My Co-Worker Tried to Steal My Boyfriend and Get Me Fired, but Her Obsession Blew Up in Front of the Owner’s Japanese Mother

My co-worker almost got me fired for speaking Japanese to her crush, who was also my boyfriend, so we taught her a few key phrases to impress the owner’s Japanese mother.

I used to work at an upscale sushi place with my boyfriend, Kenji, and everything there was great except for one co-worker named Bianca. From day one, she had it out for me simply because of how handsome she thought Kenji was. He was half Japanese, which meant I knew his language too, and for some reason that seemed to be the thing Bianca hated most.

The very first day she saw us together, Kenji and I were on our lunch break, and the second I got up to use the bathroom, she made herself comfortable in my seat right next to him. She pressed her shoulder against his and, seeing that he was Japanese, flashed him this flirty smile and said, “Konnichiwa.”

When he awkwardly said it back, she grabbed a pair of chopsticks and started unsuccessfully eating her noodles while complaining to him about American girls appropriating his beautiful culture. She was very obviously talking about me. When I came back and saw them together, she told me to grab a chair and said I was welcome to join their conversation.

It bothered me, obviously, but I was so secure in my relationship with Kenji that I didn’t really care at first. That changed when Bianca started actively trying to wreck things between us.

She would corner him whenever I wasn’t looking and throw innuendo-filled Japanese phrases at him that she’d clearly pulled off Google Translate. Whenever we were talking, she would squeeze past us as slowly as possible, sometimes rubbing her butt against him, other times facing him directly and giving him these fake sultry eyes like she was in a bad movie.

The thing that really made me furious was when she asked Kenji to come tutor her in Japanese at her house after work. I was going to confront her right then, but we were in the middle of a packed service and I told myself I would deal with it after. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

At some point during service, a group of important Japanese businessmen came in for dinner. They were seated in my section, but Bianca practically shoved me aside so she could serve them herself.

“Please speak Japanese,” she told them. “I understand everything.”

They looked pleasantly surprised and started rattling off their order with all kinds of specific modifications and allergy warnings. Bianca just kept nodding and saying, “Hai, hai,” while scribbling complete nonsense.

Forty-five minutes later, the whole table was a disaster. One man got the wrong starter. Another got two sushi orders instead of his chicken chow mein. And the third actually started having an allergic reaction to shellfish that he had specifically asked them to leave out.

That was when Bianca did the worst thing yet. While Kenji ran to get the EpiPen, she pointed at me and told her cousin, who was the manager, that I had changed the order to sabotage her. He didn’t verify a single thing. He wrote me up on the spot, right there in front of everyone.

“One more incident and you’re terminated.”

I went home completely crushed and cried to Kenji. I honestly wondered if quitting would be easier than staying. Instead, Kenji suggested something else.

“If she wants you to teach her Japanese,” he said, “let’s do exactly that.”

Over the next few weeks, we put a plan into motion. At the restaurant, Kenji and I pretended to be having relationship problems, and of course Bianca jumped at the chance to comfort him. She started sitting next to him again, placing his hand on her shoulder, getting way too close, and soaking up every second of attention.

That was when Kenji made his move. He offered to teach her Japanese, not at her house, but there at the restaurant, and she was so thrilled she didn’t question it at all.

Before long, I’d catch them in the back together, Kenji teaching her these ridiculous phrases while she listened with puppy-dog eyes and repeated them in the most seductive voice she could manage. Every time I caught a glimpse, Kenji and I would exchange quick looks and fight not to laugh.

Soon he convinced her to start using the phrases on customers.

I was serving tables next to her the first time I heard her say kuso baba, which meant “crappy old hag,” to an elderly Japanese woman. I had to focus so hard not to laugh that my face hurt.

The rest of that shift, I paid close attention to everything she said.

At one point I heard her tell a seven-year-old Japanese girl, busu shine, which meant, “Ugly, go die.”

What made it even better was that after every successful insult, she would run right back to Kenji and proudly tell him she’d done it. He would smile at her and say she was doing great, and she absolutely glowed under the praise.

For weeks, Bianca insulted customers in Japanese without having the slightest clue what she was saying. She told people things like kusoku to shine, “eat crap and die,” omae no senzo wo fakushiro, “f your ancestors,” and my personal favorite, ore wa baka tsumori, basically “I’m stupid and think I know what I’m saying.”

It all built up to the night of the owner’s mother’s 80th birthday party.

She was Japanese and was seeing her son for the first time in three years. The owner had reserved an entire section for the celebration, and the whole night was supposed to be beautiful.

Bianca happened to be waitressing that section, and that was when Kenji pushed her into the grand finale. He told her to take the mother’s order and fed her the exact phrase to say. Bianca, full of confidence, walked over and cheerfully said:

“Konnichiwa, kuso baba…”

Then she kept going.

The phrase she used was basically, “Hello, you dumb old good-for-nothing, kiss my behind.”

The room went dead silent.

The owner’s mother’s face changed instantly, from warm anticipation to stunned disbelief. The owner shot to his feet so fast his chair tipped backward. Everyone at the table stared at Bianca in horror.

Bianca, totally oblivious, just kept smiling and bowing. She even added a few more phrases Kenji had taught her, and each one was worse than the last.

The owner’s face went from red to purple while his mother started speaking rapidly in Japanese, her voice trembling with anger.

That was when Kenji stepped forward.

He bowed deeply to the owner’s mother and began apologizing in Japanese, explaining that Bianca had been tricked and had no idea what she was saying. Then he threw me under the bus so completely that for a second I genuinely thought I had misheard him.

He told them I had taught Bianca those phrases as revenge for being written up.

The owner turned to me with fury in his eyes.

“You’re fired. Get out. Now.”

I just stood there frozen, watching Kenji comfort Bianca while she started crying as she finally realized how badly things had gone wrong. He put his arm around her shoulders and kept explaining to everyone in Japanese that I had orchestrated the whole thing. Bianca’s cousin was already on the phone with HR.

I grabbed my things and left with shaking hands.

I sat in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes, waiting for Kenji to come out and explain himself. When he finally did, he wasn’t alone. Bianca was still with him, crying, and he was still comforting her.

They didn’t see me.

I watched him walk her to her car, rubbing her back while she sobbed about how humiliated she was. He kept telling her it wasn’t her fault, that she was the victim here.

When she finally drove away, I got out and confronted him.

“What the hell was that?”

Kenji looked exhausted. “I had to do something. Did you see the owner’s face? Someone had to take the blame.”

“So you chose me.”

“You’re the one who wanted revenge,” he said.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “This was your idea.”

He shot back, “You said we should teach her those phrases. I was trying to help you feel better. I didn’t think you’d actually go through with it, and I definitely didn’t think you’d let it go this far.”

We argued in that parking lot for an hour, and by the end we were both crying. He kept saying he felt terrible about what happened to Bianca and that she didn’t deserve to be humiliated like that. I kept reminding him of everything she had done to me, but he just shook his head and said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right. What we did was cruel.”

That night I barely slept. I kept replaying everything.