Teacher of 32 Years Says Coworker ‘Smashed’ Her Property, Then Tried to Replace It with a $5 Knockoff

A longtime high school teacher turned to Reddit after a growing conflict with a colleague who she says has been disrespecting her classroom — and her belongings.

The veteran educator explained in her post that she has “taught at the same high school for 32 years” and has always gotten along with her coworkers — until now.

Two years ago, she joined the special education department and was told she’d have to share a classroom, even though, as she noted, “there are enough for everyone.” Her principal requires special education teachers to double up, so she ended up sharing a science lecture room with another instructor.

Wanting to make the space welcoming and flexible for her students, she designed it carefully: “For student engagement, I set it up flexibly: two comfy chairs and small desks instead of a second teacher desk, a round four-person table, and small desks that can be pushed in groups or singles,” she wrote.

She also added plants to the shelves, giving students the chance to care for them as part of their social-emotional learning. But once her new classroom partner moved in, things quickly went downhill.

“On day one, my new roommate rolled in five giant two-door lockers, several four-drawer file cabinets, and piles of random junk,” she recalled. None of it, she said, was related to his classes, which already had their own lab spaces.

The clutter soon consumed the room. She tried to compromise, asking him to “limit it to three lockers and fewer file cabinets” while offering her own desk and shelf space. Though he initially agreed, things only got worse. “He even moved out the teacher desk so he could make space for piles of boxes, three broken refrigerators, and more useless technology,” she wrote.

As time went on, she started noticing that her personal belongings were missing or damaged. “A 20-year-old jade tree was removed from the shelf, smashed, shoved in a bucket, and put back,” she shared.

Cushions and pillows were ruined, and supplies she’d bought — including colored pencils and science weights — disappeared from her cabinet, only to reappear later among his things.

The breaking point came when a simple candy dish she had owned for years was destroyed. “A candy dish I bought at Target years ago at Halloween I used to hold the doorstop — smashed and left on the table,” she explained. When she asked her coworker to replace it, he laughed.

Determined to resolve the issue, she sent him links to the exact replacement dish, which cost around $25. Two weeks later, instead of reimbursing her or ordering the same item, he handed her something completely different — “a $5 plaster skull that looked nothing like the original.”

The gesture stung. “I feel disrespected — he could’ve just given me the money or ordered the actual thing,” she told readers. For her, it wasn’t about the cost, but the lack of consideration.

She also described moments when his behavior turned aggressive. “When I told him the room was literally not large enough to accommodate everything, he threw a roll of contact paper at me,” she recalled of their first week together.

When she brought the issue to her department chair, she said she was brushed off. The response she received was: “He’s a hoarder, you need to understand that is a mental health issue.”

Meanwhile, she said, his outbursts have continued. “He’s yelled at me, thrown things, and blames students (who insist they didn’t break anything),” she wrote. Feeling powerless, she admitted, “I feel like I’m being walked over while he fills the room with clutter and damages my belongings.”

The teacher asked Reddit if she would be wrong to return the fake skull and insist on a real replacement or reimbursement, titling her post: “AITA for giving back the knockoff my coworker bought after smashing my candy dish?”

Commenters quickly rallied behind her. “Nah, you’re 100% not the a——,” one person wrote. “He’s disrespecting your space and stuff and then half-assing the replacement? That’s petty. Also, the department chair brushing it off as a ‘mental health issue’ without addressing the real problem isn’t helping at all.”

Many encouraged her to trust her instincts. In a follow-up comment, she admitted how hard it had been to stay confident. “I am gaslighting myself over this,” she wrote. “I don’t think I have ever worked with someone who disrespects others in such an obvious way… that is not normal for teachers.”

Now, she’s considering returning the knockoff dish and asking once more for a proper replacement. But for many readers, the real issue runs deeper — a lack of respect, and an administration unwilling to step in.

After 32 years in the classroom, she says she’s never faced anything like this. What should have been a shared teaching space has become a daily source of stress. Still, she stands firm: “I feel disrespected,” she said — and she’s determined to be heard.