Pregnancy itself is definitely no easy undertaking, I completely understand the many struggles that expecting women endure during the nine months. However, the crucial question remains whether this difficult phase should automatically become the financial and professional responsibility of every other person to accommodate. When my coworker first announced her official pregnancy at the office, the general atmosphere was genuinely celebratory and overwhelmingly happy for her personal situation. Everyone clapped and cheered enthusiastically for the future mother, and I, too, felt a sincere wave of joy for her upcoming good news. Unfortunately, that brief but authentic excitement did not manage to last very long once the coworker began to act as if she had suddenly gained an extra, entirely unpaid, personal employee.
The demands on my time and energy started innocently enough, initially phrased as small, manageable requests for assistance with basic office tasks. She would often approach me in the shared workspace saying things like, “I am struggling quite terribly with the morning sickness today, so please help me out with this,” or condescendingly suggest, “you would understand this if you were indeed a woman yourself and had experienced it.” Gradually, she began pushing more and more of her core responsibilities and actual work onto my already full plate, completely blurring our professional boundaries. At the very beginning of this process, I agreed to help her, simply because I did not wish to appear rude or unsupportive of her delicate situation as a pregnant colleague.
But then, the entitled coworker ceased holding back on asking for significant and major favors, and she clearly crossed a crucial professional line. The pattern of avoidance became instantly impossible for me to ignore, consistently disrupting my own necessary workflow and critical deadlines. She developed a habit of arriving noticeably late to the office or just deciding to leave work drastically early, and sometimes she would simply message me that she was heading off to the doctor’s without any prior notice or discussion. In every instance of her prolonged absence, she completely expected me to take care of her pressing tasks and professional duties “for the time being,” without asking.
The inevitable breaking point was finally reached one hectic morning when I received yet another curt text message from her, requesting that I immediately handle her critical weekly reports again. I had officially snapped, feeling utterly used and taken advantage of by her consistent and irritating presumption that I was her assistant. In a moment of sheer frustration, I replied to her with a statement that was meant to be a kind of half-joke yet contained a painful kernel of professional truth: “I will certainly do the work, but only if you agree to pay me a proportionate part of your own salary.” She did not, however, perceive the comment as a joke or a necessary boundary being set. She went completely quiet, and the very next day, I froze in shock when a formal email arrived from the Human Resources department, requesting an immediate and mandatory meeting.
It was quickly revealed during the formal meeting that the coworker had lodged an official complaint, falsely claiming that I was completely refusing to be a simple “team player” and alleging that I was actively “discriminating against her because she is pregnant and being mean instead of showing understanding.” During the difficult meeting with the HR representatives, I calmly and logically explained the entire situation, providing the complete history of her escalating demands. Thankfully, I had preserved all the necessary text messages as solid evidence to back up my legitimate claims. HR reviewed the entire communication thread and ultimately concluded that I was not professionally incorrect for setting a fair and necessary professional boundary.
The Human Resources department then formally summoned the pregnant lady to a meeting, and I soon learned that she had now been officially “asked” to manage all her required work independently and on time without any further professional excuses or to choose to go on immediate unpaid leave. She has since stopped talking to me completely, maintaining a noticeable and frosty silence in the office. The situation has unfortunately created a very awkward atmosphere, as my other coworkers are now widely treating me like the supposed office villain. They often whisper condescending things like, “it costs absolutely nothing to be a little kind to a pregnant woman.” I honestly do not understand this strange and unfair perspective. How is the responsibility to take care of her or endlessly help her out solely mine? I am not a charitable organization or her boyfriend, and I seriously question whether I was truly wrong in thinking this way.
