Disrespectful Work Colleagues

[ColleenE]

Are your colleagues 5 years old? I've never heard of such a thing amongst adults. I agree with some of the others' posts. Even though they are clearly offensive, this is a moment where you can take the moral high road but yet make a strong impression on them that their actions are NOT accpetable. I would say something like "Look, I won't take what you did the other day ever again. It was not funny, I don't feel comfortable at all working with people who don't respect me."
I don't know what kind of a company you work for, but if it's large and has an HR department, depending on how you feel, you could say "next time I'm filing a compliant" or somesuch.

Sorry you work with such jerks.

[blinki]

I've not had anything like that done to me since I was a kid. Adults doing that is beyond immature

But you didn't say anything at the time so you don't know for sure what was in it? That makes me doubt it was a vegan thing unless something else was said. I'd assume they thought it was funny to make your drink spicy, thinking the first sip would burn. That's still silly but imo no where near as bad and more 'banter' side of things. I think if you didn't say anything at the time it's not worth causing a fuss now but if something happens again then don't sit their quietly about it

[Hiking Fox]

Though I said nothing and neither did they.

The biggest cause of disputes is people jumping to conclusions about each other, based on incomplete information. Ask yourself the following:

1. Do you know that they definitely put Worcester sauce in your drink? Is it possible that you were mistaken or that it was something else?

2. Do you know that they know that Worcester sauce isn't vegan? (I recently explained to a vegan of 10 years from Worcestershire that it contains fish and he was shocked because he'd never heard this and had been eating the stuff all his life).

3. If the answer to both the above is definitely "yes", do you know why they did it? If you are making assumptions about why they did it, you could be tying yourself in knots for no reason.

The only way to find out whether and why they did it is to ask them. So ask them.

If you establish that it was definitely bullying, you could point this out to them and explain that you won't tolerate this kind of behaviour again. Under the Equalities Act, they are on very dodgy ground.

[xrodolfox]

Wow.
That's really terrible.

For some reason, I'm imagining this done by men. When I worked with an office of full of middle aged women, my veganism was taken seriously and nicely. Now that I work with guys, I've found that the more "frat" they are, the more jerks they are about me being vegan.

When I read what happened to you, I read this as a larger part of bullying at work by men who have been privileged to never have been told "no". Perhaps this isn't true, but that's how my biases are coming in.

I am appalled that this happened to you. I think that you *should* call those fuckers out. Call HR. I don't think you should play by their game, or pretend it didn't exist. I think you need to accumulate power in some way and take your respect into your hands.

To me, this isn't about veganism; this is about bullying.

[Hiking Fox]

When I worked with an office of full of middle aged women, my veganism was taken seriously and nicely.

Interestingly, my experience is exactly the opposite. I find middle-aged women are the most antagonistic about my vegan diet, whereas men tend to be curious for a while in a polite way.

[beforewisdom]

Maybe it depends on which gender you are and which gender your coworkers are.

The worst coworkers I've encountered as a group have been very obese middle aged men in the network support group. Oddly, these types tend to be right wing. Instead of just quietly passing the issues up they rant about how they want meat, they personally evolved over millions of years to move up the food chain and how it interferes with their human rights to have bacon disparaged.

Among individuals, the worst coworkers I had in this regard just silently shut me out of all sorts of invitations to lunches and other things. I think they had enough of feeling scolded by the in-your-face types. When I confronted one of them about it they said they didn't want to feel silently judged and they didn't want me to feel uncomfortable around their food.

In general, in the workplace, I've found the most mellow people to be women, the more educated, people with veg*n children and Indians ( who I get some popularity from for free by being vegan )

[loveliberate]

Happily, the vast majority of co-workers I've had have either been either supportive or never really raised the issue.

That said, I agree with what folks have said about it being unlikely that they intentionally put a non-vegan sauce in your drink. And perhaps I'm "immature" because I can see the humor in this? Not in purposefully trying to have you ingest something you find offensive and certainly not in doing something truly harmful - but pulling a little prank? To me, that sounds playful & probably even friendly. If you don't like that sort of thing, that's understandable & those folks would likely never repeat it if you just told them so.