Hi Reddit, I need your take on this. I’m a 28 year old guy and have been volunteering at a local animal shelter for over a year, dedicating most weekends to walking dogs, cleaning kennels, and organizing adoption events. It’s tough but rewarding, and I’ve built strong relationships with the staff and animals. My friend “Lisa” who recently joined the shelter as a volunteer after I encouraged her, thinking it’d be fun to share the experience.
Last month, we worked together on a big adoption event. I spent weeks planning—securing sponsors, designing flyers, and coordinating with local businesses for donations. Lisa helped with smaller tasks, like handing out flyers and setting up tables on the day of the event. The event was a huge success, with 15 animals finding homes, and I was thrilled.
Here’s the issue, a local news outlet covered the event, and Lisa told the reporter she was the “lead organizer” and had been “spearheading” the shelter’s efforts for months. She didn’t mention me or the team at all. The article came out praising her, and she’s been soaking up the attention, even posting it on social media with captions like “my proudest moment.” I was stunned—she barely contributed compared to the rest of us.
I confronted her privately, saying it wasn’t fair to take credit for work she didn’t do. She got defensive, claiming she “represented the team” and that I was being petty for caring about recognition. I pointed out that I’d spent countless hours on the event while she only showed up for the easy parts. Things escalated, and I ended up saying she was dishonest and shouldn’t mislead people about her role. She called me jealous and stormed off.
Now, Lisa’s telling mutual friends I humiliated her over “a little misunderstanding.” Some think I should’ve let it slide since the shelter benefited, but I feel she crossed a line by claiming my work as her own. I don’t care about the spotlight, but I hate seeing someone misrepresent their contribution, especially when it overshadows the team’s effort.
AITA for calling her out, or should I have just let it go?
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Hi Reddit, I need your take on this. I’m a 28 year old guy and have been volunteering at a local animal shelter for over a year, dedicating most weekends to walking dogs, cleaning kennels, and organizing adoption events. It’s tough but rewarding, and I’ve built strong relationships with the staff and animals. My friend “Lisa” who recently joined the shelter as a volunteer after I encouraged her, thinking it’d be fun to share the experience.
Last month, we worked together on a big adoption event. I spent weeks planning—securing sponsors, designing flyers, and coordinating with local businesses for donations. Lisa helped with smaller tasks, like handing out flyers and setting up tables on the day of the event. The event was a huge success, with 15 animals finding homes, and I was thrilled.
Here’s the issue, a local news outlet covered the event, and Lisa told the reporter she was the “lead organizer” and had been “spearheading” the shelter’s efforts for months. She didn’t mention me or the team at all. The article came out praising her, and she’s been soaking up the attention, even posting it on social media with captions like “my proudest moment.” I was stunned—she barely contributed compared to the rest of us.
I confronted her privately, saying it wasn’t fair to take credit for work she didn’t do. She got defensive, claiming she “represented the team” and that I was being petty for caring about recognition. I pointed out that I’d spent countless hours on the event while she only showed up for the easy parts. Things escalated, and I ended up saying she was dishonest and shouldn’t mislead people about her role. She called me jealous and stormed off.
Now, Lisa’s telling mutual friends I humiliated her over “a little misunderstanding.” Some think I should’ve let it slide since the shelter benefited, but I feel she crossed a line by claiming my work as her own. I don’t care about the spotlight, but I hate seeing someone misrepresent their contribution, especially when it overshadows the team’s effort.
AITA for calling her out, or should I have just let it go?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. Action to be judged: I confronted my friend Lisa and called her dishonest for claiming to the news outlet that she was the lead organizer of the animal shelter adoption event, when I was the one who did most of the planning and work.
2. Why I might be the asshole: I might be the asshole because I escalated the confrontation by calling her dishonest in a heated moment, which may have humiliated her, especially since she thinks it was just a misunderstanding. Some mutual friends said I was too harsh and should’ve let it go since the event succeeded, which makes me wonder if I overreacted or could’ve handled it more diplomatically.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
NTA. That was not a “little misunderstanding.” It was a purposeful lie, that hurt you and others, just to fraudulently elevate her. I think you didn’t go far enough. I encourage you to contact the journalist and make the correction. Which they can fix in at least the online version of the article, if there is one.
NTA, that was no misunderstanding, she deliberately mislead the reporter and is really out of line. Be aware she does this and will do it again if she has the chance. Your job is not to give her that chance.
NTA
But she is not your friend. This event has passed and unfortunately, you cannot undo what she has done. If anyone gives you any grief about her, just point out that ONLY work she did was bask in someone else’s spot light.
What you CAN do is for the next event is NOT include her.
And please don’t let her put a damper on your dedication to the Animal Shelter. We need more people like you!!!
NTA holy shit. If I go dutch with someone for dinner for friends I make sure they know it wasn’t just me that paid for it, and that is dross compared to the hours you spent laboring over the event. She is feeling humiliated because her dishonesty is weighing on her. You got heated because she is gaslighting and lying to probably herself, but definitely others. Hold your ground my friend on your stance, but if you truly felt you got too heated you can always own that at a later point
NTA, I am sure other people at the shelter noticed as well.
News media is just looking for a pretty face to to increase views, they have no idea who does what.
Just be happy your helping the animals. She got her 15 minutes of fame at a cost she doesn’t realizes yet. Your got to learn never to trust her in the future. Smile and carry on.
In the future, who at the shelter would give her a recommendation.
NTA
Humiliated her??😭 if anything she humiliated her self, by going around crying about it, you did nothing wrong, and most people would feel the way u did.
You were actually very nice and approached her kindly. She clearly knows what she did wrong, and is embarrassed about it, and trying to convince others, but mostly herself, what she did was okay, and that your being a hater
NTA. She just wanted shiny credit and easy praise. You even did her the courtesy of confronting her privately. Which, if she wants to talk about humiliation, you COULD have made a public callout, or gone around telling everyone, or even reached out to the news outlet with screenshots, etc. to prove she was lying and hopefully get a retraction. The only reason anyone else even knows about this is because she keeps insisting on telling them.
And what you said was true! She WAS dishonest and she SHOULDN’T mislead people about her role (and thus steal credit from a bunch of people who worked way harder than her).
Also telling a local news outlet that you’re the “lead organizer” and have been “spearheading” things for months isn’t “a little misunderstanding” lmao, it is a large and completely deliberate lie.
YTA, sounds like you’re being petty it’s really not that big of a deal. If you really cared about the animals you wouldn’t care about the recognition.
But you did let it slide. Not letting it slide would have been speaking up. It’s unbelievable that she said you humiliated her since you didn’t tell anyone. It’s more unbelievable that yet another group of friends thinks an OP who’s in the right should ignore the issue.
I do not understand people like you.
As in; it would be so easy to call the news outlet and call out how inaccurate their article was and criticize their lack of fact checking, and I do not understand why you didn’t just do that to begin with. I don’t understand why you’d go through the angst of picking a fight when you know it wouldn’t do anything, when just getting the newspaper to issue a correction was right there as a solution all without you ever needing to say anything.
NTA I suppose. But why?
NTA.
I agree with other commenters here that you should contact the journalist and/or editor to clarify the situation. Whether they’ll publish a correction or not is uncertain, but they should, and at least you will have tried.
You would also be well within your rights to set your mutual friends straight. The ones who are telling you that you “should’ve let it slide since the shelter benefited” are missing the bigger picture. It is NOT RIGHT to claim someone else’s efforts as your own. It’s a kind of theft.
If it makes you feel any better, Lisa has been extremely foolish. Apart from losing your friendship, and possibly the friendship of others at the shelter, the person she risks hurting most is herself.
Volunteer work is important – not merely for the cause you’re supporting, but also for the value it can add to a person’s CV. It shows a potential employer that you’re concerned about more than just making money, and you’re generous with your time. It helps you build valuable skills that will be useful to a future employer, and it puts you in contact with people who may be able to offer employment opportunities or at least act as a referee.
So what has Lisa shown with her volunteer work? She has shown that she is dishonest, and is quite happy to throw her colleagues under a bus if it will benefit her. Every other worker and volunteer at the animal shelter now knows that.
If Lisa ever wants to ask any of these people for a reference, she’ll be disappointed. I wouldn’t give her one. If she were to give my name and contact number when she’s applying for a job, and they phone me, I’d happily tell them straight out: “Lisa took all the credit for someone else’s hard work.” No potential employer will touch her with a reference like that.
NTA. She should have said “the team” if she meant “the team”, and calling herself a “lead organizer” was a deliberate lie.
NTA AT ALL. Watch out for her…
OP, I would imagine the shelter knows who did the bulk of the work! It might be a good idea to discuss it with them. If she’s taking credit for what others have done, she might also be doing other things that are detrimental to the shelter! Plus, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for THEM to ask that to have the news report revised. NTA
She is not your friend.
NTA and she’s a lousy friend.