Cruise Ship Employees Reveal Stories About The Biggest Problems Passengers Never Discovered

Cruise Ship Employees Reveal Stories About The Biggest Problems Passengers Never Discovered
[rebelmouse-image 18345439 is_animated_gif=Cruises can be some of the best vacations a person can take - and also some of the worst. A pleasure cruise can pretty quickly go all Titanic. Ships have to be fully self-contained, so all it takes is one sick passenger, one little kid with lice to infest a whole ship, one broken pipe - and it could all go sideways. Things go wrong on cruises all the time, but most passengers never know about it. One reddit user asked:
Cruise Ship workers of reddit, what was the biggest "oh sh!t" moment on the boat, that luckily, passengers didn't find out about at all?
Antarctic Toilet Paper
[rebelmouse-image 18347745 is_animated_gif=Water pipe burst in a store room and soaked ALL of the spare toilet paper. This was on day 2 of a 14 day voyage to Antarctica. The cabin stewards had to swap around rolls of paper between "low use" and "high use" guest cabins and it came right down the wire. None of the guests found out or realized. Now toilet paper is hidden in every cabin instead of a centralized location.
The Special Freezer
[rebelmouse-image 18347746 is_animated_gif=Currently working on a cruise ship - people die on cruise ships, and the bodies are kept in a special freezer. Most guests will never know. I mean, you gotta do something with the body if you're at sea. Spent a lot of time in the casino on my last cruise.
Same few faces there each night. Day 3 or 4 one of the guys doesn't show. I comment on it to a dealer and she says something about
"Yeah - my guess is he ended up in the freezer... you see a bunch of people who come here for their end... maybe his money ran out."
Not Landing The Helicopter
[rebelmouse-image 18347747 is_animated_gif=The last cruise I was on, somebody needed surgery and so the coast guard came to collect the passenger. Rather than land on the deck (it did have a helipad), they just hovered and EMTs were lowered to the deck, they strapped the kid into some kind of gurney, then raised him into the helicopter.
At the reception, I asked the captain why the helicopter didn't land and he just said they didn't need to land. I imagine it's similar to picking someone up in the city. Sure, you could find a place to park and walk to where they are and escort them back to your car, or.... you could just double park out front and tell them to hurry the hell up.
Dryer Lint
[rebelmouse-image 18347749 is_animated_gif=Drier lint fires are the number one cause of shipboard fires nowadays.
Always empty the lint catcher, folks.
Bankrupt Cruise Line, Stranded Workers
[rebelmouse-image 18347751 is_animated_gif=I worked on a cruise ship, and unbeknownst to the passengers and most of the crew, the ship was on its last cruise. The company was going bankrupt and when the ship landed, that was it. Everybody was out of a job, and a lot of the immigrant workers were stranded in a foreign port.
Ran Right Off The Ship
[rebelmouse-image 18347752 is_animated_gif=I worked on a cruise ship for three years! I've got a lot of these kinds of stories, but here's my favorite one:
Our ship officers got a call from a ship of a completely different cruise line, off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. They found one of our passengers floating in the ocean. He wasn't even near the shore at all, just floating in open water. He was alive & perfectly fine.
We reviewed the security footage, & in the middle of the night this guy was drunk on Deck 5. He could be seen holding his phone, dancing to music by himself. He then climbed onto one of the lifeboats, put his phone down & did a RUNNING JUMP into the ocean. His body was so fluid from being drunk that he wasn't injured when he hit the water. It wasn't a suicide attempt, he was having a blast. We think he just got too into it?
The other cruise ship spotted him & rescued him. His family didn't know he was missing because he had booked a separate room.
This guy told the news that a "rogue wave" pushed him off the side of the ship. He was on Deck 5, so the wave would have been over 40 feet tall. No wave was seen on the video, nor did any other ships report a wave anywhere near that large.
Don't know what happened after that. The entire crew was talking about it for weeks before it hit the news, though.
Extra Lifeboat Drills
[rebelmouse-image 18347753 is_animated_gif=I was on the Costa Serena in January 2012. Just cruising around the Mediterranean. Woke up one morning and ALL of the crew and wait staff at breakfast we're stone cold and depressed looking. They made us do an extra life boat drill that morning, to all of our confusion. Found out later that day that our sister ship, the Concordia, sank overnight but didn't have many other details.
My now wife wasn't on the trip and didn't know the exact name of the ship I was on..and found out before us. She was terrified till the next morning when I could get on to the ship's internet connected computer.
We also found out the crew was especially depressed because a lot of them had family on the other ship and very little information. The captain of the other ship (who was probably drunk) had a civilian girlfriend in the bridge when he shouldn't. He ordered the ship to steer closer to the rocks to get a better view. He ignored all alarms and navigated by eye because he claimed to know better than their navigation equipment. When they struck, he lied to the coastal authorities and said they just had a minor power outage. This heavily delayed rescue /assistance. Then he tried to sneak on board a lifeboat ahead of passengers. People died as a result of all this.
The Italian Coast Guard had to order him to get back on the ship and help. He's in prison for the deaths he caused.
Took a few days, but things got back to fairly normal. I just remembered doing life boat drills and thinking they were a waste of time... Then we found out and learned that lesson
He Died. She Finished Her Vacation.
[rebelmouse-image 18347754 is_animated_gif=Ship just arrived in Whittier, Alaska (the port for Anchorage) and an elderly passenger dropped dead while walking down the gangway. A conflict ensues between the port security and the ship's medical team. The port security didn't want the ship's medical team to get involved because it technically happened off the ship and the local authorities had jurisdiction. There really was no saving the guy but the ship's medical team at least wanted to try but the local authorites wouldn't even allow the chief medical officer to start CPR.
The coroner had a ~6 hour ETA so the port authorities bagged up the body and stuffed it in an x-ray machine storage container in port (guarded by local police) until the coroner could arrive to take the body to Anchorage.
The wife of the deceased continued on to finish the vacation for the 7-day rail trip to Denali (it was a 14-day gimmick... 7 days at sea, 7 day scenic rail trip). My understanding was the cruise line comped her entire vacation, arranged for the remains to be returned home at no cost to her, and provided a personal escort/assistant for the remainder of her vacation.
Purple Rain
[rebelmouse-image 18347755 is_animated_gif=I was playing a production show (guitar) was standing on stage with a wireless unit alone to play Purple Rain, and then all of the sudden the house lights came on and the curtains closed. Everyone in the audience looked at me, and I ran off the stage. Turns out a sewage pipe burst backstage and there was literal, actual sh!t everywhere.
Show was cancelled and the passengers didn't find out why.
Hurled Himself Overboard
[rebelmouse-image 18347756 is_animated_gif=A QM2 transatlantic crossing one of the kitchen staff got drunk one night and hurled himself overboard in the North Atlantic. The ship basically found out the next morning when the first mate kept calling on the ship wide intercom for him to go to his post. That afternoon, the captain announced what happened and that the ship was turning around to, with the help of 3 nearby merchant ships, try to search for the him. Of course it was foggy as hell and you couldn't see 100 yds but just about everyone was on the railings with binoculars trying to search for the poor guy.
A wedding on board even stopped, the whole party out looking once the announcement came that we were in the search area.
Nothing was found. The concierge desk set up a multinational-currency donation box to send to his family back in Chile. There were 4 days left in the trip at that point and every day that box was stuffed to capacity.. I hope it helped them.
Windows 7
[rebelmouse-image 18347757 is_animated_gif=All of the computer systems run on Windows 7, including all of the automation in the machinery space, security system, fire detection system etc.. When Windows updates it will restart the computers, as it does with a normal desktop, unfortunately it can also take out every computer at the same time and we're flying blind until it finishes.
People may be more worried to hear that there is a hole in the hull yet they're actually fairly common occurances in older ships and easily plugged.
Fires happen occasionally. The most terrifying was a crankcase explosion. The fire suppression systems are good at extinguishing them quickly enough though so they're not even a concern to the crew ... unless Windows is updating at the time.
Bye Sweden
[rebelmouse-image 18347758 is_animated_gif=I was a cruise ship worker for a few years and on a route between two cities there was a really bad storm. So a few minutes after the passengers got off, the storm got so rough that the ship was ripped off the docks and drifted out to sea. Bye Sweden.
Because it takes quite a while to start up the engines it took some time until we got back to the harbor. Not really dangerous, but if it had happened while the passengers were deboarding it could have gone badly.
Bullet Fired From Shore
[rebelmouse-image 18347759 is_animated_gif=Somebody shot at the navigation bridge of the ship from the shore on my last ship, the bullet bounced off and hit my colleague on the hand (no real damage but it scares the hell out of her, ended up going home for a few weeks). While we waited for the local police to come on and investigate and take statements, guests were told we were delaying the departure to take on fresh water.
I'm still shocked that never leaked out.
Cocaine And Group Sex
[rebelmouse-image 18347581 is_animated_gif=Was a casino dealer with a major (you know their name kind of major) cruise line for five years. The biggest thing the passengers never know about is that the crew gets LIT.
Cocaine use is rampant due to cheap costs and quickly metabolizing (out of your system in a day or 2). Cocaine in Panama and Bahamas etc. is waaaayyyyyyy stronger than any here.
Group sex: It's not like orgies everywhere but I've seen some pretty buttoned down, conservative types lose there morals quickly. Vacation mode and booze and drugs etc...plus not having to worry about reputations and all makes for some good times.
Catching Human Waste In Garbage Cans
[rebelmouse-image 18347760 is_animated_gif=I used to work on the Tahoe Queen as an engineer. We would cruise around Lake Tahoe for 2.5 hours and do lunch or dinner cruises. Between cruises, it was my responsibility to pump the feces out and pump on water if we need it. A lot of times we don't need more water, or we don't have enough poo to warrant pumping.
This was one of the times where we needed water, but not to pump poop.
Problem is, the water systems on large boats/ships can be a funny thing. Long story short, I left a valve open where I shouldn't have, and started taking on water into the water tanks, which, while in transit, apparently overflow into the sewage tanks. The sewage tanks quickly began to fill up, and I spent the last 1.5 hours of the cruise catching human waste in trash cans.
I don't know that anyone would have necessarily panicked.... but I don't think people would like to know what was going on right below where they were eating.
Check For Whales
[rebelmouse-image 18347761 is_animated_gif=If you're pushing 140 revs on the shaft and the ship still won't break 15 knots, check the bulbous bow for whales. The weight of a dead whale will slow a ship down. Cruise ships hit whales quite often and the passengers never know.
The What-Ifs
[rebelmouse-image 18347763 is_animated_gif=I was on bridge watch during a cruise around Alaska. It was right at the end of the hour so I had just been relived. Luckily, because I still had my night vision, I was still hanging out on the bridge just chatting with my relief and this new chief mate.
That's when I saw what looked like a shadow on the water, it was extending left from an island. Something about it didn't look right so I kinda did something a little out of character for our role as deckhands and jumped over to the the big spotlight and flicked it on. That's when we saw, just a few boat lengths in front of the ship a rock and gravel shoal. It was low tide and this big long shoal was just smack dab in front of us
This new chief mate cranked it hard over and luckily we missed it. It did rock the boat quite a bit and we all just stood there in shock. Lucky nothing more came of it other than a hard turn. Thank god it was the last hour this new chief mate was on watch and thank god I was relieved from bridge watch. Apparently it was was very quiet and very awkward hour with that guy.
He was fired that day and sent packing. It turns out all he was doing all night was following the GPS plots. Those are guides, not actual tracks one should follow without using the radar, charts and all the other aids to navigation we have. This idiot was just following a line and doing no proper navigation at all. He wasn't even marking the chart or logbook properly, just copying what the GPS said. Apparently that's all he had ever done in the open waters of the gulf, just follow a line so that's all he did in the tight and confined waters of Alaska.
Sometimes I think about the things that could have gone wrong. What if I had just left the bridge instead of staying to chat, my partner didn't have night vision yet so he would not have seen it. What if my relief had shown up late, or early, what if the conversation was a little different? What if I had just thought that shadow was just from the trees on the little island and not flicked on the light? So many things could have gone wrong and who knows how it would have turned out. Would it just have been a collision with a soft sand bar and some paperwork, or would we have hit hard rock and torn the bottom open drowning most of the crew asleep in their underwater rooms? SO many little variables and any one of them could have changed the outcome.
Sea Trials
[rebelmouse-image 18347764 is_animated_gif=I provide software and services for most of the major cruise lines and spend a lot of time "cruising". On the new builds is when you see a lot of crazy stuff happening.
When a brand new ship is built they have to go through what's called Sea Trials. This is a full systems check for multiple reasons, biggest ones being safety, emissions, and engine/navigation testing. This happens without passengers , and a lot of stuff breaks usually. They will list the ship (lean it all the way to one side) as hard as they can and hold position while doing a circle or figure eight pattern in the water. I had a ~600lb wine cooler (fully stocked) fall face down about 12" away from me while installing a PC at a bar. It sounded like a stick or dynamite exploding from the pressure of all the bottles hitting and simultaneously breaking. I froze staring at it and as I started to come out of the initial shock, four security crew members came running around the corner, no one else around except me and about $10k in broken wine (and the cooler wasn't cheap either). I just stuck my hands in the air, and slowly exited the scene. I'm pretty sure if I was standing one foot to the right it wouldn't have been pretty for me.
Found out the yard workers forgot to bolt it down (as per protocol), oops.
Freddie Mercury And A Free Steak Dinner
[rebelmouse-image 18347765 is_animated_gif=I was a musician aboard a cruise ship. One time, a guest entertainer (a fly-on act who joins the ship for a cruise to perform one show) thought he was fcking Freddie Mercury or something. He decided to literally throw out his CDs like ninja stars into a completely dark audience.
One ended up hitting some old woman a half an inch below the eye and she had to go to medical. The husband wrote the cruise director a very threatening letter basically saying "my wife almost went blind so I strongly suggest you give us a free steak dinner."
Cheaters Overboard And Into The Jellyfish
[rebelmouse-image 18347766 is_animated_gif=One time I was on a cruise, and a few cabins down a man and woman who were cheating on their wife and husband, respectively, got super drunk and fell over the edge of their balcony. From really high up. It was at night too.
The whole cruise ship stopped once it was reported and it took like an entire day to search for them. Apparently the man had his jeans or something because he had inflated them somehow and they were floating holding them.
They reported that they were stung by multiple jelly fish and were super cold the whole time. That must have been the scariest most terrible eighteen hours of their lives.
H/T: Reddit
Anyone with any amount of dating experience knows at least a few things that they love in a relationship and a few things they find unsavory.
Just like discovering our boundaries and what qualifies as a relationship deal breaker, most of us generally have a few rules that we tend to live by in every relationship, whether it's romantic, platonic, or professional.
Curious to learn some rules to live by, Redditor aytmamatov_musa asked:
"What relationship rule have you memorized forever?"
Actions Speak Louder than Words
"I can't remember the exact wording, but something to the effect of: Pay more attention to how invested your partner is in the relationship, not how much they say they are."
- why_im_single
Know Who Holds the Power
"I remember when I first realized that the person who has the most control in a relationship (especially ending it) is the person that cares about the relationship the least."
"When I thought of all the relationships that I had been in (not just sexual) and how one person decided sometimes months ahead of time that the relationship was over, I remember how oblivious the other person was when it ended."
"By the way, this can also be applied to employment relationships as well."
- Mo_Jack
Don't Fight for Someone's Attention
"If someone does not want to hear you, there is no way you can phrase anything to make them listen."
"This applies to all types of relationships, but I learned it from trying so hard to have a healthy relationship with my mother. Then when I left at 25, she responded by filing a missing person's report, hiring a PI (Personal Investigator), harassing my friends, and hacking my email and bank accounts to monitor my activity."
"This also ties into: abusers see you taking away their ability to abuse you, as an egregious theft of their rightful property."
- CurrentSingleStatus
Be a United Front
"Problems aren’t You vs Me. They’re Us vs The Problem."
- FilecakeAbroad
No Codependent Relationships Here
"You cannot help someone who does not want to be helped."
- Diesel07012012
Be Honest About Your Feelings
"Listen to how you describe your partner to friends, or how you think at the moment how you're describing your partner to them. That will tell you a lot about how you feel about them."
"If you're nervous about introducing them, listen to why. If you're apologizing for their actions, pausing to reframe positive ways to speak about them, or ignoring the red flags, then listen to that instinct. If you're constantly talking about the problems or hiding them, pay attention to why."
"I remember being in one relationship and having those feelings of, 'Should I introduce her to the family, when I talk to others about her, I'm exhausted from some argument, etc.'"
"I remember another relationship, thinking, 'Oh, I would love her to meet the family, she'd get along with everyone's kids, my friends would love her, I just had this great moment with her, and I wanted to tell people about it, I enjoy talking about her.'"
"When you experience that difference (and you have the wisdom and experience to know you're not being deluded by things like abuse or newness or getting caught up in a big fire that's going to burn out fast), it tells you so much."
- ConvenienceStoreDiet
Be Mindful of Reciprocation
"Something a friend of mine once told me was, 'Always ask yourself if this relationship isn't taking more from you than it is giving you.'"
"It saved me a lot of heartbreak."
- Interferonno2fan
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
"If they don’t respect your boundaries while dating, they won’t respect them in marriage."
- Rachel1578
Cheaters Gonna Cheat
"My best mate got with a woman who cheated on her then-boyfriend to be with him. Then my mate and she stayed together for four years, but she ended up cheating on him with another guy that she is now dating."
"I warned him in the beginning and advised him not to get into a relationship with her to start with. If she can do it with one guy, she can do it with another."
"His argument was that her then-boyfriend was not good enough for her which was why she is cheating on him. But what he failed to realize was that no one is the best in the world, and if she decides that he isn’t good enough for her in the future, then she will cheat on him too. And that is exactly what happened."
- dp9116
Acknowledge Red Flags
"Red flags look like normal flags when wearing rose-colored glasses."
- Mezame_Drgn
Common Interests Aren't Everything
"Having a lot in common doesn’t equal a good relationship. It’s just a decent starting foundation."
- ironicallyunstable
Don't Go to Bedroom Angry - Or Do?
"I wouldn't say forever, yet, but since becoming a wife, I have learned that it's okay to sleep off a fight. Don't have to 'resolve' everything right then and there. Give each other space to let steam off and talk in the morning."
- beanedjibe
Be Loved for Who You Are
"Do not change your personality if you don't want to... I didn't realize until the breakup, that my ex did not like me, just the idea of what I could be..."
- Bethedr
Know the Difference
"When an argument comes out of nowhere, ask 'Are you yelling at me, or to me?'"
"It's helped with a lot of arguments. Sometimes we just need a backboard to scream at, and nine out of ten times, that backboard is your significant other."
"A lot of arguments get bad just because they don't know you are releasing anger, which is healthy in the right way."
- spenser1994
Some of these seem pretty simple, but they can make a huge impact in a relationship, if not also to the trajectory and health of a person's life. By understanding our own worth and how it's valued by others, we gave give ourselves a much happier ever after than we might have otherwise settled for.
A breakup can really reveal a person's true colors.
Whoever in the relationship initiated the heartbreaking news that "this isn't working out anymore" or for any other reason the significant other didn't see coming can elicit irrational behavior.
Can they be blamed for going into a blind rage? Well, it depends.
Curious to hear just how someone whose had their heart broken reacted, Redditor No-Feeling865 asked:
"Whats the most f'ked up thing your ex did after a breakup?"
Some people just can't accept the fact that love has died and they resort to revenge.
Fake Pregnancy Alert
"Said she was pregnant and sent me a positive test. I searched positive pregnancy test results on Google Images… it was the first one to pop up."
– SpaceShipET
Public Announcement
"Had an ex make a MySpace page about how I’m a f'king loser. I already knew that, but I just thought it was rude."
– EssEyeOhFour
The Expensive Guilt Trip
"Take out a credit card in my name, go to Greece, and rack up $6K in charges in my name the stick me with it."
– soon_zoo55
Based on these cases, divorce seemed a logical next step.
Expensive Waste Of Time
"Cheated on me, refused to sign the divorce papers, so I had to pay an attorney thousands more to show up to court."
"Showed up to court, judge asked: kids? No. Shared property? No. Bank accounts? No significant money in them."
"Judge literally asked, 'why are you here?' I pointed at her, he sighed, signed the divorce and said 'next case'. Thousands of dollars for literally two minutes of court time."
– Shoddy_Emu_5211
No To Makeup Sex
"I left my wife when she threatened me with a 6' kitchen knife because she was stressed by our 11 year old son's homework. 4 weeks later when I collected the last of my things from our house she looked upstairs and seductively said 'do you want to come upstairs for a f'k?'"
"In the 18 years we had been together she has never said anything like this before."
"That was a definite 'No!'"
– Elegant-Ninja-8166
Actions spoke louder than words verifying these were not the kind of people you'd bring home to meet mom.
Truth Comes Out
"Immediately started dating the girl he swore he wasn’t cheating on me with."
– emshlaf
Animal Cruelty
"Hung my dog off a balcony. He is okay now."
– easygoinggirlie
Sometimes, there's a happy ending.
Blessing In Disguise
"I had an ex who cheated on me multiple times, and just generally manipulated me emotionally. Always lied to me and never actually came clean about the cheating, even when I had evidence, or when her best friend came to me because she thought I should know."
"We finally break up after 8 years, and I get back out there and start hooking up with someone else, ended up getting her pregnant, and it was her choice to keep it."
"My ex heard and called my Mom to tell her before I had decided to tell anyone in my family, totally blindsided me when I started getting calls and texts from my parents."
"Anyway, the other woman ended up being the most amazing mother, friend, and partner you could ask for. We've been married for 4 years this summer, and our son will be 5 in the spring!"
– Cristal_Lizard
The horrific behavior mentioned above just further cements the fact that some people were never meant to be in your life.
That's the thing about a person's true colors–you don't see them until in hindsight when the relationship becomes comfortable.
Love makes jilted people do crazy things, indeed. Like slashing an exe's car tire in a parking lot with surveillance cameras catching all the angry action.
Yeah, that may or may not have happened.
Sharing a home with a roommate is always a balancing act.
Particularly if it's a roommate you settled for, rather than chose to live with.
While some roommates proved to be a match made in rent-controlled heaven, others find themselves to be less than compatible.
From constantly having to clean the dirty dishes they left in the sink, to dealing with them blasting music on full blast at all hours of the night when you're trying to sleep, some people never manage to jump from being roommates to being friends.
Making the day they can finally afford a place of their own to be truly the happiest day of their lives.
"What made your worst roommate ever such a bad roommate?"
With Friends Like These...
"Was a slob who got into drugs and hanging around the wrong sorts of people."
"Completely trashed his room and took off one day leaving his dog he had just gotten behind for me to deal with, along with a bunch of unscrupulous-looking characters knocking at my door telling me that he owed them money and asking where he was."- Electro-Onix
Well That's Disgusting...
"She stole, wore, stained, and destroyed my fancy frilly underwear and then returned them stained and tattered to my drawer and played stupid about it."
"I discovered this by finding my underwear in her laundry basket when I was tearing apart the room going 'what is that SMELL?!''
"I was allowed to change rooms by the school."- CaffeinatedHBIC
Animal Endangerment
"Had a weekend getaway planned, confirmed a couple of weeks in advance that she could take care of my cat while I was gone (side note: she had a cat too.)"
"Before I left, re-confirmed that she would be around and could take care of them."
"Wasn't uncommon for me to do all the kitty duties, which I didn't mind at all, but because I was used to being on top of it I wanted to make sure she had it under control."
"Got back after 3 days and clearly no one had been in the apartment for at least a couple of days."
"Cats had no water or food and had been clawing at the door enough to chip a bunch of the paint off of it."
"I texted her and asked if she had watched the cats, she replied that she decided to stay with her boyfriend for the weekend, completely oblivious to the fact that she had abandoned two helpless animals."
"I asked if she realized the cats hadn't had food or water in a few days, she replied 'oh, they're just cats, they are fine'."
"I asked her to move out and also if I could keep her cat because I was worried about her ability to take care of another creature, both of which she agreed to."
"Some next level loser a**hole sh*t to do that to creatures that are dependent upon you to survive."- basicallyasleep
The Zoo
"Rented a room from a neighbor who let me live there cheaply when I had nowhere else to go."
"Her house was pretty dirty due to her physical limitations from being very obese, but I tried to keep common areas clean."
"Her adult son lived there."
"The worse part was her 25-year-old daughter."
"Immature, entitled, thought she was god’s gift."
"She’d leave blood and pubes all over the bathroom. She’d have sex with her bedroom door open. She was always arguing/disrespecting her mom."
"But the worst part was how she treated her pets."
"She loved to rave about her 'zoo', but her mom had to take care of her dog, cat, and several birds."
"The dog was untrained and it peed on my bed and barked when I was trying to sleep."
"The mom would go out of town sometimes to a family beach house."
"One time she was gone awhile I noticed the dog’s water bowl was always empty."
"So I kept filling it back up."
"Then I realized that the house was pretty quiet."
"She had cockatiels and conures, so the house was never quiet."
"So I went to check them."
'The bowls were bone dry and empty seeds."
"And 2 of the birds were dead."
"I was so happy to finally get out of there."- lalapine
Well, That's A Decision...
"In the middle of a 100F heatwave in August, not only turned off the AC, but turned the heat on."
"To 90F."
"Even at the coldest days of winter, has no one turned the heat to freaking 90."
"Came home to a sauna, and she didn't even stay after she did that."- LeatherHog
Questionable Practice...
"They were drug dealers and they liked to work from home."- Ok_Whatever_Buddy
Did They Think They Would Clean Themselves?
"We had a shared kitchen, the 3 of us, we had cleaning schedules but they never followed it, they just piled it up until it was my turn."
"After numerous complaints that I was the only one cleaning I stopped cleaning."
"3weeks later there was rotten food and fungi all over the kitchen and even a cockroach infestation."
"A cleaning company had to be hired, the costs of which spread over the people living there."
"I objected the bill on grounds of my earlier complaints, they didn’t argue and I did not have to pay."
"I even got compensation for eating out every night, they got kicked out a week later."
"Was a win for me eventually but a horrible time before that."- Mezame_Drgn
Anything But Trustworthy...
"Tried to set the rest of us up for a pot bust after he got caught."- roadfood
Health And Safty? Meh...
"My favorite: She would come in drunk at 2am, turn on all the lights, leaving either her keys in the front door lock, or just leave the door wide open and then pass out in the living room."
"Good times!"- cerart939
Three's A Crowd...
"His girlfriend basically moved in immediately after he did."
"She was nice enough but adding another person to a tiny 2-bed apartment sucks."- beachfun2525
Grand Exit...
"Sh*t in the oven before moving out."- Longearedlooby
Contributed Literally Nothing
"He got into drugs, quit working, and quit paying rent three months into a year-long lease."
"Then he started letting his drug buddies sleep over and they ate all the food I bought."
"So I couldn't keep groceries in the house."
'Then they went through my room looking for things to steal."
"I ended up having to forcibly take away the apartment key and get a second job to make the rent."
"After months of stress, I worked 80 hours a week for eight months because of that b@stard."- luthurian
Consent Was Necessary
"Found out the dude was keeping his webcam running when he was out."
"Being secretly filmed was kinda f’d up."- O_vJust
Sometimes, putting up with a roommate who will never be a friend is worth it for the home you are sharing.
Other times, a tiny studio apartment is probably the way to go.
Even in a strong economy, or after making billions of dollars in profits, all businesses try to look for ways to save money.
Sadly, one very common solution is to lower the numbers in their workforce, resulting in layoffs for those whose departments they deem unnecessary.
Others look for slightly more unusual solutions.
However, sometimes these solutions are made without a great deal of thought, and these presidents and CEOs soon discover what they thought would be a cost-cutting measure ended up costing them even more money.
Sending them racing back to the drawing board.
"What did your company do to “save money” but ended up costing the company lots of money instead?"
You May Get A Little Hot...
"Shut off the HVAC system to save on electricity costs during the summer."
"Had to pay over half a million in mold remediation costs."
"F*cking morons."- dinosore
Never View People As An Expense
"Lay off a bunch of veteran people so they can bring in newer workers for cheaper."
"They find they couldn't bring in newer people for cheaper so they hire newer people at close to the same price as the veteran workers."
"Veteran workers are mad they have to train somebody making almost the same as they are with no experience and start leaving."
"Company has to pay fewer remaining veteran workers even more to get them to stay while paying inexperienced workers close to what the workers they just laid off were making."
"To my knowledge, prior to the lay offs, the veteran workers weren't even complaining about pay."
"Now the department is at a worse state and more expensive than what it was prior to their plan to save money."- Frankie__Spankie
Simply Illogical
"The roof of our building was leaking bad."
"Got quotes for doing just a third of the roof and for doing a whole new roof."
"They choose to do third of the roof."
"All it did was move the leak."
"A month later they did the whole roof."
"They would have paid a lot less had they done it right the first time."- sonsonmcnugget
Location, Location, Location! Or Not...
"Business travelers must fly to the closest airport to the destination."
"Is Airport A one mile closer to the destination than Airport B?"
"Yes."
"Are the airline tickets 2x as expensive?"
"Also yes." - Reddit
A Hospital Is Nothing Without Its Nurses!
"Underpaying the nurses so they quit and had to pay agency 3x the going rate."- junotinychonk
The Dangers Of Outsourcing
"Moved 'corporate' phone support from UK to India for a very large fizzy drinks company, despite the contract saying guaranteed UK support."
"Over 50k phones canceled and moved to their rival."- WimbleWimble
"Someone I know worked for the 'oldest American' hoist company."
"They decided to outsource production to china."
"The cost of transport, losses, customs, etc made the Chinese hoists just as expensive as their American-made ones and then the Chinese company stole the plan to make and sell themselves for less."- Diabetesh
You Never Know When You're Going To Need Them...
"Company ran a campaign for 'outside the box' ideas in cost cutting, with stock awards for proven savings."
"Our facility maintenance manager claimed a $300k savings by eliminating unnecessary capital spare parts in the warehouse and received a $30k award."
"Six months later a critical compressor failed resulting in the plant reducing to half capacity at a $500k per day profit loss."
"It would only take two days to repair, however, the parts were no longer in the warehouse."
"They were among those eliminated and sold for scrap."
"It took 90 days to receive replacements."
"Total loss to our company was just over $50 MILLION."- eron6000ad
God Forbid People Are Rewarded For Good Work
"I used to work at a place with a sizable distribution center and thousands of SKUs."
"The warehouse's team of pickers was a great group of folks."
"They were fast, extremely accurate, and very good at their jobs."
'I brought them cookies on a regular basis and made sure to take good care of them."
"One day, some f*cking walnut decided that they were 'making too much money' in incentive pay (they got a bonus for accuracy and for picking above and beyond their normal quota of items) so they canceled the picker incentive plan and bumped up their quota, saying 'it's their job, we're getting robbed paying them extra to do what they should be doing anyway!'"
"Pick rates began falling sharply within the first week or two, because the incentive pay for being an outstandingly fast and accurate picker made the otherwise crappy base pay for that job turn into a living wage."
"Warehouse staff was enraged by having their pay jacked with and now being unable to pay their bills while still being expected to perform as well as they did before, so they started performing to the old quota."
"Management did much finger wagging and tried to write up a couple of the top pickers for 'deliberately underperforming and hurting the company'."
"Those top tier workers refused to sign the writeups, walked out of our warehouse, walked into the warehouse of our direct competitor, and had new jobs that same day."
"The rest of the high performers followed over the next couple of weeks."
"Delivery routes got delayed because of the short staffing and loss of the best workers, customers got upset because they were receiving the wrong items or not getting them at all, and the sales team, which wasn't paid enough to get screamed at by angry customers, was furious."
"Cue a meeting with the sales team and the f*cking walnut, who proceeded to lecture everybody about how 'picking is an entry level job' and 'anybody could do it' and how they're going to bring in a bunch of temp labor 'because they will actually appreciate the opportunity'."
"Fast forward a few months and it turns out the temps are idiots and caused the number of pick and 'not on pallet' errors to increase, customers are now leaving in droves, and sales people are bailing out too."
"The company lost millions of dollars in business and had to lay off half the staff because they were going to go bankrupt otherwise."
"All this because some f*cking walnut thought they could squeeze the people at the bottom of the pile who actually did the work that made the company money."- nancybell_crewman
From $75 Max, To A $75 Steak...
"We used to get a travel per diem for our meals."
"Most people would eat cheap like get a free breakfast at the hotel and get a $5 footlong and split it for lunch and dinner and bank the rest."
"I traveled a lot so it was like a nice perk."
'The company got wind of this and changed their policy to we had to buy and expense all our meals."
"The problem was they had to have the same policy for all employees so they couldn’t put a cap on meals due to the sales guys having to take out clients and stuff."
"We took full advantage of it and ate like kings."
"My meals expenses were twice what they were paying in per diem."- velvet_satan
Safety First
"I used to be the head of security for a club that had the most tight-fisted owners I’ve ever heard of."
"I kept telling them that we were dangerously understaffed."
"The police told them the same."
"So did the fire brigade, they said there wasn’t enough of us to evacuate the venue if we had to, they were right too."
"The owners wouldn’t listen."
"The club was taking around 45k per week but they wouldn’t pay for radios for us to least be able to communicate."
"We had so many incidents there that it was just insane."
"There just wasn’t enough of us to actually watch the whole club and even when we did see something we couldn’t call for back up."
"I found a set of second hand radios for under £200 but they refused to buy them I ended up buying whistles for the team to at least give us something to use to get each others attention."
"They also wouldn’t pay to get CCTV installed which upset the local police."
"One night a bartender came out to the door and told me there was a fight inside, there was no security inside just 2 of us on the door."
"When we went in there was around 60 people brawling on the dance floor."
"We did what we could but it was beyond our control."
"Eventually the police arrived but wouldn’t come inside they stood outside and essentially instructed us to kick everyone out and they would keep them out."
"We spent 45 minutes dragging people out of there."
"Many people were injured and after the fight one of the guys who had been fighting came back and stabbed a guy he had fought with."
"The police decided enough was enough and approached the council who as expected revoked the premises license."
"They lost the club altogether."- operative87
Gig Economy...
"Not giving the guy doing 2.5 full-time jobs a slight raise, instead letting them walk and paying 3 new people (combined) at least twice what they were paying him to do all the same work at like 65 percent the quality level."- BigPZ
Experience Matters...
"Consolidated the sales departments and made salespeople stop selling the stuff they knew how to sell and forced them to try to sell products they weren't familiar with to customers they had no history with."
"Company almost went out of business in a matter of months, and this was not a small company."- MostBotsAreBad
Needless to say, a business needs money to operate.
But money should never be the driving force behind the decision.
At least not over quality, practicality, and the well being of your employees.