AITA for yelling at my coworker after he pulled my hair?
I (24F) and my coworker (45M) got into an argument. For some context, we had a normal friendly relationship, just the usual coworker dynamic. Unfortunately, lately I kept ending up in uncomfortable situations with him. He would tell me how nice my figure was, at first I took it as a compliment, but after a while it started feeling weird, especially when he added comments about my butt and joked that one day he’d smack it. I firmly told him not to even think about it and to knock it off. (He only said things like this occasionally, which is why I didn’t really make a bigger deal out of it.)
Sometimes I wear my hair in a ponytail to work because I don’t have the energy to wash it, so I just tie it up and survive the day. Unfortunately, there were already two occasions in the past when this coworker pulled my ponytail. I clearly told him that this was a huge NO for me and that he should NEVER do it again. (You can probably see where this is going.)
One day I was sitting at my computer doing my job. I’d had a rough day and was absolutely not in the mood for jokes. Then some coworkers came in laughing and started teasing me, I told them to walk away that I am not in the mood, after that coworker pulled my ponytail again. And I just SNAPPED! I yelled at them to finally stop doing that, told them to fuck off and leave me alone. Everyone went silent, and the coworker got offended, saying I wasn’t going to talk to him like that, but he still refused to leave. When I told him again to go away, he angrily stormed off. It’s been a week and nobody has really talked to me since. The other coworkers say I crossed a line and that it was “just a joke.”
Ever since then, the atmosphere at work has been really tense. After a week, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to talk things out with him. I apologized for maybe reacting too aggressively, but I explained that it was simply the wrong time and place. He responded by saying that he had only squeezed my ponytail and that I moved my head, which accidentally made it seem like he pulled my hair. He said he was sad about the whole situation and about the way I reacted, and that he didn’t expect “our relationship” to be like this (I honestly don’t know what he meant by that). He also said the situation wasn’t serious enough for me to yell at him. Overall, the conversation made me feel like I was somehow the bad guy, even though the entire situation started because of him. I feel awful, because even though he caused all of this, I’m the only one who apologized.
So, AITA for overreacting and yelling at my coworker?