This story is really weird to me.

I understand that we all spend a lot of time at work, but when people start calling themselves someone’s “work wife” or “work husband”, I can see how that would make some folks uncomfortable.

And a man took to Reddit’s “Am I The A**hole?” page to ask if he was wrong for the way he treated such a co-worker. Let’s see what happened.

AITA for kicking my coworker out of my wife’s baby shower?

“I (29m) work in a pretty tight workspace. We have about 9 of us in my department and it’s a pretty even split between men and women.

There’s one coworker “Eva”(20f) who started working here a few months back. She’s really good at her job and seems to get along with everyone. We get along well as we work on projects together and are usually in the group of people that are the last to leave most days. I learned some weeks ago that she was calling herself my “work wife”. I knew what the term meant, the sentiment wasn’t shared and I’ve expressed as much.

I don’t think I’ve been rude about it, I just let her know that I’d prefer for her to keep things a bit more professional. There’s no real harm in the term, but for someone who doesn’t understand the joke, it just looks and sounds wrong. I’m also a happily married man, and my coworkers including Eva know this.

I thought I had done a pretty good job nipping things in the bud after our conversation [I no longer heard the jokes from her] so I didn’t think it would be an issue to invite her to my wife’s baby shower. My coworkers are all vaccinated (our job helped us get them) and my wife WFH so there wasn’t much concern for the sickness that shall not be named.

Eva comes in and immediately starts back up with the jokes. “You’re OP’s home wife? Nice to meet you!”, “it’s so nice to see who takes care of my hubby when I send him home!” My wife is a very sweet and patient woman so she just laughed it off, albeit uncomfortably and moved on. However the jokes got worse and wouldn’t let up.

At one point Eva was telling people she would be our baby’s second mom. My wife’s friends and family were annoyed and my wife looked very uncomfortable. I had pretty much had it by then, and took her aside and told her that the jokes weren’t funny and that she could either apologize to my wife right now for being so inconsiderate and gross, or she could just leave. She chose to leave.

Word got around to our coworkers what happened and while they agree that she was acting inappropriately, that I should have let her down a little easier, as it was “obvious she likes you OP”.

Am I really the a**hole for kicking her out?

And here’s what folks on Reddit had to say about the man’s story.

This reader said that the man is not to blame and he needs to make sure human resources at his company knows all about this…just in case…

Another Reddit user said that anyone who “likes” a married co-worker and makes it known is pretty gross.

This person said that the other co-workers are also to blame for their behavior.

No, he shouldn’t be nice to her because of this!

And this Reddit user agreed that the other co-workers seem to be part of the problem.

Finally, this individual made a very good point: if a man acted like this toward a married woman at work, they would definitely be labelled as a creep.

Do you think this guy was out of line?

Or did he do the right thing?

Let us know in the comments! Thanks!