted to know if he understood correctly.

Yeah, this guy is weird.

Mind you, the conversation my coworker and I were having was very personal and that’s why we spoke on a lower voice and in another language. I told him that eves dropping is disrespectful if he is not part of the conversation.

I avoid confrontations because I get very nervous and overwhelmed. When I told him that he went back to his station and didn’t talk to anybody the whole day.

Maybe he is just awkward.

Obviously he kept doing it and a few coworkers got mad at him because he kept joining conversations he wasn’t a part of and because of this he reported to the managers that we were being disrespectful towards him.

John is the type of person who listens to reply and not to understand. If I was having a conversation with him he would make me stop what I was saying to say a joke or start singing.

But if he was talking and someone interrupted him… you know where in going with this.

Well, that is just a personality issue.

2. He has no ideas of his own and steals them from others.

I was planning a Friendsgiving party last year and because my mom was not feeling well I decided to cancel two weeks prior. I was obviously sad because I invited a few of my coworkers (not him) and they had already said yes. I’m not kidding when I tell you that he asked me:

“Hey! You’re not hosting your Friendsgiving anymore right?”

I said: “No…”

This actually seems like a nice thing to do.

And he said: “Perfect! Cause I’m hosting and I want you to come!”

To give a little bit more context on why I thought that was insane is because I canceled the Friendsgiving the day before he asked me that.

Why is it a problem to want to host something like this?

My coworkers told me that in the 3 years he’s been working there he had never planned anything like this. He really thought because everybody already said yes to me they wouldn’t change plans last minute. He was mistaken.

3. He had asked almost every coworker out on a date.

Yeah, this would be uncomfortable.

At this point I don’t know how nobody has accused him of harassment. Thankfully he never made any weird comments towards me because I have a boyfriend and made sure he knew from the beginning.

One of my new coworkers started working here a month ago and he was training her. You have no idea how badly I wanted to save her from him.

Someone needs to tell this guy how to behave at work.

I thought that maybe I was being too hard on him and I should just stop overthinking. Well, she told me that it turns out he invited my coworker to hang out with the illusion that it was a friend hang out and she said sure.

He then texted her that same day saying: “You know it’s a date right?”

At least she got out of it.

She was so uncomfortable she ended up talking to a manager and now they are scheduling her later in the evening that way she doesn’t get to see him at all.

The red flags list goes on and on but I feel this are the ones I wanted to share first.

AITA?

It sounds like this is a situation where the guy is definitely awkward and not very professional, but some of what he is doing is also no big deal but this person doesn’t like him, so it bothers her.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about the situation.

Some of it was just awkward, not necessarily autistic.

You don’t want to step on any toes.

People with autism can learn to act professionally.

Looping in the manager is a good idea.

This guy is definitely awkward, but should he be fired?

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.