Woman urged to go to police after sharing jaw dropping work story

A woman has shared the most jaw-dropping work story we’ve ever heard online, with people urging her to go to the police after a coworker sabotaged her career over the course of 10 years.

It was originally uploaded anonymously to Reddit thread LegalAdviceUK with the caption: "Someone in IT trolled me for over a decade. Have I any recourse?"

The post was also shared on Twitter/X by user @bookiesnacksize and it has racked up close to 13 million views.

It read: “I work in a medium sized firm. Between 2014 and January 2024 I found myself constantly making mistakes while working.”

After listing examples such as incorrect calculations on Microsoft Excel and “data inputs on spreadsheets being wrong”, she also revealed that she had inadvertently put “typos in her work, including mixing up "counts" with "c****".

Or so she thought.

She continued: “I felt like I was going crazy, so I would do things like screenshot what I had calculated, but I found my screenshots had disappeared when I logged in the next day - so I was wondering if I ever took them in the first place.”

The unnamed woman went on to explain that a member of IT, who she gave the pseudonym Bob, left after facing a disciplinary in February this year.

The woman revealed: “The new IT guy over the next two weeks approached me and showed me a series of records. Bob had been accessing my system, editing my work, and changing the information I had put in to my annual leave sheet - among other things.”

Listing off the ways the man had “been sabotaging my work life for a decade”, the woman said that she was “not allowed to work from home like my colleagues due to my apparent ‘unreliability’”.

She also said that it resulted in “£250 in transport costs every month between 2021 and February 2024” and she was also “overlooked for promotion” and had her “professional life and credibility massively damaged” – as well as having to “undergo assessments for ADHD and early-onset Alzheimers and other cognitive tests with the NHS”.

After explaining that the man she’d called Bob in the post had left the UK, the woman said she had “spoken with HR and they issued an apology, allowed me to work from home again”.

The post then asked if there was anything else she could do, or if there was anything the police could do – and it sparked a huge reaction online.

One person in the comments responded by writing: “Please don’t diminish this as ‘trolling’. The man did actual psychiatric and financial damage to you. Find an employment lawyer and tell them everything. Your ability to contact the culprit is immaterial. Your claim should be against the company.”

Another wrote: “Given the abuse, is there also not a criminal case to answer?”

One said on Twitter/X: “I have seen workplace wickedness but this is a discovery.”

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