High school teacher. TLDR a coworker recently lost her husband. He was in his early 50s and had an "extremely aggressive cancer". Months within diagnosis, he was dead.
Caught her completely off guard, etc etc etc, nothing to do, "ultra-fast spreading cancer," "he was in perfect health before," etc etc etc.
So anyway, funeral has just concluded last week-end, and she's telling her sob stories in the teacher lounge.
I turn around and ask:
"Did he get vaccinated against Covid?"
She replies right away: "Yes, he had all his doses, plus the boosters..."
Then... I smirk. Not smile, just a tiny, tiny smile on the bottom of my right lip. In my mind, I thought "mystery solved."
So anyway, she... I don't know, she completely flips out, starts screaming, "why are you asking me this, what is your problem" typical pre-menopause hysteria, etc.
Well apparently she filed a complaint with HR against me, and now I have to meet HR to discuss "something." Union rep will be with me LOL okay.
Did I really go too far? I mean, I just asked ONE question...
Based.
Double down, bro. If they ask you any stupid questions, ask if they got jabbed. It does cause brain fog, after all.
Edit: I was thinking more about this and y'know what? Fuck this bitch!
Did you ask her about this personal tragedy, or did she just feel the right to dump it on her professional colleagues? What fucking entitlement! It's not your job to be her emotional tampon. How does hearing about this affect your mental health; anyone ask you that?
If she can't handle your (pretty bloody benign) comments about something incredibly sensitive to her, she shouldn't have brought it up at work.
Did you need to know about her dead husband to do your job? Did anyone? No? Then she's acting unprofessionally and has no right to complain about how you deal with being forced to perform emotional labour on behalf of someone else.
That's how I would answer. Clean it up but, basically, her totally unnecessary trauma dumping in the common break room caused you emotional stress which, in turn, triggered your own trauma around Covid. No doubt there are supports like berevement leave or paid counselling; if she wants to talk about it, those are appropriate venues. Or friends, in private. NOT the communal break room. If she doesn't like how you reacted, she shouldn't have brought it up, obviously expecting unilateral sympathy.
For me, the lies and gaslighting by health agencies, media, and actual doctors around the safety and efficacy of the Covid shots caused severe adverse mental health outcomes; I've had people close to me die of turbo cancers and brain aneurysms and been told I was a "conspiracy theorist" for suggesting the shots as a culprit which has seriously affected many of my personal relationships as well as my faith in my government and my society as a whole. I had to suck it up for years, and now I'm done. I suspect that, given your reaction, you've had similar experiences. Why should we have to tip-toe on eggshells for the people who told us to take the poison and stop making waves so they could be gifted their "rights" back?