Coworker Kept Showing Him Inappropriate Drawings — Then He Finally Took It to HR

A young grocery store worker said a weird inside joke with a coworker started harmlessly enough. They were both awkward in their own ways, both used Reddit, and for a little while, the friendship made work less boring.

Then the joke got out of control.

The man, 20, explained that he had become friendly with a 26-year-old coworker who seemed socially awkward and did not have many friends at work. After they discovered they both used Reddit, the coworker followed him. One day, while bored, the man posted a ridiculous joke online about Waluigi from the Mario games being attractive.

It was not meant to be serious. It was not carefully written. It was the kind of dumb internet joke someone makes to see how people react. The post was removed, he and the coworker laughed about it the next day, and the man thought that was the end of it.

It was not.

The coworker started making sexual Waluigi comments at work, and he did not seem to care who was nearby. Sometimes customers were close enough to hear. Sometimes managers were nearby. Sometimes the man was simply trying to do his job when the coworker would show up and make another uncomfortable joke.

The man quietly told him not to say things like that around customers. The coworker laughed and walked away.

Then it escalated.

The coworker would sneak up behind him and make Waluigi noises in his ear, catching him off guard while he worked. The man told him to cool it, but the coworker kept laughing it off. Another time, the coworker showed him a Waluigi shirt under his uniform while licking his lips and staring at him, turning what had started as a stupid online gag into something deeply uncomfortable in person.

The man told him plainly that he was taking the joke too far. He said he did not actually find Waluigi attractive and needed the coworker to stop.

The coworker treated that as denial.

Four days later, while the man was helping a customer, the coworker handed him a folded sheet of paper and said it was “really important.” The man finished with the customer, opened the paper, and found an explicit drawing involving Waluigi and Bowser. It was not a quick scribble. According to the Reddit post, the coworker had clearly put effort into it.

That was the point where the man snapped.

He told the coworker to leave him alone and stop being creepy. The coworker stormed off. A few minutes later, the coworker’s sister, who also worked at the store, came over and yelled at him. She said he was a horrible person. When the man explained the whole situation, she said her brother had special needs.

The man pushed back that having special needs did not excuse repeatedly making someone uncomfortable at work after being told to stop. He had tried politely. He had asked several times. The explicit drawing was not an isolated misunderstanding; it was the latest step in a pattern.

The sister accused him of being ableist and left angry.

After posting online, the man received a strong response telling him he was not wrong for being upset. Some commenters did think he should have handled it through HR instead of cursing at the coworker, especially if the coworker had difficulty understanding social boundaries. But most agreed the behavior itself had crossed a line.

The man took that criticism seriously.

In the update, he admitted he probably should not have told the coworker to “fuck off” in the moment. He still believed the behavior was inappropriate, but he realized HR was the better route once repeated boundaries were ignored.

So he reported it.

HR gave the coworker a firm warning. His sister was also reprimanded for enabling his behavior and was expected to help hold him accountable instead of defending every uncomfortable thing he did. The situation did not end with a firing, which seemed to matter to the man because he still missed the friendship before it got weird.

After things cooled down, he texted the coworker and apologized for how harshly he had reacted. The coworker apologized too and said he would respect the man’s boundaries going forward. The man offered to take him to lunch at a pizza place near work, and the coworker accepted.

They ended up rebuilding the friendship, with one major difference: the jokes had to stay appropriate and mutual. A ridiculous internet gag could be funny between friends at lunch. It could not become workplace sexual harassment, customer-adjacent comments, surprise ear noises, and explicit drawings handed over while someone was helping a shopper.

The whole thing ended better than it could have, but only because the boundary finally became clear enough for everyone to stop pretending it was only a joke.

Commenters were torn between laughing at the absurd details and taking the workplace issue seriously. Many admitted the Waluigi part sounded ridiculous, but they still said unwanted sexual comments and explicit drawings at work are not okay.

A lot of readers said the coworker’s special needs might explain why he struggled with boundaries, but it did not mean the man had to keep tolerating behavior that made him uncomfortable. Several said HR was exactly the right place to handle it because they could address the behavior without relying on the man to manage it alone.

Others criticized the sister for enabling him instead of helping him understand why the behavior crossed a line. They felt she was protecting him from consequences in a way that would only make things harder for him later.

By the update, many commenters were glad the situation resolved without anyone losing a job. The coworker received a warning, the sister was told to stop excusing it, and the friendship survived once the jokes moved back into a setting where both people actually wanted them.