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'I keep getting in conflict with my vegan coworker. I don't know how to deal with her.' MAJOR UPDATE

'I keep getting in conflict with my vegan coworker. I don't know how to deal with her.' MAJOR UPDATE

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"Me [29F] with my vegan coworker [29F]. I don't know how to deal with her."

As the title states, I have this vegan coworker (we'll call her Vegan) who is very active on FB and in the office about being vegan and how cruel farming is and everything. Each to their own. I don't necessarily disagree with her views on animal cruelty but here's the thing, I'm a hunter. Not a trophy hunter but I do shoot feral pigs, rabbits, ducks (introduced, classified game ducks) and foxes and I fish too.

All except for the fish are classified as pests, foxes especially ki-l native wildlife and farm animals and farmers will often put you up on their property for free to hunt them.

I have passed tests here, especially for identification of game ducks vs protected species and practice ethical hunting, i.e. allow the animal to have a fair chase, no dogs or tracking devices, practicing marksmanship and dispatching prey swiftly and humanely and not wasting the meat. None of that is obviously good enough for Vegan.

When she first came onto the team and told everyone she was vegan, I kept my mouth shut about my hunting. I also think she's really intolerant because she preaches to people about how going vegan will help with their various ailments and always turns up her nose at people heating up meat in microwave. As a result, we've kind of consciously started excluding her when we get up for lunch.

However last year I started going hunting more regularly with a work friend from another department whose uncle owns a farm where feral pigs and like are an issue and he often swings by to have a chat about g-ns/bows and our next trip and she found out I was a hunter. This isn't even at our desks, it's in the kitchen area that has tables and stuff, we sometimes eat our lunches together.

Ever since then, every conversation I've had with her, she's referred to hunting and how cruel it is. One time, I wore a leather pencil skirt to work and she had a go at me for wearing animal products. She seems to have singled me because of the fact that I go hunting.

My boss has no spine, I've tried talking to him about this, but she just intimidates him and makes it seem like she's been persecuted and he's back down from that. She even tried to get a "vegan" shelf in the fridge and tried to rope in some Hindu vegetarian guys to do that but they pointed out that they use milk and cheese and honey in their cooking. They also think she's nuts.

It's gotten to the point where we go out for drinks on a Friday night at 5 and we never ask her. I don't organize these things, a coworker does but my boss told me, when I brought it up in one on one meeting, that she feels really left out and she seems to think it's my fault because I've been here for longer and I'm somehow poisoning them against her or something.

I have since been conscious of this if anyone starts conversation about Vegan, I just say I don't talk to her unless it's work related and she's more than adequate at her job. It's actually become something of a joke or "catchphrase." I told my boss I don't organize anything except official events and she's always been invited.

If she's not invited to informal stuff, that's not even organized by me, then that's not my problem. The coworker that doesn't invite her, she managed to piss him off because he's eaten guinea pig (he's from Peru) and she asked him if he'd eaten any of his other pets. For the record, he never ate a guinea pig that was a pet, it's something they eat in Peru.

Whenever she brings up hunting or anything, I just point blank ask her there was anything work related that she wanted to talk about, and if there wasn't, I would start talking to someone else or just walk off. I have asked her multiple times to keep conversations work related. I never start a conversation with her at all.

Most of the time, she pounces when I'm in the kitchen making tea, getting water or just stretching my legs. One time last week, a group of us were talking and she got up join the discussion. A horrible silence fell over the group to the point where I just excused myself and went to me desk and so did a few others.

It all came to a head in our team meeting today when our boss, usually at the ends asks if there's any positive news or celebrations outside of work people want to share like engagements, marathons, charity appeals etc and Vegan sarcastically asked me how many "lives I'd taken last weekend."

I got annoyed and said her constant badgering me about my hobbies and choice to eat meat was discriminatory and bothersome and that unless it was work related, she was not to engage me in conversation otherwise and told our "scribe" to put that in the meeting minutes. She seemed a bit shocked by that and my boss looked uncomfortable but said fair enough.

I thought that was the end of that but the right before our boss went to close the meeting, two other coworkers also put their hands up and asked Vegan to only engage them in work related discussions and that they were also uncomfortable being given non-medical health advice pertaining to their choice to consume meat and their diets.

Again boss looked uncomfortable but asked Vegan to respect their wishes and closed the meeting. Vegan didn't look anyone in the eye after that but headed straight to the bathroom. My boss was trying to get one of the coworkers to see if she was OK and I think one of them eventually checked up on her but she was in a cubicle and asked to be left alone.

She eventually came out and asked my boss to leave early which she did.

I feel awful now. She embarrassed me in front of my team with the "lives taken" comment so I pushed back but I am caught between not wanting her to miserable and not wanting anything to do with her at all.

A few of my coworkers and I ended up in a proactive conference call after this with HR who basically said that always been subjected to unwanted advice and jabs about eating meat was not OK but some "mediation" was in order to ensure cut the tension in the workplace.

The HR rep then called my boss who explained what happened in the team meeting and complaints that we'd made one on one etc but then he went into a meeting room and didn't hear the rest of discussion. I don't know what to do, assuming she comes into work tomorrow or if I should even talk to her at all.

TL;DR: Vegan coworker keeps making jabs at me, I snapped and told her not to talk to me unless it was work related and two other coworkers followed suit. Vegan left work early upset. Not sure how to proceed from here.

The internet had a lot of thoughts about the dynamic.

[deleted] wrote:

I have nothing productive to add, but I love the image of the Hindu guys tapping out of her (vegan, cruelty-free) nuttiness

OP responded:

They have leather briefcases and shoes and wallets. Once of them even pointed that out to her after her dig at my skirt.

Zap_Dannigan wrote:

Why did you come here for advice, you've done everything perfectly, imo. Don't feel bad, don't engage her, just keep on keeping on!

OP responded:

Because I still have to work with her and I feel bad that she's crying and had to leave work early! I've never made a coworker cry before.

onionprincess wrote:

You didn't make her cry. Being confronted with her behavior did.

OP responded:

True. A part of me feels really part but a part of me is just feeling how ridiculous all this is. We're adults and professionals. It shouldn't have to come to this.

sillysillyyou wrote:

Chiming in as a vegan here. She is being completely ridiculous. She has now created a hostile work place for you and your coworkers. As a vegan in the world she cannot expect to never encounter meat eaters.

Its one thing to state your opinions, but it is quite another to berate your coworkers. If she didn't want to work with meat eaters she should choose a vegan company to work for. Do not engage her further, she has been harassing you. This is her problem now.

Evereth wrote:

Another vegan here. My random guess is that she's a relatively new vegan, still caught up in the euphoric heavy evangelism phase some of us go through, and hasn't yet learned a more nuanced vegan advocacy ethic. She needs a wake-up call. This could be that moment for her, and I think OP has handled it correctly so far.

Four days later, OP shared an update.

So the meeting happened on Friday. HR lady was a very much a "let's all get along" type and very enthusiastic and eager to mediate with buzzwords and talk about feelings.

HR contacted me and I told them to get Vegan's perspective first so that she wouldn't complain not getting a chance to get her point of view. So Vegan, boss and HR had a meeting. I'm pretty sure Vegan made it seem like she had been bullied which was pretty much what I was expecting.

Then the rest of us were called into a meeting with HR to give our points of view. The coworker who was a cancer survivor had gotten progressively more annoyed at what happened after the meeting with Vegan taking off so I told her she was welcome to take the lead in the meeting because her issues could have had an actual health impact.

She took up most of the time actually talking about how Vegan kept giving her unsolicited, medically unsubstantiated advice on cancer treatment and prevention and HR and boss started looking uncomfortable and concerned. A few other coworkers- like the one with celiac especially also mentioned unsolicited advice.

Then my Peruvian coworker brought up cultural insensitivity and the eating your pets comment and I didn't know Vegan said this to the Hindu coworker but apparently Vegan had told Hindu that veganism would make him a better Hindu because it eliminated all animal cruelty or something.

A few people started laughing at this and one coworker joked that Vegan was like the vegan Amway- always selling something that nobody was interested in. So I'd been pretty quiet at that point and HR asked me, why I had asked Vegan to only speak about work related matters and I told her that I'm a hunter and briefly explained that I believe in ethical hunting and how it befitted endangered species.

But Vegan kept on calling it murder, had a dig at me for my leather skirt even though other people here had leather shoes, leather handbag and HR injected that her Filofax was real leather and I told her the talking to Vegan was stressful and demoralizing and she'd refused to respect my boundaries when I asked her on other occasions to keep things work related.

So then the "mediation" begun and Vegan was brought in and other coworkers left. I basically said exactly what I'd said before to Vegan with HR and boss there, that I respected her lifestyle choice and how passionate she was about making a change but I disagreed with her on certain pointed and even if she didn't agree with my lifestyle choices, it was unfair of her to single me out or harass me about them.

Vegan said that to her, what I was doing was morally unconscionable and she didn't believe in exploiting animals.

I told her that her iPhone, her clothes, her computer were all produced via human exploitation and the quinoa that she loves so much has affected local income farmers in Bolivia but...and then I qualified I told her it was great that she had her thing to try and improve the world but I also had a different perspective and different issues I was more passionate about.

I said I had respected her point of view and she should respect mine. Vegan's response to all of this was "it's still m-rder". HR looked annoyed at this point and said that Vegan was not trying to find a middle ground.

So I turned to HR and said that this was why there was no middle ground and that's why I thought keeping things civil and work related because in the end we are here to do a job. HR agreed, boss agreed, I agreed, Vegan grudgingly agreed and HR wrote all this down and I had mediation meeting minutes saying all of this emailed to the 4 of us.

Anyway, boss called us into a meeting around lunch and said it was a good that we were able to talk about things outside of work because it's good team bonding but "it had come to his attention" that there was unsolicited health advice and cultural sensitivity issues in the team we'd be discussing that in our next team meeting.

We'd had a productive session but needed to focus on work and keep our spirits up. Vegan had a meeting with boss after that and then went home early.

We had to come in on a Saturday and today end of month stuff (this happens when the end of month falls on a weekend- I'm in finance) but we get time in lieu. I just gave Vegan a cheerful good morning to which she didn't respond and when she said handed me a file and said she was leaving, I just said thank you for your work today and enjoy the rest of your weekend. Vegan kind of just grunted at me and left.

I'm just going to keep it civil like HR said and Vegan and dig her own hole. I still feel a bit sorry for her, I still think she feels attacked but at least it got her off my back for the time being.

TL;DR: Vegan was told formally by boss and HR to keep things work related and civil.

The internet had a lot to say in response.

[deleted] wrote:

Lol how hasn't she been fired yet?

OP responded:

Because she does her job and Australia has good workplace laws. So yes you do get frustrating coworkers but I'd hate the fire at will sort of thing happening in the US.

[deleted] wrote:

Her behavior has nothing to do with being vegan, and 100% to do with being an obtuse b--ch. You handled this really well.

Made_you_read_penis wrote:

You did everything 100% right. I'm a vegan, and I'm not vegan enough for a lot of other vegans since I'm fine with my wife not being vegan and cooking with the same pots and pans (that we wash!). I don't get it.

We're all doing our own thing here, and we're only responsible for ourselves (and underaged kids if we have 'em). We all have our good qualities and setbacks. I don't agree with the judgmental bulls--t.

Sources: Reddit,Reddit
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