Woman Says She Finally Challenged Coworker Over Comments About Her Food: ‘What Do You Mean by “You People”?’

A post shared in r/AmITheJerk on Oct. 14, 2026, asks whether a woman was wrong to challenge a coworker’s comments about Thai food. The post had received 484 upvotes and 129 comments at the time of publication.

The account was later shared in r/BestofRedditorUpdates after the original post was deleted. It includes updates dated Oct. 16 and Oct. 18, 2026. In the final update, the poster said she had reported the comments to her manager, who promised to investigate.

The 29-year-old woman said she moved from Thailand to the U.S. about six years earlier. She brought homemade Thai lunches to save money, but a 34-year-old coworker repeatedly complained about them. Initially, she dismissed his remarks as jokes. She said he criticized her curry, chicken and rice, and fried rice, while making no similar comments about other colleagues’ fish or eggs.

After another complaint about curry, she asked the coworker why he had a problem with her food. He called the other lunches normal but did not explain further. The confrontation escalated when she brought pad kra pao, a dish made with meat, basil and rice. “Do you people eat anything that doesn’t smell like this?” he asked her.

She asked what he meant by “you people” and requested an explanation of the joke. Rather than accepting his answer about the smell, she kept asking what made her lunch funny or abnormal. The coworker accused her of overthinking and twisting his words. Two other colleagues were present, and one stopped laughing during the exchange.

She told him to learn manners before commenting on other people’s meals, then left with her lunch. Afterward, she recalled, he told their colleagues she was difficult and had accused him of racism. “I came here to work and make a living, not have somebody comment on my lunch every single day,” she wrote.

In her Oct. 16 update, she recalled another remark the coworker made when he did not see her food. “At least you’re giving us a break from the weird stuff today,” he said. He called it a compliment, but the poster disagreed. He later told her that his remarks targeted only her food.

By Oct. 18, she had privately reported the incidents to her manager. The manager requested examples, dates and witnesses before saying she would speak to the coworker. The poster emphasized that she wanted his comments to stop, not for anyone to be fired. She later heard that he was complaining she had gone behind his back, despite her earlier requests for him to stop. She had not received an outcome from her manager when she published the final update.

One commenter urged the poster to keep a record of the incidents. “Highly recommend documenting all of these interactions and notifying HR,” the commenter wrote. “No one deserves to be harassed.” The commenter identified as Canadian-American and praised Thai food. “Even if I didn’t like it, I would never continually comment on it,” the commenter added.

Another commenter left the decision about escalating the matter to the poster. “The racist harassment should be reported, but that is your choice,” the commenter wrote. “NTJ.”

A third commenter questioned the coworker’s response to the possibility of being fired. “He thinks you are trying to get him fired but yet he continues the same behavior,” the commenter wrote. “Sounds like he is trying to get himself fired.”

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the events described in this thread. The details above reflect the original poster’s account as shared on Reddit. Her identity, the workplace, the coworker, and the commenters’ usernames have not been confirmed.