Italian woman tells how colleague spiked coffee to 'eliminate' her from job
An Italian woman has described how a bitter workplace rivalry resulted in a colleague spiking her morning cappuccino with a sedative as job cuts loomed.
Alice Bordon, the target of the plot, toldthe newspaper La Stampa that she had always trusted the colleague and was still incredulous that she had tried to “eliminate” her by slipping a tranquilliser into her coffee so that she would feel sleepy and underperform at work.
The colleague, Mariangela Cerrato, was this week sentenced to four years in jail. The court heard she had wanted to discredit Bordon in the eyes of the company’s bosses.
The coffee plot dates back to 6 October 2017. As always, Cerrato bought her colleagues a round of coffees from the bar near their office in Bra, a town in Piedmont.
“Usually I would just sip it, but on that day I drank it all in one gulp,”
Bordon said. Shortly after, she lost her balance as she walked towards her desk. “Everything was black, I felt like I was floating.”
Bordon was taken to hospital where she was tested for a suspected stroke. She had the same reaction after drinking several more cappuccinos bought by Cerrato, and on one occasion crashed her car into a wall.
It was not until Christmas of that year that Bordon became suspicious. “She had taken a few days off and during that time I was fine,” Bordon said. “I thought there might be a link between the coffee and the [health] crises. A neurologist advised me not to drink it for a month, and that’s what I did.”
A few months later, she accepted another cappuccino from Cerrato, but only drank half of it.
“I put the other half in a test tube and tests revealed that it contained 10 times the amount of tranquilliser that is usually advised,” she said.
Cerrato was then caught redhanded. “With the police involved, we managed to stop her as she was putting the medicine into my cup.”