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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/CaptainScruffy22 on 2024-11-23 02:21:35+00:00.
At the start of this year I (M21) was going through a really rough time. I had just found out my girlfriend of 5 years had been cheating on me and after a month of trying to make it work we’d given up. Due to the pain of that, I made the choice not to date for a while. I know how much trust issues can impact a relationship so decided I would stay single and heal before trying something with anyone else.
A month after the breakup I met someone (F20) at my work at my work. Funnily enough her name was almost identical to mine. Similar letters and sounds in the first name and identical last name. We immediately hit it off and would not stop talking. I am a swimming teacher so it was a bit problematic as we would occasionally neglect our classes in order to joke around with each other. After our classes one day I asked her if she wanted to stick around after work to hang out and she was down. This was when she let me know that she had a boyfriend. She was very polite about it and definitely was aware but comfortable with the fact that I probably had feelings for her.
The issue was that I was not aware and was VERY not comfortable with my having feelings for her. I tried to make it clear when she told me that I wasn’t interested. However once I got home from work I found I was weirdly unable to get over it. So after a day or two of not texting (we had texted somewhat frequently prior). I texted her pointing out how easily we could trick our coworkers into thinking we were related. My goal was to send something that made it clear our relationship was platonic and felt like a genius because who would want people thinking the girl you’re into is your sister.
She was immediately on board and the joke spiralled from there. We started hanging out more frequently and carpooling home from work. Eventually we started spending more and more time just sitting outside my house in her car. Since she was in a relationship I had absolutely no intentions of ever pursuing anything with her. I would frequently make comments about how nice her boyfriend seemed and he was completely comfortable with how close me and her were. However as time went on she stopped bringing him into conversation. Eventually I realised they had broken up.
Over the course of the last 3 months however the joke about me and her being brother and sister spiralled out of control. It started with me simply making jokes about how “it’s great having my sister work here means I can force her to drive me home”. Which would in turn cause people to ask if we were related. Obviously for the sake of the joke I’d respond yes. My workplace has a very comedic culture and this kind of joke/prank happens somewhat often. However eventually the culture of my work place shifted, one of the supervisors quit and he started a trend of more and more people quitting. This, obviously, resulted in a bunch of new hires. These new hires obviously not being aware of this kind of culture. In my stupidity I didn’t think to stop the joke despite the 3 people we were planning on “tricking” having left.
We ended up getting closer and closer to the new hires eventually the joke kind of faded. As people don’t hang out outside of work often it didn’t feel like much of a drama. People seemed to just casually be aware of our (fictional) relation to each other but didn’t mind.
The issue comes from when management supposedly caught wind. During the hiring process you are told to make a list of any and all current employees of the company that you have relation to, in order to avoid any biases. My friend obviously did not list me as she didn’t know I existed. And apparently I was one of the people who reviewed her application and approved her for an interview. We haven’t yet had a meeting with management but we heard from a supervisor that they’re discussing taking action.
The second issue is the one that you can probably predict. Me and her got quite close since her relationship ended and began being more explicitly flirty with each other, in quite generic and admittedly cringe worthy ways. People began to notice and started talking. We’re scared to tell people we’re not related because we don’t want the new hires judging our weird idea of a joke. There’s also an extremely strange feeling whenever we bring it up because it would mean that we have to bring up how we feel about each other, which neither of us seem to want to do.
Not too sure of my intentions with this post. Whether it’s to receive advice or just to rant. Hope some people have found my situation funny at least.
TL:DR tricked people into thinking me and my friend were brother and sister, we started becoming more flirty so coworkers judge us and rules to prevent nepotism have gotten us in trouble with management.