Reddit Stories - COLLEAGUES began EXPERIENCING regular emotional OUTBURSTS, then fixated on a male coworker who

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #workplaceissues #emotionaloutbursts #coworkerconflict #professionalrelationships #officeproblemsSummary: COLLEAGUES began EXPERIENCING regular emotional OUTBURSTS, then fixated on a male coworker who became the center of escalating tensions in the workplace, leading to a challenging and disruptive environment.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, workplaceissues, emotionaloutbursts, coworkerconflict, professionalrelationships, officeproblems, workplacestress, toxicworkenvironment, interpersonalissues, conflictresolution, teamdynamics, workplacerelationships, officeconflict, workplacechallenges, officeculture, communicationbreakdownBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Colleagues began experiencing regular emotional outbursts, then fixated on a male co-worker who turned down their advances, leading them to fabricate allegations of misconduct while monitoring female staff members and making violent threats. Am in lower management in a white-collar workplace. My department has around 25 people total, and I run a small team of around 10 employees. The work environment is pretty casual, it's common for people to become friends with their and people often go out for drinks slash to events after work and socialize. Around six months ago, a woman joined the department. I'll call her Jane. She is not on my team,

but we all utilize a shared office space, and she sits directly beside me. Jane is in her 20s, but is very small and thin and is often mistaken as a younger team. Within a month of joining the department, Jane began to have crying episodes at work. The reason since then is a seemed legitimate, death of family members, legal slash housing issues, etc. The department was very empathetic and did their best to uplift her when she seemed to be suffering. I did not notice at the time, but she began to form a pattern of having crying episodes once every week or two. They were never loud and dramatic, she'd just well up at her desk and start messaging people on Slack asking if they had time to talk. Usually someone, often other women in the department,

would take her aside and offer verbal support until she got herself together. I and the others in management often encouraged her to take the rest of the day off, but she always refused, and after being comforted, would return to work completely normally, laughing and joking. About three months ago, Jane developed a huge crush on a man in an adjacent department. She gushed to the other women about how handsome he was, and obsessed over any interaction with him. He spoke to her in passing maybe twice. and she didn't even know his name, but began to talk about how excited she was to date him,

so she could move away from her current situation. This raised some yellow flags, but we collectively shrugged it off as a young person with a big crush. Eventually Jane convinced a co-worker to pass the young man her phone number. Unfortunately, he elected not to text her. Jane became unusually agitated and began to loudly complain. At one point she allegedly texted one of her team leads at 9 p.m. complaining that she deserved an explanation and was being ghosted. Her co-workers tried to talk her down, reminding her that the young man may be married, or simply uninterested, but she refused to listen and continued her loud, public ranting. Jane said that she wanted to look especially hot to make her crush regret ghosting her.

She began to imitate some of the younger women in the department, buying dupes of their outfits and accessories, and openly asking where they bought their clothing so she could get the same thing. She heavily fixated on one Gothic woman in particular, to the point where she would wear copies of her outfits from the day before, like clockwork. The woman she was copying apparently became irritated and began to show up to work in increasingly outlandish body chains and harnesses to shake the copying, and some of the snarkier people began to make bets on whether or not Jane would show up to work in a harness. She did not, at this point, several people from work went out on a Friday for drinks. Again, the departures.

is very casual, and Jane was invited. During the course of the evening, she allegedly became blackout drunk on two drinks, and railroaded the evening by beginning to cry loudly about her ex-hook-up. The sister of a co-worker took her to the restroom, wherein she ranted for at least half an hour about how frustrated she is over her social issues. Apparently, Jane feels that most women hate her because she is so small and slim, and they cannot contain their jealousy. She claimed that most women hate her because their boyfriends won't leave her alone. To take things further, whenever another random woman walked into the bar bathroom, Jane would accost them, weeping, and complain about how cruelly she is treated over her petite build.

She ended up getting kicked out of the bar by 10 p.m. and people spoke for weeks about how awkward the whole evening was. Shortly thereafter, Jane began to publicly levy accusations against her work crush. She claimed that. that he was stalking her on the work floor, and that he would regularly corner her and stare at her ass whilst making dirty comments. She followed women onto their lunch breaks and messaged them constantly about it. At this point, I had overheard enough, and encouraged Jane to speak to HR. She refused, suddenly claiming the harassment wasn't that big a deal. Over the next couple weeks, people observed her in the same room as the reputed predator, wherein no interaction happened.

after which she would return to the department office and complain about stalking and dirty comments. One of the more egregious situations I personally witnessed involved her walking silently past the man with no interaction, and returning to the team office. When I entered the office minutes later she was huddled over her desk, with two women awkwardly flanking her, as she described in frightening interaction in which she was followed into a dark corner and verbally assaulted with sexualized statements regarding her slender stature. I met with HR shortly after, described specific overheard lies, and provided time stamps. Our entire facility is peppered with cameras, so I felt fairly confident that HR would investigate

and validate my claims. I did make it clear that harassment could have occurred, and that despite witnessing lies, I didn't want to unfairly assume everything was lies. HR took things seriously, and requested a meeting with Jane. During the meeting, Jane doubled down, agreed she was being stalked, and requested that an official investigation be opened. This was her undoing. H.R. immediately began pulling camera footage from the timestamps I provided, and some of the women Jane had vented to were called in for interviews. From there, whisper spread, and a flood of people began to initiate their own HR meetings. Apparently her lies were constant and poorly concealed, and people were disturbed.

H.R. requested Jane provide her own time stamps for alleged assaults. Suddenly Jane could not remember the dates, even hazily, and began to openly cry and break down in the office over the stress. She developed vicious migraines that caused her to call out on the days that H.R. had requested meetings, or claimed that her superiors were overworking her to the point she had no time to meet. As H.R. pressed on, she began to speak poorly about the H.R. rep, calling her arrogant and condescending. One morning Jane wrote out a harsh, snappy email belittling the HR representative for not comprehending how busy she, Jane, is, and after sending it, walked her open laptop through the room showing people how she defended herself. Jane became increasingly paranoid and began

to burrow into people she presumed connection with. Two additional women requested meetings over Jane's obsessive and clingy behavior. Besides the outfit copying, she began to intently stare at the women she was close to in the office. I know that staring is an odd thing to get worked up over, but again, Jane sits near me, and I personally witnessed it. Jane would turn her chair and sit silently, with wide open eyes, fixating on someone for up to 30 minutes. It was never an angry stare, or menacing. It was almost as though she weren't aware of her own body, and was visually absorbing the person she was fixated upon. Several times the victim caught her in action awkwardly waved, and Jane seemed startled, as though unaware that she was visible. I personally

observed her covertly following individuals she was fixated on in common areas, shuffling behind corners and near windows, silently staring with wide, wet eyes. It disturbed me but I did not know how to address it to HR without sounding petty. As HR became more aggressive demanding meetings, Jane became more distraught. She had been made aware during her initial meeting that someone had reported her complaints of sexual harassment, and made her personal mission to find the rat. She began to corner co-workers and demand their opinion on her list of suspects. At one point, she told someone that when she figured out who reported her, she would start smashing skulls. People were naturally disturbed, and another rash of HR reports took place.

HR abruptly went dark and stopped requesting meetings with Jane. I personally suspect that they were collaborating with the legal department on plans of termination, but the silence was unnerving to the more high-strung people in the department, whose nerves were already frayed. One of the more vulnerable women was followed to her lunch break daily by Jane, and as she snuck out to the common areas, was bombarded with messages begging for girl time. One lunch break Jane followed the woman out to the common area and allegedly struck her backside with no warning, and claimed she just had to do it.

This woman has diagnosed anxiety issues and ended up having several panic attacks at work, and had to call out for a day and a half. She was so frightened of Jane she elected not to report the incident to HR, and instead hit herself as much as possible. Two days after striking the woman, Jane got a tattoo that was similar to one the woman has. It felt like a sick way of marking territory. I requested another HR meeting and shared what I could, but as the primary victim was too frightened to come forward, it was all hearsay and rumors.

I made it clear that people were miserable and afraid, and that Jane is a walking lawsuit. I was told we are just as upset as you and it will be over soon. So here I am now. Leadership has gathered the more vulnerable people around them and begun to have casual group lunches with them, attempting a safety in numbers kind of thing. Women have messaged leadership on Slack asking for escorts on their smoke breaks, because they are so anxious that Jane may follow them out. Men refuse to interact with Jane without witnesses because they are afraid of being accused of sexual assault.

It is tragic and stupid that one 100 pounds woman could turn an entire department on its head. I have a history of mental and physical abuse, and the entire situation is painful. The knowledge that Jane has threatened to smash the rat's skull, and sits directly beside me has brought a lot of paranoia up. I'm no bitch, but I have been pounding liquor after work just to calm down. I am not making the progress I should be in therapy, because my sessions are overtaken with processing Jane. My wife has expressed concern and dismay over my regression, and I am deeply ashamed. So here we are now. I've been enjoying my weekend, but Monday is looming.

I desperately hope that Jane is fired first thing, and am considering threatening to refuse to come in until she is let go. While I don't feel exactly comfortable trying to push the company into a corner, I feel that I am out of options, and I just want it to stop. For both my sake and the vulnerable people in the department. It's Sunday afternoon now, but I will hopefully update soon. Update, hello again, everyone. A lot of people asked for updates, apologies for the long delay. Things escalated massively and I chose not to update until now, as there were concerns of this becoming a legal issue. Also, I regret using sociopath in my original post.

For continuity purposes, I am keeping that as the header of my update, but I now believe that Jane suffers from one or more Clusterby personality disorders. I am no doctor, but I personally suspect untreated borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder. The CEO came to the workplace and personally fired Jane in front of the entire department, had her arrested immediately after. Then he gave me a promotion, my own labeled parking spot, and a hefty bonus that I used to take a trip to Greece. The day after my wife and I returned, she discovered that she is pregnant with twins. I announced our pregnancy at the next quarterly

meeting, and the entire room burst into applause. Jane is currently serving 10 to 12 years in prison, where they have her on a chain gang breaking rocks along the railroad tracks. Life is really looking up. Obviously none of that happened. But, things are better regardless. To start, Jane is no longer employed at the company. Besides some residual stress, the department seems to be doing well overall, and everyone has bounced back more or less. As for the details, I'll try to lay them out briefly and give more detail and comments if anyone has questions. I got a few complaints on my last post for being too wordy, so I'll do my best to keep things shorter this time. I'll warn everyone though, it's still going to be pretty long and unfortunately complicated.

One, attempted emitter accusation. Shortly after my first post, Jane fixated on one of the many employees who had reported her to HR, presuming them to be the rat that had started everything. I'll call this employee Sarah. Sarah was one of the women Jane had tried to ingratiate to, and imitated her outfits. After Sarah made her report to HR, she withdrew for her. from Jane and began openly ignore slash avoid her, which apparently hurt Jane's feelings very much, as she was often seen crying and asking people why Sarah hates her in the break room.

Shortly after Sarah withdrew, Jane and one of her relatives in the company began telling employees that Sarah's brother, who often picks her up from work, had attempted to amateur Jane by trying to run her off a bridge while she drove home. They claimed that they were certain that Sarah had put him up to it, as she had been acting shady recently. 2. Theft of personal device this is where things become muddled. I'm not exactly sure what happened myself, as most of the information came to me in scraps and overheard gossip, and my superiors did not tell me anything personally. But allegedly Sarah was very upset by Jane's accusations and texted some very unkind things about Jane to one of her friends. I mentioned earlier that

Jane has a relative that works in the company, and have mentioned this relative in other comments. Well, Jane and this relative are very close and seem to have an unhealthy relationship where they both resent and blindly defend each other. They live together and have worked together in the past, so I suspect there is some deep-rooted codependency between them. Regardless, the blind defense comes in here. Basically, Jane's relative decided to steal Sarah's phone while Sarah was away from her desk and screenshot the messages Sarah had sent one of her friends complaining about Jane. I don't know what exactly the content of the messages was, but from what I understand, it was pretty offensive. Jane's relative then sent the screenshots to HR as evidence of bullying.

In our state, stealing and accessing someone's personal device is a crime. Regardless, HR got involved and had some sort of conversation with Sarah about the unkind nature of her texts, and everything went to hell from there. I'm still upset that HR elected to do that, considering the texts were brought to their attention through an obvious crime. As far as I am aware, Sarah was not written up or officially reprimanded, but the damage was done. 3. Jane escalates and destabilizes people began to openly shun Jane and her relative, which did nothing but further upset Jane, who blamed it all on Sarah's influence. Suddenly rumors that Sarah had physically attacked Jane in the office sprouted via Jane's relative,

though no official reports were ever made. Jane's relative told people that Jane was too afraid to speak up, Jane began to openly cry and have panic attacks on the work floor, claiming she feared for her life. She only acted out in this way if leadership was not around, and conveniently only had her meltdowns around other regular employees. Unfortunately for her, people continued to avoid her, and employees from other departments began to come to my department's leadership

with complaints about Jane's erratic behavior. 5. Physical slash sexual assault reports back in my first post, I mentioned that Jane had slapped the backside of a woman that she was fixated on. Well, in the midst of all this, the woman decided to officially report to HR that she had been sexually assaulted by Jane. And what do you know, within a week of that, another two employees made their own reports of inappropriate physical contact from Jane. Apparently Jane had a pattern of poking slash tickling other people, and coming up to them at their desks to rest her head on their shoulders. The woman who had been slapped spoke to me after her HR meeting and told me that she felt badly for not reporting sooner,

but that she feared for her safety, as Jane had made retaliatory physical threats in the past with no noticeable consequence. The woman was also afraid that Jane would turn the situation around on her, and make it seem that she had initiated sexual contact in the workplace. Considering Jane's history, this was a very valid fear. Jane and her relative resign I don't know exactly what pushed Jane over the edge, but in the middle of a random Monday, she had some sort of crisis. I did not witness it, but I was told that she burst into sobs on the work floor and said things like, I can't do this anymore. And I'm fucking done.

One of the snarkier employees that witnessed the meltdown claimed that Jane cried so hard she was choking and gasping, and had snot face. One of Jane's favorite things to do at work was to make little sketches and tape them around her workspace. Directly after her meltdown, she returned to the office and dramatically tore all of her little pictures and sketches down, ripping some apart in the process, and demanded a meeting with the manager. The two of them left the room, and around ten minutes later the manager returned alone. Six, exposure of sabotage Jane did not return to her desk. Apparently, she had quit.

I found out later that Jane's relative had also quit that day, neither of them giving any notice. As a parting blow, one of the two, not sure which, posted the screenshots of Sarah's text messages on Facebook. Jane also allegedly made a post in which she accused the company of enabling bullies, and bragged in the comments that she had purposely misplaced slash destroyed important materials to sabotage a random employee, who she named. The employee Jane's sabotage had been spoken to several times in the past few months for misplacing materials, and had been scrutinized by management for his assumed negligence. No one knows why Jane would go out of her way to antagonize the employee, as he is a very quiet person that avoids drama. I personally speculate that perhaps Jane felt rejected by him,

as she appeared to flirt with him back when she first started, but pretty quickly realized that he is not attracted to women. But again, just my personal speculation. Anyway, I'm assuming Jane and her relative realized they had massively fucked up or were legally threatened. Because both the post admitting to sabotage and the screenshots from Sarah's phone were deleted from Facebook within a couple hours of posting. Seven, conclusion things are back to normal now. People are noticeably happier and more relaxed, and our productivity has skyrocketed. People, myself included, are still upset that Jane wasn't fired back when she first made physical threats in the workplace, but morale has been great regardless.

I have no idea if the company is planning on suing Jane for purposely destroying slash misplacing materials, but my gut feeling is that they just want the whole situation to be closed, and will let her walk with no consequences. Our company is in the medical field, and the materials Jane destroyed slash misplaced were related to clinical studies for cancer patients, which is absolutely horrendous. The young man Jane accused of sexual harassment back in my first post

is back at work and seems to be doing just fine. I've noticed that other employees have been going out of their way to chat with him and make him feel welcome. Some very kind people ask me to take care of myself, which I appreciate. I am doing much better now, and am trying to get back on track mentally. I've been cutting back on my alcohol intake and leaning into my hobbies and social life. I had a long talk with my wife the week Jane quit and apologized for falling apart and burdening her with my mental weight. There were a few nights during the worst week where I drank myself to oblivion, shame spiraled and slept on the couch because I felt that she didn't deserve to sleep next to a miserable drunk. My wife accepted my apology immediately. She says that she was

very worried for a time, because my distress and regression were extremely noticeable. When I admitted that I had been sleeping on the couch due to shame and thoughts that she deserved better, she teared up and began to scold slash aggressively hug me for my criminal levels of idiocy. I'll be doing everything I can to build better coping mechanisms so that, should something like this come up again, I'll minimize the effect it has on her. So while we didn't go on a vacation to Greece and become pregnant with twins, we're hanging on decently. She's been a little shaken since the whole debacle, and I don't blame her. I'm doing my best to get my act together for her. She deserves the best.

I have no idea what Jane and her relative are doing now. I heard yesterday that they have moved to a different state, which they had talked about in the past. There were concerns that they would attempt to cause more trouble down the line, but considering they have no legal legs to stand on, I doubt it. However, should Sarah or one of the people Jane inappropriately touched express an interest in pursuing legal action, I will remove my posts to avoid harming their proceedings. Anyway, that's the update. Apologies again for the long delay. Thank you again to the many kind people that offered advice

and well wishes, I appreciated a lot. I honestly felt like I was going insane at some points, but reading other people's stories about their dealings with Jane like people really brought things into perspective. If there's a moral to this situation, it's that mental health is not a joke. And if you think you have some issues, especially severe issues like Jane's, please seek treatment. I hope everyone has a great day.