It's never fun to watch someone dig their own grave. While it might inspire a sense of "gee, glad that's not me!" it still leaves a lasting impression on you.
People are usually doing the best they can with what they have. And sometimes that best is truly not enough to get them through the day in one piece. Sadly, if you work with them, you're beholden to this horror show, too.
u/chocolatefeckers asked:
What's the most spectacular way you've seen someone f*ck up at work?
These are their stories.
Be A Jerk, Get Kicked Out
Giphy
A grad student was invited into a professor's office for a meeting and was left alone for a moment. There was a pile of cumulative exams on the professor's desk that had just been graded. These are subject exams for grad students, wickedly difficult, and you need to pass 4 to continue in the program.
This jackass decided he'd take a look at the stack of exams, then upon finding that some of his fellow students did poorly, he took pictures of their grades so he could use them to ridicule them and pass the results around the department. This was a big deal because numerical grades aren't ever given out for these exams, only pass/fail, and also it's a pretty big FERPA violation to distribute others' personal academic information like that.
He was found out almost as soon as he sent the pics around and was dismissed and forbidden from campus immediately. Someone else had to pack up his desk because they were that serious about him never setting foot in the building again.
21st Century Dumb Moves
Guy drops a glove in a deep fryer, sticks his entire hand in it before realizing it's on and set to 350 degrees F. My current job is a lab technician at a major university, and we had a new guy unplug the small -80 degree C freezer full of recombinant DNA because he wanted to charge his phone.
He's Gonna Win That Case
I was once a bank teller. One day, a guy comes in to pay off a line of credit that he shares with his son. Apparently, his son is a drug addict and ran the line of credit balance up to $10k (maxing it out). The guy comes in, talks to my fellow teller, pays it off, and signs to close it out. He asked my coworker at least 3 times that it was closed. She assures him that it is (she is also addicted to her phone and loans most of her attention to it). Guy leaves.
Several months later, the same guy comes in enraged with a line of credit bill. He comes to my window and explains the situation. He thought it was closed. It turns out that our bank's policy (not sure of this is universal) is that both he and his son have to sign off to close it out unless there was some sort of special circumstances that never happened. Dude owed another $10k because of course his son isn't going to sign off on closing it out if he can run up the balance again. He says he is going to sue. I point him in the direction of someone more qualified than me. My manager tells me he has a good case and will probably beat our corporate bank in court. I'm just a teller. Some days it's good to be on the bottom. Glad it wasn't me that messed it up.
The Cost Of Being Lazy
I used to work at Popeye's, this fried chicken chain. It sucked and I eventually quit. A week after I quit the night crew decided they didn't feel like putting the boxes away from a truck shipment. Someone could deal with it next day. Few days later, and several reports of food poisoning later, they got in a load of trouble. Boxes were full of raw chicken. So glad I quit.
Car-ry On My Wayward Son
Couple of years ago, we had a new supervisor directly from corporate. He got a promotion and moved from another city
He was a complete jerk, micro managment nightmare, arrogant, etc,etc. But someone up the corporate ladder really liked the guy, so he had full support from the bosses.
Then in his first month of work his company car was stolen, it was insured so no big deal. A week later his replacement car was stolen again and a third car two weeks later. Turns out the guy had a trouble with alcohol, he got really drunk and left the car open, on the street and he just forget about it.
He wasn't fired, he was just moved to a desk job with no company car.
This Will Teach Ya
I used to work in a grocery store and I had an HR person repeatedly "lose" my doctor's note stating that I have Reynaud's Syndrome and couldn't be in the freezer. I got a stack of them from the doc and would have to bring in a new one every few weeks. Finally, I had a department head fax a copy in to corporate for me before dropping off yet another copy to HR B*tch. The next week the HR b*tch called me into her office and told me I was going to have to put the frozen load for bakery away.
I told her I couldn't do it and I had a note on file. She told me she didn't have any paperwork on file for me and that she could "make me do anything she wanted to." I called my department manager into the office and told him what she had said. He got corporate on the phone and asked if they had received the copy of my doctors note detailing the fact that I had Reynaud's Syndrome and had already previously gotten frostbite at work from being forced to be in the freezer when I wasn't supposed to be.
They said they had it, and he then told them what HR B*tch had said. He then handed HR B*tch the phone. She had to hold the phone about a foot and a half away from her face because they were yelling at her so loud. It was one of the most satisfying days ever working there. She went on leave shortly after that and never came back, and the official story was that she was having health problems.
Big Mix Up
Worked in a single story cinder block office with parking spaces out front. There was a big window that overlooked the parking lot. We had an older engineer (early 70s) that worked there. He pulled up one morning in his parking spot and must have gotten the brakes and the gas confused. He drove the car right through the window, taking out some of the wall with it. I can still remember seeing him gripping the steering window with this terrified look in his eyes while he kept slamming on the gas. The car must have gotten stuck on something because it would just lurch forward and the engine would rev. Luckily he didn't kill anyone. He retired soon after that.
How Can You Keep With The Same Mistake?
My coworker sold someone an auto insurance policy but forgot to check the effective date. Turns out she had pushed the start date of the policy out a month. Guy got into an accident a few days later. Cumulatively, we probably spent 10+ hours on the phone trying to get claims to cover this guy's accident.
She ended up messing up the effective date on about 10 other policies before she left.
Someone In The Government Is A Giant Jerkface
I'm a welfare caseworker. A few months ago I got a call from a client wondering what was going on with her case.... Read the case comments and found that one of my more intellectual coworkers shut down this case and assessed a FIVE YEAR overpayment on this client for her cash aid (basically saying that all the aid she had ever received was fraudulent and she needed to pay it all back). Her reasoning? There was a glitch in the system that made this woman's child show as a resident in a different county.
Rather than following established protocol and calling this woman, or ordering a fraud investigation from our literal unit of full time investigators, or anything else that would make sense, she went out of her way to make this woman's life hard.
For the record, I called the other county and the worker I spoke with confirmed that the child was no longer a resident, his father had reported to them that the family was moving to our county 5 years ago, and they'd been trying, unsuccessfully, to update his county residence ever since.
Because I caught the phone call, I had to un-f*ck the case and close out the overpayment.
Goodbye, Jerkface!
Giphy
Surgeon was a notorious *sshole to colleagues but had been getting away with it for years. One day he was doing a minor surgery on a lightly sedated (mostly awake) patient and said some horrible things directly to the patient. And the patient remembered it.
He contested his firing, and the hospital had to go through an arbitration process, but all the other staff in the room corroborated the patient's story and testified against him. And now he's gone.
And he deserved to be gone a long time ago.
Ain't No Party Like A Sexist Party
I got promoted. New guy who'd been there a month (Id been there a year) threw a sexist fit that I was promoted instead of him. His fit took the form of walking to the back door and slamming it open so hard the automatic closer ripped clean out of the metal door. I was the MOD for that shift and terrified. I sent him on break, called my boss, explained the situation. He was gone the next day.
Not All Doctors
I'm a medical device rep - One time a Surgeon decided to just rip/peel a particular organ off/out of a person rather than take the 15mins it usually takes to properly cut and coax it off/out. This routine procedure ended up taking nearly 3 hours because he could not stop the bleeding. It got a little awkward. C's get degrees people. Not every surgeon is world class. I know who I wouldn't let operate on me and my loved ones, that's for sure.
Another time I saw an anesthesiologist elevate a surgical table mid procedure without paying attention to the mayo stand hovering over the table. The surgical table knocked the mayo stand over and it all came crashing down. Multiple glass scopes were broken and all new instrumentation had to be wheeled in etc.... it sounded like someone kicked over a crash symbol from a drum set. Those laparoscopes are like $7k a piece...
Way Out Of Line
A manager was operating a hi-rail vehicle on the mainline and rear ended another vehicle.
- He was not qualified on the vehicle.
- He was not expected to operate said vehicle.
- He was travelling more than 25 mph over the limit.
- He shortened the truck by 6 inches.
- It wan't reported to control (me) until 2 hours after the incident.
Racism Doesn't Rock
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Working at a company of about 5000 people and one day, we all get a message from some guy named Ming Wong saying "Hi, I can't remember the password to my timesheet software. Can anyone help me reset it?"
Then, a few minutes later, he replied to himself with "Oh no! Sorry, I didn't mean to send that to everyone."
It would have been just your standard accidental reply-all except then we got a third email. This one was from some guy who was trying to forward it to his friend, but also mistakenly replied to the entire company with "lol ching chong bing bong. Ming Wong send email wrong". Both him and the intended recipient were fired immediately.
Refined, But Unrefined
Was working at a refinery one time and a new unit was being built. Someone bumped the insulation of a large distillation column with a lift. There was only a small dent but the whole section had to be replaced. $30,000 later the person that bumped it was looking for a new job.
Your Uppance Came
In high school I worked at Babbages. Our manager claimed one of the employees was stealing stuff and fired him as a scapegoat after a regional manager said we had a lot of missing stock. Fired employee knew the manager was actually stealing and reported him to the regional manager. RM and police made a surprise visit and inspected manager's car. Found over 100 Dreamcast, PC, and N64 games in his back seat through the back window. He got fired and arrested on the spot. I was working that day.
But eventually, we need to face the facts, and these Redditors are ready to deliver the harsh truths about what it means to be human. SomeWillingness2960 asked:
What is the truth humanity is not ready to hear?
Let’s start with a few of the light ones, before we dive deep in what we’ve been overdue to hear.
Starting off with a very controversial one.
“The air in chip bags is important.”
“They replace the air (which contains oxygen and water vapour) with nitrogen so the chips don't get soggy or oxidise.”
“And they "over inflate" the bags on purpose to cushion the chips from crumbling during packing / transport.”
A universal work struggle.
season 8 episode 23 GIFGiphy“No matter where you work, or what you do for a living, there will always be That Person that nobody can figure out how they got hired, never mind why they are allowed to continue working there.”
“I remember seeing a post on Reddit that seems to answer it. It basically says that to keep most jobs you just need to tick two out of three of the following attributes(I might have misremembered 1)
- You actually show up on time
- Your work is
good/up to standardis not the worst and passable - Your colleagues and bosses
like youdon't hate you the most out of your colleagues
Edit. Adding 4 and 5 based on below discussions which can supercede the above 3 while also ammending the above three slightly
4. It's more difficult to kick you out than to keep you
5. You have some control over those in charge (some kind of relation, having some kind of incriminating evidence, etc)”
What is “normal”, anyway?
“We will never have a good sense of the world's "normal."
News won't focus on it, because it's boring by definition. Social media won't focus on it for the same reason. Word of mouth and fiction too. Statistics may get us close, but they're hard to picture in terms if human experience, and of course, more exciting stats get repeated more.
Our view of the world outside of our own personal experience will always be shaped by the outliers, and there's not much way around it.”
Ok, now it’s time to dive deeper. Prepare yourselves.
This one hurts.
“Most people simply don't care about the things you're passionate about no matter how much you try to convince them that they should be.”
“As I've gotten older I've had to learn that my friends don't find joy in the same things I do. It's nothing personal.”
I’ll never understand this.
Mermaid Man And Barnacle Boy Superhero GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy“Much evil not only goes unpunished but is rewarded.”
“Not only that but a lot of evil behaviour is rewarding itself for many people.”
Unfortunate truth.
“The loudest among you are mostly a bunch of wankers. Unfortunately you usually let them lead you.”
“A big part of that is because they tell us what we want to hear.
You ever hear a politician go "We're going to have open borders, lower corporate tax rate, higher sales tax, reduced prison sentences, laws forbidding employers from looking into if they're hiring a criminal, a ban on beef, and we're doing it all because that is what the experts say we should do and I have a giant book of sources on that"? No, because even though that's very much what experts advise, it's not at all what people want to hear.
So instead, when you hear someone going "Don't listen to that guy, what we really need is better border control, huge taxes on corporations, no taxes on the poor, criminals get treated like the scum they are, and corporations are the main ones behind climate change, and don't ask me for sources", you're still much more likely to support him. Because when you want to believe them, they're so much easier to believe.”
Those would be some very smart monkeys.
“There's a good chance that humans simply don't have the capacity to fully understand the universe.
A monkey will never be able to comprehend calculus, macroeconomic theory, or how a car works. It makes sense that we too have an intellectual ceiling that will prevent us from ever understanding how the universe works.”
Ready to face the music? Keep reading.
Oof.
Giphy“Humanity is the largest threat to itself. Not some natural disaster or outside invasion. We will kill ourselves off at this rate.”
“Yes. It's sad that the most successful and intelligent species in the solar system is most likely going to cause its own downfall.”
Same.
“For most people the last thing left of them will be an eroded name on a headstone.”
“I want to be one of those taxidermied drones.”
Username checks out.
“Are you special? Maybe a little bit. Are you as special as you think you are? Certainly not.”
“We are all the same decaying organic matter.”
Well, I hope y’all aren’t too messed up from reading that. Especially that first one about the chip bags. How dare they.
But in all seriousness, just do your part to make our world a better place. That’s all we can do.
Most of us would be content making sure our family and friends were set for life and bettering the world the best we can.
Redditor ApArAmY wanted to hear what everyone else dreamed of doing if they had no limit on funds.
“What is the first thing you would buy if you had infinite money?"
Dreaming of affordable health care? Must be from the US...
“Every single medical provider facility in the world. Make healthcare free for patients. Since I have unlimited money, I can afford whatever drug/device/material/salary/etc that would treat patients.”
“Then everyone can get on with living life knowing that they'll get good medicine and not be saddled with high costs. And taxes could go down because governments wouldn't have to pay for healthcare.” Specialist-Ad475
20 trillion, no big deal...
“I'd fund all efforts to further the fight against climate change, global warming, pollution, etc. I'd probably try not to spend that much money for a while so as to prevent inflation, but adding ~20 trillion dollars to the global economy wouldn't be that bad, right?” PixelGMS
The orange one wouldn't like this idea...
“I'd buy Mar a Lago, make it into a homeless shelter and install wind power turbines on all 18 holes." Mr-Warmth
Someone come get their dad!
“A new butt, my old one has a crack in it!" drewdwagy1966
seth meyers dabbing GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphyHuman rights and green energy...
“Buy Amazon, Nestle, and as many $1billion+ corporations as I can. Once I'm CEO, I would stop every human rights violation they cause and give all the profits (since i have infinite money I won't need it) to charities and funding to green energy and stopping climate change." crispier_cream
So pure...
“It sounds silly, but an ice cream sandwich. Several years ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck and had a fair amount of credit card debt. I fell behind in my mortgage and lost my home to foreclosure. Shortly after I was notified, I drove over to a 7-11, bought an ice cream sandwich, and ate it while crying in my car.”
“Unfortunately, every time I eat an ice cream sandwich, it's still a bittersweet feeling. I always think of the day my favorite childhood comfort food became forever intertwined with my sense of complete and utter failure. After coming into life-changing money, I would hope that an ice cream sandwich would taste as good again as it did when I was a kid.” Steve-in-rewrite
“Just….. a huge chunk of land.”
“Land. Just….. a huge chunk of land. Build a house for my parents, one for us, and one for my In-Laws, and another small house for the family to stay at when they come to visit. Maybe two. We got a big family. And then just spend my time building my farm." Unusual_Amphibian_20
Just make sure to funnel it through a PAC first...
“A US Senator! Or several of 'em. I've always wanted my own senator.” a_dangerous_noodle
Susan Collins Thank You GIF by Election 2020GiphyThe who’s got a bigger one game...
“Judging by the world we live in, apparently I'd enter into the private space race.” Cool-breeze7
Back to the bartering system perhaps?
“I would distribute it all evenly so that it's literally worthless. I would expect this to collapse the economy but what do i know, I'm not an economist.” Jham_jam
It seems like mostly these Redditors want to help others and the planet. Although for that one person, may all your ice cream sandwiches be delightful.
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