Woman piggybacking on coworker’s efforts finally faces the music when she secretly forgets to add her name to the file
'But I’m tired of being invisible so she can look competent,' she said.
A woman shared how her coworker constantly took credit for her work, until it eventually caught up with her. Posting on Reddit under the username u/Foolishcatt, she explained that she works as a project coordinator, while her colleague, "Jamie," joined last year and immediately started attaching her name to everything she did. "If I sent out reports, she’d forward them to management with, 'Here’s the update I compiled.' If I presented an idea, she’d echo it like it was hers," she wrote. Their manager once told them they made a great team, which stung because, as she put it, "it’s mostly me doing the heavy lifting."
A 2025 study shared by the University of Toronto Scarborough and published by the Journal of Knowledge Management found that 91% of employees across the US, UK, and Canada had either experienced, witnessed, or taken part in "knowledge theft" — i.e. when someone takes credit for another’s work or ideas. Researchers noted that repeated incidents like this can erode trust, discourage collaboration, and make people hide their contributions out of fear they’ll be stolen again. They concluded that workplaces where credit-stealing goes unchecked often see lower morale and weaker teamwork.
After months of feeling overshadowed, she decided to stop CC’ing Jamie on her work. "I just did my work quietly," she said. That quiet shift made a big difference. Soon, upper management began noticing Jamie’s sudden drop in productivity and started asking her to share her own deliverables. That’s when panic set in. "She came to me begging to 'back her up' by saying we split the work 50/50," the post read. "I told her I won’t lie, I’ll just tell the truth." Jamie accused her of "ruining her reputation" and "gatekeeping knowledge," but the employee said she was simply done letting someone else take the credit. Some coworkers suggested she could have been "kinder," but she felt that being honest was overdue.
Readers overwhelmingly sided with her, calling out Jamie’s behaviour as manipulative and unprofessional. u/Annual_Appearance579 wrote, "She shouldn’t be taking your work as hers; this only comes at your expense. You’re making it right by not letting her continue with this. Funny how she says you’re 'gatekeeping' when you’re no longer forwarding your work. Absolutely NTA." u/CheekyMeatballs commented, "NTA dude, not by a long shot. You gotta stand up for yourself. Easy for others to say 'be kinder,' it ain’t their credit being stolen. Jimbo’s gotta learn to swim without your help, else she’s set for a lifetime of mooching off others’ work. 110% back you on this one, mate!"
u/get_to_ele added, "She’s an incompetent fraud who made you look less productive. She is your enemy, not your coworker. She’ll stab your back in a nanosecond, so be careful around her." u/Blocked-Author wrote, "Gatekeeping knowledge? Not a chance. Tell her she is more than welcome to do 50% of the work, and you will be happy to give the credit she is due." u/Pandoratastic quipped, "You're not ruining her reputation. You're protecting your reputation. All that time, she was tarnishing your reputation by making it seem like all of your work was half-done by someone else. She made your productivity look worse than it was."
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