rSlash - r/Bestof My Coworker Stole My EXTRA EXTRA SPICY Lunch

Episode Date: August 13, 2022

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Welcome to our slash Best of Redditor updates, where OP nearly bleeds to death while her husband ignores her phone calls. Our next reddit posted from Throwway's son's father and was posted to our slash relationship advice. My husband and I got into a fight prior to my daughter's birth a week ago when he casually suggested a paternity test for our daughter when she was born. To be clear, this was completely out of the blue with no wanting a reason. I'm a homebody who works remotely with no male friends other than my brother. I told him that he was accusing me of infidelity, and he said that he just wanted to be sure. He kept bringing it up until I told him that I didn't want to talk to him, and I left

for my brother's house. I called him while I was gone and tried to work it out, but he refused. After all this, I went home the next day to grab some things while he was at work, and I went into labor. I called him 16 times. Then I called my brother, who called my husband another six times while he himself drove to pick me up to take me to the hospital. It was a horrible and traumatic birth. I started crowning in the car and the doctor delivered my daughter in the back of my brother's van because it was too far along for me to move.

Then they had to rush me into the hospital because I kept bleeding. It was horrible. I hated all of it. My brother's wife, who's a nurse, even told me that she honestly thought that I wouldn't make it. I also opted for a hysterectomy because it came to that or something more dangerous. I only ever wanted one kid or no kid, but my husband wants a large family. I'm trying to bond with my newborn daughter, but it's been hard. The point is that during this, while I was recovering from surgery,

10 hours after I called, my husband finally responded, and asked why I hadn't answered his call. However, my brother had my phone, and he was so angry that he said, this is Opie's brother. I met the hospital, and she didn't make it. Then he turned my phone off. My husband rushed over and got there when I had just woken up and started shouting until the security forced him out. Then he didn't get to see our daughter until the next day because I was mostly asleep and apparently they needed my signature to allow him back. My sister and law thinks that this was horribly, but still that he deserved it. My brother stands by his prank and says that he only gave my husband 10 minutes of the

same fear that he had felt at my side for 10 hours. Whenever my brother sees my husband, he reminds him that I nearly died because we waited for him. My brother used to be mostly indifferent to my husband, but now he absolutely hates him. You can just see it in his face whenever my husband enters the room. My brother's been visiting a lot because he doesn't trust my husband to care for me while I'm still healing. My husband is furious that he won't apologize and that I won't make him, and he yelled

at me when I said that the only reason my brother had my phone was because he wasn't there. I'm trying to be empathetic. I know that he feels guilty. My mother-in-law has been texting me to say that my family is horribly cruel for the prank and that I should go no contact with my brother, and now my husband is saying the same. I just don't know what to do. I'm not in a good headspace. It's been hard to be in the same room with my husband

and I've been sleeping in the guest room with my daughter. My husband brought up the paternity once more and I just exhaustively told him to either get out of my face or go stay with his mom if he's gonna keep planning to stress me out even more. And then OP post in an update. So I don't think that this is something that we can come back from. I just don't think that I'll be able to heal with my husband because there's no way that he didn't know that it was me calling. And he still hasn't told me why he didn't answer. I took the time to think of that moment before everything went down and just how grossly betrayed and scared and alone I felt while the contractions were hitting. And I was on my knees trying to breathe through the pain while waiting for the phone to ring. And I just don't think that there's any coming back from that.

I wouldn't want my daughter to think that it's okay to stay with a man who destroyed her trust that way either. I'll be contacting an attorney and I'll be meeting with them in the coming weeks. We had a prenup so hopefully it won't be too hellish. I feel like the situation became even clearer when my friend asked me if I would still trust him as the one to sign off on my medical papers, and the reaction that I had to that idea was visceral. I wouldn't, and I want him to get off that legality as soon as possible, in fact. There are roommates I had in college

that I would trust more. I feel good that my brother and sister-in-law are here with me, especially so with her being a nurse and having been there through the birth. It's really helped us bond in a way that we'd never really had the time to before. None of this even touches the paternity test, but I'll deal with that in the divorce, I guess. So I guess that'll get what he wanted. Anyway, I'm safe and well. My daughter is healthy and happy as a peach. Just making this decision has been an odd weight off my shoulders.

And my sister-in-law has really been helping us bond. Okay, so let me just say right off the bat that in general, I'm in favor of every single parent, man and woman getting a paternity test after giving birth. Because even if you don't suspect your wife of cheating, there's still a possibility that your baby can get swapped in the hospital. There are stories like this and paternity tests are like super cheap nowadays, so like just spend the fifty bucks, do the paternity test, and then for the rest of your life you don't

have to worry about, hey did my baby get swapped out at the hospital? Now like that being said this whole story is super super fishy. Like the fact that he would suggest a paternity test out of the blue, to me I almost have to wonder if that's projection, right? Like he's cheating so he thinks that you're cheating so he accuses you of maybe sleeping around him not answering 16 calls when he knows that his wife is about to pop and give birth at any moment. 16 phone calls plus six from his brother-in-law. This is really, really fishy. And I have to wonder if the reason why he wasn't at the birth of his daughter is because he was off making other babies with some other woman.

I don't have any real solid evidence to back this up, but I just can't help but wonder about this story. What do you guys think? Is this a reasonable suspicion that I'm having, or is he just, you know, a run-of-the-mill douchebag father? I'll sum this one up with W. Brother, L. Husband. Our next post is from a non-reddit website called AskAmanager.org.

I work for a small-ish company of about 80 people. I have epilepsy and I have a seizure alert doc. She can detect when I'm about to have a seizure, which helps me get somewhere safe. For example, she's alerted me when I'm on the stairs so that I know to sit down immediately, or if I'm walking along a busy road I can move off to the side. She's very good at what she does. Usually, I get a two or three minute warning and I can ask for help or preemptively call someone like my husband.

She'll also find a person and direct them to my medical alert bracelet if I'm unable to tell someone what's happening ahead of time. Here's the problem, so to speak. She's a smaller dog, only a 20-pound mut. Since she doesn't provide mobility assistance of any kind, she also doesn't wear a full harness like a seeing eye dog would. She walks on a standard collar and leash, though she does have a fabric vest that says service dog in large letters, so if someone does see her when she's looking for assistance,

it's pretty obvious they should follow her. Recently, we hired a new VP of HR. This person says that they don't believe that my dog is a real medical dog and not just an emotional support animal or a pet that I wanna bring to work. They say that my dog is too small and she doesn't wear any real medical equipment. I paid literal tens of thousands of dollars

for this dog and her training. She has saved my life with her alerts on more than one occasion. She's also given me back freedom that I didn't have before because I was unable to go anywhere alone. This new HR person has no complaints about my dog's behavior. She calmly walks beside me or she rests under my desk during the day. She doesn't bark and the only time that I take her out for a bathroom break is when I'm on lunch. Nobody in the office has said anything that I know of. This person simply says that they've never heard of a dog that does this type of work,

and they've never seen a small service dog, so therefore I must be lying. I've provided paperwork from the training organization in my medical team, and they say that you can just print papers like that off the internet. I went to the CEO who's the VP of HR's boss because if I don't have my dog, I can't go to work. And the CEO said that this was out of their area of expertise, but couldn't I just get a bigger dog? Because that way it would be obvious that it was a working dog.

I'm not really sure what to do from here. Other than this one particular incident, I love my job and I'd like to keep working here. And then OP posted an update. Oh man. This first line isn't funny at all but it got me because I was literally just thinking, girl, you need to find yourself an employment lawyer because he will eat this up. Anyways, my meeting with the employment lawyer went well.

Like everyone agreed, this was a fairly cut and dry thing where my dog absolutely should be allowed. We started by going the friendly route. My lawyer provided the language for me to attempt to address this myself in a more official way. That predictably went nowhere. The VP of HR doubled down in her stance that I had to have a real service dog, or I had to come to the office without my dog. Anyway, I let my direct supervisor know

that HR was continuing to push back on this, and my boss attempted to plead my case, thinking that if it came from a director level employee, then maybe it would hold more weight. HR shut that down as well, since sales directors don't understand the Americans with Disabilities Act like HR does. My boss then told me that if I didn't already have plans to take a more aggressive approach with my lawyer, then she would be doing it on my behalf because this was getting ridiculous. My lawyer sent a letter to my boss HR and the CEO asking for a response in 48 hours before they push further. Nobody responded. My boss deliberately didn't respond. HR and the CEO either ignored it or didn't notice it. The world will never know. We then push the letter to the company's board and things

happen to very quickly from there, although I'm unfortunately out of the loop on the details. What I do know is that the CEO claimed that he misunderstood what I was saying when I asked him, and of course he supported me and my dog coming into the office. But it wasn't a misunderstanding, it was definitely incompetence. But that's fine, I'm not going to fight that battle. HR quietly underwent a restructuring. Our VP of HR left for other opportunities last week with no other comment. We're pretty sure that she was pushed out. Although we're a smaller company, we do hold a sizable government contract, and an ADA

lawsuit would go against the main service that we provide. Our board was very interested in making sure that we didn't do anything to jeopardize that contract. I do wish the board and CEO had taken a firm restant and admitted to the error while publicly committing to make sure that any and all employees felt welcome, but they did reach out to me and apologize personally, so I'll let that go too. All in all, our terrible HR boss is gone. My boss was as supportive as she could be, and she went to bat for me several times, and

once the office is fully open, my dog and I will be able to go to the office as needed. Josie, the dog in question, received lots of pets and loving at the request of the commentators and continues to be a very good girl. I want to thank everyone for your advice. Not only was your advice spot on, but the support meant a lot for me and gave me the push I needed to stand up for myself. So like, I'm not a lawyer, but based on my understanding and sort of the stories that I've heard, the ADA seems like one of the most serious, do not cross this line, types of laws that the US government has ever put out. Like when a company violates the ADA,

they're in big trouble. And like, well, I want to know is, how does someone make it all the way up, not just into an HR position, but to the VP of HR, the highest ranking HR person, but not understand the ADA.

Like you'd think that understanding the ADA and equal employment would be the two most important things that an HR person could possibly understand. But hey, what do I know? I'm just some guy reading Reddit stories on the internet. Our next post also comes from askamantager.org. We have a fridge at work. Up to this point, nothing ahead in it was stolen. My food is always really, really spicy. I just love it that way. Anyway, I was sitting at my desk when my co-worker came running out having a hard time breathing. He then ran into the bathroom and

started being sick. Turns out that he ate my clearly labeled lunch. There was nothing different about my lunch that day. In fact, it was just my leftovers from my dinner the night before. Fast forward a day, and my boss comes in asking if I tried to poison this person. Of course I denied that I had done so. I even took out my current day's lunch, and I let my boss taste a bit. He was blown away by how spicy it was even though he only took a small bite. I then proceeded to eat several spoonfuls to prove that I could eat it no problem. He said not to worry and that it was clear to him that I didn't mean any harm. My co-workers shouldn't have been eating my food, etc.

I thought the issue was over. A week later, I got called up to HR for an investigation, claiming that I did, in fact, try to do harm to this person and this investigation is still ongoing. What confuses me is that there was nothing said about this guy trying to steal my lunch. When I brought it up, they said something along the lines of, we can't prove that he's still anything. I'm confused by this. I thought the proof would be clear. My boss is on my side, but HR seems to be trying to string me up. Their behavior is quite aggressive. Even if my boss backs me up, they just ignore everything that he says. For example,

if he says, that's clearly not the case, then the HR lady wouldn't even look at him and just continue talking. On top of this, HR claims that my coworker would be well within his rights to sue me. The way she said this seemed to indicate that they suggested this to him as a course of action. How can someone be caught stealing my lunch and then turn around and say that I was in the wrong? I don't understand this at all. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose my job over this. Is there any advice that you can give me? Then OP posted an update.

I ended up being fired by HR because she said that there was enough of a case to get rid of me before the top boss came back. I consulted a lawyer who sent a letter to the company informing them that I was considering legal action. The letter contained the reasons for doing so and an account of what happened. One week later, I got a call from the guy who owns the company asking me to come back with an apology. Both the HR woman and the thief have been let go. He also gave me a very generous raise.

I assumed a smooth thing's over. I accepted and I'm now back at work. As much as I hate to go off of office gossip, it seemed that the HR woman and the food thief may have been romantically involved. They were seen a lot outside of work together, so I assumed that it was her protecting him. She may have even believed him and thought that I was trying to frame him or something. Who knows. I doubt that I'll get the answer now. Right now, I'm working in my previous position with almost double my paychecks, so this is a great turnaround.

My boss also opened more doors for me, offering different training courses that I'll be paid for. It's obviously to keep me happy and to stop me from taking any legal action. But what more could I ask for? Something unreasonable happened and it's been more than corrected. I've been happy with just having my job back. I wonder if the reason why the HR lady was so upset was because the guy ate your spicy food, then the two of them went off for some spicy alone time, we'll say. And then, how should I put this delicately?

Then the HR lady was in a, Liar Liar, pants on fire type situation if you catch my drift. That was our slash best of Redditor updates, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. every single day.