Giving a coworker a ride to work is a great way to help them out while also being environmentally friendly.

What would you do if even after you asked him to clean up, the coworker kept leaving wrappers and crumbs in your car every morning?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so he told the coworker he couldn’t give him a ride anymore, and soon after, the guy was fired for chronically being late, so now he feels bad.

AITA because my dirty co-worker got fired after I stopped giving him a ride to work?

So, I’ve been getting some flak at work because a well-liked co-worker of ours got fired for repeated absences after I stopped giving him a ride to work.

Ok, let’s see what happened.

As background, I’m an Active Duty Military mid-level healthcare provider and he was an entry level civilian contractor. We both worked at a large Military Hospital.

Earlier this year, “John [20m],” who recently started working at the hospital, was asking around our department for people he could carpool with.

This was really nice of him.

Everyone gave various reasons why they couldn’t help, and eventually I volunteered because he lived nearby and it wouldn’t be out of my way to pick him up.

(I will preface this by noting John was very well liked in our department with most of the older ladies adopting him as their “work son” etc. He’s also the youngest employee by almost a decade.)

Wow, this is really rude.

This issues started about one month in when I noticed every morning after I picked him up, he would bring various food products to eat on the drive to work.

This didn’t bother me at first, but as time went on he was leaving food trash and crumbs in my vehicle.

He kept eating in the car after being asked not to?

I’m an extremely clean individual, so this bothered me and I said something. He continued eating, and kept forgetting to clean after himself.

I was getting tired of constantly reminding him to take his trash with him, and I started just throwing the trash away myself. After doing this a few times, I decided to just leave the trash, and see if he would notice.

Some people just can’t be bothered to keep a car clean.

He didn’t. For weeks the empty water bottles, Redbull cans, candy wrappers and empty containers started to pile up in by passenger door and floorboard, and stayed until I asked him politely “could you take that trash with you?”

His response of “yeah of course, I don’t mind” made me feel like he thought it was MINE and I was asking for a favor.

This is absolutely reasonable.

There’s more examples, but to keep things short, I gave him an ultimatum, he needed to clean up after himself and respect my car, or he would need to find another ride to work.

Not even a week later, he was eating some type of meal with flaky crackers and it was spilling on his lap the entire ride to work. When we pulled into the parking garage, he dusted all the food crumbs from his lap onto my carpet.

This is the last straw.

We left the car and went to work. After work, when I returned to my car, there were ants inside of my vehicle.

I had enough. So I made up an excuse, and told him I couldn’t give him rides.

It is his own responsibility to get to work on time.

He took it well, and the rides stopped. But over the next few weeks, his tardiness started to pile up.

His agency fired him in September. We are not privy to contractors personnel issues, but everyone assumes he was fired for being chronically late.

If they liked him so much, why didn’t they give him a ride.

Fast forward to today, while on break, I overheard some folks saying he was fired because I stopped giving him a ride to work and that was selfish of me etc.

I never told anyone except him why I stopped, and I’m assuming he told them some half baked truth and because he was well liked, I know they believe him.

AITA?

Not at all. If anything, he is the only one who was nice enough to give him a ride. The guy ruined that by not waiting to get to work to eat.

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

This commenter says the coworker is responsible for getting himself to work.

He was being very disrespectful.

I agree with this commenter.

This person points out that nobody else was willing to give him a ride.

He should have told him the real reason he couldn’t give rides.

He was given multiple opportunities to change, this is on him.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.