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Guy Furious After His Teen Coworker Keeps Getting Away With ‘Unprofessional’ Behavior

Claudia Burlotti/Getty Images

There’s nothing more annoying at work than a coworker who doesn’t follow the rules.

A guy on Reddit called out his teen coworker for this type of behavior, but wasn’t sure about how he’d handled things. So, he went to the AITA (Am I The A**hole) subReddit for perspective.

The Original Poster (OP), who goes by throwaway9472838 on the site, asked:

“AITA for calling out an unprofessional coworker?”

He explained:

“I (M[ale]27) have been with this company for three years now, and we recently ‘hired’ a new girl (F[emale]16). I say ‘hired’ because she’s working off the book and is only there because she’s the daughter of a family friend of the CEO.”

“She never talks to anyone seriously. In our groupchat (small team) she would reply to the CEOs messages with things like sexy, okay, got it, lmao ok, exactly like that, no signing off or anything. She would write emails the same way, not bothering to use uppercase letters, and the email would always be the bear bones of what she was trying to say.”

“When people would explain things twice to her she would cut them off and say she understood the first time. Once the CEO congratulated her for fixing something wrong with the google sheets and she said she just googled how to fix it, there’s also tons of other times when she was asked how she fixed something and she said she just googled it.”

“Recently I confronted her, and she said that all of this was a construct, she was getting the message across either way so why does it matter if she’s saying it in 2 words or 20 and I told her it was out of respect. She said the people she respects knows she respects them and if they didn’t like it she could apologize later.”

“Throughout our messages to each other, she kept saying things like ‘lmao’ and continued to void the use of capitalletters. I asked her what she would do when she got a real job and she said if the work environment didn’t fit her she would leave, and she worked hard for the skill set to let her have that much power over her job.”

“She ended the conversation by telling me to ‘chill tf out my guy it’s not that serious’. A few hours later, sent me a long paragraph about how acting professional created a ‘weird ass work environment’ and if everyone was just chill to each other we would be much happier with our jobs, and why would we want to be miserable 8 hours a day.”

“I said whatever and ignored it for a few days until the CEO wanted us to fill out a form and she had it done within twenty minutes. He sent a message praising her for how fast she did it compared to us and said we should be more like her and she had the audacity to respond, and I quote, ‘chill out bruh people are busy they’ll get it done eventually let them breathe’.”

“Finally I confronted the CEO and asked him why he let her talk like that and he said it didn’t matter and she was only there to gain experience.”

“I’m so sick of it, she’s allowed to act however she wants just because she’s the daughter of one of his family friends and does whatever she wants. Every time I bring it up with my coworkers they say to get off her back because she’s a child, but she’s the one who wanted to be part of a professional environment.”

“Now, to her credit, she is a pretty good asset to our team, manages the social media, edits docs, helps with technology, a good programmer and has a good skill set, but she’s unprofessional.”

“AITA here?”

Folks on Reddit were then asked to evaluate who is in the wrong in this situation based on the following categories:

  • NTA – Not The A**hole
  • YTA – You’re The A**hole
  • ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
  • NAH – No A**holes Here

And for the most part, they felt like OP’s vitriol was way overboard.

I might not be popular for this, but yes. YTA. The people who she’s talking to regularly have no issues with her and how she talks to them, so quite frankly, butt out.

Meanwhile, when she was being used as an example for being faster at something than you, she actually supported everyone else.

You might want to take a step back and look at how professionally you are behaving towards her, because it looks like the tea pot calling the kettle black here.”Koda5111

“Maybe the texting language is a little immature (she is actually a child after all) but the CEO seems to be indicating a preference for brevity and speed and honestly I’ve always thought a “to the point” email was more professional than ones with tonnes of preamble and corporate speak. It’s a rare occasion that I send an email longer than 3 sentences tbh.”witch_harlotte

“What I get from this is that the company really needed someone who knows how to use google? Thank god for the zoomers upholding the society. She might be really bad at communitaction but she is doing a fair share of work it seems. And yeah someone should teach her a bit about being more professional (lmao) but like… she’s just a kid.”wcqaguxa

“YTA… This seems like an unnecessary amount of anger/frustration just because someone is unprofessional. If you already talked to your superior and her about it I don’t see how there is anything else you can possibly do in this situation other than just make the people around you annoyed.”

“It sounds like you are the only person at your workplace that has an issue with her behaviour which is probably a clear sign that you are overreacting… Sorry…”PumpkinCottenball

“Dude, please stop trying to confront this girl that is ten years younger than you. Why is there a stick so far up your ass. Also she was defending you and your coworkers in the last bit, acknowledging that you all have full workloads and your boss needs to cut you some slack. She has your back even though you’re an asshole. YTA”slutforlibraries

Hopefully OP can learn to be a little more chill in the future.

Written by Peter Karleby

Peter Karleby is a writer, content producer and performer originally from Michigan. His writing has also appeared on YourTango, Delish and Medium, and he has produced content for NBC, The New York Times and The CW, among others. When not working, he can be found tripping over his own feet on a hiking trail while singing Madonna songs to ward off lurking bears.