AITB for asking a coworker why they’re working so much?
I don’t want to give too many details but I work in a field with super long shift hours. I was getting off work and overheard my coworkers talking about how they were coming in again to work pretty soon.
I think this might be where I came off rude but it wasn’t my intention at all—it was genuinely me being an idiot more than anything and I was genuinely curious. So I asked my coworker, “why do you guys work back to back shifts like that?” And one of my coworkers turned to me and said, “because I have two kids.”
At this point, I felt like an idiot because I knew that but didn’t even think about it in the moment when I was trying to converse with them. So I told them, trying to make it come off polite and rectify the fact that I forgot about their home life, “ah, well I don’t have kids so that makes some sense.”
My coworker sort of came back at me in a snarky way saying, “well you should get to working on it then.”
I was a bit taken back by it but just responded by telling them I couldn’t get because my spouse is gone (currently away in the military). The “conversation” fell off after that, so I said bye to both my coworkers and the one who seemed a bit upset with me didn’t say anything back. I feel like a complete moron, granted, my autism has always gotten in the way of me being able to have smooth conversations with people but holy shit, I feel like such an idiot for what happened and I’m worried I just fucked up big time. AITB?
Posted May 7, 2025, 2:29 PM UTC