When you first start at a new job, the sheer number of new people you need to get to know can feel quite overwhelming. But over time, as you settle in, people will start revealing their true characters to you, just as you will to them. And as you become more and more relaxed around one another, you’ll be able to find out who in the office are truly your people.

The woman in this story has been at her job for some time, and is knowledgeable about the folk she does and doesn’t want to spend her time with. Unfortunately, another woman who works in the office has decided that she very much is her person – even though the feeling is not reciprocal. That would be fine on the surface, but when the other woman’s behaviour becomes increasingly annoying, this woman knew she had to take further action.

Read on to find out what happened.

My coworker has zero boundaries, stalks me to prayer times, and treats my desk like a playground. I’m losing my mind.

I (female) need to rant because I am at my absolute wits’ end with a female coworker in my office, and I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my sanity.

For context, she is a bit older than me (late thirties) and comes from a very privileged background. At first, I tried to be nice and polite, but she quickly turned into a complete energy vampire.

She uses me to dump all her emotional baggage, but the second I ask a simple question about her life—like asking for her Instagram handle—she literally lies to my face and says she doesn’t have one (spoiler: she does, she just wants to keep her life exclusive while invading mine).

Lately, her behaviour has crossed from annoying into completely suffocating and weird.

Let’s see what else she is doing to be so unsettling to this woman.

She is not a punctual or regular prayer-goer at all. But the *second* I get up from my desk to go for Namaz, she suddenly materialises and follows me there. It’s like she’s tracking my exact daily movements just to force her presence on me during a time meant for peace and reflection.

She constantly walks over to my seat, peeks directly at my monitor to see what I’m working on, and offers totally useless comments.

I keep a plushie and my personal diary on my desk. She will literally come over, grab my plushie without asking, and start playing with it. Last week, she took the thumb pins out of my stationery organiser and started sticking them directly into my diary cover!

I literally had to remove the pins from my table just to stop a grown woman from vandalizing my stuff.

But her behaviour gets even worse than this.

If things don’t go her way, she gets aggressive, rude, and starts misbehaving in the office.

Just today, she got into a massive, petty argument with another guy in the department because she missed his lunch call, giving some absurd, childish excuse that “school kids were too noisy” downstairs (our office is above a mall).

I have tried giving polite corporate hints, but she has absolutely zero social awareness. Today, she texted me to make lunch plans, and I finally just decided to choose peace: I didn’t even open the chat. I’m completely ghosting her messages now because it’s the only way to save my mental health.

I feel a little guilty because I’m naturally a polite person, but I cannot set myself on fire just to keep this woman entertained anymore.

Whether she’s trying to be a friend or not, this woman’s behaviour has gone far beyond what is appropriate.

It’s clear that these two don’t have the same vibe, and she’s finding the other woman’s behaviour overbearing.

She needs some boundaries, and she needs them fast.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that she needed boundaries.

While others shared similar situations they’d been in.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought it would be a good idea to ask for her seat to be moved.

Honestly, getting moved is not a bad idea – especially if there are spaces in different areas of the office or even in different offices altogether. Because while she’s still close to this woman, this bad behaviour is likely to continue. Of course, if she’s happy where she is, it’s absolutely okay to simply try to have an honest conversation with the woman, tell her that her behaviour is bothering her and explain that she needs some space – but whether or not that will work depends a lot on the co-worker herself.

But if she does confront the issue, explain what is bothering her and how she’d like to be treated going forward, at least her co-worker’s refusal to do so (if that were the case) can become an HR issue. Because this woman deserves to have her space, deserves not to have her things touched or damaged, and deserves to pray in peace. Any decent person would respect that – regardless of how upsetting it might be.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who just let clients complain after her boss refused to approve overtime.