Coworkers Kept Joking She Was Pregnant — Then She Found the Private Chat About Her

A woman who had been away from work for a week said she returned to the office and heard something so bizarre on the radio that she did not know how to react.

The small company where she worked listened to the same local radio station every day. The station had a tiny listener base, and her coworkers had built a casual relationship with one of the hosts by sending in regular song requests and messages. She had never emailed the host herself and had no personal connection to him.

Then she came back from time off and heard the host congratulating her by name on her pregnancy.

She was not pregnant.

At first, she did what a lot of quiet, private people do when they are caught off guard in a room full of laughing coworkers. She laughed along because she did not know what else to do. But inside, she was horrified. Her coworkers had made up a pregnancy prank involving her name and the company’s name, and the radio host had apparently been repeating it for a full week while she was gone.

The worst part was that the host sounded genuinely happy for her. He did not seem to know it was fake. That made the “prank” feel even more humiliating. A stranger on local radio had been publicly congratulating her for a pregnancy that did not exist, because people in her office thought it was funny to make her body and private life into a joke.

When she got back into the office, the comments continued.

Coworkers joked about caffeine being bad for the baby. They joked about planning her due date. The woman was in her mid-20s and said she could barely believe she was having to write about this kind of situation at all. She was the quietest and most private person in the office, which made the whole thing feel even more invasive.

She did not want anyone formally punished over what might have started as a bad attempt at humor. But she also did not know how to explain why it was not harmless without damaging relationships at work.

According to the Reddit post, which preserved her original Ask a Manager letter and later updates, the woman planned to start shutting the jokes down directly. She considered asking the next person who joked about it to be the one to write the radio host and tell him the truth.

The next update brought some relief.

After reading outside reactions, she realized she was not being oversensitive. Pregnancy is not something to joke about in a workplace. Nobody knew whether she was dealing with fertility issues, pregnancy loss, medical problems, family pressure, or anything else. Even if none of those things were true, her coworkers still had no right to invent a pregnancy and broadcast it publicly.

She told people in the office to stop. When the director was back in, she pulled him aside and explained two things clearly: she was not pregnant, and the whole situation was inappropriate and needed to end immediately.

The director was shocked. He had not known she was not part of the prank. He supported her, spoke with the office manager, and arranged to get the woman out of the office for a while so the others could be addressed. When she returned, the radio was turned down and everyone looked sheepish.

No one apologized.

But the jokes stopped.

One coworker contacted the radio host, and he stopped mentioning the fake pregnancy right away. The woman believed he had genuinely thought the news was real, which made her coworkers’ role in the whole thing look even worse. They had used him as part of the prank without considering how awful it would be for her to hear strangers congratulating her on something deeply personal and completely false.

Years later, she returned with a much larger update.

After the pregnancy-prank incident, things at work became okay for a while, then worse. A few months later, her relationship unexpectedly ended. Shortly after that, she discovered a private channel on the company’s internal messaging system where coworkers had been talking about her behind her back.

The channel had been running for months, even before the radio prank.

That discovery changed how she saw everything. The fake pregnancy announcement was not just one bad joke in a healthy office. It was part of a workplace culture where people had been quietly targeting her while still acting normal to her face.

By then, the company had outside HR support, so she filed a formal complaint against everyone involved. One coworker who was already on thin ice was let go not long after. Others apologized directly, which she appreciated at the time.

But the private chat was the final push she needed.

She began to understand that the workplace itself was toxic and probably had been for a long time. The company had strange rules and unhealthy norms. Employees were discouraged from talking to each other except through instant messages. Lunches were staggered and taken alone. Screens had to face outward so the boss could monitor them. The company had also been caught in the middle of the directors’ divorce, and the tension at the top seemed to shape the whole office.

The woman eventually started job hunting with a clear list of requirements. She wanted active HR, visible salary scales, and a workplace in a part of the country that interested her. The first job she applied for turned into one of the best decisions she ever made.

She interviewed in February 2020, got the job, and started during the early COVID lockdowns. Later, she moved to the new city as restrictions lifted and started rebuilding her life in her late 20s.

Years later, she said her work life was dramatically better. She had changed roles within the same organization, found more fulfilling work, built useful skills, and even become active in her workplace union. She was no longer in touch with anyone from the old job.

Looking back, she was still embarrassed by the fake pregnancy ordeal. But she was grateful it had become an old story rather than a situation she was still trapped inside.

Commenters were horrified by the pregnancy prank from the start. Many said pregnancy is never a safe workplace joke because nobody knows what someone may be dealing with privately.

A lot of readers were especially bothered that the prank involved a local radio host and the company name. This was not one coworker making a dumb comment in the break room. They had pushed the lie outside the office and let a stranger publicly congratulate her for days.

Several commenters also focused on the private internal chat discovered later. To them, that proved the office had deeper problems than one bad joke. The pregnancy announcement was part of a wider pattern of coworkers treating her like a target instead of a person.

By the six-year update, many readers were relieved she had left that workplace entirely. The stronger reaction was that she should never have had to wait for something as extreme as a fake radio pregnancy announcement to realize the job was unhealthy, but toxic workplaces often make strange behavior feel normal until one moment finally snaps everything into focus.