These Insane Workplace Stories Put “The Office” To Shame
The nine to five grind can get to the best of us. Even great jobs have bad days—but then there are the terrible jobs that make us want to quit on the spot. Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute would be a dream next to these horrible bosses and annoying coworkers.
1. The Principle of the Thing
I worked as a database administrator for a community center one summer in university. Basically, I created a database for them to track who was donating to them and how much they were donating, as well a who was volunteering, and for how many hours. Very simple work and despite being the youngest person on staff, I got along well with my co-workers.
Well, except for my immediate boss, who was a total piece of work. The next spring, I was applying for jobs and e-mailed my old boss to ask for a letter of recommendation. Much to my surprise, she told me that she didn't write recommendation letters "out of principle." I was pretty ticked off about it because I was finding it very difficult to find a position.
Not being able to count on my most recent employer for a reference was a definite blemish on my resume. However, in spite of this, I managed to land a decent job. Lo and behold, I got to get revenge on day one of my new job. That day, my boss happened to email me about a problem at my old work with the database I had worked on.
She had moved some files around, rendering it impossible for her to access the database. She asked if I would come in. I had the perfect reply. I e-mailed her back and told her I already had a job and couldn't do it "out of principle." From the center's perspective, it effectively made my entire summer a waste of time. Hey, what can you do?
2. Stuck in the Middle with You
A call center employee once called Human Resources (i.e. yours truly) to complain about her supervisor. “He’s abusive, he won’t even let me leave my desk!” Later that same day, the supervisor in question called me up to complain about that very employee: “Can you please tell her that she’s allowed to leave her desk? Oh my goodness, she’s been pooping in her trash can!” It may sound humorous, but there were significant mental issues at the heart of this fiasco.
3. Bottoms Up
I "beer quit" this really horrible desk job at a bank. We had really low cubicle walls. You could basically see the entire room from your seat. So, one day, I came in with a six-pack and sat it on top of my cubicle wall and proceeded to drink. I also offered any who walked by a can. I managed to comfortably drink four of them while doing some work before two supervisors and a manager started walking towards my desk. Needless to say, I was asked to leave.
4. The Gift of Knowledge
I worked at Spencer’s Gifts for a bit during university. I was working and saw that I was scheduled for an evening shift the day before a morning exam, so I asked the manager if I could switch. She said no, the schedule is already made up. We went back and forth trying to negotiate. She ended with, “You’re going to have to decide what’s more important, the shift or your exam.”
5. Mutiny
I worked for a computer company that had me train my replacements but told me I was eventually getting my own sales team to train. I was one of their top salespeople for the year way back in 1999-2000. Halfway through the two-week training, I found out they laid off my entire team and that I was going to be laid off after training.
I told my manager he could go screw himself and quit that day, but not before I told all the new hires and many of them quit too.
6. Throwing It Out There
Once, I worked with a manager who decided to dump all this trash on my desk on my third day on the job. She told me she did that to remind me that it was my responsibility to take out the trash because it was a part of my job description. Here’s the thing: it wasn’t. I was working as a research assistant at a mortgage firm.
7. Health Standards
I was the lead for a fast food restaurant and I moved to another town. I transferred to a restaurant in this town but only went in as a cook since all the lead positions were full. Had this other cook come in for his shift wearing basketball shorts and was literally inside them gripping himself with both hands. He jumped right on line with me. I was like "Bro, shouldn't wash your hands first?" He just smiled and said, "Nah man, we don't do that here." I walked out immediately.
8. When the Cat Is Away, the Jerks Will Play
I started work in a bar in town and was told to be at work at 7 pm for my first shift with the manager providing me with a typed timesheet showing my new working hours. I went home and had a cat nap. At 5 pm, my new manager calls me asking where the heck I am and telling me I need to come in now. I referred him to my timesheet which stated I was to be in at 7 pm to which he told me, "the timesheet doesn't matter, you do what I tell you."
Hearing this, I politely told him that I would not be in tonight or ever, good night, and went back to my cat nap.
9. The Whole 9 Yards
The commute was over an hour, but I really enjoyed my job. I interviewed at two closer stores. I was told one store didn't want me. But the other store offered me a promotion and raise right there. I was ecstatic. A week goes by with no calls and no notice of transfer from my general manager. I finally mentioned it and was told they turned me down. When I found out why I couldn’t believe it.
I found out my general manager didn't want to lose me so she went above the other stores' management and to corporate to shut down my transfers. I spend 50 hours a month in traffic and it wasn't worth it to stay at that location. I really, really loved the company but when I found out the general manager went above and beyond to have me turned down for a raise and closer commute, I lost it.
I hopped on the store radio and calmly announced what the general manager had done to me and walked out in front of everyone.
10. Feeling Free at Work
Let me introduce you to the worst coworker of all time: He always asks questions in the slowest manner possible. Over explains what he is doing to people who are already aware of what's going on. Oh, and he gets completely undressed in the bathroom before and after work and just sits on the bench, all spread-eagle. No towel or anything.
Then, he gets dressed and tries to strike up conversations with everyone. It's a small two stalls, two urinals, bathroom in an aircraft hangar. No one gets so dirty from the work we do that they need to change even their underwear on a daily basis.
11. Seeing Eye to Eye
I fractured my orbital socket in an industrial accident. Another employee lost focus at the wrong time was supposed to wait for a hand signal and didn't. We had been working over 90 days straight of 13-14 hour shifts and living in a dingy motel a 45-minute drive from our worksite. We were supposed to be on a rotation where we didn't work more than three weeks at a time.
It was a close call and could have been a lot worse. I'm glad I "saw it coming" and had time to at least try and get out of the way. I got sent away after a night in the ER while the rest of that crew continued to work. After spending two or three days at home, the boss called to say that he "needed me in Alaska" in two days and that my flight was already booked. I told him I quit right on the spot.
12. Brushed Off
I worked as a painter for a franchisee of a student painting company and he kept telling me that "he would pay me next week." This went on for about six weeks and the final straw was when I had finished several large projects that would give him ample money to pay me but he decided to hire on another person instead of paying me for all the stuff I had already done, which was like $1,300 worth of work.
Then he tried negotiating down what he thought he should be paying me despite already having agreed in writing what I would be getting paid right from the get-go. I was so mad that I didn't give him notice or even show up for the next day of work because I had bills to pay and needed to make as much money as possible during the summer.
I wrote him off as a lost cause and took him to small claims court for what he owed me and eventually got my money through the court. It was still a pain though, and as far as I know, he still works there full time.
13. Well Done
I worked at a restaurant and was treated like garbage with bad shifts, terrible sections, teasing by managers, the whole lot. I worked hard to win the monthly sales contest to get better shifts and a bonus table on my section. Managers said I must have cheated, which wasn’t possible, and gave the reward to the regular guy who had previously won most months.
That Friday night at 8:30, I rang in 20 well-done filet mignon and sent them to the kitchen from several different waiter's numbers. I waited five minutes, walked to my jerk of a manager with my jacket on, and said to him, “I quit, see ya.” I never even bothered with my last check or asked what happened with the kitchen. The place has since closed down.
14. No Deliverables
Back in college, I delivered food. I worked all the time, picked up shifts, and was highly valued. Corporate wanted to have a front staff meeting and the managers didn’t communicate it to the employees, so literally no one showed. I was working at the time of the meeting so I saw the managers get reamed by corporate. They rescheduled the meeting for the following Saturday morning, which happened to be the day after my birthday and one of the few days I requested off.
I told them I wasn’t going to make the meeting and they got all huffy puffy about how they would have to “do something” if I didn’t come. This happened at the end of my lunch shift and I just said screw it, called a local pizza shop, set up an interview, and didn’t show up for my evening shift. They called and were all, “we can figure something out,” and I said, “nah, I’m good.” I probably could’ve just toughed it out because the managers typically only lasted four months or so, but I had enough of this dude by then.
15. This Isn’t Your Living Room
I worked with this girl who would sometimes just lay on the floor and play games or something on her phone. She would routinely flip out about something her boyfriend did and just start screaming curse words sometimes even in front of the customers. The day she was fired was just so wonderful.
16. Home Away from Home
As a Human Resources professional, I know that our maintenance guy has been secretly living up above the ceiling of our office building. He has built a little cubby for himself as his own little living area. It has electricity, a small fridge, and everything that you might expect to see in a small apartment. He would probably be mortified if he realized that I knew about this.
17. He’s All the Rage
I worked with this guy. His behavior in meetings was truly bizarre. In half of our meetings, he wouldn't say a word, but for the other half, he would go on a huge rant at whatever topic we were discussing and pick people out telling them why they are wrong without offering any valuable solution. He would turn bright red and fume for a while. The only reason management kept him on so long was because he was one of their first employees.
18. As I Was Saying
I worked with a guy who'd interrupt any conversation to talk about anything and everything as if he was the expert. And I’m not using the word "anything" as a hyperbole. He truly had something to say about anything including the things that he didn’t even know or even heard of or obviously knew very little about.
When the subject of the conversation would fall into the category of things that he didn’t know and couldn’t talk about, he would slowly steer the whole conversation away from whatever it was to whatever he wanted to discuss at the moment. It was both amazing and the most annoying thing I have ever had to deal with.
He was like that Wikipedia game where you start reading about one thing and end up on something unrelated. The "conversation" was basically 98% of him talking non-stop. Most people just tried to stay away from him, but he'd follow them around. I eventually left, but I remember having a nightmare where he was the best man at my wedding.
19. You’ll Smell, You’ll All Smell!
The office where I worked years ago instituted a scent-free policy. One woman who was already insufferable was so offended by it that she sneaked in her perfume collection. She'd walk down the halls and spray perfume into empty offices or cubicles when no one was looking or before everyone arrived in the morning.
This went on for well over a month or two, and we had no idea who was responsible. My coworkers and I started referring to this mysterious person as the Chanel Bandit. She was finally caught on camera in the act. She'd left for a three-week vacation and was unaware that we had installed cameras after a break-in.
Some of us had already suspected her since the Chanel Bandit mysteriously stopped spraying the whole time she was away. She quit and left right after she was caught on video. None of us could say that we were sad to see that cedar-scented lover leave our office and we were all excited to breathe scent-free air again.
20. Crash Test Dummy
I once was walking down the street with one of my bosses. We go to cross the street at a stop sign and get part-way across when a car lurches forward and hits my boss hard enough that he falls onto the hood. He was mid-sentence when the car hit him, and he literally didn't even skip a beat in his conversation at all.
He just continued his sentence like nothing happened, all while keeping eye contact with me the entire time! Not only that, but when the driver yelled and asked if he was OK, he didn't even look over. All he did was just give a little hand wave to the driver while still keeping eye contact with me and chatting away.
21. Over Talking to You
My co-worker likes to initiate conversations then pauses a long time as if to let you say something back, but then he cuts you off and keeps talking. He has entire conversations all by himself. And that’s not even the worst part. He also likes to make changes to my paperwork before it’s turned in, so it ends up riddled with spelling mistakes while he tries to make the content look smarter.
Fortunately, it’s all electronically stamped with who made revisions.
22. Bewitched
I once had a temporary job in a company’s Human Resources department. I was scanning lots of old personnel files, and one of the perks of the job was getting to read all the old complaints against people who worked there. The best one that I ever came across was a mediation caused by one member of staff accusing another of practicing witchcraft while on the job.
23. Hush, Sonny!
We have a coworker who keeps putting the Grease soundtrack over the PA. She does not do this as a joke but because she thinks it’s actually good music.
24. She’s Good at What She Does
When I was an intern, there was this old lady who would call people into her office that shared a thin wall with my cube shared a thin wall. She’d gossip with one person about another person. Then, immediately after, she’d call the person who she was just gossiping about with the other person into her office.
Then she'd tell them what the other person said about them and stuff like that. She would try to frame people for things she did wrong. She was so arrogant. She refused to adapt to workforce modernization like once, she refused to learn how to hyperlink in emails, documents, etc. Real ray of sunshine she was!
25. Not a Minute More
I worked for a boss who micromanaged everything and was just a jerk about everything in general. I came into work at 6:56 AM and the clock in time was at 7:00 AM. Instead of clocking in then going to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom first instead of using company time. I clocked in at 7:01 AM and he went off on me for being one minute late. He saw me sit my stuff down and go to the restroom so he knew I wasn’t truly late.
This wasn’t the first time he yelled about something so small, but that day was the last. I didn’t say, “Screw this, I quit!” I said, “Screw you, I quit!” I reported him to Human Resources two days later for the ridiculous behavior. I come to find out this was not the first time he had been reported for creating a toxic work environment. My friend in that department told me he was fired that next week. It was a happy ending to my “Screw this, I quit!” story.
26. Teamwork
I worked at a call center on the same team as my girlfriend. She was fired, but it was for good reason. Rather than have the angry boyfriend on the team, they fired me too without cause. In the evening, they pulled my brother who was a manager there into a room and said they were putting him on a "Performance Improvement Plan," but they had no reason behind it.
He said, "You just fired my brother and his girlfriend, and you're building a paper trail to fire me too. Screw this, I quit." The office was super clique-ish. My brother's girlfriend who was also a manager there made it about three months before they started giving her written warnings for petty things and she quit too. About three months after that the whole place imploded and about 900 people were out of jobs.
27. Not a Dollar to Spare
After one year at my old job, I asked for a small raise of $1 more per hour to add to my current $20 per hour. I was underpaid and we all knew it. When they came back with the counteroffer, I was stunned. They offered me 50 cents. I showed them I was saving them $70-100k/year, they wouldn’t budge. I gave my notice right there.
I got my last check with no yearly bonus. I was owed $1,000. They told me they didn’t have to pay me since I quit. I said that’s cool, I’ll call OSHA later today and cited five big violations they hadn’t addressed. Suddenly I got my bonus.
28. PSA: I’m Done
A guy in my department had a long-running feud with his line manager. After a particularly tense email exchange, he responded with an email that had an underlying "go screw yourself" message and quit. He then CC'd the entire department, including our senior management team, and the upper management of the entire organisation. It was a beautifully crafted rage-quit.
29. Two of a Kind
I used to work in the Human Resources department at a large corporation. Our department had a big back-office team doing a lot of processing and data entry, including employees’ banking info for their salaries. The craziest thing I’ve ever seen was the time when it just so happened that two employees with the same exact name had started out on the same day.
A huge mixup ensued. First, the banking information was entered for the wrong person. One of them realized this and had it corrected, but the other’s file wasn't fixed. So, both salaries started going to the same person. The unpaid guy started refusing to come to work, but payroll said that the payment cleared and that the account was in his name, so he was terminated for refusing to come to work.
He kept calling up, and the Human Resources support team kept misidentifying him as the other guy who was still working for us. So, when they finally agreed to get his bank information changed, they mistakenly changed the info of the wrong guy. This meant that the guy who did not work for us anymore was now getting paid the salary of a guy who did.
When this whole thing was finally worked out, the first guy was given his job back; but on his first day back, security misidentified him and issued him a badge of the other employee’s. This meant that he was now clocking in hours for the other guy and, once again, not getting paid because he never clocked in for himself. It took about three months for all this to be worked out once and for all. The moral of the story is to always use a freaking email address to identify people from now on!
30. A Taxing Experience
While working in Human Resources and interviewing job applicants, a guy once came in for an interview wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. He then said that he didn’t need the job because of how much money he was making unlawfully. He only wanted the job in order to seem more legitimate, so that “the IRS wouldn’t get suspicious” of him. This was particularly weird because I don’t live in the United States. I very much doubt that the IRS cares about Canadian tax returns…
31. Real Don’t Getter
I worked in a law office with a secretary who refused to do anything because, "she didn't know how," and she refused to try to learn. She couldn't create documents in Word, scan anything, or use the billing software. She’d just do nothing. In a crunch, she would take the work home, so her grandson could do it for her.
32. Pointed in Error
The building where my job was closed down at 9 PM. Everybody except security had to get out so they could shut everything down. One of my supervisors, I had eight of them, kept scheduling me until 9:30 PM. I repeatedly brought this up at the end of the night and was always told, "No, that's just a mistake, you need to leave."
Fast forward three months, I get called into a disciplinary meeting. The reason? I kept "leaving early." I had like eight attendance points from "leaving early" because one of my idiot bosses who worked in the SAME BUILDING and definitely should have known when it closes couldn't figure out how to schedule. I explain my side, which was pretty obvious, and they say they'll hold off on any disciplinary action while they look into it.
A couple of days later they told me they weren't going to remove those attendance points. I told them to shove it, walked out, and went to a concert with some of my now former coworkers.
33. I Have the Receipts
I was once in a meeting with the very arrogant boss of our department and the other company executives. While I was there, there was a question about a major mistake that cost the company a product recall. Our boss laid the blame on our department from before he worked with us, saying we had modified a piece of equipment incorrectly.
One of my co-workers, a very humble man, quietly said to nobody in particular: "I have pictures in my notes." Meaning: "I am throwing the boss under the bus in front of every one of his superiors in the company." He hadn't planned this, he just happened to be incredibly meticulous in taking notes and pictures and documented absolutely everything.
He proceeded to lay out the facts—that we were not culpable—with complete disregard for retribution from our very vengeful boss. It was quite glorious to see someone so haughty and pious get brought down so beautifully by a low-level engineer and his meticulous note and picture taking. Never seen anything quite like it.
34. A Bloody Great Job
When I was working with the Human Resources team at my old company, we once received a resume that was completely covered in blood. Attached to it was a handwritten note, explaining that their printer had run out of ink and that, therefore, they had been unable to print out a better copy for us. Scaring your potential employers is always a great first impression to make!
35. Dang, Daniel
Let me tell you about my coworker, we'll call him "Danny." Danny doesn't wash his hands. Danny for some reason feels the need to not use a spoon to put coffee in the communal coffee maker. Instead, he's "gotta" use his hands because people need to "quit being afraid of germs." That's not the worst part. Danny takes a poop, comes out to join everyone in a company lunch, and sticks his germ hands down the bucket of KFC to get a piece at the very bottom.
Danny came in hungover one day and just slept for eight straight hours at his desk. Danny doesn't flush. Danny loses every form of paperwork given to him. Danny is a jerk, but is also apparently too good of an engineer to fire. I hate Danny.
36. Gut Settling
Dan was 37 working at a job going nowhere as a lab specimen processor in a windowless room for nine hours a day. He ate only Burger King but never with any lettuce because that’s “rabbit food.” He literally drank a gallon of Mountain Dew a day and didn’t understand everyone’s horror. “There’s water in it,” he would say.
He said if he ate corn, he’d get sick and need to go to the hospital. He’d tell me his “theories” coming from his “gut,” and one he firmly believed was that man and dinosaur roamed the earth at the same time. We got into an argument once, and it got ugly. Dan was fired. I got out of there as soon as possible.
37. Money Hungry
I was working as general manager in a struggling restaurant—struggling despite excellent business because the owners would do stupid stuff like take trips to Italy to source the “perfect” panini press. They also wouldn't staff properly, I was the only FOH staff open to close, six days a week, on top of ordering, inventory, other managerial duties. I was wildly overworked, but I sucked it up because the base pay was good, plus tips.
However, to fund their lavish “business” trips, costs had to be cut at the store. They decided to do this by bumping me down to minimum wage for tipped employees—effectively cutting my salary to 1/10 of its previous level. They were also too chicken to tell me until I got my new teeny paycheck and questioned the mistake.
Their response was to play dumb and said, “Oh yeah haha, forgot to mention that blah blah cost-cutting blah valued team member please work with us through this difficult time.” I had worked for two weeks at this new lower rate without my knowledge. Pretty sure that's against the law, but hey, a lot of bad things go on in the restaurant industry. That's not when I rage quit, though...
A couple of hours later, I'm fuming and have decided I can't work for the lower rate just waiting for the chance to give my notice. They called in a delivery guy who was fired a few weeks before and start talking about hiring him to do our Facebook posts and handing out flyers around town. Whatever. Then they offer him close to my old salary as “Promotions Manager.”
What!? I was running the place for $2.13 an hour and you're offering this dude almost $20 an hour to walk up and down the street saying “Eat at (Name)?” And yet, it gets worse. They bring up our negative Yelp reviews and the flyer guy suggests asking friends to post positive ones. Then jerk boss starts laughing and says, “Hurdur better not ask her (me) to post one, it'll be boohoo don't eat there, I can't pay my rent this month because they cut my pay without telling wahhhh.”
I wasn't supposed to hear it I think, but I was five feet away, of course, I did. I RAGED at them, quit, and wished them good luck keeping the place open without me. They quickly realized I was right, neither of them knew how to do more than pick up the takings once a week, and begged me not to quit. They were so desperate that they allowed me to tell them exactly what giant idiots they were for the half-hour my rage burned and just listened nodding and apologizing.
Once I had cursed myself back into calmness, I walked out 30 minutes before dinner rush leaving them with an unstaffed floor and no clue how to even open the register. The store closed down about 18 months later, surprised it made it that long.
38. When It Rains, It Pours
I was on an internship that was a train wreck, partly because I started later than some of the other interns. Turns out our main office space would flood when it rained. I came in to find the lobby and office with an inch of standing water on the floor. One of the other interns walked in, looked at all the water, sighed, sloshed over to his computer, sat down, and started working. Dude barely seemed to notice—he’d obviously done it before.
39. Sad But True
While I was working in Human Resources, there was one occasion where the entire cleaning staff came into our office to inform us that they refused to empty the trash bin at one employee’s desk because, allegedly, it was filled with poop and pee. Confused, I went over to that employee’s desk to see for myself. Turns out they weren’t lying…
40. Time for a Refreshing Glass of Chicken Broth
The CEO's girlfriend was a devout vegan who would patrol the office around lunch to make sure that anyone who was eating meat promised not to use the sponge in the kitchen to wash anything that touched meat. She did this in yoga pants and heels, for some reason. Everyone thought she was so unlikeable and awful.
So, for April Fool's day, I came up with an extremely satisfying prank. I rinsed out a carton of chicken broth and then filled it with some mango juice. When I made a point of pouring myself a glass and drinking it in front of her, she was truly disgusted, which made it twice as delicious and worth the effort.
She was the financial manager and HR, so everything people shared was pillow talk between her and the CEO. He’d sprinkle what he knew at meetings as if everyone was in on the secret. This pair was rotten. Someone heard him say, "I wouldn't care if I didn't hear music again in my life." Who says that? Sociopaths.
I was eventually fired, and the official reason was that I had "Photoshopped grotesque images of several people in the office." She failed to mention to the department of labor representative that I did it all on my own time on my own computer, and each co-worker asked me to make them one after I made my photo.
The one I made for myself had my eyes moved farther apart so I only looked abnormal. For other coworkers, I flipped their faces upside down, made their eyes too big, removed their noses, or covered their mouths with beards. While discussing unemployment, the agent asked me to email her the photos, and it made her audibly laugh. Being fired was worth it just for that.
41. Break Away
We had just gotten a new boss who for some reason hated the friendships that we made. She said I had been stealing time from the company and "caught" me on video outside on breaks I wasn't supposed to have. She pulled me into the HR office and berated me for taking breaks. She had been cutting my hours slowly but scheduled me long enough to force me to take a 30-minute breaks.
The HR girl tried to correct her several times, telling her I was entitled to my breaks, but my boss wasn't having it. She said she had proof of me leaving, but never showed it to me. So, the next time I was scheduled, I clocked in, waited 30 minutes, and just clocked out without saying anything. Nobody ever called me for a no-call no-show.
About a week later, I went back to the store with my friend who was also an ex-coworker and quit the day before and they threatened to call security on us.
42. $40 000th of July
I had a lawyer draw up an intent-to-sue-for-harassment after a new boss required me to work on the Fourth of July. Usually 100-150 people in the office, but that particular day I was the only one in the office. That was the final straw after six months of harassment. I ended up winning a $40,000 settlement. I still smile when I think of it.
43. How Thoughtful
After taking a few days off work while my father was having a brain tumor removed and I was still checking emails and attending conference calls from the hospital, my boss gave me a new project. On a Thursday afternoon, she gave me a Monday morning deadline for a project that would take 6-8 days to complete. I worked 16 hours a day to get it done. When we met on Monday, she asked how my weekend was. I looked at her and said, "I worked all weekend."
Then she asked if I got to visit my dad in the hospital and then I told her, "No, I didn't get a chance because I worked all weekend." A couple of weeks later, she pulled me into a meeting and said, "I feel like you were resentful because you had to work and I feel like I was really good when your dad was sick, maybe you're just tired. Are you tired?"
She'd also make comments when I would leave the office on time—not early, on time—like, "it's great that you just get up and go when your day is over. Like I have to go because I have a daughter, but you don't have any kids and you just leave at the end of the day." Um yeah, I don't live here. I don't go home and sit in a dark room counting the hours until I get to come back here.
I'm also not curing cancer. Nothing we do here matters to anyone outside of here. I give you 100% when I'm here, but when my day is done, it's done. I no longer work there.
44. Friends in Higher Places
My boss' girlfriend works in the company. One time she was in my section just complaining about something to my manager, who was silently working. Getting no answer, she asks him: “Are you ignoring me?” To which he promptly replies: “Yes, I am.”
45. Liar Liar Pants on Fire
The weirdest issue that I’ve ever had to deal with as a Human Resources representative was an overnight IT guy who had decided to start working pantsless. He was the only person in the building at the time, but it still didn't fly with our company rules. After being warned by us, he still did another shift in his boxers. He was canned almost immediately.
46. A Bridge Over Troubled Employees
I used to work at a staffing agency that placed people in manufacturing positions. Everyone had to be tested for substance use at the office as part of the orientation process. If the pee cup came back as “inconclusive,” we would send the potential hire to a medical lab. They would then take another pee test and the lab could determine if the person was on a prescription or using illegal substances (and, therefore, not eligible to be hired).
So, one guy failed his pee test at the lab. He came back to my office complaining that it wasn’t his fault. His explanation completely blew my mind. He claimed that he had been riding in a car on his way to take the test when he happened to briefly stick his head out of the window for some air. Then, just as the car was passing under a bridge, someone threw a bag of illegal substances off the bridge. The bag allegedly hit him in the face, and he accidentally inhaled some of it.
47. Selfish Questions
A woman who, on her first day, went around asking a series of oddly specific questions like, "Are you white, or mixed?" "How old are you?" "Are you religious or not?" We stupidly answered them, thinking she was just being friendly (she put on a sweet, naive demeanor). We were so wrong. After a couple of months of sitting on her butt and doing nothing but lying about her knowledge base, skills, and her progress on several projects, her supervisor tries to fire her.
Of course, she's union, so that's not as easy as it sounds. We find out she's filed grievances against all of us: The white male is prejudiced; The 1/2 Korean lesbian supervisor is ageist; I'm prejudiced because I'm non-denominational Christian and she's Baptist; The African American female around her same age was after her job. This woman literally pulled every card she had. She managed to keep her job too, but thankfully, corporate transferred her and got her out of our hair.
48. Paging Punxsutawney Phil
My boss's wife has been given a position of authority over my department, despite having no experience or expertise in the area. But the worst part is, she is an older lady and by all accounts seems to be suffering from dementia. Every single email you send her or e-mail chain she's included on, she will respond without having any understanding of what was written to her.
So then you have to spend an hour explaining what just happened to her. It's like Groundhog Day.
49. Keeping the Team Balanced
I worked in a three-person department that included me, an awesome dude, and this terrible new co-worker. She was fresh out of college, which made her believe she was smarter than me and our other teammate. She totally discounted anyone's opinions except her own, and one manager let her do whatever she wanted.
She was the worst one-upper than I'd ever met even for the smallest of things like going to a coffee stand. She'd chime in and say how her friends work at a coffee stand and they know her order by heart – just things like that. She thought she was adorable and charming but was incredibly grating and worthless.
She constantly messed up, but if you tried to help or give any constructive feedback, she'd cry and go to the one manager that liked her. She lasted almost four years, which blew my mind. She was furloughed recently, but she won’t be returning as the owner’s daughter now has taken her position. Phew.
50. Essence of Fish and Eggs
I'm pretty cool about most people because we all have a role to play, but one time we had a secretary that would microwave eggs and canned tuna every morning in a bowl. Now...I am not a mean person at all, but that smell generated from microwaved eggs and canned tuna is downright repulsive by anyone's standards.
51. Missing in Action
While working in the Human Resources department of my company and conducting job interviews with potential candidates, I once had a mom show up on behalf of her son for the interview. She basically just tried to tell me that her son was a great guy and that I should definitely want to have him as part of my team. Let’s just say I was not convinced…
52. Technical Problem
I was getting screamed at in a meeting by some marketing jerk that was literally demanding my technical group perform magic on a completely unrealistic time schedule with almost no resources. Literally screaming at me in front of about eight of my peers, calling me incompetent, screaming at me to “just do your job” and all of that. I stood up, said I refuse to be talked to like that and left the meeting.
Normally if you just get up and leave these types of meetings, you’re fired. Boss scheduled a meeting with me later in the afternoon after hearing about it. Figured I’d be walked out, but I was told they fired the marketing guy. I was about to just say “Screw this, I quit,” but the company kept me on and fired the other guy. Pretty happy, it’s been a solid place to work ever since.
53. Request in Denial
I was a manager at a company where the executives were ineffective. I worked 60 hours a week most of the time and had to do all of my director’s duties because he didn’t understand our systems. The work environment was also pretty hostile and passive-aggressive. People cried on the job daily in other departments, slightly less in mine. Managers and staff would snap at other departments the same way the executives did because of the stress.
I tried to take care of my department and make sure they weren’t being mistreated or taken advantage of. I had three days' leave for a passing in the family but had to work every day from home and the funeral itself. It was especially vexing because it was to re-do the same thing every day that my boss would just forget to complete and need to be done again the next day. I brought this to his attention, as well as all the other issues, and he said he would try to do better. Months went by and it got worse.
Finally, our team sat down with him and told him things needed to change. I told him that the environment was more hostile and aggressive than ever and the team agreed. He told me that was my perception and we needed an attitude change, then left for a meeting, which I had provided the data for him. I cleared out my desk and left after quitting with HR.
For me, the kicker is that he kept assigning me tasks and insisted that I was still working there for days. Never been more relieved to quit in my life.
54. Lifelong Accomplishments
After working for 37 years, I requested leave from work to care for my partner who was dying of cancer. I had eight weeks of PTO time and was denied the request, so I quit to care for him in his last month of life.
55. Moment’s Notice
IT manager here. I was working for a company that didn't consider us a real department. Lots of things leading up to this, but the last straw was an announcement that a satellite office was being shut down and any employees that could, would relocate to our office. We, the IT department, found out about this at the same time as the rest of the company MONTHS after the decision had been made.
Nobody told us anything, and this would involve obscene amounts of extra travel, hours, and stress as we accommodate the moves, the infrastructure, and everything else involved with such a move. I left in the middle of the announcement. My boss, the CFO threatened me to fire me if I don't do the work. Well, you can't fire someone who's already quit.
Then the CEO calls me and asks me back to negotiate. I agree to come back for six months if I get a 25% raise for myself and my entire team. After six months, I left and they laid off everyone else.
56. Breaking the Bank
I worked for a company that went public after operating as a private company for 18 years. Four months after going public, our company was caught fabricating the financial statements for our quarterly reports. This put an extremely large strain on our accounting department, and they were required to work overtime to try and “fix” the corruption.
Well, the accountants started complaining that they were spending less time with their families, so the CEO held an emergency meeting. In that meeting, he told the accounting department that all departments are working hard and if anyone is unhappy, they can leave. He got what was coming to him.
The entire accounting department of 14 employees got up and left. It was super awkward. About two months later, the CEO stepped down and then the company was sold to a competitor for next to nothing.
57. You’re Allowed to Have a Bad Day
The woman who makes it her sole priority to find out what's wrong if you’re having a bad day. As if you’re going to help and no, being a mom doesn't give you special abilities to cheer someone up. Leave me alone.
58. Those Who Can’t Do, Delegate
I used to work at a bakery and was constantly berated by my manager. She would give all the tasks she didn’t want to do to me, so I was literally doing her job for her while getting paid a little over half her wage. She had been there for five years and no one recognized her as a poor worker because I made her look so good.
One day, I wasn’t feeling great and she tried to hand me a thick stack of orders to double check, confirm, and file (which was strictly her job) while I was already in the middle of something. So I didn’t say a single thing. She stood there awkwardly for a minute before putting them down next to me, saying “thanks,” and walking away.
I was the closing leader that night, and never touched the stack. The next day, she’s reamed out by the district manager for not only not doing her job, but also leaving crucial customer info (credit card numbers and the like) out in plain view. Kept her job, but her mascara was runny as heck for the next few days. Taught her a lesson.
59. Accomplishing an Impressive Feet
While I was working in Human Resources, an IT guy who worked the overnight shift (because he was doing support work for our Asia and Europe regions) once got written up for improper use of company systems. He had dozens, if not hundreds, of Google image searches in his internet history related to pictures of celebrities’ feet.
Like “insert celebrity here feet,” along with other random searches like “cute toes,” etc. Like dude, you work in the IT department!! You KNOW that this stuff is tracked and that your boss could easily be monitoring everything you’re doing online. What in the world could this guy possibly have been thinking??
60. The Resale Artist
A guy in our office bought the snacks from the company's vending machines and tried to sell them back to coworkers for a profit.
61. Pretty Grate Co-worker
Out of all the bad co-workers I’ve had, Bag Salad was by far the worst. It was my job to train her on a position that only I knew how to do, and they lied to me when they said I would definitely be involved in the interview process for the position. I'm still not sure why they did that. No hyperbole, but I crushed that job.
I had exemplary reviews every year and positive relationships at the company all around. I didn't need or want the help, but they said they were hiring her for the, "anticipated future workload." It's been so long I don't even remember why she got that nickname, but it really suited her somehow. She was exhausting.
She didn’t know how to do anything. She didn't understand how to take messages, forward or reply to emails, or print anything. All day long, she would talk to herself in this weird half-whisper lip-smacking way that was like, "Hmm, ok, if I just copy, oh no, maybe move it but I, ummm, oh, ok, maybe I'll hmm…"
Then she would turn to me with her big buggy eyes waiting for me to acknowledge her rather than just asking me for the help. And every breath she would take, her nose would whistle, and what was worse was when she breathed through her mouth, she would smack her lips or tongue every single time she took a breath!
She loved Big Bang Theory and would regale me with the plot lines of episodes she'd watch, she would say things to me like, "And then the one, the Sheldon? Goes bazinga, and oh, how I laughed! Goodness, it's soo fun-ny! Hee hee,” with every vowel lasting much longer than needed in her unbearable sing-song voice.
She felt the need to jump in on every conversation she was able to overhear. If I was talking to a friend about a trip or something, “Man, Chicago was great. I hope I can go again someday,” she’d pop out of nowhere and go, “I never went to Chicago, but my uncle's friend did in the 80s and he said he used to…”
I really hated her and couldn’t stand her. I know it sounds like a woman out of her depth who was just trying to fit in, and that's true. But some people just grate, and she grated every last nerve and ounce of patience I had. I tried, I just couldn't hack it, and I quit that job two months after she started.
62. Appearances Can Be Deceiving
This old woman looks like the sweetest lady, but she's actually the exact opposite. She'll hide behind pillars and around corners just to catch you doing something tiny so she can tattle to management. Everyone hates her but pretends to be nice to her because she's been there for 30 years and one of the managers is banging her niece or something.
63. Dwight Schrute 2.0
My worst coworker constantly eats throughout the day, so he's always going to the canteen to get food. Every time he gets up to grab a snack, he takes a 20-minute break. Then he complains if anyone asks him to do anything as he is always "too busy." He becomes deeply offended at any change in the office, especially if the temperature isn't freezing cold (apparently he can't work if it's too warm). He can't stand the coffee addicts in the office as they need caffeine...but he drinks several bottles of Coca-Cola everyday.
I have been in the office for nearly two years and I still don't know what he actually does. He smells, he's sweaty and when he sneezes he wipes his nose with his hand and cleans it off on the desk. I hate him and so does everyone else.
64. Three Strikes and You’re Out
My company’s Human Resources department once got a complaint from an employee who was very upset that two of his coworkers had a softball game together outside of work and didn’t invite him to participate in it. Practically everyone who worked with us disliked this fellow, but I guess that’s a story for another time.
65. Master of None
I worked with a guy who just couldn't learn new skills. When he started at the job, he had to learn new programs and processes just like anyone would need training for any new position. He couldn't pick anything up whether it was where to click in a software to get a certain result or how to fill out a report.
The team took turns to show him the ropes, but it never stuck. Once, I got so frustrated when he couldn’t minimize a window. "Top right corner. Click on the straight line." It took him four seconds to drag the mouse to the corner and then he'd hover around it but never on it. He was nice but couldn’t work with us.
66. Privacy Listing
I worked with a guy that regularly Googled everyone that worked there. He knew information about the apartment me and my partner had just sold and told everyone at our department meeting how much we got for the sale.
67. Not My Management
On my first week at the job, my boss confided in me that we ought to do something about Obama, and that's when I knew I was not going to enjoy working with her. And over the next three years, I was tormented as she learned more about me. When she learned I loved animals, she told me she’d hurt a skunk before.
She’d say outrageous and offensive things, so the whole team with the exception her favorite pet had gone to her manager to address her horrendous and unprofessional comments and behavior. In four months, we would lose five employees because of her, with each one listing her as the main problem why they were leaving.
Finally, after three years of her doing her thing, I finally snapped and demanded to speak to her on the patio of our office and tore into her for at least 10 minutes viciously explaining to her why she's a terrible human being and just unleashed everything. The next day HR contacted me and asked me what happened.
I asked them, "How much time do you have?" And they said, "However much you feel you need." I thought I was definitely getting fired. So, I said, "Well, it all started when she said something about the president…" and for two hours I went through my entire dossier that I’d kept on her for the whole time. It terrified HR.
HR called her into their office later that day, and the next day after, the VP of Marketing addressed the whole team and explained that she wouldn't be returning and that she'd agreed to take another position working alone from a different building. And shortly after making that announcement, she quit her job.
I worked another six months before I saw that the company was going to let me go because of poor numbers. Her favorite pet team member wound up being her replacement, which was much better because she was much better at the job. I, on the other hand, was horrible in the position and had a bad view of the company.
The Pet recommended to me that I talk to the IT department about a possible position, and over the Christmas holiday, I taught myself enough to get hired on the team as HelpDesk Support. Now, I’ve been doing that for two years, and I love my job and company—but I still despise the marketing department, of course.
68. Argument Resources
The HR manager at my last job had zero training, education, or experience in HR. She was argumentative, passive-aggressive, and incompetent. Toward the end, she asked me “Why are you being resistant,” and, “You’re not being a team player,” when I was advocating for client safety. I was the second person in less than a year to leave and hire an attorney.
69. An Abrupt Ending
I once had a candidate who our team liked for a senior finance position, and we decided to make him an offer. The decision was made on Friday. I decided to call him the next Monday, giving us time to prepare the paperwork. When we called him, there was no answer. No problem, I left him a message and dropped him an email. I figured he’d respond as soon as possible—but I wasn't prepared for the tragic truth.
Two days later, there had still been no answer. So, I decided to try and call again. Still nothing. Same approach, message and email. Maybe he is on vacation or something, I assumed. On the following Friday, I decided to call one last time since the hiring manager was starting to get impatient. Finally, someone picked up the phone.
It was his wife. She told me that they had just buried him the day before. Apparently, he had passed in a car crash coming back from the interview.....
70. Bringing Down the Evil McQueen
In the interview, she said something to me that was along the lines of, "You're quite young. How do we know that you'll be responsible enough to work with our team?" as if she was running an Olympic team and not a fast-food joint. I know this is not an unusual question, but her attitude spoke more than her words.
Well, I was technically homeless, a young teenager at the time, and staying in a shelter. I explained my situation to be my motivation. I needed a day program, wanted a permanent place to live, and that someday, to be comfortable financially to go back to school. Before I was homeless, I had amazing grades in school.
Well, I had gotten another job, but was more than willing to work two jobs to achieve my goals. My first day on my first shift, she gave me the basic instructions. Read the employee handbook and then come get her. She was adamant I was illiterate because I was so quick, which meant that I must not have read it.
She was pointing to random words getting me to read them. It was annoying...but goals...homeless and all. She walked me over to a till, put me in a headset, and told the other woman at the till to make me do all the work. I tried my best, but with zero training on ANYTHING and no guidance, it went bad, fast.
Mid-order, she grabbed my arm and dragged me into the office. She berated me for a solid 10 minutes on how I was just some pathetic disgusting homeless scum with no manners, no wonder no one wanted me, no wonder I was homeless, how pathetic. Honestly, it makes me cry thinking about how cruel and harsh she was. Finally, she finished. I took off the headset, went to the staff room to change, grabbed my stuff, and left. No one said a word to me. I just left.
Once I was just far enough away, but in front of another business, I fell to my knees and cried. A full-on breakdown the kind where it feels like you’ll never stop. While I was crying, someone came up to me and put her arm around me. I just cried in her arms. When I was done, I finally saw who it was. It was the assistant manager from the exact place I just left.
I was flustered and furious and embarrassed. She just looked at me and told me “MANAGER is the absolute worst.” Then she told me the horrible manager was going to be fired that week, with the assistant manager promoted to her position. She said to me, “What she did was very wrong. If it's okay with you, I would still like to hire you. I think you would be a great asset to the team.”
I worked there for nearly 10 years. I got my high school diploma, went to college, became an adult there, and worked my way up the chain of command. Well, as high as I could since the manager was so incredible the turnover rate was crazy low. There, I had both my best and worst bosses of all time at that place.
71. Did You Enjoy Your Stay?
I used to work in Human Resources for a hotel. I once had to fire a young woman because of what we caught on camera after her shift one night. While she had been working that evening, a big group of Navy men checked in. After her shift, she hung out in the pool and hot tub with them. I didn't see the footage, but I’ve been told that she didn't have her swimsuit on the whole time...
Then, she was apparently caught on camera going from room to room to "entertain" the guests. When she was asked in the morning by the manager about her activities, she came clean as if she was bragging about all the fun she’d had the night before with the men. She was immediately fired, and a rule was made that workers could no longer stay on campus after their shift or be in rooms with anyone who is not family.
72. Low Ink Levels
My boss didn't do payroll before leaving on a business trip and left it to the poor office manager to tell people they weren't going to get paid on time. I walked out of the staff meeting saying I'd be back when paychecks arrived. By the time I got home, I was mad enough to call my ops manager back and quit. Why didn't the boss do payroll? The stated answer was printer toner cartridge at home was empty. Guess he'd never heard of writing checks with a pen.
73. Hanging Up My Apron
A very long time ago, I worked at a Kinko's. Either the manager or the assistant manager was on duty every day of the week, in theory. Both of them were lazy. Neither stayed for more than an hour of their shifts and they trained me to do the daily paperwork. There was a deadline for when it had to be sent to corporate so that often had me leaving the front counter one person short during our busier times of the day. When it got slammed, I'd have to go through the whole procedure to stop what I was doing.
First, I had to wait for the safe to open, put the money in marking how far I had gotten with the counting and trying to resolve any cash vs receipts mismatches, and go up front to help after taking four minutes to pack the money in the safe. Then I'd have to reverse it when I came back. So, eight minutes shot every time I was called up front, and often that was as often as every 10 minutes during busy hours. 18 minutes gone for 10 minutes’ paperwork.
I'm in the middle of my final quarter of school when I get a scathing performance review. I was leaving the front unattended for too long. I pointed out that I shouldn't be doing the paperwork in the first place, but of course, that didn't fly. Apparently, the district manager had just laid into the manager for never being in the store when the DM came by and I was going to be her punching bag.
I don't get angry often, but blaming me for not being at the counter while I was doing her job made me livid. We agreed that I'd take the three-day paid "decision-making leave" where I would decide if I really wanted to continue working there. I would never have to do the paperwork again. I was two weeks from my portfolio review, and I had no time to be looking for a job.
My first day back, the assistant manager comes in for his shift. "Hurry up and go do the paperwork. I've got paintball in an hour!" I said, "Screw you." I rolled up the apron and threw it at him and walked straight out the back door. As satisfying as it was in the moment, I was freaking out about how I would pay rent all that night. I got a job right after my portfolio review, so it ended up working out in the end.
74. See You, Motel 8-er
At my first job out of college, I was informed that it might involve some "light travel," which was fine. However, about two weeks into working there, this turned out to mean they wanted me to spend 6+ months in a cheap motel room with my slob of a boss in Arkansas. Now, I'm a young guy and can handle most types, but I think it's incredibly unprofessional to have to see your boss in nothing but his tighty-whities as he brings back trashy chicks from the latest dive bar and makes you leave the hotel while he screws them.
I'd have complained but the guy above the two of us was his longtime friend and fraternity brother—I wasn't winning any arguments. I spent three months there before they brought us back to the main office for a one-week stretch and I decided that this just wasn't for me and I couldn't go back. I walked into the main office and just told them it wasn't for me and gave my two weeks. I handled it professionally.
It was them who decided the next day to bring me into the conference room where about 20 co-workers were sitting only to have the boss make me stand while he called me a quitter and let them know that "This is what someone who isn't committed to their job" looks like. The next day I came in and my stuff was in a box and I was told that my two weeks' notice was not needed and they didn't want me to return.
Two weeks later I had an interview for a better paying job which I've been in for four years and haven't looked back.
75. On the Dot
I was working at a call center. My shift started at 10. I badged into the building at about 9:55 and logged on, but the decrepit PC I was using took so long to boot up that when I finally logged in, I was 15 seconds late. I told my supervisor and he said there's nothing he can do and since I was late, I was put on probation and wouldn't be eligible for a raise for another month.
He then said that I should arrive 15 minutes early so that situation won't happen again. I handed him my headset, walked out, and have never worked in a call center since.
76. Shortcut to Success
At a company I used to work at, we had a super helpful guy in charge of stores and logistics. He was totally undervalued for what he did above and beyond his role, and management treated him absolutely terribly. He frequently got told by management to stop taking shortcuts through the showroom to get between his work area and the offices, and instead take the long way around.
He ended up getting himself a better job with another company and a few days before he left, I was in the showroom with the company director and a salesman helping to demonstrate a piece of equipment. This guy does nothing more than strut through the showroom, farting loudly and profusely as he went, not caring at all.
77. All in a Day’s Work
The new receptionist was coming in every morning and opening up programs and documents just to make it look like she was busy. She would sit with one hand on her mouse and one hand on her keyboard and just stare blankly at her computer screen for eight hours a day, while not actually doing anything. She would also consistently pick up the phone and hang it up without saying anything, just to get it to stop ringing.
As a Human Resources representative, I sat in on her termination. During that meeting, she started screaming at her manager about how she was doing an amazing job, and insisted that she be given another chance. I was 100% confident that this person was just trying to get some easy money out of us and was not at all surprised that they were finally getting fired. The whole thing was just bizarre.
78. Off to a Rough Start
My dad works in Human Resources. He just told me about a day when they had to lay off about half of the company at once. It was crazy, and there were a whole lot of moving parts that day. Unfortunately, in all the craziness, no one had remembered to tell this one new hire that (sadly) the position he was hired for was no longer affordable.
So, this poor guy had to come into the office excited for his first day only to see everyone clearing out their desks and leaving. And then, he immediately got told that he was being laid off as well. No more than an hour into his first day on the job. He said that the guy understood, but that it was still the most horrible he had ever felt for someone in his life.
79. It’s Interim for a Reason
We have a girl who was recently promoted to be an "interim education director" position, but she fails to leave out the "interim" part when introducing herself. She brings her untrained disobedient dog to work, wears highly inappropriate clothing to a job that requires working with kids, tells people they have to respect her because she's a director, leaves her desk a mess, makes every story about her, and willfully ignores safety protocols if she doesn't have time for them.
So how'd she get the job? She called the boss "daddy" and sat on his lap at the Christmas party.
80. To Err is Only Human
The most hated person in our office is a woman who survives off boogies, diet Pepsi, and the souls she drains (mine included.) Some of her greatest hits: telling me I am not getting any younger therefore my babies will be disabled. Telling a delightful tale of how she once snuck pork into a Muslim's diet. Going on about her husband's pension and how she doesn't have to work, she just works for the fun of it. Yet she bums smokes and bus fare off people half her age.
She lives to get anyone into trouble, yet she's incompetent herself and when she's called on it, she says, "to err is human." Every week she threatens to quit but nowhere would have her.
81. The Pretentious Mr. Magoo
He is no longer working with us, but he is still legendary to this day. I will refer to him as Magoo. Magoo and I both started at the same time in a science-based company, but in different departments. He looked really good on paper, well qualified, and interviewed fairly well (from what I was told). I sat next to him and we began chatting.
It quickly became clear that something was wrong with him. He would giggle to himself during the conversation, and immediately began one-upping me in the conversation, saying how he had something better or knew more about what we were talking about. Not a big deal, I work with scientists and engineers, being one myself, and odd personalities are the norm.
Within a day or two, I knew that I was not going to enjoy my time with Magoo. Our office has a tradition of getting bagels and cream cheese every Friday as a sort of reward for a long week. I get in at 8:30, Magoo is already munching happily on a loaded bagel and giggling to himself. Not a big deal either. But an hour later, I see Magoo eating another bagel, then fifteen minutes later, ANOTHER. I confront him and tell him you can't eat 3 bagels before some people have had one. He brushes it off and tries to pretend like he didn't know he had done it. This guy is in his 30s by the way.
The worst part of being around him is that he takes over EVERY conversation he is in, and he makes sure he is in EVERY conversation. He will literally walk up to a group of people, no matter what they are talking about, laughing like he heard something funny, and then interject with how he knows more about it or is an expert at it. It got to the point that we would avoid him at all costs, or just leave when he came around. It didn't matter to Magoo, he would follow you and talk about his knowledge anyway.
He began to get bolder. He interrupted the CEO of our company during an important meeting to correct him on a detail that didn't matter. He once ordered over $10,000 in materials for an experiment that he wasn't authorized to work on. The last straw was when he started insulting people if they disagreed with him, including his boss.
At this point, most people wouldn't even respond to him when he spoke to them, and most people just left when he came around, even in mid-sentence. How he lasted three months is beyond me, but the day he was fired, we were told to stay out of the offices in case he did anything drastic. After he was gone, he asked his boss for a reference.
82. Carb Keto-sistant
A guy at work was trying the Keto diet, and it was all he could ever talk about. One time, he overheard a conversation I was having with a colleague on a particularly stressful day I was having. He interrupted our conversation to suggest I give up carbs in order to reduce my stress levels, so I’d feel better.
83. Spotty Reception
My receptionist is the most useless person I’ve ever met. She ignores the phones while playing on her device, takes personal calls, and does all personal business on her work computer from shopping to bills. Every day, she’ll find ways to avoid doing work by getting up and talking with anyone patient enough to listen.
My personal favorite? She does not take an ounce of criticism whatsoever. Every question or suggestion is an attack or mistreatment in her opinion. She has filed countless HR complaints because other employees have suggested that she focus on work. Countless meetings and time have been spent trying to appease this person.
84. Doing the Dirty
I worked in an office with a woman who rarely showered and always dressed as if she was auditioning for a role as a stereotypical bag lady. Her hair was unkempt and uncombed. She stank up the area around her desk. The owner would talk to her from time to time about her appearance and how she needed to clean up.
This was important especially for our clients who we had traipsing in and out of our office all day, but that upkeep would eventually dive back down. The owner would offer help in any way she could, but nothing sunk in. One day, there were these little bits of crumpled up papers trailing all over the office.
The manager started picking them up as we all looked over to figure out what they were. There were some papers with red stuff all over. The trail led to the bathroom. We figure out that this pig woman used toilet paper as a menstrual pad, and as she walked around the office, her makeshift pad disintegrated and fell out.
She walked around the whole day leaving bits of crotch rotted paper everywhere. And there was even evidence that she went into the bathroom and came out after all that mess was made. It was not something that you wouldn't notice on the dark maroon carpet. She knew she made the mess and left all of it anyways.
Her husband and children would also come to the office frequently to visit her. They were just as disgusting and dirty as my co-worker as well. It was actually very sad, but it was also extremely infuriating to have to work in the same vicinity as someone who doesn't care for anyone else much less themselves.
85. Programming Code of Conduct
A “programmer” I inherited would take half a day to start fixing a bug because he kept his own version of source code full of debugging information and refused to follow instructions. I'd been with the project long enough that I'd suggest the module, file, function, and sometimes even line number he had to fix. A day later or so, he'd fix the minor error.
86. No, You Do It
My bad coworker just...wouldn't work at all. This was in a research lab. He was a visiting researcher from another country, and he spent a lot of time asking tons of non-work-related questions to the point of disrupting other people’s work. In a year, he designed one very basic experiment and didn't even go through with it. He only designed it.
He was above doing bench work, apparently. He picked fights with everyone doing anything related to his. He didn't want to have to share credit with anyone. He wouldn't clean up after himself or pick up things from the floor. He once called me from another room because he didn't want to take a string-less teabag out of his mug.
Also, on a different occasion, he'd knocked some things off a hanger on the back of the door and, for whatever reason, wouldn't pick them up. It was kind of like working with a child. I don't know how, but he was there for his PhD. My boss fired him. He was one of two people in her 30+ year career that she'd fired.
87. Selective Memory
My manager claimed to have called me to change my schedule, but my phone didn't show any missed calls from his number so he was lying. Then the same day, he scheduled me to work a shift that afternoon without confirming that I was free or willing to pick up the extra shift. When I came into my next shift, he asked why I didn't come in for my scheduled shifts showing me my work schedule that he'd printed out.
I told him I hadn't been scheduled for that shift, showed him the screenshot of my original posted schedule from two days after it had been officially posted that showed I hadn't been scheduled for that day. He said it was fine, smiled and nodded, and sent me back to my shift. Next week's schedule comes out, I have no shifts. I ask what's up, and he says that since I missed a shift and didn't call in to say I'd be missing, I had to lose two weeks of hours. I again asked why that would be happening if I had come in for my scheduled hours, reminding him we had talked about it, he had said it was fine.
He pretended that he didn't remember that conversation. He was absolutely shocked when I quit before the two weeks were over. I got a voice mail three days later asking why I didn't show up to my scheduled shifts that week, and when I called him back asking what about "I got a new job and will not be back" was unclear, he claimed that he had never called me or left a voicemail and I must have just been confused!
Yeah, sure, some guy with your voice took your phone, called my number, claimed to be you, and used my name in the voicemail, mentioning my new job and confusion over my new schedule, to benefit who? To accomplish what? That manager got let go a few weeks later. Found out he had been pulling the same thing with other employees. They erased his name from the front of the building and everything.
88. Useless Knowledge
From her long and loud personal phone calls during work, I know how many pushes her daughter needed for labor, how much she's in debt, how her son-in-law is borderline abusive, and the grooming schedule for her dog (Peaches). But here's the worst part: her ringtone is a CAT MEOWING.
89. Mourning Event Staff
A friend of mine took his own life nearly a decade ago. When I requested the day off for his funeral, my request was denied. I had to go to work after going to the funeral of my 21-year-old friend. I was an event captain, so I had to be the face of the staff for the contact of the event, I tried my hardest to put on a happy face, but I failed. My mood was terrible and the event contact complained to my boss after the event.
The next week I was scheduled as an event server for my whole schedule with less hourly pay, less tip percentage. When I asked my boss, I was told that I had been demoted because of the complaint from the prior event. I quit on the spot, I should not have been forced to work that day, and I should not have been demoted for being in a bad mood after burying one of my closest friends. Screw that place.
90. Fatal Nepotism
My aunt got me a job as a tech in a chemical plant. As I was young and stupid, I told the guy who was supposed to train me that I got the job through my aunt. He decided to "haze me." After the first shift I already almost decked him as he would handily forget to tell me things and would berate and belittle me all the time. The second shift it continued and while I was working on a pipe, he didn't close it as he was supposed to do.
If I hadn't been aware of the rumbling and rolled away, I would have been blasted by a jet of boiling steam. I went to the team leader, he said I was overreacting but he proposed to move me to another shift. I quit. My aunt was pretty upset with me until she heard, through the rumor mill, that the guy indeed had done what I said he did.
91. What a Waste of Her Time!
When my sister worked as a Human Resources representative, she once had to deal with a case of serial pooping in the office. Just what do I mean by that, you wonder? Well, an employee kept repeatedly defecating in front of the driver’s side door of someone's car in the employee parking lot. They did this over and over again. My sister was put in charge of finding the identity of the offender and implementing corrective action. It was the top Thanksgiving story at my family’s table last year.
92. Technical Difficulties
I had a manager who pulled the entire department into a meeting. This manager was well-known for being “underqualified” for his position and usually had absolutely no idea what the heck he was talking about, which was hilarious. Meeting starts up, and he said our group would be a part of a livestream effort with several other departments in the company.
I would love to give you more details, but the hour-long meeting was composed of this manager desperately trying to get the livestream to work and refusing to ask for any help. Occasionally, he would stop and talk nonsense—like literally, “So how’s work been going? Chat amongst yourselves...”—then he’d get right back at it.
One of our senior staff members, who is usually very quiet, got up out of his seat after 40 minutes and said, “Darn man, this is embarrassing.” He then left. It was perfect.
93. No, YOU’RE Dismissed
I was once getting fired from a really bad job by a really bad boss. I knew he was going to fire me after I finished the project because the moron actually hinted at it in a conversation with his superior when he thought I couldn’t hear. So he calls me into a room, and as he was about to start his monologue, my phone rang.
I excused myself without waiting for an answer and left the room to answer the call. It was a company I had previously had an interview with offering me the position. I accepted, got back in the office, and dealt him the most satisfying blow. When I entered the room, I could see he was almost foaming. He was really expecting to destroy my soul by dismissing me from the job.
So we go in the room again and when he opens his mouth, I just stop him and say, "I know what you’re doing, could we make it quick? I have a really important meeting and I don't want to be late." He just threw the paper at me and left.
94. Secret Stash
While working in Human Resources, my team and I once discovered that a site manager had been hiding more than fifty pairs of women’s underwear all over his office in Ziploc baggies, along with some highly inappropriate intimate toys and over $100,000 of cash. These things had mostly been stuffed into the ceiling tiles above his desk. It took a while for us to unravel all of this, and we were all pretty confused when we finally did…
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95. The Out of Touch IT Guy
We had an IT guy for our department who was so out of touch with tech that he would simply refuse to work with ANY Mac products. He needed two more years to retire and just didn't care. His favorite activity was mouth-breathing in the secretary's cubicle and leering at all the women in the office.
96. What’s for Lunch?
I worked closely with Human Resources in a call center. You'd get some crazy stuff. For example, there was this one guy who carried a cooler around with him every day. I never wondered what was in the cooler—and when I found out, I instantly regretted it. One morning, we caught him wiping poop all over random walls and desks. Turns out it was his own poop...and he had been carrying it around in the cooler for all that time. Naturally, we had always just assumed that the cooler contained his lunch.
Nope, poop. He got caught when he wiped it on the front desk directly in view of the security camera.
97. Ruining All the Good Things
Tim was the guy everybody hated; he was lucky we all felt bad for his quirks. Every working day Tim punched in exactly at 8:00 AM and out at 5:00 PM, in between those hours you were lucky if you saw him working. Because of him we no longer have Secret Santa during the holidays, catered monthly lunches, or Holiday Bonuses.
Secret Santa: Tim was quite frugal, and when I say quite, I mean he was as cheap as it gets. But still, the recommended spend for Secret Santa was $50. When people started opening presents, it was clear that everybody went over that amount. Tim received a pair of tickets to a Dodgers Baseball game plus some Dodgers T-shirts and a hat. When it came down for Tim to give his gift, I watched in horror. He gave his desk-mate Jesse, who was the sweetest, most polite, quiet girl in the office, the most inappropriate gift. When she opened it, I wanted to die. He got her lingerie. Not just any lingerie, crotchless panties and matching bra. HR had a hay-day with that one.
Catered Lunch: Tim got so upset that he couldn't have Mexican food every single week that he raised a huge stink and made our bosses cancel the entire program.
Holiday Bonuses: This is what got the ball rolling for Tim's demise. Our company manufactured steel products and shipped them to different distribution warehouses. Nobody in our office worked in sales, so nobody had commission-based pay. Every year before our 2-week holiday vacation we received our last checks for the year and a bonus.
The bonus was a percentage of the profits divided up between all employees. It was great. Who doesn't like more money right before the holiday season? Tim, that's who. This particular year had been a bad one for us, profits were down 10% due to one of our distributors filing bankruptcy. So our bonuses were not as big as before, but they still equated to a paycheck's value.
Everyone, other than Tim, was ecstatic they were still receiving bonuses. When Tim opened his check, insanity broke loose. I've never seen someone so angry about a bonus check in my life. First he goes around asking everyone how much they received (we all received the same amount), but nobody wanted to show him their check.
Then he tries to talk to his desk-mates about receiving less than last year and this is where it goes downhill. Everyone he asks tells him they received more than last year's amount. You can see where this is going now. After everyone's gone for the day and a few of us stay to clean up the Holiday Party mess, Tim rushes to the company owner and yells at him about how low the bonus was.
After the holidays, we're told that our branch's bonus program was canceled. Everybody knew why. A month later Tim finally got fired after his poor desk-mate Jesse revealed that he'd been harassing her pretty much non-stop. Last I heard he moved to Kansas to live closer to his family.
98. Larry David Would Hate This Guy
We have this goober of a guy who works probably one full day a week. I actually get surprised if I don't have an email in my inbox in the morning of him saying he won't be in. Worst of all though, he sits nearest to the bathroom and makes comments like, “WOW you were in there a long time! Must've been a number two?!” when people come out.
99. Close to Home
I worked with this really strange guy for four months who was also secretly living in the office and was always completely nonsensical when he was actually doing his "work." We found a mattress folded up in the warehouse after he was let go, as well as a brand new pipe with a price tag on it squirreled away back there.
The craziest part? It wasn’t just him living in the office. He’d moved his entire family in. They left discarded food everywhere, put pizza crusts in the toilet brush holder in the bathroom, and left hair in the sink in the bathroom. They were obviously bathing in there too since we had no actual bathing facilities in the office.
One day during his tenure, this guy sent an email to everyone saying he slept in because his alarm didn't go off and he'd be in later at a certain time. He kept moving the time back later and later until he eventually showed up at 4:40 PM when we closed at 5 PM. And remember, he was secretly living in the office.
100. For the Love of Fish
There is an older guy at my place, who is a senior developer. He is knowledgeable, dependable, consistent, realistic, has a grasp of the projects he is working on, and is a hard-working engineer. He'd be a good coworker, except for one thing. Every single day, exactly at 1 PM, he enters our kitchen, which is exactly in the center of the floor, with straight corridors leading to every corner of the office, and sits down to eat his lunch. Fishes. Canned fish, fish in sandwich, fish soups, he even microwaves fish. For Christ's sake, every single person in the building hates his guts to the bitter end.
101. Nothing Worse Than a Close Talker
The laboratory where I worked hired an older fellow who had come in for his interview in jeans and a flannel shirt. When he started, he was...inclined to give minimal effort. He would take multiple half-hour breaks every day even though my job doesn't allow this, since you only get one-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks.
When an important task came along that didn't let him sit down at a desk and fill in his notebook every five minutes, he would just leave. He would get uncomfortably close to people thrusting his face to within inches of others to talk, and he would corner the other technician and me in the cramped preparation room.
He also called me "Toots." He didn't like that he had to learn things and do work, so he turned in his resignation after two months. He told the other technician and me who were training him that he refused to do any more work before he’d leave. He spent the time writing an insane letter to a state commissioner.
The letter went on about our "horrible" laboratory practices and how our boss would make him cry or something like that. I believe the wording was something like, "and I had not cried since I lost my dog." At least we got some good mileage out of that. We used to jokingly make fun of my boss about the guy’s dog.
102. The Office Martyr
This person does "favors" for people consisting of doing things no one asked for. Such as choosing a schedule because they think you'd prefer the one they didn't take, or talking to the boss about something "for you" so they can "defend" what you did. Then they act like you owe them for these things. On top of that they constantly do things outside of policy and act like a victim or martyr when they get into trouble.
103. Double Trouble
The family of an employee who had passed came to speak to us at Human Resources to pick up some pension documents, etc. This was in a factory environment. We sent them away with a to-do list of forms to complete. An hour later, reception pinged us saying, once again, that Mr. X’s family was here.
Strange, I thought. Those documents take at least a few days to get, let alone complete. How could they be back so soon? But as they walked in, I realized the dark truth. As it turned out, this was a completely different family than the first one. Yup. The guy had apparently been living a double life and had two different families. Let’s just say these visitors were about to have a fun surprise…
104. Delusional Distractions
The first terrible co-worker that pops in my mind was this woman who was obsessed with these two other girls who were BFFs. They were always whispering to each other about absolutely nonsense like taking their kids to Disney on Ice together. But the dumb co-worker just constantly insisted and whined and complained that they were talking about her.
Finally, I snapped after maybe three weeks of her huffing, getting upset, and glaring at them. As soon as she opened her mouth to complain, I hissed at her that she wasn't that interesting or important for everyone to be thinking about her. She was super shocked because I'd been chill, but she was driving me nuts.
105. Nursing Resentment
When I started, at my first job outside placement there was this horrible lady who just really hated any new people. When I was introduced to a group of my coworkers, she interrupted the supervisor who was saying how good it is to have new people just to tell him that she hated people who “don't know anything.”
She’d consistently came to the nurses’ station to ask for someone to help her with a two-person patient job and then would turn to me and say, "not you," or other small and petty stuff like that. Thankfully, everyone else was nice but it was hard to build your confidence with stuff like that happening every day.
106. The Guy You Can’t Get Rid Of
This guy who is kind of condescending and overcomplicates things. He thinks very highly of himself and a while back was always whining about wanting promotions but never getting them, because there were more deserving people. Earlier this year he finally got his promotion, but then got a job offer, negotiated to stay with our company AND THEN LEFT. Less than six months after he left he was begging to return. They re-hired him and he asked for ANOTHER promotion (two within a year). They turned him down.
107. Pretty Wild
We used to have a young blonde at my last security job that we could tell our boss hired her only for her looks. She had the personality of a doorknob and the I.Q. of a jar of mustard. Though the worst thing about her was that we quickly learned that she had an addiction and would randomly pass out in her chair.
She’d even start drooling on herself or disappear somewhere and return only to be acting really goofy. Some days, she’d do this in front of the workers as they’d walk through our guard shack. I’d always cover for her and say she wasn’t well. We had every intention of getting her fired, but she quit before that could happen.
108. Orange You Glad
There was a guy at my work who used to use oranges for “pleasure.” The weirdo would be in the washroom stall doing god knows what and would leave a desecrated orange behind. They eventually caught him and confronted him. He was never let go. They just wanted him to tone it down with the washroom-citrus business.
109. Just a Reminder
My annoying co-worker loved saying dumb stuff to get a rise out of me. One day, I made him regret it. He shouted at me from across the floor that “there's a woman on the phone, and she says she's pregnant, and she thinks the baby might be yours.” I just shouted back at him, “Tell your mom to stop calling me at work."
110. Clean and Clear and Out of Control
In the late 90s, I had a co-worker who complained about her computer being slow. I took a look, and the hard drive was full. The largest folder was her recycle bin. She had never, ever emptied it in years of use. I emptied the recycle, cleared the Temp folder, and the PC started working fine. She was happy until...her big Excel tracking sheet was gone. Oh, No!
She did not know where it was on file explorer, so I asked her to show me how she opened it. She goes to the little storage container on her desktop, named...Recycle Bin. It was normally at the top, but now it's gone. No backup. Oops...She cried to management that I "destroyed her computer." The manager laughed when I told her the truth.
111. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name." So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
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