my coworker is telling people I spat in her coffee (I didn’t)

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I’m early in my career and in my late twenties. I’ve been with the same company for around four years now and have been working hybrid since early 2022.

Tempest works in the same small office that I do. There are maybe 10 of us who come in regularly, but she works on a different team. We initially hit it off really well due to some shared interests, but she slowly began icing me out some time last year — turning the other way when I’d walk in the room, no longer replying when I said “good morning,” etc.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should politely pull her aside to talk about it, and ultimately decided against it. Our departments do not typically coordinate, and we’ve never had any professional reason to talk to one another. I figured that she had made it clear she didn’t want to interact with me and, since she was being civil, I would just let it go.

However, over the course of the past few weeks, I have noticed Tempest will be talking to someone else and they’ll turn away when I walk by to refill my water or run to the restroom. Those she’s spoken to have also begun to ice me out. I again thought of something saying to her.

Earlier this week, someone decided to ask me what happened, and if it had anything to do with coffee.

One day in November of 2022, I needed to make a coffee run so I asked the few other people in the office if they wanted anything. Tempest gave me her order, I returned with her drink, and proceeded to think nothing of it. Tempest is just now telling people that I allegedly spit in this drink.

I’m so confused. I’m neurodivergent and can come across as cold and kind of bitchy sometimes. I had convinced myself that I had just done something socially awkward, not that she thinks I did something that would never even cross my mind!

I do realize that maybe this would be resolved by now if I had just talked to her in the first place. I have not talked to my manager yet, since I want to try and at least handle this myself before I get anyone else involved.

I have a script that I had planned for when we were both in the office next week. The goal is to be professional and non-accusatory: “Hey Tempest, I’ve recently heard about a rumor that I spit in your drink. I’m confused about how and where this started and it’s important for me to put this to rest since that’s not something I would do. Would you have some time today to talk about it?”

But now that things have escalated, I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am harmfully non-confrontational and am seriously thinking about just working from home since my company culture is generally awesome, nobody on my team is local to the area, and none of them are icing me out. But I love working in the office, and some of the people there obviously still care about me.

Could you give me a sanity check here? Should I talk to her or should I just let this go?

What on earth. In 2022, she believed for some reason that you’d spit in her coffee (??!), decided to ice you out over it in 2023, and now, close to two years after the alleged spitting, has decided it’s time to tell people about it to turn them against you?!

This is very, very weird.

And deciding out of nowhere that someone spit in one’s coffee is … awfully strange. I assume you’re not the sort of person who spits in colleagues’ coffee, particularly someone you’d been on good terms with. (Or anyone! Even someone you were on bad terms with! You’d have to be a very specific kind of person to go around spitting in people’s coffee, even your mortal enemies, and it’s bizarre that she jumped to that and didn’t ever bother to say anything to you about it like, I don’t know, “Hey, why did you spit in my coffee?”)

I’m somewhat split on whether you should address it with her though. I’m probably 70% “talk to her” and 30% “don’t bother, she’s unhinged and it will just cause more drama.”

But “talk to her” is winning out because she’s affecting your reputation with other people, and maybe — maybe — it can be cleared up.

If you do try to talk to her about, I wouldn’t say, “I heard you think I spit in your coffee and I’d like to meet later to discuss it.” That’s going to make for a really odd meeting request. Just ask if she has time to talk. When she does, say that you’ve been told she’s telling people this, you’re horrified that she’d ever think it, that spitting in people’s drinks is not something you’d ever do, and you’re appalled and want to clear up whatever made her think that.

It’s okay to sound shocked — you should sound shocked, because this is shocking and it’s useful to let her see that you are as stunned at being accused of this as you presumably are.

But if that doesn’t immediately clear it up, at that point I don’t know that you should put any more energy into it, unless you see it becoming a bigger problem in your office (in which case, yeah, talk to your manager at that point, but I hope you don’t have to).