Am I an asshole for not letting work colleague use my medical equipment needed for my disability...
I (35 year old, underweight, female, registered disabled) am on a specialised diet for celiac, gastroparesis (paralysis of the stomach), recurrent gastrointestinal infections (so need to keep food at safe fridge temperature, cant even risk it sitting at normal temperature for 1 hour), and a severe autoimmune disorder which further severely restricts my diet (yes, I am well aware I have 'alot' wrong with me).
This means I can only eat 2 things, plain rice and boiled meat (chicken, beef, pork), and occasionally broccoli also. I cannot add any seasonings or oils to my food as I am very sensitive to those. My condition means I cannot find food that is safe to eat outside of the house, so have to rely PURELY on food that I prepare at home, and I use a portable power bank to keep my food at a safe-to-eat temperature when outside of the house for the day, especially if I am outside for more than a few hours with no access to a plug socket.
At my work (office job), myself and 5 other colleagues did a charity volunteering day outside working on a nature conservation site. We were outside without access to plug sockets for over 7 hours. I brought along my large (and rather expensive, £200) power bank and all other required medical equipment to ensure I could safely nourish myself and have food available to me that was safe to eat (I manage my condition well and carry a disability kit bag with me with all required equipment when/as needed with no hassle to anybody else, I am completely self-sufficient and self-reliant in managing my condition). Everybody else had packed lunch (sandwich, snacks, crisps, chocolate bar, fruit, that kind of thing).
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Here's where shit gets annoying... I use my power bank to keep my food safe to eat, and to charge my phone also if it needs charging, assuring I have enough electricity to fuel my medical equipment first and foremost. I take good care of my charging cables and all my equipment (but I know some people charge vapes with theirs or don't have dust covers on the ends of them, and it corrodes the wires, posing a fire risk / risk of electrical damage to the cable itself and to whatever the cable is later plugged into). I also need to keep all the power in the bank to run my medical equipment and my own personal phone... there isn't much left to share.
For these 2 reasons, I do not let Anyone use my power bank, it doesn't matter if they are friends, family, colleagues, strangers on the bus, etc... I have strict rules nobody else uses it. It is expensive (£200), it is heavy to carry around (5kg), I do not carry a backup (because one is heavy and bulky enough to carry around, yet alone 2). If this one broke or ran out of electricity, then I would be left without food for the remainder of the (very physically active) day. I need to eat fairly regularly (every 3 hours or so, in small amounts) because of my disability, otherwise i risk blood sugar disruption, metabolic crisis, gastroparesis flare. If my power bank ran out of battery, I could be left without food for longer than 3 hours, which could pose high risk to my health / a medical emergency even.
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We were told during the briefing to be mindful of using our phones, and to attend with them 100% charged, and to not waste our phone battery watching videos or listening to music, so that our phones could be working for us in case of emergency or getting lost.
Despite this, after only 2 hours of being there, one of my colleagues (also mid-30s, female, diagnosed autism) asked to use my power bank to charge her phone (it was around 20% battery, i doubt she'd even charged it before getting there). I tell her no, I need my power bank for my medical equipment and it is not something I let anybody use, not even close friends or family. I told her it is her responsibility to take care of keeping her phone charged, not mine, and that I was not going to risk my medical equipment or physical health so that she could charge her phone.
She kept asking me every 20 minutes or so, pestering to use my power bank, trying to make me feel bad, all whilst using her phone to show another colleague youtube videos, listen to music on her earphones etc, until her phone died with many hours left to go of the volunteering day. She then had the audacity to try to turn the other colleagues against me for not letting her use my power bank. They all agreed with me, that I had every right to deny her use of it, but some of the things she was saying was just plain hurtful. She told me I shouldn't have gone on the trip if I was too disabled to look after myself / eat normal people food. She said if there is this much wrong with me, I just shouldn't bother leaving the house. She tried to gaslight me about my condition saying theres no way somebody can be 'that' sensitive to food, and that I just had an 'eating disorder' and that I could just 'eat a sandwich if i really wanted' (trust me, I've tried many times, it ends in metabolic crisis, or the damaging of my stomach/intestinal lining, leading to high risk of gastro infection which can easily lead to malabsorption and even hospitalisation/sepsis, and over time the autoimmune reactions have lead to losing half the hair on my head overnight, anaphylaxis, hives, accelerated liver and kidney damage, and thats just the tip of the iceberg of ill health, hence why I so stringently follow a boringly restrictive diet, to keep myself safe).
She told others I was being selfish for not letting her use my power bank, and 'what if she got lost and couldn't contact anyone because her phone is dead' and that it would be 'my fault' because I had a big power bank I wasn't letting anyone else use, and that I should share it because there was enough electricity in there to run everything and everyones phone (there wasn't enough to risk sharing, especially if there was a real emergency and I ended up needing electricity for longer than the 7 hour day).
Alongside the phone charging, she also caused a very big scene around lunch time, where she insisted I use my food heating box to heat her cheese and ham sandwich 'to make it tastier for her to eat' (her words, not mine), and told the rest of the group I would heat their lunches up / ask me to heat their lunches up, it would be 'unfair' for me to make them eat cold food whilst I eat something warm etc, 'who did i think i was, the princess' etc... It uses ALOT of electricity to heat my lunch/water, but I need to warm up my food and drinking water because cold things hitting my throat and stomach triggers my gastroparesis and give me very very painful indigestion which feels like i've been kicked in the throat, and delays my digestion for days and i've been to hospital many times for stomach/bowel obstruction due to this), and also I keep all my equipment strictly gluten-free due to my celiac so not only would it use alot of electricity I dont have to heat everyones lunches up, it would also definately result in me being glutened for days, even weeks after, hence why I would not heat up anyone elses food except my own. Yet she tried to make me look like the devil to the rest of the group and turn them against me over this.
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After the trip, she told the manager and any other colleague who would listen at work, trying to paint me as the devil itself for not letting her use my power bank that I brought along for me and my medical equipment (for which I budgeted in my own minimal personal phone use and charging, even then, I never used my phone excessively). Some of the colleagues (who weren't there and didn't know the full story) even came up to me to give me grief for it, for 'bullying her', for 'leaving her in a vulnerable situation without a phone', etc.
I still had a good time on the trip with the colleagues that do respect me and treat me well. But I guess I am just very upset about how the day was a little bit ruined by this colleagues constant pestering me to let her use my power bank, and how she tried to make me feel bad for not letting her use it / tried to turn everybody on the trip against me, and managed to turn some people at the office against me after the trip. The way she spoke about me and my disability, and the way she and others at work tried to convince me im in the wrong has kind of got into my head and has me doubting myself and makes me feel guilty and like a bit of an arsehole.. maybe I could have at least shared use of my equipment on this occasion...
She has already been to the manager and HR about me 'bullying' her by not letting her use my power station and for depriving her of charging her phone and 'leaving her vulnerable'. As mentioned, she has autism, and she uses it as an excuse often to get her own way and bully others. For example, she is allowed to listen to youtube videos and music loudly at work, but nobody else is, not even on their break in the staff room. Nobody is even allowed to have a conversation in the office or staff room that is not strictly work related, because it 'triggers' her in some way or another (even the most innocent conversion, she'll find a way or reason for it to have 'triggered' her, you could be talking about your day out to the zoo with your partner, and it 'triggers' her because she doesn't have a partner etc, you really can't win, or talk about swimming and she dislikes it due to her sensory aversion to chlorine... she'll even stop what she is doing and really strain to hear and listen into other peoples conversations being whispered half way across the room or walk over and evesdrop on others conversations, and say they offended her). And they allow her to go and pester people multiple times a day, and her asking people for food or some of their snacks despite them saying no like 20 times.
And work excuses her outwardly bullying others and saying offensive things either to their face or to others trying to turn them against them... She has done this to many of my colleagues, but I'll just give you a little insight into how she treat one (of many) colleagues... The time she kept commenting on one of my colleagues weight (she was quite a bit overweight) and what she wore, every outfit she would find a reason to insult, like if she wore a top or skirt that wasn't plain grey, she would say the colour 'overstimulated her' / stopped her from working, and that the woman eating high fat food was disgusting to her, so this poor woman was stuck being pressured into wearing grey and eating only 'healthily branded food' until she eventually had enough and quit. This is just a small snippet of one person this autistic colleague has treated this way (and me as well ocf, which is what this post is about), but she treats a few others this way also and has treated many this way in the past too, who have either been fired over her false claims/bullying or have quit from simply having the fu*k enough of being treated this way by her and it being excused / her having a free pass to bully them freely, just because she has autism.
I do not have high hopes much will be done about this situation and that I'll have to carry on enduring it or quit and find a job without all this bullshit. All my other colleagues are lovely, but her free-reign to be an arsehole just makes this job intolerable, and I still feel so deeply hurt and upset by her comments on my disability.
I don't know... what are your thoughts here?