A man who became exhausted with the amount his colleague talked about her pregnancy decided to politely let her know he wasn't really interested, advising her to go chat to someone else.
Although he didn't mind speaking about it within reason, being fully aware of what a huge and exciting deal this is for her, he feels she has taken this way too far and says he now knows "the ins and outs of her pregnancy better than her gyno at this point."
According to this exasperated man, his co-worker has talked with him for a minimum of 20 minutes every single day about her pregnancy for the last two months, going into detail he just simply doesn't care about.
Unfortunately, after he gently directed her elsewhere, she unfairly stereotyped him, stating that as he was ‘the gay guy' of the office, she'd naturally assumed he and their female co-workers have more interest in the topic than the straight men they worked with. At this point, he finally snapped.
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Taking to Reddit, the fed-up employee admitted this assumption "p***** [him] off a lot", and so he didn't hold back on letting her know how he truly felt. On reflection, he fears he may have been a bit too harsh.
The man - who goes by the username u/u354i23 - wrote: "I told her that I didn’t care about the inner workings of her uterus and that she should keep it to herself. I’m not her obstetrician-gynecologist and it’s obnoxious.
"I also told her that we aren’t friends and that coworkers, gay or straight, don’t wanna get regular updates on how the pregnancy sex she’s having with her husband is so much better, or how she craves drinking peanut oil, or how her boobs have gotten bigger."
He continued: "She was pretty upset after I chewed her out and has been avoiding me ever since, she’s barely willing to talk to me even if it’s work relevant.
"I overheard her complaining about how vicious I was to her and that I made her feel ashamed for being pregnant/having a pregnant body. That wasn’t my intention, but I do now worry that I crossed a line."
Fellow Reddit users have advised the man his colleague had been the one to cross a line twice over, firstly, by not respecting his boundaries and, secondly, by stereotyping him as a gay man.
One person wrote: "As an HR Manager. You need to go to HR first. Her sex life is a very inappropriate work conversation. I am sure you are not the only one tired of her long conversations.
"Personally, if she has that much time to talk, she isn't working efficiently. I would bet a lot of money that other people are tired of her as well. She sounds exhausting."
Another said: "She clearly has some odd sexism/latent homophobia going on here by assuming that all women would wanna hear her diatribe and then also looping you in with those women. Very odd.
"She wants a 'gay best friend' or something and apparently it's you simply because of proximity."
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