Childfree woman teaches colleague a lesson for publicly shaming her for not having kids

Having kids is a personal choice and not something that can be made to appease others. A woman, u/Minimum_Reaction_724 shared on Reddit how one of her colleagues kept asking her why she was not having kids and she ended up having to lie owing to the pressure he created on her in a room full of people. She started by writing how it all started. She had gone for a two-day seminar a few weeks ago with over 100 people from different departments in her company. 

"There’s a man I work with, mid-50s, seems like the type that is insecure but hides it with fake arrogance," the woman wrote. Cut to the first night at dinner and they were all sitting on large round tables. She had just moved her house and was sharing that it has two bedrooms and that they were making one a hobby room. At this point, the co-worker she earlier mentioned said, "'Hobby room? Shouldn’t you make that the child’s room at your age?' I just looked at him and pretended he didn’t say that and carried on talking."

She said that she could tell he was upset about being ignored. However, the woman decided to leave as it was 10 and she wanted to have an early night. She shared, "I start walking from the table, saying goodnight to everyone when he shouts over: 'Really, you should reconsider having kids. Your life lacks purpose without them, and we need more children for the future of this country.'" She was taken aback and mentally exhausted so she stood up and started crying. "I don't know what happened but then I said, 'I can't have kids.'"

The woman she was talking to before was shocked upon hearing this and said, 'Oh my God' and another older colleague got up and hugged her. She continued, "Then I kept lying and said something like. 'I’ve been trying for years, we tried everything, does my life really lack purpose without them?'” The man who had made these comments just sat there quietly embarrassed and didn't make any apologies. "The next day he never showed up, and now he's been on 'sick leave' from work since the seminar," she wrote. 

She concluded by saying that she does feel bad for people who want kids and can't have them and that she should never have lied. "Also I feel bad for the sweet women who comforted me, but my God how else can these guys learn?" she asked. People in the comments supported the woman for teaching the colleague a lesson. u/Half_Life976 commented, "One day he would have said it to someone who was in a worse mental space than you and caused untold suffering. Way to nip his arrogance in the bud. Don't worry about him. No one's ever died of foot-in-mouth disease."

u/Loud_Flatworm_4146 expressed, "Lol that was great. Yeah, lying isn't great, and for people who want kids but can't, that sucks. But the embarrassment you caused him was worth the lie." u/NocturnPhelps wrote, "Sometimes you just have to call a jack*** out on their behavior, even if that means creating a scenario around it to be successful. Kudos to you! No one has the right to tell someone their only purpose in life is to have kids." u/thinghammer said, "You're my hero. I love how you made his own nonsense blow up in his face. 'Sick Leave' lol."