The people you work with play a big part in making your job enjoyable. It's important to be surrounded by people who exude positive energy and support you in your job, especially since you'll be spending the majority of your time with them. Unfortunately, not everybody is blessed with pleasant coworkers. These employees share their most infuriating moments with the people in their places of work, and honestly, as bad as these situations may be, we can't deny they make for juicy reads.
1. What A Beautiful Sight
Over the course of six months, through countless phone calls to different union offices and the department of labor, I eventually got my boss fired for changing people's time-keeping information to take overtime from them. During those months I was treated like dirt by this guy, but I never actually did anything wrong so I couldn't be punished.
At one point, management—against contract rules—denied my time off request to be at my best friend’s wedding and my boss brought me into his office and warned to fire me. At this point, I had called the northeast district business associate on him, and I will never forget the look on my boss’s face when he realized I knew he couldn't do anything to me.
2. I’m On to You
I was working late one day and my dumb co-worker, "Stacy," and another co-worker who work later than me were both there. Stacy was a few feet from me and the other co-worker didn't know I was working late that day. So she comes out of the break room and says "Oh, you're still here?" I jokingly say "No, I left!"
Honest to god, Stacy jumps out of her seat and says "HE'S LYING, HE'S STILL HERE".
3. Jailbreak
At one of the places where I used to work, federal agents swarmed the office with a search warrant one afternoon before shutting down all our computers in order to inspect the hard drives as part of some kind of investigation. Believe it or not, according to my boss, we were still all expected to stay at work for the rest of that day!
We all just puttered around for the next few hours without computers before we finally got sent home at the regular time.
4. A Jerk of Historic Proportions
During the attacks on the World Trade Center, I was managing a small team. When we heard the news, we were all shocked and gathered around our computers trying to understand what exactly had happened. The jerk owner who was my boss at the time called me into his office and told me to tell everyone to get back to work right away.
He said that there was nothing we could do about what happened, and that we were wasting time and money. Nope.
5. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
She was our neighbor, a young mother whose husband was a truck driver. I knew they struggled with finances, had been evicted from past apartments, gone to their church for help with food and utilities, etc. When she told me she was laid off from her job at a bank, I hired her at the store I managed. What a horrible mistake.
It was the beginning of the busy season, and I figured that would give her a few months to get back on her feet while she looked for something back in banking. Instead, she worked for me for less than two weeks. In that time, she took from the register and another employee, was late twice, and quit by leaving her uniforms balled up in a grocery bag with a note saying she "just couldn't do it anymore".
That chick was an A1 phony and I held a grudge against her for a long time.
6. Take a Chill Pill
I work at a consulting firm. The boss's daughter, who shall be referred to henceforth as Captain Incapable, was working for the summer. Being a superhero whose only power is to screw everything sideways that I ever gave her to work on, ever. One day, she came into my office DEMANDING something to occupy her time.
I gave her a menial task and further asked for her to bring me some Advil. She disappeared for nearly an hour, forgot to complete the task I had asked her to do, and handed me two pills, which I later identified as heartburn medication. I didn't yell, although I wanted to, I just stared at her holding the pills in my hand until she left my office.
7. Going Postal
I used to run a small team, and one of them was a notorious screw-up. I asked him to go to the post office and send off some important documents through the classified post, AKA next-day delivery. He comes back after a while and reports that all is good. I get a frantic phone call the next day asking where the docs are.
Guy says it's all good, he posted them fine, must be a post issue. This stuff carries on for a while until I ask him to explain every step of what he did. He bought a stamp, licked his thumb, touched the stamp with his thumb, then posted the letter. Of course, stamps are sticky…and it turns out the stamp got stuck to his thumb and ended up in his pocket.
8. Master’s in Masquerading
My boss suddenly started mentioning her PhD. Weird, I thought, she never mentioned it before in the four years I worked with her. But she definitely wouldn't lie about that, right? I had to find out. I searched graduation records, I checked for theses, I checked websites for labs she would have worked or studied in.
There is not a stitch of evidence anywhere that she has a PhD. I am now convinced she doesn't even have a master's degree. She's lying to coworkers, clients, and investors. When she meets with actual PhDs in her field, she embarrasses herself. I wish a client or an investor would just ask for proof.
9. Getting Down and Dirty
One time, a pipe leading to the sewage tank burst through a wall that I was standing next to. I tried to clean it up and move the product out of the way until someone ran in screaming that it was sewage. When I asked to go home, my boss said I was "the only closer" and therefore had to finish my shift. Needless to say, I quit immediately.
That was the first and hopefully last time I will ever be covered in human poop while on a job.
10. Under Pressure
My boss forgot to release the pressure in a water sprinkler system before he told me to replace several elements. As a result of this, while I was about 30 feet up in a scissor lift, I was blasted with a few hundred gallons of dark black water full of MIC (Microbiologically Induced Corrosion). I was instantly knocked onto my behind, could easily have fallen out, and got totally soaked.
Not only was I still required to finish the remainder of my shift, but my boss actually had the audacity to chew me out for flooding the shop floor!
11. Stalemate
Everyone is trying to figure out who left the egg sandwich in the fridge that's been there a month. It stinks like rotten food, but no one is owning up to it.
12. Work Fun Shun
One co-worker had a bunch of cash stolen from her purse. Everyone knows who did it. Not only was she the only one not in attendance at a meeting when the money went missing, but she suddenly started avoiding my co-worker when they had been friends before that. Also, she would have to know exactly where the purse was stored in order to sneak in and back before being noticed.
Now no one in the office is talking to the alleged thief. That’s our version of office justice since management can’t fire her without more proof.
13. Falling Flat
I once worked with a girl who thought the world was flat. There was an Australian guy who just started work with us and someone made a reference to "down under". She asked why Australia was called Down Under and someone reasoned that it was because it was "down and under the other side of the planet". She was confused and said that you can't go under the other side of the world because you will fall off.
Everyone in earshot was taken aback and thought she was joking, but she continued to insist that she was right and explained how the world was flat. We told her about gravity and about how it pulls things towards the center of the Earth, and she countered that this could not be true as she "was once on a roller coaster and when it suddenly dropped, she felt herself go up".
I asked her; "If the world is flat, how do you explain the oceans still being there?" To which she replied; "The water just goes up to the edge".
14. Team Strategies
One of our full-time guys started dating a temporary seasonal worker on the down low. The temp worker says she’s moving away once her contract is up. He decides to tag along with her and puts in his two weeks. Poor sap—he had no clue what was coming. Two weeks is up and the seasonal worker suddenly has a change of heart and applies for the full-time position that's now open and ends up getting hired on as a replacement for our full-time guy.
15. Wisdomless Tooth
I once slammed my head on a forklift that anyone would miss work ever, even if you told him well in advance. Last year, I got all four of my wisdom teeth taken out at once, yet I was still scheduled for a shift the day after even with the several weeks of notice I had given him. I ended up having to call in sick on the day of, with him reluctantly accepting once he realized he had no choice.
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16. Seating Arrangements
We had a community cozy chair. It added some character to the office until we hired another employee who claimed it as her own. It's 8:00 PM and I'm camped near the printer on five hours of sleep. I'm using the chair while listlessly stapling packets on auto-pilot. The moment I stand, I kid you not, she grunts and drags the chair away to the front of the office. I nearly fall on my tail-bone.
It's a constant source of trouble and she wasn't getting much work even before this point. She hates doing the very thing she originally agreed to do. She sits in the chair in a state of near-sleep. Occasionally, she startles, because the way she sits cuts off her circulation, but settles back into a state of lethargic grumpiness. It blows my mind.
She staffs the check-in desk when I need to be elsewhere, and, frankly, it doesn't look very good to visitors. I'm responsible for her, but can't fire her. The chair is now gone. She looks for it, but she'll never find it.
17. Work Dumb, Not Hard
He was 17 at the time. We’ll call him Jerry. We were working in a grocery store when I met him. Jerry wanted so bad to be a bodybuilder-bro. He idolized the Rock. He spent countless hours in the gym every day. He woke up at 4 AM to run 5K, only slept for 20-minute increments through out the day because "that’s what Marines do," and he made sure everyone knew about his "no excuses" attitude.
Except all he ever did was complain and make excuses. Jerry would give speeches about hard work and dedication, and whatever other stuff he obviously pulled from a motivational Instagram that day. He really did put time in at the gym, though. He had the arms and chest to show it. But if you gave the kid a basic task, he was useless.
Cleaning the bathrooms? He left stains and toilet paper everywhere. Stocking shelves? The product was always facing the wrong way or in the wrong spot. Offering additional assistance to customers? He never bothered, always got yelled at, and never changed. Even just consistently working was an issue for Jerry because he had to stop like every hour to eat a snack or drink a Monster.
For some reason, Jerry thought I was his friend, and he would always complain to me when he got yelled at by management. He made up this conspiracy theory that management hated him and wanted to see him fail. According to him, he was never actually screwing up, management was just attacking him. He would say stuff like "they’re just jealous. They don’t work as hard as me and that makes them jealous".
Jerry lived in a fantasy land that was a product of too many quotes he probably got from some bodybuilding calendar. Eventually, Jerry quit because he was "tired" and he went to work in fast food under his older brother. Jerry got fired by his older brother. Jerry tried joining the forces but apparently couldn’t hack it. Tried becoming a cop but couldn’t hack it.
Now he’s a valet at the local mega-church and he recently turned 25. He’ll probably get fired or quit there too.
18. This Can't End Well
I work for a before and after-school program for elementary school kids. It was the end of the day and I was outside with maybe 15 kids ranging from 5-12 years old because we mix age groups at the end of the day. One of my fourth grade boys was playing tag and accidentally ran into a first grade girl and knocked her over. She cried and he helped her up and apologized. That should have been the end of it—but this was far from over.
She was fine until she saw her dad walking up to the school. The second she sees him she starts wailing again and runs up to him. I’m with the rest of the group and we are slowly making our way inside before it gets dark. Dad walks up to the fourth grade boy and yells in his face, "Did you punch my daughter?!"
Immediately I tell the kids to go inside to the other staff inside and not come out and I stay outside trying to calm down the man. As I explained that I saw the entire situation and thought that maybe she was confused he proceeded to yell in my face things like, "Are you calling my daughter a liar? YOU are the liar," etc.
It turned into this big thing where my bosses were asking if I wanted to press charges and all of this stuff. They also did not want me to be the only staff with his children even if there are many other kids around. I felt bad for the man's older son who had no idea what was going on and was actually good friends with the boy who accidentally knocked his sister down.
I didn't press charges. I just ignored the man every time I saw him. It was very, very hard.
19. Pointing Fingers
I worked for a pizza chain years ago while I was at university. One afternoon, I was prepping ingredients for that night and managed to slice the tip of one of my fingers off. I was working alone, so I had to call my girlfriend to come and drive me to the emergency room. On the way there, I called my manager to let him know what had happened.
The first thing he asked was, "Can you still come in and work tonight?"
20. Periodic, Arbitrary Rules
I got a drink of water and my manager made a new rule on the spot that I had to ask permission to get a drink and "how dare I disobey her rules?" This caused a manager from another department to call me childish for not following "rules". We also aren't allowed to say, "Bye Felicia," and if we do, we get written up because one of the girls thought she was being called something else.
Apparently though, we can yell "poop nugget" across the store while guests are shopping.
21. Like Taking Milk From a Baby
I worked at a preschool. A lady in the infant room and was lying about feeding the babies. She was just dumping their bottles down the drain and making up numbers for telling the parents how many ounces they were "eating". She got fired.
22. What a Bagel
We have bagel day every Friday at work, but there's been a lot of drama because one person doesn't bring butter, another person wants an egg bagel but comes in later and there are no egg bagels left, or someone else gets them from the supermarket instead of a bagel shop. Now bagel day is cancelled and everyone's angry. These are mostly 50+ year old men.
23. Falling Apart
I literally passed out in the parking lot after pushing carts for two and a half hours straight. I then almost got run over by a car, threw up, got sunburned, and watched my heart rate skyrocket to 163. My boss literally just gave me a Band-Aid and said to walk it off. I don’t like him, in case that wasn’t obvious…
24. Hit and Run
I was once involved in an accident where I was hit by a van while riding my bike. I was on my way to the hospital and shot a quick text to my immediate supervisor to let him know that I would probably not be in the next morning, as I did not yet know what the damage was or how long it would take me to deal with it.
He told me to take the day off to be sure that I recovered properly. I was very thankful and did exactly that. The following day, his boss called me up and asked me where the heck I had been the day before. I told him I had been hit by a van. "And?" was his reply. Let’s just say I didn't work there much longer after that.
25. Bad Competition
Everybody here plays "The Points Game" to see how much they can get away with without getting in real trouble. You get "points" for things like being late, calling off, etc. If you get enough of these "points," you get written up, suspended and then fired. After enough time, the points go away. On top of how uncool that is, they talk about it incessantly and hate each other for doing it. It is endlessly annoying.
26. The Leisure Lawyer
I was supposed to train a new junior at my firm. He showed up at 11:30 AM when the workday starts at 8:00. On his first day. When he sat down, I asked him what was up. He said "Am I late?" and I said everyone gets in at 8:00. "Oh, I'm so sorry, but I won't be able to come in earlier than ten". What the heck? No reason was given.
Sadly, I do not have the authority to fire someone, and my boss was out for the day, so I stuck with him. At lunch, he arrives back half an hour late. At three, he starts packing his bag. I ask where he's going. He said home. I told him that he had to work the full eight hours. He refused and left. He said no one still works an eight-hour day.
I promptly left my boss a voicemail, and when new guy strolled in the next day (at 10:30), the boss fired him on the spot. Apparently, this 22-year-old guy has never worked a day in his life. It was shocking. He thought that working less than three hours was appropriate.
27. Reply All Regrets
My current boss is a moron. I'm really not sure how he made it to the director level. My company typically makes very good hiring decisions. He asked me to prepare a presentation for the whole company to roll out a newly instituted policy. THREE DAYS later I deliver the presentation to him and he had forgotten about it.
He replied to me (and CC'd his boss because he's that dumb) saying, "I don't know who gave you the authority to write your own policies, but nothing leads me to believe that we would embrace this type of policy any time in the near future. Please consult with me prior to wasting any resources on these types of projects".
His boss replied to both of us and said, "Is this some sort of inside joke between you two? Good job, we will roll this out immediately". Also, he doesn't use they're, their, and there. In his world, there is only one spelling...".there".
28. A Bit Standoffish
Two other teachers I work with at an elementary school both had daughters. The daughters were about 6 or 7 and were friends. Teacher 1 walks into Teacher 2’s classroom and calls her kid stuck-up for not including her daughter in a play date with another kid...all the while the kids were in the room.
29. A New Kind of Energy Crisis
I used to work in high-pressure sales. Once a week, the director would come in and, to get us all energized, she brought in energy drinks for everyone. She'd leave them in her office for the salespeople to have. Now, I liked the director. She was nice and professional. My manager, on the other hand, was a piece of absolute trash and a dirtbag.
I got tired of drinking energy drinks after a while, so I decided not to participate in this one week. My manager immediately came up to me and said, "I noticed you didn't have an energy drink today. You do know that Wendy (let's call her Wendy) bought these for the entire division, right?" I said I was aware of that but still didn't want one.
Without even so much as a pause, he then shouted: "Listen, you march straight into that office and get one right now". I was so stunned that I didn't know what to do. So I got up, grabbed a can, walked back to my desk, and just left it sitting there unopened. He then came back a few minutes later and asked why I didn't drink it.
I told him I didn't want to have one because my body doesn't do well with so much caffeine in it. At that point, he asked me to walk into his office. Now, I admit that I wasn't exactly the best at this job. As a matter of fact, I happened to hate it. When I sat down in my manager’s office, he stated to me that my lack of energy was extremely distracting to him (not to the team, to him).
He added that it shows in my performance. He ended off with the promise of "If you keep this up, we may have to let you go". All I said to him in response was, "Okay, well that's unfortunate. But I will not drink something that takes a toll on my body". Lo and behold, I ended up getting fired very soon after that conversation.
I enjoyed two glorious weeks of unemployment until I got a phone call from the higher-ups at that same company. They wanted to hire me for a different position, not in sales. No interview and higher pay. I took the offer and I absolutely loved it. I have since moved on to an even better opportunity, thanks to that experience.
As for my ex-manager, he ended up being terminated for substance use (and when I say substances, I mean bad ones). He actually had the audacity to recently send me a friend request on Facebook! I didn't accept it, but I heard from my prior sales coworkers that he was asking people for money.
30. "Ironic" Is an Understatement
When I was living out of state, I got word that my dad back home was dying. So, I told the district manager of the restaurant I served at that I needed to take a leave of absence for a few weeks to a month and go home immediately. This was in mid-June. Her immediate response was "I don’t know if I can allow that. We’re already short-staffed for Father’s Day".
Yes, you read that right. For FATHER’S DAY.
31. Keeping the Thermo-status Quo
Over in customer service, Brenda is complaining about being too hot and throws a tantrum every time someone touches the thermostat. Brad, on the other hand, because he's cold and fed up of Brenda, keeps messing with her by changing the thermostat.
32. Bathroom Etiquette
The office building where I work has been trying to catch the mysterious Phantom Pooper. The office building has multiple companies per floor, but only one multi-stall bathroom to serve each floor. Every single day, someone from the other company on our floor blows up the bathroom, poops on the toilet seat, the floor, doesn't flush, etc.
Through careful analysis, cunning detective work, and a fancy Excel spreadsheet, we feel like we have determined who the offender is, but are not sure how to confront her. Now we are getting remodeled bathrooms and have to use the bathroom on the floor below ours. Guess who struck again?
33. Know Your Place
We just got a new supervisor from within the company and everyone who has worked under him in the past has nothing but army stories. He's been decent so far, but one day he was being a big jerk to us all. Then one of our safety guys wrote him up for not wearing shaded safety glasses in a weld cell. Our safety guys have the authority to write anyone and everyone for safety violations.
It’s a ballsy move by the safety guy but he's basically irreplaceable to the company as he's the only one who knows how to operate and repair our aging weld robot systems.
34. In Detail
I worked for a small design company fresh out of school. They used cracked software, didn't really pay anyone, and were generally shady, but I didn't really think anything of it...that is until the FBI showed up one day. Apparently, they also didn't pay their taxes, and so my boss was taken away in handcuffs and the office was abruptly closed.
...or so I thought. In reality, our boss called our creative director from lockup and told us to all go and work from this seedy motel room he had set up to finish up the assignment, or else we wouldn't get paid. Not too surprisingly, though, nobody showed up. Apparently, we had all independently decided that now would be a good time to start looking for new opportunities.
35. Hanging by a Thread
I am pretty sure my CEO has been stealing money from our company. I’m a textile designer and we have factories in India and China. No one wants to ship our product because they haven't been paid and personally, I haven't gotten a raise in three years. All the while the CEO is driving a Bentley and just purchased a new $2+ million-dollar home.
He is constantly getting angry calls from our factories, some of which he owes millions of dollars. In fact, he owes $7 million to one factory in particular. But that's not even the worst part: I’m pretty sure that if he went to China, he would be detained because of how much he owes people. A lot of them fly to our office here in the States and wait for him for meetings but he ducks out the back door like a coward.
One day he even drove an old truck to work so no one would know he was here.
36. This Girl is on Fire
I used to work for a landscaping company and over the course of a summer, I witnessed one of my co-workers accidentally set three different things on fire: a hedge trimmer, a truck, and himself.
37. He Who Smelt It, Dealt It
He wouldn’t stop breaking wind the entire time we worked together. To make matters worse, we worked in close proximity, and it was absolutely horrible. Silent toots, but so deadly. Once he did it in front of someone else and looked at me, trying to make it seem as if I was the one who did it. I hated that guy so much.
38. Battle Queen
I worked in a small office of seven people at a university for two years. I worked most closely with another woman who was 36 and dating our student worker who was 24. The woman and I had a lot in common and got along pretty well at first. We even double-dated a few times. About a month in, she started oversharing drama with me about her boyfriend.
They would get into huge fights based mostly on things surrounding their age difference. One time when he broke up with her, she insisted on laying dramatically on the floor of her office crying she was "sick" instead of going to our presentation, all to get attention from him. She would stop talking to him and expect me to communicate work-related matters to him.
I flat out said this was unprofessional and I wouldn’t do it. She dated or chatted up other male employees in different departments at the university in between break-ups then ghost them making them call and/or show up at our office. One day when they were on-again, her boyfriend went out for drinks with one of our gay coworkers.
He told the guy he thought he might be gay. The guy propositioned him and said, "If you sleep with anyone it better not be with (other gay coworker)". Then the boyfriend went home and told this woman everything. She flipped out—not at the boyfriend, of course, but at the coworker. She straight up showed up at his house to fight over her man.
Literally half of our office wanted to sleep with or hurt one another.
39. Heartless
On a day I can never forget: I was rushed to the hospital with severe chest pains, thinking I was about to have a heart attack. Seven hours later, I'm leaving and decide to call my boss since I hadn't been in touch with him for the entire day. I immediately find out that I’m in major trouble for not calling sooner and that I’m still expected to come into work right away.
40. Ruining the Moment
I was an exterminator for a while and one of the places where I once did preventative treatments (i.e. spraying and treating before there was a problem) was an old creepy motel. My job was to go check in at the front desk, tell them I was there, and then walk to each room to complete the appropriate procedures. Maybe 20-25 rooms total.
To make a long story short, I found a lifeless guy in one of the rooms. The person did not answer their door when I knocked, so I assumed it was unoccupied and walked in. Yea, I was wrong. I was extremely shaken up by this and immediately called my boss to tell him what had happened. All he said in response was, "What time is your next appointment?"
I laughed and went home.
41. Payback
A colleague who clips her toe nails at her desk can't seem to find out what's wrong with her computer mouse saying they move fast new but slowly go out. She's gone through 3 so far—and it's all according to my devious plan. Little does she know I slowly turn down the sensitivity until she's freaks out and buys a new one. Screw her. Don't clip your toe nails at your office desk.
42. I Left You a "Present"
There was a fellow sales associate at my work who was a bad employee in general—taking items and cash from us repeatedly, not respecting our boss, not showing up for shifts, etc. All that stuff. If she had worked anywhere else, she would have been fired. But I will never, ever forgive her for what she did last month.
Our store is only open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday right now. On Saturday night, she took a McPoop in the bathroom and didn't flush it. It sat in the HEAT of the store with the bathroom door open all weekend. When my boss and I walked into the store on Tuesday morning, I literally threw up in my mouth.
43. I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me
I worked at an office supply store, and one day I saw that one of my co-workers had a picture of me. In the picture, I was standing at the register, so it was taken at work. I asked why he had it, and he just tried laughing it off like it was funny. Later on, he tells me he's been putting his own memory card in the store display cameras and taking pictures of me.
But it gets worse. Then he goes on to inform me he has more pictures of me saved on his computer at home. He was such a creep.
44. Crimping Our Style
I work at a place that manufactures hose. Part of the process of making hose is inserting various types of nozzles into the end then crimping it tightly to the hose so it does not come off. When we crimp a nozzle to a hose, it leaves a specific pattern that is unique to our crimper. We received a report that one of our customers' hoses had failed at the nozzle.
That's bad because when a high-pressure hose fails, you want it to explode in the middle rather than at the nozzles. You want it that way because when those nozzles come off with several hundreds or even thousands of PSI of water in them, they're like a deadly weapon. We sent someone to their location to see the hose that failed.
After 30 seconds he said, "This isn't our hose, it's not the same crimp spec or pattern," and then he left. It turns out that company had actually tried to crimp the hose on their own, using the wrong spec, which is why it failed at the nozzle. They were going to use it to get free hose out of us.
45. The Tables Have Turned
When I worked for my last boss, I cried every single morning on the way to work, and some of the others in the office were on antidepressants. She also once slept with someone in our office. What a dirty, ugly, poor excuse for a human being. Then, she said one day that she was taking a vacation when, in reality, she had checked herself into a mental institute.
It makes me appreciate what I have now.
46. I Love a Parade...Not!
I once worked at a store that was right in the middle of a common parade route. My boss would always single me out and put me on duty alone whenever there was a parade going on. That may not sound like a big deal but believe me, it was a living nightmare. On the morning of every holiday that had a parade (i.e. Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc.), I would have to go in very early in the morning before the festivities started to get everything set up for the day.
I would then have to just kind of chill for hours on end until the store opened, which would not be until after the parade was over. They insisted that I arrive and set up extremely early on days like this to ensure that I would get my usual parking spot before the crowds showed up. If I didn’t come in super early, the lot would quickly fill to capacity with people's vehicles who were there to watch the parade.
So, this meant I always had to sit around doing nothing for several hours to start my day. But then it would get so much worse. Let’s put it this way: when there are that many people lining up on the side of the street, some of them will eventually need to pee. So, they would inevitably come up to the closed, locked doors of my store, read the sign that clearly stated we were closed until the parade ended, and that we did not have public restrooms for parade watchers.
Nevertheless, I kid you not, at least half of the dozens of people who walked up and read the sign would still proceed to yank repeatedly on the door handles over and over again; because, clearly, if the door was locked and wouldn't open on the first pull, then obviously the answer must be to try and rip the darn thing off its hinges! Right??
One Labor Day, I was the sole employee once again and, by the end of the parade, these people had literally ripped the door locks off of their tracks and I had to call maintenance to come to fix it. Otherwise, I would not have been able to close the doors and lock them when we closed—two big deadbolts would come out the top and bottom of the door into slots to lock them; these people destroyed those.
I definitely do not miss that job or the selfish boss I had there…
47. Dumping Grounds
We have been noticing small mysterious changes over the last month in our office. A square of brand-new carpet being torn up and replaced in a hallway. The runner in front of the cafeteria disappeared, and a few weeks later we got a brand new one. Parts of the hallways have been strangely roped off. We also just had security cameras installed in all of the walkways.
The situation was finally brought up and discussed in a private meeting. The explanation was absolutely insane. An employee has been pooping randomly throughout the building during business hours. These have been rather large piles of poop that people have narrowly missed stepping in. This is a very professional workplace which makes this entire situation all the more perplexing. This person is still on the loose. It could be anyone.
48. Restricted Operations
There is a very exclusive donut club in which members take turns each Friday bringing in donuts for the other members in the club. It is very serious business. My second week I received a page long email offering some donuts because it was a special occasion and most of the club was out of the office, but it was very clear this was a one-time deal and usually outsiders partaking in these tasty treats would be punished.
A few Fridays ago, it was the IT guy's turn to bring in donuts. I don't know if he forgot or what, but he ended up getting a donut box from one of the local donut chains and filled it with the little donuts from a packet in the vending machine. He emailed the club like, "Hey everyone, donuts are here!" and people were livid because he clearly was trying to pull a fast one, he was not joking and I guess didn't realize that people would notice. They noticed.
The next week is when I was filled in on all of this. Apparently, the IT guy had been on vacation and was returning that day, so everyone was buzzing about how to get their revenge. They ultimately had settled on putting 12 cheerios in a box and sending him the "donuts have arrived!" email. I learned about all of this on revenge day, when my new boss invited me into the club, 2 or 3 weeks ago.
I politely declined mostly because I don't pass any donut places on my way to work, but a little bit because it's way more fun witnessing this all from the outside.
49. The Long Game
The trainer intentionally trained people how to make errors when filling out paperwork. Errors counted heavily at this company. So while trainees thought that they were doing a perfect job, they were actually making huge mistakes. This sabotage ultimately cost many trainees their job...and got the trainer promoted, "Since she was the only one who learned how to fill out the paperwork perfectly".
50. Devil Worship
I worked at a call center for a year and a half. It was a rather bad one that hired people with literally no computer experience. One of the new hires was a woman I will name Lynn. Lynn had no experience with computers or cell phones, leaving her in training for an extra two weeks. Because she sucked so much, they put her in a cubicle next to mine, since I would have been a trainer if not for my scheduling conflicts.
Lynn had quirks, such as reading her Bible every break. I didn't think much of it. Until, of course, we started decorating for Halloween. Lynn was quiet about this, until October 30th, when she freaked out and screamed at everyone that they were going to burn for worshipping the devil's holiday. The next day, she gave dirty looks to the preschoolers who came in to trick-or-treat, muttering under her breath about sinners.
Everyone on the account reported her to HR for harassment. She quit before she was fired, though. Apparently she got engaged to some guy and moved with him further north. We're pretty certain that the man married her either for her virginity or for a green card.
51. Let’s Go to the Tape
I worked with this lady in a restaurant who for some reason decided to hate me that week. She always hated someone, it was just a matter of who. I never gave her any reason to dislike me, I think she was just one of those people who thought that the worse she could make others look, the better she would look to the management.
Anyway, she took money out of the register and did a reverse pick-pocket thing and put it in my apron. Then she said she saw me take money out of the register. I was stunned. I protested like crazy, but nobody believed me. They said they had the security tape and would be reviewing it, but in the meantime, I should just go.
The next day, I showed up like nothing had happened and the lady in question had been fired.
52. Don’t Shoot the Messenger
I had been hanging out with a girl and we had talked about the possibility of dating, but she wanted to know me better first before getting into anything. So, we're just friends for the moment until we got more of an opportunity to get to know each other. About two weeks after that, she tells me she doesn't want to lead me on but is now seeing someone else.
I'm fine with that, so we just continue being friends. She doesn't really talk about it beyond that, doesn't tell me anything about him, and I don't ask. I'm still interested and don't really want to give up, but I'm not pushing it. Two weeks later, she's dropping less than subtle hints that she wants to tell me who it is. I ask and apparently, it's a coworker of ours.
Trick of it is, she's 21 and he's over 40. She's looking for serious long-term commitments too. I try to break it to her that it's really unlikely that she's going to find what she's looking for with this guy. She takes it incredibly poorly. We're now no longer friends. I ran into the guy in the hall today and he stared daggers at me.
53. Showing His True Colors
At an office job that I once had, I was asked by my boss one day to organize a set of folders according to color. The only problem was that I’m completely colorblind. So, as you’d expect in that situation, I told my boss, "Yo, I’m colorblind!" and expected him to understand. Nope! He thought that this was me trying to get out of work, and said he would fire me.
54. Lesson Learned
Guy had my name in his diary notebook listed under "people who need to be taught a lesson". He was fired immediately and I wasn’t allowed to come and go alone.
55. Pregnancy Paralysis
We had a new employee who used her pregnancy to get out of doing any work. She was only a few months pregnant and every time she was told to do even a minimal amount of work, she'd hold a napkin over her mouth, put on her best puppy dog eyes, and pretend to be nauseous. And it always happened after she was asked to do some work and even then, it was always at half the capacity the rest of us had to do.
I knew that she was faking her illness to get out of work. Everyone at the office accused me of being "a hater" for daring to suggest that she was pretending. But then she went and told me straight up, "Every time they tell me to do work, I just act like I'm sick! Hahaha!" My manager overheard her when she said this. She was given the option of quitting or being fired.
56. Dewey Decimal’s Motel
I work at a church and there’s been a really big issue with people giving out the parish library after hours code to non-members. Word got out to some homeless people who then set up a little motel in one of the study rooms in the back. Somehow, it went unnoticed for about a week until smoke ends started appearing in trashcans throughout the library building, which isn’t a very big building.
Now there's this huge all-staff email thread going on and on with people clicking reply all about whose fault it is and how to fix this issue.
57. Not a Boss Move
I had a boss who nobody liked. He was the one-upper. Everything he had anything to do with was better than everyone else’s. His kids, his wife, his dog, his car...We've all dealt with them. He would also tell these outlandish lies and stories all the time, even if he wasn't trying to one-up you! He didn't think twice about throwing people under the bus when it came to problems in the office, either.
He was pretty much universally unliked and unrespected. Well, one night he started acting a little squirrelly at work. Kind of vacant, not much to say. The next day, the authorities show up looking for him, but he was out to lunch. They tell us if he shows back up to call them, but he never made it back.
The next morning, he comes back to work, but the officers were waiting for him. He sees them from the parking lot, takes off running back to his car and drives off. The men leave, but call back a few hours later and give us a dire warning. They tell us if he shows up, he's probably armed and we should give him a WIDE berth by leaving the building.
But, the dude never showed...Three days later, I see him on the news. In a mugshot. He had burned his wife's business down, then he offed her. Waited outside their house, and when she walked out? Point blank shot, two to the head, five to the chest. Apparently she was about to divorce him and had kicked him out a few days previous.
It doesn't get much weirder than seeing your boss on the nightly news like that.
58. In Bed With the Enemy
One of my co-workers was a 20-some-year-old girl who initially seemed nice until she took the liberty of informing me that she had previously been detained in Korea—for trying to end someone. Apparently she beat a woman with the end of her stiletto heel. Obviously, I tried to be extremely nice to her even though she was an incompetent fool because I didn't want a repeat of her incident to happen to me.
She began dating our boss (who was well into his 50s) and, unsolicited, shared explicit details of their bedroom life with me. All the time. She couldn't properly work our computer system, and whenever she'd fill out paperwork, she'd mess it up...and everyone else somehow got blamed for her errors. Thankfully, after she and my boss broke up, she was fired.
59. Background Check Optional
Since I started my new job two months ago, we've had the head of marketing leave his position. Come to find out, he was not only in charge of much of the company's financing, but also the owner's financing. He has been stealing money—over $100,000—from the owner. He was opening credit lines in his name, draining bank accounts, etc.
I’m not sure how long it's been going on. But I did find out that the same guy was locked up from '94-'98 for embezzling over $1 million. I’m also not sure why they hired him here in the first place back in 2003 knowing this. I work IT so I've had to spend my time going through his emails and his personal computer and shutting down his access to anything and everything.
60. A Sonic Boom
I recently experienced one of my worst migraines of all time. I was literally sobbing and vomiting out of control. I happened to have been working my shift at Sonic at the time, and my manager said that we were too busy for me to be allowed to leave. That’s right, this manager saw no issue with an employee vomiting in front of potential customers.
Let that sink in…
61. Going Hungry
I work in a restaurant. One day, our oven broke; so we couldn’t cook any food. You’d think that would be viewed as a pretty big deal when your business is a restaurant! Nevertheless, the manager made us continue on with our jobs as normal, arguing that we could still sell salads (without the cooked elements), drinks, and cheesecakes. Our total sales for the day came out to $4.59.
That amount was from the cheesecake the manager bought for himself.
62. Obvious Warning
This ex-employee just moved in next door to my boss, two months after getting fired for violent, crazy outbursts. He already knew where she lived and he still chose to live there too. So now my boss is filing a harassment order.
63. Man Made Disaster
This all started about 18 months ago between my boss, Megan, her husband, Daniel, and my colleague Melissa. Me, Megan, Daniel and Melissa all work in the same department, however Daniel works on a different team because Megan can't be his boss. Anyway, we're all going for a team night out but Megan can't make it. Daniel, Melissa, and I all go for the curry, along with a couple of others.
Come Monday morning, Megan calls me in to a meeting, crying her eyes out because she's convinced Melissa and Daniel slept together on the night out. She's absolutely freaking out so I agree to ask Melissa as we're pretty close. I ask Melissa, who also freaks out crying and telling me that Megan is using her power as her boss to push her out of the company and begs me to believe that she didn't sleep with Dan.
I trust her; I mean, we've known each other for a long time. Dan also promises me nothing happened, however Meg and Dan's marriage suffered as a result of all the drama. Months go by, Megan becomes really strange and starts following Melissa to the bathroom trying to listen to her recorded calls, and access her emails.
I tell her that she can't use her position like this and we do this weekly routine where she cries, promises me she won't do it again, and she does it again the next week. Anyway, it gets to a point where Melissa can't cope and she resigns. Megan walks around all triumphantly. Dan seems to reconcile with his wife and they start trying for a baby. This is where things REALLY went off the rails.
Last night, Melissa posts a picture of an ultrasound clearly stating that it is her and Daniel's baby. It turns out they'd been sleeping together for two years and she'd lied to me the whole time. Megan is obviously devastated walking around like a ghost of herself. Daniel thinks it's the funniest thing ever, now lives with Melissa and is expecting a child...on his anniversary date with Megan, which also happens to be Meg's due date with Dan's child.
64. The Customer Is Always Wrong
We'll call her Anne, because that was the insane woman’s name. Anne, as she loved to remind me, worked in bookshops for 25 years. And yet somehow in all that time she had not learned how to 1) be polite or helpful to customers, 2) keep track of stock properly or use the computer ordering system, 3) answer the freaking phone.
I once saw her make a customer cry, she was so rude to them. She once complained to the manager about me because people would ask me questions instead of her—this was apparently my fault, silly me for being nice instead of belittling people for daring to not know something. She attempted to blame me for other screw-ups she was responsible for, one of them on a day when I wasn't even in.
During her time at the shop, three other workers left because they "Couldn't work with that [bleep] any more" (direct quote). Her hair was reminiscent in style and color of a WW1 pith helmet.
65. Can’t Touch This
Fawn was a complete psycho. She set the mood of the workplace and every boss was afraid of her. It wasn’t until she finally met someone dumb enough to date her that she calmed down a bit, but she was still insufferable. She loved when she was in control, but hated when someone didn’t put up with her stuff—somehow, this rarely happened.
Saw her mistreat an elderly co-worker who was a third of her size. She was legitimately insane. She never really wore makeup but when she did, she looked like Leatherface. Truly horrifying. Her mom would visit often, and let me tell you, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I actually ran into her a couple of years ago and I dodged her hug.
She looked like she wanted to smack me, but it was so worth it.
66. The Rumors Are True
I work with my wife in a separate department but I just started working here. Someone started up a rumor that the "new guy" is having an affair with a woman in marketing. But they are 100% talking about me and my wife, who works in marketing.
67. Check out of My Life
I had a co-worker who literally would do nothing but tell my higher-ups they needed to fire me, because I wasn't as organized in her way as she was. I worked the front desk at a hotel at the time and my first day with her, she refused to check in a soldier who had a room with her two kids under her husband's name.
Over the next several months, I had to record our interactions, because she would say I made some backhanded comments to her and left the front desk messy. My bosses always took my side, though, because she'd had a reputation there before and only took her back on because they were desperate for staff.
68. The Early Bird Gets the Worm
I once had a boss who absolutely hated me. But after realizing that she wasn't qualified for the position and had already slept with two different guys at the company, I came to the conclusion that she was a joke and to just be dismissed. From that point on, I never paid much attention to her and when she'd show up at my building once every blue moon, I kind of just ignored her.
I was busy and didn't have time to play her stupid games. Then I learned that she had written me up for being late on three separate occasions. The first time I had been one minute late, the second time three minutes late, and the third time six minutes late. I lived an hour away from work and had to deal with traffic.
I left my house two hours early most days to account for this; but when there's a wreck on the road, there's not much you can do as the freeway is backed up and the side roads are clogged. Each time I got stuck in traffic, I called ahead of time to let her know. She still wrote me up each time in the hopes of eventually firing me.
But I had a plan. I started leaving the house crazy early. I'd get into work super early and then leave early in the afternoon. She haaaated it. Eventually, her behavior got her fired and people to this day remember her and laugh at what a horrible person she was. The best part? I also had that write up removed from my file, as it was recognized that she was treating many of her employees unfairly.
Needpix
69. Leaving You in Charge
, , when the teacher in charge of the classroom got a call saying that her daughter had gotten into a car accident. She immediately left, and the boss told me that I was in charge of the whole classroom by myself for the rest of that day. As intimidating as that already was for me, it quickly turned out to be much worse.
The teacher ended up staying with her daughter all throughout her recovery process and then immediately took her vacation time for the year. This meant that beginning with that horrifying day, she was away for two full months straight. Naturally, you would think that they brought in a new teacher to take her place for all that time, right? Nope!
Little old me, with zero qualifications, was forced by my boss to look after the class on my own for two entire months—all the while being paid as an assistant!
70. Computer Games
Our computer guy has been with the company for upwards of 10 years, charging premium. I have been working with computers and can do some basic stuff since I started crashing them due to visiting bad sites as a kid. Basically, I know a lot of about recovery restoring and stuff like that. The IT guy claimed one of the computers was slow because a couple of my photography works are on the computer.
This is after he couldn’t figure out what was wrong for about two hours and tried to throw me under the bus. I get on the computer and fix it in ten minutes in front of the owner. Things got really quiet and they both left.
71. Don’t Be Catty
I worked in an office with a literal "cat lady". She had at least a dozen cats and didn't have enough money to care for them. She looked like a cadaver. She was very skinny, her skin was waxen, her hair oily and limp, and she stank. I won't even talk about her teeth...For some reason, she thought I was her best friend, even though I'd never socialized with her outside of our office and never sought her out inside of the office.
I was just there to do my job and go home. But I was the one she came to in order to complain and moan about how everyone was against her. She also thought that the vet should treat her cats for free because...reasons. I dunno, I worked there for about seven months, and every day I heard more about her cats than I ever wanted to hear.
She also had no concept of personal space, so I got to smell them too—whether I wanted to or not. And whenever she wasn't parking herself in my cubicle, someone else would take her place and give me an earful about her.
72. Pics or It Didn’t Happen
Had a serial pooper with us for a good two years. He always took a dump midday and would always take a picture of his masterpiece. He would find creative ways to show us his art. On better days, it would just look like a python, but darn the worst ones were during Mexican lunch-outs.
73. Gaslighting Specialists
At an old company I used to work for, we had this accountant I'll call Laurie. Laurie was her 40s and just insanely gorgeous for her age—not fake and plastic surgery looking, just natural beauty. We all tended to work late and she was no exception—not always, but maybe 2 days a week she'd stay over an hour or two.
It got to where her husband would call our department's phone since the main line would go to a recording after regular hours and ask whoever to go find his wife. Sometimes she was there, but if she wasn't, the husband would get weird and start badgering whoever picked up "She's messing around on me, I know it. Who's she sleeping with?"
So, we'd have to be careful about answering, as to avoid this guy and his questions. She has young kids and every so often, after he'd call, we'd get a call from her kid(s), asking to speak to their mom. Eventually, we brought it up to her and she was so embarrassed, swore that he was possessive and crazy and she wasn't doing anything wrong.
We would always tell her it was between her family and we didn't care, but she would always just deny and say her husband was nuts. It got to the point where my boss who was friends with her would argue with her husband and tell him he was possessive and that he was crazy. Eventually, we would all argue with the guy when he called and confirm that she wasn't cheating.
I stayed out of it for a long time, but after watching Laurie cry in our office after being confronted on it, I started to stand up to the guy when he'd call too and tell him that I work with her and had never seen her act improper and that the accusations were taking a toll on our workplace. He would usually talk to me fairly rationally and always say that the signs were all there and he was almost certain she was cheating, but I always stood up for her—which made what happened next all the more painful.
One day, she put in her notice, just like that. We were all stunned as she'd worked there for 20 years and definitely seemed like a lifer. It was only after she left that I found out she'd been having numerous affairs over the course of several years with coworkers as well as other random guys. And to make it worse, my boss had known all along and was helping to cover for her.
I felt terrible for sticking up for her and really trying to convince the husband that she was faithful.
74. Unfinished Business
In the middle of work, I got a call one day from my cousin saying that our house had been broken into and robbed. I immediately went home to deal with it and file a report with the authorities, and it was honestly so stressful. My supervisor then rang me to ask what time I was planning on coming back to work at later in the day because she still had some paperwork for me to finish.
75. We’re Sick of Garbage Like This
I was working at McDonald’s and I was supposed to do the overnight shift, but I was sick. And I mean couldn't get out of bed and throwing up sick. So, I called in that day, several hours in advance, to say that I couldn't make it in. I had been working there for quite a few years by that point, so they knew that I was competent and trustworthy.
They also knew that I would never call in sick unless it was absolutely necessary. I got written up because "they needed me" that day. Why? Because apparently the freakin’ hygiene inspector was coming in that morning, and therefore they required all employees to be present. I couldn't believe it. I quit not long after.
76. Over Gripe
We had a visit from a corporate higher up today, and one of my coworkers knowingly violated policy in front of said higher up. Not surprisingly, the higher up was furious and insisted my coworker be written up. Usually my boss is very lenient about this specific policy and many others and will just remind everyone not to do it, but never actually write anyone up.
Apparently, the best way for my coworker to handle the situation was to yell at my boss that "This usually isn't a big deal, I do this all the time, what the heck?" My boss, who is fortunately a pretty chill person, just looked at her and responded, "If you really want to complain that I don't write you up every day, I'd be happy to change that for you".
Now my coworker is complaining about the higher-up, my boss, and the policy. My other coworkers are complaining about how she should've been fired. My boss is complaining about the whole situation. And now I'm complaining about all the complaining.
77. Anger Management
Oh man, where do I begin. I worked for a medical supply company that specialized in oxygen therapy and other supplies. I worked with this guy, we'll call him John. John was very religious and was a part of one of those cult-like churches who speak in tongues and force their beliefs on you. One day, he went too far. He tried to get into a religious discussion about homosexuality.
I politely passed and told him that I didn't have a problem with it and what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their own bedroom was none of my business nor his. After while he saw that I wouldn't play into these discussions at work or any other time, and this made him angry. John would act very Christian until something made him angry.
He would throw things around the warehouse for having to do his job. One time, he decided to throw an oxygen tank, filled with 2000 psi. He regretted this decision when it hit one of the tank carts, sheared off the top, and took off like a homing missile right back at his shin. The aftermath was truly disgusting. I believe his shin was like a jigsaw puzzle that had to be put back together, because it looked like a bag of Legos between his knee and ankle.
What's even better is that since he was such a jerk to me and everyone else he worked with, I decided to let the manager know how this happened. John spent months out of work and fought the company to get workman’s comp, but when they found out how it happened...he was denied. I'm assuming because he was an idiot with a short fuse.
Instant karma.
78. A Rude Awakening
I worked at a fast-food chain themed around a royal figure, and we got a new assistant manager who transferred in from a fast-food chain known for their special sauce. She was the whiniest person I’ve ever met and made everyone else do her tasks for her. I was napping on my break when I was sick and she physically grabbed me and shook me awake to do something for her.
I should have refused, but I was too sick and tired to fight, so I just did it. She lasted two weeks before being kicked to the curb. Screw you, Brittany.
79. Lovable Larcenist
I work in a hostel in Amsterdam. It's a quick turnaround because we hire travelers who are passing through and we let them work for their bed, changing bed sheets and cleaning toilets. People usually stay a couple months. There's this new guy who everyone loves, but I am growing more and more suspicious of him. Things keep going missing in the rooms that he cleans. It started off small with things like earphones, sunglasses, hats.
Last week 150 pounds was stolen and two days later he asked me the exchange rate for 150 pounds to euros. He also told me that he is traveling on his brother’s passport using a fake name and was kicked out of his parent’s house for stealing. I don't know who to turn to. I like the guy, but we can't have a thief working in the building.
80. This Paints an Ugly Picture
I worked in automotive painting. I had been complaining about my mask parts needing replacing for a few weeks. Finally, my mask broke and I refused to paint because deadly fumes were coming into my mask. Being the only automotive painter, this meant work came to a halt. I was told to get in there and paint or else.
I pointed at the security camera and asked him to say that again but a little louder. He fired two people that day, but I wasn't one of them.
81. Full of Hot Gas
My first boss was the manager at a gas station where I used to work. He was good in most ways—efficient, fair, disciplined, ran a tight ship. There was just one drawback. He used terrible slurs often and loudly.
This guy resurrected some old slurs that would have sent Bull Connor running for a thesaurus. And to make matters worse, the truck driver who delivered our tankers of fuel every week was a minority, and he often overheard my boss using this kind of language. The two of them almost came to blows over this on more than one occasion.
His comeuppance finally came when the corporate office hired a new third-level supervisor, a young man out of business school who happened to be of a minority background. The boss just could not take orders from someone of another race. When he quit, he trashed the office and tore up every floppy disk we had (it was the 80s) so that we couldn't do our accounting for a few days.
82. Team Quitters
We recently got a new general manager who seemed fine at first, but it has become increasingly obvious she doesn't know what she's doing being a manager. She's been giving everyone bad hours except a few people she likes basically because they're friendly with her not because they're especially good at their jobs or preferred by customers. She’s also terrible at keeping track of who needs what days off, even when they text her, write notes, put it through the online system, etc.
My department makes most of the profit of the store and under previous general managers our supervisor was basically our boss with very little interference from the general manager. My department’s supervisor is thinking of trying to transfer to a different store which would probably lead to a bunch of other people quitting beyond those who already have or are planning to.
83. At the Flip of a Switch
I work with documents from a short-wall cubical. I get to my office at around 6AM. My boss shows up around 5:30AM. It's just us for the first few hours of the day. We prefer the lights off because we have windows producing natural light when the sun comes up. The lights in the office are too bright and bother us.
Every single day, this guy, we'll call him Ron, shows up and turns on all the lights in the office. Ron will even turn on the lights in rooms with no one in it. We've told him that we don't like the lights on in our area. It's bothersome. Ron flips out and says we have no authority over the lighting in this area and that OSHA is on his side.
He then calls up the team and demands for an OSHA representative to be sent to check for the lighting levels in the office. Someone came out and said it's fine. Ron demands another test. This time they send a team of people to check the light levels and try to come up with a solution. Because of this, a lot of testing has to be done on our light system.
So now, we have maintenance people running around turning the lights on and off to see what happens. This has been going on for months. Everyone in the office is sick of the lights being messed with but Ron keeps making a deal about it. Recently, a couple people have sided with Ron that the lights should be at full power at all times throughout the day.
So now there's a huge feud in the office between team no-lights and team full-bright-blinding-lights. The teams are getting bigger and it's to the point where some work isn't getting done because of the feud. Some people say, "I can't work with the lights so bright—I'm going home," while others say, "The lights aren't bright enough and I can't see without them on so I'm going home until OSHA fixes it".
People are starting to play pranks on each other, such as buying lamps and flashlights for team bright-lights. This is a huge company, think Google or Microsoft size, yet we're raging a battle based on a light switch.
84. This Cat Has Nine Lives
Amanda. She smelled SO bad and knew it—because she'd make excuses. "I forgot to shower". "I showered, but my washing machine is broken so I have to wear dirty clothes". There was documented disciplinary action about her hygiene. One day, she legit smelled like old maxi pads & got sent home. The same girl always "forgot to eat breakfast," so she took extra breaks to gob McDonald's and Uncrustables.
Also, she couldn't (wouldn't) vacuum the store at closing because she "heard screams coming from the vacuum" and thought it was ghosts. I documented EVERYTHING. Verbals, written warnings, she always stopped whatever stuff was afoot at the second write-up (third was termination). I finally got the green light from HR to let her go.
The very day she was getting fired, our owner decided to shut the store down and gave everyone (including freaking Amanda) severance and unemployment. Not fair.
85. Not Very Appetizing
When I was 17 years old, I worked at our local Chipotle. My manager was cool sometimes, but when things got busy—and, keep in mind, Chipotle is almost always busy—she would sweat a ton. I didn’t have a problem with that, because I knew it was obviously not something that she could control. It was one particular habit of hers that was the issue…
Whenever she would sweat, she smelled really bad...and her idea of encouraging people would be to go up to them, give them a big hug, and say, "Here, have some of my sweat!" Now, Chipotle is a very open restaurant, as in you can see almost every employee while getting your food. This means that customers could see her doing this.
I saw customers leave on multiple occasions as a result.
86. The Dating Game
I worked as a barista for a while, and I had this one customer who came in a few times a week. He was awkward, not in a cute way, but I didn't think much of it. He'd try to start a conversation and I'd be polite but I wouldn't necessarily encourage him. He mentioned where he lived, and I noted that my chain had a coffee shop in his town, but he drove a couple of towns over to mine, which I thought was odd.
One day I'm at work and he orders a coffee. As I'm making it, he starts talking about how cool and pretty I am and asks if we could go out sometime. I was pretty annoyed and I politely declined, saying I had a boyfriend—which I did at the time—and he said "He's lucky, I wish I had a girl like you," which creeped me out.
That was on a Friday. I come in for my shift on Monday and my blood runs cold. He's behind the counter in a uniform. Excitedly tells me he got a job here. I didn't really know what to do. Not only did he continue to hit on me and constantly try to get my social media from me, he was absolutely incompetent, and a health hazard.
He came in with a disgusting rash on his arm once and he would scratch it and then handle people's food. I told the manager if she didn't fire him I'd quit—I was the longest working employee there by far, so I figured she'd fire him. She didn't, so I left.
87. Excuses, Excuses
You want to know the story of my worst boss? All I can say is...Jerry. Jerry wouldn't let me leave work to go to the emergency room after the heavy bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse. I went over his head and got permission to go from the higher-ups. I then called my mom and told her to meet me at the ER.
The ER nurse said he had never seen so much blood in his entire career. An ER nurse said this. It was then determined that I would need a couple of blood transfusions and would then be admitted to the hospital. My mom calls Jerry to inform him of all this. Jerry then proceeds to tell her that it's probably just stress and that I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK RIGHT AWAY.
At this point, I couldn't even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work. I ended up needing another hospital stay later for a follow-up operation. They found a large growth on me that needed a biopsy. Jerry kept insisting that it couldn't be cancer because, if it was, I "would be tired and losing weight".
What he hadn’t been aware of was that I had lost about eight pounds in under a week, and had been going to bed the minute I got home every day. I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called to let me know that I was being fired for taking too much time off. Five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer.
To heck with you, Jerry. Screw you.
88. Smells Like Trouble
The person in the cubicle adjacent to mine has a plug-in fragrance thing and the rest of us were debating asking her to remove it. I honestly would like to see it go, not because it's a smell that bothers me, but because I don't like the precedent that we can impose our preferred fragrance on others willy-nilly; but now that we've established that it's there and we're all kind of neutral but also kind of want see it go.
89. Cart This Guy off
I worked at a golf course and Sean the cart attendant was the worst, I'd say. Sean was just plain lazy and got the job because his grandfather worked as a ranger there. If I saw my name on the schedule with him, I knew I'd be doing all the work even though I was a clubhouse worker. We'd often run out of carts and have to help him because he was so slow.
And if he closed with you, well, get ready to clean the bathrooms, restock the merchandise, vacuum, etc. all by yourself. We once caught him sleeping in the cart storage area on a busy Saturday. Needless to say, he wasn't asked back the next year.
90. Giving New Meaning to "Swept Under the Rug"
A customer once accidentally spilled—or intentionally poured out, for all we know—an entire bottle of deer attractant on the floor under the shelves in the sporting goods section of the Wal-Mart where I used to work. My boss could not be bothered to ever clean it up. The whole store stank of deer urine for...well, actually, it probably still does!
After all, who has time to clean? We had ammo to sell!
91. Naughty Yachty
An ex-con who was in lock-up for ending someone's life now works at my old job and is living on the company owner's private yacht because he's homeless and they desperately need this guy for his skill set. And that's just the beginning...Other guys were searching to buy their other coworker a male gigolo as a joke for his birthday and stumbled upon the ex-con on the owner's yacht, advertising as his service for males. We raised a ton of money to fix the sound system. The fix sucks. Now the music person is leaving at the end of the week and none of us are going to be fully equipped to troubleshoot the sound system for church services, funerals, etc.
On top of that, all the old people throw a fit when anyone uses the kitchen in the parish hall and doesn't leave it immaculate. They usually blame me or the youth minister, and neither of us ever use it. The teachers at the school also put up a big sign on their supply room door that says, "These supplies are for school staff only," because "someone" keeps taking supplies and leaving the room a mess.
Again, they blame me and the youth minister when we have our own supply closets to us. Teachers can be just as petty and passive-aggressive as their middle-school students.
92. Towering Tales
We have a pathological liar at the bank I work for. She's just an intern—on calls with the NYC office, she said she went to Yale. We noticed. Girl, I've seen your resume, it's the local state school, and there's no shame in that, it's a quality education. Plus, you know lot's of people here know people from that Ivy school, right? Or went there? But here lies only get bigger from there.
She's dating a brain surgeon who also has cancer. Girl, we found his picture that you sent us on Tinder. One of us matched with him. He doesn't know you. She's been accepted to Harvard Business school, but instead is accepting an offer with a big consulting firm. She's in an abusive relationship and was thrown through a glass wall, injuring her wrist, which healed somehow without scars.
Finally, she was called into the MD's office. They confronted her about her lies. Now she had tonsillitis surgery and is too unwell to come in for the remaining two weeks of her internship. And this is how you lose your chance of getting an offer.
93. The Last Straw
During college when I worked food, I had a co-worker who absolutely could not handle customers coming in. I mean, we’d open and wouldn’t have anyone come in for an hour, and as soon as someone walked in, he’d throw a fit. He was there so long, it just broke him I guess. Towards the end, he took a chair and sat just outside the back door to the restaurant so he didn’t have to be in the place.
It was really sad honestly.
94. Sinking Ship
Two employees had a serious issue due to both being loudmouthed and polar religious opposites, one called corporate and got people needlessly shifted around between locations. The guy who called corporate is now at my location and he's lazy. I've gotten three complaints about him from client-company employees in the 1.5 weeks he's been here and he already managed to wreck a company vehicle.
An ex-employee keeps showing up wanting to "visit people". He was removed from the premises last year under trespassing charges, but our company has no official protocol for what to do if an ex-employee actually shows up. Official instructions are to let it happen and sweep it under the rug afterward, as long as it's on weekends.
Oh, and our electrical room where everything is running 480v keeps flooding whenever it rains. That's fun.
95. Problems with Management
One of the cashiers at my last job got pregnant; she was 17 at the time. Everything was well and good and we all supported her decision, and let her know she’d still have a job when she got back from maternity leave. I didn’t know who the father was and frankly, it was none of my business—but whether I wanted to or not, I was about to find out. One day she was shopping on her day off when she ran into the father of her kid with another girl.
They were being cuddly and holding hands and stuff while they too were shopping. So, this poor, very pregnant teen went off on them, "How could you? I kept the baby because of you!" They got in a huge fight and had to be escorted from the store by management. The store manager didn’t recognize her because she wasn’t in uniform and he was an oblivious jerk anyway.
He tried to have her banned from the store. She ended up quitting because if it, had her baby, and I think is doing OK despite the circumstances.
96. Sick Leave
About a month after this lady started, she ran into the building bawling, saying she had cancer and would need one day off every two weeks for treatment. Our director complied—until it was revealed that the lady had been caught shoplifting and was taking the time off to go to meetings with her parole officer. She then got fired.
97. Caught Red-Handed
Bruce is the one I have the most stories about. I came in to work one day and started printing out a bunch of chapters for a meeting later in the day. I find it's faster to print one copy and use the Printer Manager to tell the printer to reprint that job four times instead of telling it to print five times up front. I have the bulk feeder removed because it just causes jams.
So the tray empties and needs to be refilled a few times. Bruce opens up a ream of paper only to see that there are red marks on almost every sheet of paper he touches. He's getting upset because he thinks we got a batch of flawed paper. Like a whole bunch came off the press with ink on it and they all came to us.
I look at the paper for a few seconds. Then I grab Bruce's hand and flip it over. He'd cut his thumb and was bleeding on all the paper.
98. Weathering the Storm
Hurricane Katrina was going to make landfall that day, and the owner of the restaurant I was managing at the time got super angry when I said I wasn't coming in. He wouldn't accept my reasoning and kept bargaining with me. "Okay," he said, "you can go in for four hours, and I can get [other manager] to come relieve you". Umm, no.
He finally agreed to let me take time off as long as I hid my key somewhere so that a substitute could come to pick it up. I, of course, accepted this deal. After the storm hit and devastated New Orleans, the owner called me up because he wanted me to return to town immediately. He needed people to open the restaurant for him.
Now, the roof had just blown completely off of my house and there was no way I could live in it until it was fixed. I asked my boss where he expected me to live while I was working for him if I returned right away. He said to just get a hotel as if he was paying me enough to afford such a thing. I also think hotels in the area were pretty well full at that time...
99. Bad Reception
I worked as a receptionist for a couple of months. If one thing was ever out of place in the entire lobby, my boss would yell at me and, for some reason, say that I was wasting money. She would do this repeatedly and I never understood why. Sometimes, when things were out of place in the lobby, I simply didn't have the energy to get up and fix them—especially since it wasn’t my job to begin with.
She would just keep saying that I was wasting money and I never understood it...until one week, I’d had enough and decided to grab chairs and purposely mess them up. I also tipped over trash cans to spill little bits of garbage out and so on. That week, I noticed on my paycheck that I had gotten paid $80 less than usual.
I then took a closer look at all of my recent paychecks, and suddenly realized that the more the lobby had been messed up, the less I had been getting paid each week. I was totally shocked. As soon as I made this discovery, I confronted her about it and she gave me the money back. But the whole situation was still pretty messed up. She was also extremely rude when dealing with it...
100. The Wind That Broke the Camel’s Back
I have two who actually tie into each other. I worked at Walmart when I was 20-ish and worked in the back, receiving, sorting, and staging products as they came off the truck. There were four of us: the lead Robert, myself, and two kids. We also had the three folks from the team who processed returns to merchants. One of those was a middle- to late-aged man named Jan.
We all reported to one boss in the back who was never actually there, and none of us really knew when he'd be around. To start off with, I had worked at a Walmart previously, so I had experience coming in. You'd think I'd be on a track to promotion, and so did I...til Robert just vanished. Robert was gone for two months in total.
During this time, the boss had been notified and he asked me to step into Robert’s role as lead, which consisted of a bit of scheduling and mostly making sure the others didn't mess around all day. I did this with no problem for two months. Then, as quietly as he disappeared, Robert came back. No notes, no doctors’ explanations, no anything.
He was immediately handed his old vest and the boss told him he'd "sort out the re-hire later". Just like that, the interview I had for Robert’s position as a lead was closed, and Robert was re-hired without any penalty despite two months’ no-show. On that particular day, it was 110F and I was already absolutely fuming when a truck that we had been waiting on rolled up.
Turns out, the driver had tried to drive in overnight and was going to exceed his driving allowance so had pulled over at 6 am and slept till 1 pm. The trailer had sat in the sun and was HOT. I'm talking "open the door and heat just blasts you"...but we needed to get it unloaded, so me and one of the boys dove in and started pitching everything we could out.
Robert got a pallet jack and was trying to arrange some stuff to make the two 7-foot high pallets of dog food easier to get out, but had got them stuck instead and called Jan over to help. Jan is a big guy. He's German, complains loudly and often, and ate sauerkraut without fail for lunch every day. Jan and Robert are working away trying to get these pallets out while me and the kid were basically stuck in the sweltering trailer.
Suddenly, I hear Robert cough and Jan goes "Oof. Ohhh...Ooh" and Robert backs slowly away from the truck while Jan just gets back into it and keeps working away. Then the smell hit. We're in a trailer that's easily 120 in the sun, baking, sweating, and barely able to breathe, and Jan just let out the most god-awful silent toot.
Sauerkraut and Sausage.
We had fans blowing into the trailer over the dog food pallets to keep me and this poor kid from dying of heat exhaustion, and suddenly we're ground zero of this nuclear toot. I can taste it, my eyes are watering. The poor kid next to me is dry heaving and we're ABSOLUTELY STUCK because Robert jammed the goddarned pallets together at a messed up angle.
I slice the shrink-wrap and just start chucking bags of dog food behind us. The kid starts helping while he's gagging and finally we clear about four rows out and I boost him up and crawl up myself and out into the warehouse. I ripped my vest off and walked into the office where the boss was and chuck it in his face and walk out.
As I leave, I can hear him asking Robert what happened and a "Christ. What's that smell?"
101. Real Pain, No Gain
I worked for a doctor who was incredibly cruel to patients. I had to sit by—but one dark day, he took it too far. Finally, I knew I needed to act. He assumed that everyone who claimed to be in pain was clearly faking it to get pain meds, so he never treated them properly.
Then one day, a senior director from Microsoft came in, but this doctor assumed, as always, that he was faking it. The man passed on from a heart attack soon after. At that point, I stepped in and went to management. I wish I’d done it sooner, but at least he can’t hurt anyone else.
102. For Official Reasons
A teacher at our school was constantly being reported by her assistant for grossly and absurdly exaggerated offenses because the assistant doesn't like the teacher she's been assigned to this year. The teacher is new to our school. The assistant is related to a high-up administrator and has already been moved several times.
Administration kept writing the teacher up despite her protests that the complaints were absurd and kept requesting this assistant be switched with another. Teacher finally had enough and quit. Admin spread around the rumor that the teacher had to leave her job for "mental health reasons".
103. Cheater's Karma
My dirtbag boss cheated on his wife with a 22-year-old customer and got her pregnant. Later, he called me into his office. I was completely done with him at this point, so I looked him straight in the eye and said: "The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant".
I lost my job instantly, but it was so worth it. He was a complete creep, and walking out of there was one of the best moments of my life.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , ,
