First letter:


HR won’t do anything about a coworker who’s angry about my weight loss
https://www.askamanager.org/2023/02/hr-wont-do-anything-about-a-coworker-whos-angry-about-my-weight-loss.html

& original community discussion https://agonyaunt.dreamwidth.org/594086.html

I just came back to work after a month-long emergency medical leave. The tl:dr is that after a decade of medical gaslighting, a new doctor ordered an emergency MRI during a routine visit and discovered a mass in my abdomen. I was rushed into surgery within 24 hours. I ended up having an 18-pound benign tumor pressing on my vital organs and I was about a week away from multiple organ failure. I’m lucky to be alive and time will tell if I have any lasting organ damage but right now everything is fine.

Mentally I’m struggling with a few things but the only outwardly noticeable impact is that I’ve gone from a size 20 to a size 8. Nobody on my medical team anticipated a change this drastic but I’m healthy and lucky. I was expecting to get a lot of questions from my coworkers because curiosity exists. I had a basic “emergency surgery but I’m fine now” answer that almost everyone accepted but one coworker who I hardly speak to, Aubrey.

On my first day back to work, Aubrey came up to me and said, “I wish you had come to me to lose the weight instead of resorting to such drastic measures. You’re going to gain it all back, you know. I’ll be waiting.”

I was aware of Aubrey’s reputation, but since we never work together I didn’t think it would be an issue. She’s one of those people who think they’re a fitness expert and calls herself a “health coach” (nothing to do with the company we work for). She has a reputation for giving out unsolicited and incorrect “health advice” and is always commenting on people’s food choices. I was speechless when she asked why I “opted to get butchered instead of putting in the hard work to lose the weight.” There’s nothing wrong with someone choosing surgical weight loss options, but that’s not what happened to me and I really resented her aggressive attitude/spreading rumors.

During my second week back, she came by my office at the end of the day in athletic gear offering to go with me if I was “too afraid to go to the gym alone.” At the time I wasn’t even cleared to lift my kid, do laundry, or climb a flight of stairs, let alone go to the gym with this crackpot. I don’t remember what I said to her, but she left saying I’d gain the weight back because I’m lazy.

The next day Aubrey ranted angrily about me in a meeting I wasn’t in (missed it for a follow-up, ironically). I don’t know everything that was said, but the gist was that if I can’t dedicate myself to weight loss, I obviously can’t see my work obligations through. HR called for a red flag mediation. At our company, mediation can go against your bonus opportunities for the year. I have no idea why I’m in mediation when she’s the one being an asshat.

At the mediation, Aubrey stated that she was triggered by my “new body” and I should have “thought of other people’s feelings and warned” her before my surgery. I hardly had time to warn my husband and get my kid out of daycare. I don’t owe Aubrey anything. I have empathy that she’s obviously struggling, but that does not excuse her behavior.

HR said that while they can’t ask me to explain my medical history, it might clear the air if I told her what kind of surgery I had and why. I said I wasn’t obligated to share my medical information with anyone and that Aubrey having bad coping skills doesn’t entitle her to a coworker’s personal health information. Their response was kind of “well, then we can’t stop her from bullying you.”

After Thanksgiving, my doctor helped me put in ADA accommodation paperwork so I could work from home. I was having some mild complications from surgery but also to avoid Aubrey. This company hates remote work so they’re REALLY not happy. Aubrey still emails me workout videos and diet plans and when I forward them to HR their response is, “Noted. Do you know when you’re coming back to the office?”

I’ve been thinking about escalating this to corporate with an employment lawyer. Is that overkill? I’m still in a sensitive place after my surgery and I have no energy for this, especially since Aubrey is fixated on weight loss which was the primary way doctors gaslit me for years. I’ve been with this company for five years and I’m just exhausted and disappointed in how they’re handling this and I want it over yesterday.

What on earth. Aubrey is obviously batshit bananapants and wildly offensive and out of line — but having one bananapants coworker is less surprising than how much your company’s HR team is dropping the ball.

Aubrey is welcome to have her own private feelings about weight loss, but she needs to keep those feelings to herself at work (and preferably everywhere else too). She is not entitled to harass a coworker about their body, their weight loss, how she thinks they achieved it, or what she thinks they should do next. She is definitely not entitled to refer to someone’s surgery as “butchering” themselves (!) or claim their body triggers her (!) or proclaim that their weight has anything to do with their follow-through on work obligations. (And the whole “you’re going to gain it all back, and I’ll be waiting” thing?! As if after this you’d obviously go to her if you did gain weight? What?)

But, as I said, she’s clearly bananapants. HR’s response in some ways is weirder, because you’d assume they don’t have whatever problems Aubrey is dealing with.

HR should be fully aware that they can’t legally allow an employee to harass another employee about a medical condition — a real one or one that exists in Aubrey’s mind. (The ADA specifically calls this out; you can’t discriminate against or harass an employee because of their protected health condition, or because of a condition they are perceived as having.)

Telling you that they can’t help you unless you share your private medical information with Aubrey … no. They might not be wrong that it would shut her up, but (a) Aubrey isn’t entitled to that, nor should they support the idea that she needs a “good enough” reason to stop, and (b) they’re obligated to shut her down regardless. And making you do mediation with her? No.

And now they’re being weird about your ADA accommodation — and in that context, are blowing you off when you report Aubrey’s latest harassment? That’s a huge problem. The entirety of the picture — the mediation, the vibe you’re getting about your remote work accommodation, and how they’re raising it when you attempt to discuss Aubrey — is concerning enough that talking with a lawyer about your options is a reasonable next step. Not necessarily because you’re going to sue (hopefully it doesn’t get to that point) but because lawyers can be enormously helpful in negotiating with your company on your behalf or advising you from behind the scenes on how to protect yourself.

Update:
https://www.askamanager.org/2023/04/update-hr-wont-do-anything-about-a-coworker-whos-angry-about-my-weight-loss.html

All I have to say for this update is hold on to your bananapants.

I saw a lot of comments asking where management was in all this, so I’ll address that first. My boss, “George,” was getting ready to retire while this was going on. George is roughly my grandfather’s age, so this entire situation bewildered both him and his replacement, who he was training at the time. Both of them met with Aubrey’s boss, because believe me I was documenting everything she did from the jump, and they all assured me that Aubrey would be dealt with. None of them recommended the red flag mediation, that was HR’s idea. I was given details of the meeting where Aubrey ranted about me and it was horrible, but apparently Aubrey was asked to leave by her own boss while several other employees told her to stop, so managerially and in the office in general, people were trying to rein her in from many different angles.

HR is where the ball dropped and dropped hard. This company just has a poor HR structure and bad entry to mid-level HR. When Aubrey’s boss referred her to HR regarding her negative behavior, HR took it upon themselves to consider it a mediation situation (which, remember, at our company can go against your bonus for the year) despite communication from George, his replacement, and Aubrey’s boss saying I wasn’t in the wrong. When George found out about this, he spoke to the HR generalists’ manager, who said that my “absence probably caused a lot of strain and extra work for Aubrey” when Aubrey’s not even credentialed to do what I do. Management made a point to tell me how baffled and upset they were with HR’s handling of the situation every time something came up. My company mentor was also a huge support during this time until she decided to take another job elsewhere.

When my doctor extended my ADA work-from-home accommodation a second time, HR responded by telling me my attendance was a “concern.” I emailed their boss’s boss, the HR director, and asked for clarification. He said I hadn’t come in to the office so of course my attendance was a problem, I reiterated I had medical documentation stating that if WFH wasn’t available then they could refer to the FMLA documentation my medical team also sent. He replied that medical documentation, including both FMLA and ADA reasonable accommodations, “doesn’t hold much weight” with the company.

That’s when I got a lawyer. Aubrey as a problem kind of drifted to the background when HR started their “medical documentation doesn’t matter” campaign. On my lawyer’s recommendation, I contacted the HR executive team, which is where this whole cursed situation came to light. (And I did check with my lawyer about emailing this update and they laughed and said I couldn’t leave people hanging after all that.)

I called the chief HR officer (which for my company is going over like five people’s heads, but I did it with George’s and my new boss’s blessings), who is the head of HR, and asked why my attendance was an issue when I had reasonable ADA documentation. She had no idea what I was talking about so I filled her in on all of it — including the mediation meeting and Aubrey’s harassment and the HR director (her direct report) saying medical documentation didn’t hold any weight with the company. She was speechless and asked to meet with me and my lawyer as soon as possible. My lawyer hardly had to do anything during the meeting because the CHRO was horrified at everything I told her. I’ve never actually seen steam come out of someone’s ears, but if it was physically possible it would have happened here. My lawyer didn’t need to say a word but just nodded and smiled when the CHRO offered an extended paid medical leave so I could handle my recovery and said Aubrey constantly sending me fitness plans would be “dealt with swiftly.”

I didn’t hear anything out of Aubrey for a long time but I did hear through some gossip channels that the HR staff involved in the red flag meeting/threatening to write me up were let go. Aubrey wasn’t fired because they believed she was misled by HR, so I understand that part even if I don’t agree with it, but she was on a tight PIP for a while. Then she showed up at my house.

Now we move from bananapants to full-on banana ensemble. I’m still on leave and out of the blue, Aubrey showed up at my door on a weekend with two other women in tow and the commenters guessed it: she’s in very deep with an MLM (or maybe a cult, I can’t be sure at this point). Aubrey came over to “demonstrate” some workout techniques and give me some diet “supplement” samples and discuss a “career opportunity” because she was worried about my “physical and professional health.” She didn’t make it past my mother-in-law, who has been a godsend right now. My mother-in-law made it clear where Aubrey could stick her demonstration and they left in a hurry. I notified my lawyer and the CHRO and suffice it to say, Aubrey is now a full-time “wellness coach.”

I’m happy I went with my gut and got a lawyer because the company has changed so drastically over the last year with the toxic HR department encouraging behavior like Aubrey’s and spreading false information about medical leave and time off, the company is almost unrecognizeable. Also with my boss and mentor both gone, I don’t know if I’m going to go back once I’m medically cleared. The company is also undergoing a restructuring right now and my department may end up distributed between other parts of the company or even other parts of the state. I have been looking at jobs and doing some resume drafting for a full-time remote position since it feels like it might be a better fit. But many thanks to the comment section and all the support!