for thinking everyone at work should not have to pick up the slack because a colleague is too overweight to do her share?

[Twigggy]

I work in a job where some of the tasks involve lifting carrying and moving things. It is not all heavy labour but everyone is expected to take turns so the workload is fair.

One of my colleagues has been with the company for years. Over time she has gained a lot of weight. She is now morbidly obese and is very open about the fact that she eats too much and does not have any medical condition causing it. She even jokes about it sometimes.

The issue is that as her weight has increased her ability to do the physical parts of the job has decreased. Management have quietly stopped assigning her any of the lifting or carrying tasks. That means the rest of us have to do more to cover her share which can be exhausting especially on busy days.

A few of us have raised this with our manager and HR but both said there is nothing they can do and that we need to be sensitive. Essentially we were told to just keep doing the extra work so we do not upset her.

No one has said anything to her directly because it feels like a sensitive topic and I do not want to be accused of being discriminatory. But it is frustrating that the burden is falling on the rest of us for something that is not due to illness or injury and that she openly admits is her own lifestyle choice.

I am starting to feel resentful. AIBU for thinking this is not fair?

Say it was someone who smoked so much that they were unable to lift stuff because of wheezing, being out of breath, etc... Would people make allowances here (or in the workplace) for that addiction? 🤔 (used to be a heavy smoker myself, so aware of the effects).

Yip,reported but yet it still stands

It’s a hard one, but I think it comes down to management rather than the individual. These things happen similarly if someone has an accident or develops a condition.

At my workplace it got really out of hand with 2/4 in my team being unable to physically do the job. Management brought in support for them and it reduced the burden on the two of us because it was unfair and breeding resentment as we didn’t have the time to get our other tasks done, but they were finished really quickly as they hadn’t had to do the physical stuff!

How on earth can you possibly know that this woman is ‘refusing’ to take steps to help herself or that she is ‘choosing’ to harm herself? You don’t know what she is or isn’t doing. The self deprecating jokes about how much she eats doesn’t mean she isn’t trying to improve things. But if most other morbidly obese people are anything to go by, she’d be fighting a losing battle. She probably needs medical intervention. Who knows whether or not she’s on a waiting list? You certainly don’t. I honestly can’t believe, in this day and age, people still believe that someone who has reached the point of being morbidly obese is seen as choosing to harm themselves. Your ignorance is staggering.

The reasonable adjustments made here are "we will reassign the physical elements of your job, which are only a small part of the job, amongst your colleagues" just as it might well be for COPD or limb damage...

Could your colleague be redeployed on medical grounds into a role that doesn't require any heavy lifting and moving things? Your employer could then recruit to her vacant post.

There will always be outliers and exceptions but I will say that if you’d asked me at age 23 why I had gained weight between 19 and 23 I’d have said something like “loves cakes” too and refuted the idea it was anything deeper . I did lose that weight and keep it off for over a decade but still had binges during that period, the walking 15k steps + and gym helped me maintain weight so when I became inactive in my thirties it started to show.

Now I’m a lot more insightful and I can see that my recent weight gain (in my 30s) that began just before the pandemic was linked to disordered eating stemming from emotional issues. Losing the 3 stone over the past few years as a relatively short person has not just been about willpower, but examining my emotional and mental health.

So even a lot of people who claim it’s nothing more than loving food just haven’t looked deeply enough within themselves or aren’t ready to admit their deep rooted issues.

It is isn't it.

i’m overweight and this isn’t fair. If she can’t do the job then HR and management should be supporting her BUT it shouldn’t fall on OP to pick up the slack

Looks like the OP was a plopper, hasn’t been back to discuss.Leads me to think this was an agenda and I’ve been played. AGAIN.

A marketing agreement with WLI company - Do they?!

What I’ve noticed about the WLI topics on here is if anyone is saying anything negative about them or even questioning anything they get angrily rounded upon.

Or there was a thread where a woman said she wanted advice for weight loss that didn’t include WLI and half the thread was people trying to convince her to take them or attacking her for saying she wouldn’t.

I haven’t said anything either way as I’m neither for or against them, although I personally wouldn’t use them - but some peoples defensiveness of them on MN seems odd.

This site is a mess.

Yeah, it really makes you regret giving any input at all. Just another shit stirrer.

It doesn’t matter whether the person just loves food or is miserable eating too much food, overeating to the point of obesity or to the point of health issues, is an eating disorder or food addiction. The person doesn’t need to recognise that in themselves.

Ask yourself why a person might just love food? Because food is tasty and foods or alcohol that a person likes that make them obese are addictive.

Wow, is this woman not embarrassed that everyone else has to do her share?

I would fake an injury and get your colleagues to do the same so that management are forced to look at what they’re doing.

I know about mental health issues, and addiction (the substance is largely irrelevant), and if any colleague was individual is aware their addiction is seriously affecting their health, life, work and colleagues, they’ve got to be one seriously selfish fecker to sit around and joke about it. If she was unable to do part of her job because she got drunk at 3pm every day, or because she kept nipping out for a ciggy, her colleagues wouldn’t be expected to pick up the slack and “be kind”, would they? Why doesn’t that extend to her stuffing her face?

Excellent tactical mention of it being entirely her fault with no mitigating circumstances right in the first post, as well. She LAUGHS about eating too much and having LITERALLY NO excuse. Maybe OP should have gone all the way and had her whisper that she did it on purpose to stop getting the harder tasks

I've been seeing sponsored threads for MedExpress/Promoted WLI for at least the last fortnight on the boards. I don't even go anywhere near the diet boards (my natural habitat is AIBU, Chat and the Litter Tray, mostly).

Eating disorders are a medical condition. She has an eating disorder.

Pull the other one, she's a greedy cow. That's how people get fat!

What kind of physical tasks? Can you elaborate on the job you do? Just trying to get an idea

You know we all love a fatty-bashing thread. Especially us fatties. Hey fatty bom-bom!

Is her eating normal? Nope so it is disordered. It is abnormal.

So how do people get frail and skinny - undereating, an eating disorder called anorexia.

People not eating properly, overeating to excess or undereating - both are eating disorders and many have trauma as a reason.

I know someone who was raped and then overate and said she feared being raped again so wanted to make herself look different so it was less likely as he rapist still lived 2 streets away. It made her feel safer that he would not do it again. Her trauma was the cause of that.

The thread is not complaining about someone because of their size. The thread is complaining about someone who doesn’t do their fair share at work. When that means others have to do more than their fair share of difficult jobs, it is reasonable to complain about it.

OPs point is valid and shouldn’t be dismissed just because some people are sensitive about how much they weigh.

This is indeed a difficult one. First off I don't believe morbid obesity is a lifestyle choice, it is without doubt linked to a MH issue. There is a big difference between being overweight because you love food and being morbidly obese, if she cannot do basic lifting and moving then she also will have great difficulty in her personal life. So regardless of the cause she is already suffering.

All that said, if she is unable to do her job then that's a problem. (I typed 'pull her weight' then deleted, funny though) my job is somewhat similar in that there is a physical element to it and if I was hiring I wouldn't hire someone obese. I'm overweight myself and struggle all the time with this but am also active and capable. I had a period where I struggled with one particular thing due to weight gain and lack of flexibility so I spoke to my manager explaining why it took me so long and started doing specific exercises at home so I could get back on track, it tool a few weeks. I haven't lost much weight but am fitter and am very conscious of keeping myself this way so I can continue to do my job properly. I think a solution is rather than give one element of the job to colleagues, this woman needs to be moved to a different role entirely, same as you would to accommodate a disability or long term injury. Either way it's a management problem not OPs so I think OP needs to raise it directly with management.