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When you step into a new job, you likely complete some sort of handover from the person who worked in the role before you. Maybe it’s that you spend a week to a month working alongside them, to ensure a smooth transition – or at the very least, perhaps they have prepared a detailed handover document so that you can learn how exactly they did the job before you.

But once you’ve learned how they did the job, you’ll naturally find your own rhythm, your own way of doing things. By the time that you come to hand your job over to someone else, you’ll likely go back to that handover document and change it significantly, altering the way that your predecessor did things and replacing them with the processes that you implemented during your time in the role – and then, later down the line, the person who replaced you will do just the same.

It’s the natural way of things – after all, everyone works differently, and everyone find different hacks and tricks for completing the more complicated parts of a job.

Over three years in their role, the worker in this story has found a whole load of new ways of doing things, and has documented them all in great detail. But now their colleagues have found out about everything they’ve documented, and are weirded out that they’ve not shared.

Read on to find out what’s going on here.

AITA for refusing to share my work notes after a co-worker used them without asking?

I work at a university in a role that’s pretty unique. A big part of my job is keeping track of things that are not written down elsewhere.

Over three years I have made a big document with my work notes. It has examples and explanations and things like that. I made it because I was tired of asking the questions over and over.

One of my coworkers, Mark, started working with us eight months ago. He is smart and works hard, but he asks a lot of questions.

I helped him out a few times by sharing some of my work notes with him. I did not mind doing that.

But eventually, this worker did start to mind.

Then I found out that Mark had taken all of the work notes I had shared with him and put them in a folder that everyone in our department could see. I did not know that until someone thanked me for making a guide.

The thing is, I did not say he could do that. My work notes have some of my thoughts and ideas in them. They are not just facts. Also things I have learned from experience.

I told Mark that I was not comfortable with him sharing my work notes like that. I asked him to take them down.

He seemed surprised. He took my work notes down. Now some people are annoyed with me.

Read on to find out what has happened since.

My manager talked to me. She said that I do not have to share my work notes if I do not want to, but she also said that not sharing knowledge can hurt our team. That made me feel bad because I do not think that is what I did. If Mark had asked me I probably would have been happy to share my work notes with everyone.

Now things are an awkward at work. Some of my coworkers make jokes when I am around. Mark is not mean to me, but he does not talk to me as much as he used to.

I keep thinking about whether I was wrong for not letting my coworkers use my work notes. Mark was trying to help. My work notes were useful to people – but at the same time I feel like my work notes are mine. I should get to decide who uses them.

AITA?

It’s clear that this worker has worked extremely hard to compile a vast wealth of knowledge that makes their job a whole lot easier.

And yes, Mark shouldn’t have shared them without checking – but to most people, it would seem logical that this stuff was a collective thing, not just one person’s property – after all, if you’d made a big, helpful resource, why wouldn’t you share that with your colleagues?

After all, it’s just as important to be a team player at work as it is to help yourself.

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

This person thought the worker had handled the situation badly.

While others feared their reaction may hurt their chances for future progression.

Meanwhile, this Redditor came up with an idea to try to rescue things.

Yes, they came up with these notes themselves. But it could really help the team to share them publicly – after neatening them up and making them applicable and accessible to everyone, of course. Sure, Mark shared the notes without asking and inadvertently led to this whole drama happening, but there are ways to make the best of this situation now.

Absolutely the worker should stop keeping all the notes to themselves, and apologise for their reaction to the notes being shared. It may help the situation to explain that they are merely a perfectionist and would have tidied up the notes and presented them better if they were for the whole team to use – because offering them up now may help to smooth things over, as well as highlighting the worker’s value to the team.

But if they keep insisting the notes are theirs alone? Well there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’, and that might become increasingly apparent.