Workplace craziness is an everyday occurrence.
And it doesn't have to be in an office.
The workplace can be lethal.
Firefighters, police, and EMTs aren't the only ones not coming home sometimes.
The easiest job in the world can be the deadliest.
That's because life is fragile and you never know.
Redditor Adventurous-Pea-4925 wanted to hear about all the drama and trauma everyone's jobs have caused. They asked:
"What is your workplace horror story?"
Working in restaurants was a daily minefield. People slip, fall and fight all of the time. It's hazardous.
4 Inches
Season 5 Fainting GIF by Living SingleGiphy"I watched a woman get scalped by an assembly line. She was underneath it cleaning when someone started up the line, her hair got caught up in a roller and pulled off a 4” chunk of her scalp. So much blood."
GibberBabble
Ducked Up
"I wasn't there that day when it happened, but heard some of the details. I may be off but here goes. 2 maintenance guys were up in a scissor lift working on an overhead indoor crane. Someone on the floor grabbed the remote for the other crane and started to move it. One maintenance guy yelled 'duck' and ducked, the other turned to see what was happening and apparently was crushed between the 2 cranes and then fell out of the lift."
"I don't know how true this is, but apparently his insides were out and still alive for a short time. I got a call from my idiot team lead telling me work was shut down for at least the day, probably longer. He didn't mention the guy dying, just mentioned it was awesome to have a long weekend."
mat-tar
Severed
"I was the boss and some guy wasn’t paying attention and had his arm on the bar behind him on the forklift he was backing up. He backed up right into a container and all but severed his arm. Just a small flap of skin was holding it on. He ran in the building spurting blood all over and I ran over and stopped him, sat him down and got one of the guys to get me some stuff for an improvised tourniquet."
"I held his severed arm under mine and I squeezed the upper arm to slow the flow until I could get the tourniquet on and tight. All the while I was getting covered in his blood from head to toe. I finally got it stopped and sat there trying to keep him calm while the paramedics were on the way. After they took over, I asked the firemen that accompanied them if they could blast me off with the firehose."
"They blasted all the blood off but my clothes were ruined. I sat outside until I dried and then went home and showered well and threw the stained clothes away. I got dressed and went back to work to help the crew clean up the blood and toss the chair he was in in the trash."
"I could taste his blood the rest of the day. It even got up my nose! I didn’t notice until I went home again but my mustache and goatee were stained from the blood too. I had to shave clean. They were able to reattach his arm but it never worked right again. He went on permanent disability afterwards."
mrsmith2929
#NeverForget
"I worked in a manufacturing facility as a buyer. I was in my office one day when I saw two of the product line supervisors sprint by and head toward the production floor. Seems a mechanic had tried to get a machine unjammed and had failed to turn the machine off. He reached in and the machine indexed and caught his arm, then it indexed again and partially ripped it off."
"I was on the safety committee and trained in first aid so I was called on to assist the plant nurse and safety director. I thought I was going to pass out - the guy was lying on his back and what was left of his arm was shards of bone and tissue. I'll never forget it."
GreatMaria
Strap In
dennis quaid falling GIF by RETRO-FIENDGiphy"Superintendent of a construction project refused to tie himself in whenever he was on top of the building. On the very last day of the project, as the crew is cleaning up, he slips and falls 100 feet. The only fatality at our company and it sucks because it was really preventable too."
Old_Snow3086
Going to work does not seem safe. We should all be independently wealthy.
Crap
dog poo GIFGiphy"Not me but my office had a bring your dog to work day and I saw an intern slip right in dog poop. Half the office had to leave for the day the smell was so bad. Guess what day didn’t happen the next year. LOL."
Jasper_Beardly_
Death
"This was years ago, I worked at a small college. One day a woman in Financial Aid's estranged boyfriend came in and stabbed her to death in front of her co-workers and several students. Campus police were able to arrest him, but didn't get there in time to help her. We also had a healthy 40 year old professor drop dead of a heart attack while in a meeting with a student. Not as bad as the first one, but it shook the student up pretty badly."
Coconut-bird
click it click it....
"Was working a graveyard shift at a Comcast (May have been AT&T at the time) call center. There were TVs everywhere with movies on, as there weren’t many calls at midnight. Suddenly all of the TVs shift to a channel change, down to one of the paid porn channels. My coworkers and I spot this, and start chanting ‘click it click it.'"
"The click goes through, then the ‘do you accept the charges’ comes up. We chant again and wonder of wonders it goes through. Suddenly there’s a full spread on every television in the call center. We spot two managers running full tilt across the cubicles, and shortly after it got shut off. Apparently the security guard thought the TV at his station was just for him."
FoomFries
"reasons"
"We had someone electrocute themselves during their shift. Poor guy was only 18, went to plug in a floor buffer to an extension cord on the wall. The cord was faulty but due to 'reasons' was never replaced. When he plugged the buffer in the shock dropped him and away he passed, due to insurance and potential lawsuits from the family over the faulty equipment the security footage of that night is sealed and the company went crazy afterwords removing every single extension cord they used."
SleepingGunner3282
Inked
gross dumb and dumber GIFGiphy"One of the printers briefly stopped thinking for like 30 seconds, went to clean a roller while the machine was operating at a high speed, and half of his finger got tore off. After he went to hospital, my brother went over to run the machine through to get the blood out and the other half of the finger came out and fell in ink tray."
Soul_of_Miyazaki
Aisle 8
"A man was murdered on aisle 8 in the freezer section of the grocery store I worked at. Happened 2 minutes after I left my shift for the day. One guy made inappropriate comments about the other guys 14yo daughter, and he didn't like that. He stewed for a bit, took his groceries and family out to his car, went back inside, confronted the man, it turned physical."
"Guy knocked him to the ground and stomped his head into the ground. Afterwards he went outside after someone called the police, went outside and said goodbye to his family, that he was going away for a long time, and waited for the police to arrive."
nryporter25
On the pavement...
"Don’t work there anymore this was an internship I had in construction management. Asphalt paving contractor. Several years ago, an inspector who was hard of hearing was out on the job site. He did not realize he was in the way of an asphalt compactor."
"The compactors move really slowly and their brakes are not built to abruptly stop (at least the old ones) seeing as you could see these things coming with more than enough time to move. Several guys on the equipment tried yelling at him to get out of the way thinking he would right away but he didn’t hear them. The guy on the compactor obviously applied the brakes but the others realized too late that he wasn’t getting out of the way."
"You could imagine what happened next. They said the sounds were unimaginable, he didn’t make a noise but his body being crushed did. They had to scrape him off the pavement. The guy on the compactor took an office job after this and now has severe PTSD."
achavira13
Dry Heaves
"Ugh. Ok. I had this guy who was around 650lbs come in to the hospital via EHS. It took twelve people to move him onto a stretcher. He was coated in rotting flesh from his behind, groin and thighs from sitting in a recliner for so long, and there were flies buzzing everywhere. There were so many maggots and flies covering him that we had to shower him outside of the department while he lay in the stretcher."
"We wheeled him into the trauma bay, leaving a trail of brown rot-water behind him. Lucky me, I got assigned the job of placing a Foley catheter in him. I had two masks, a gown, and as much other PPE as I could find. The smell was not masked in the slightest. As I tried to fight back my dry heaving, I pulled the blanket back that was covering him in an attempt to grab his penis for cleaning prior catheter insertion."
"There were still maggots literally alllll over his groin and legs, and some were legitimately falling out of his penis hole. I damn near threw up in my mask. I remember thinking to myself 'omg, I’m going to be pushing maggots up into his bladder, but I gotta do what I gotta do.' End result for all you wondering, he passed away later that evening."
Nurse_malibu87
The Creep
"Dude got fired for being useless and a huge creep towards anyone he was even remotely attracted to. He'd always been quite inappropriate with his jokes and about what kind of stuff you're supposed to talk about in the workplace (hint: not your puppy play fetish or nazi sympathies)."
"But it had gotten out of control by that point. During his one month period of notice he wore the same clothes every day and never showered. On his very last day he went into one of the bathrooms, masturbated and finished over everything."
Jealous_Hospital
Head First
"I used to be a lift operator for a ski resort. A guest at the resort asked at closing if I new where to get marijuana. I did and I help the guy out by taking him with me to go get some. The next day he crashed head first into a tree. I happened to ski past the scene minutes after it happened and before ski patrol responded, dudes head was in several pieces. I could tell from his jacket that it was the same guy."
off_the_cuff_mandate
Salad Guy
"I work in a restaurant, one evening one of the salad tenders cut off the tip of his finger and it was bad enough that he had to go to the hospital for it. Unfortunately, the salad he was making somehow made it out of the kitchen and onto a table. Shortly after, a guest complained about something chewy in their salad that they thought was a piece of bacon, and they didn’t want bacon in their salad. The salad guy couldn’t find the tip of his finger before he left."
Sz3to
Miserable
"A long-term employee who started at the lowest rung was promoted repeatedly over time to his level of incompetence as a manager. It only because the CEO was closed personal friends with him, not because the guy was in any way qualified for the job."
Turns out this guy's main objective was to make everyone's lives as miserable as possible - to subject employees to the vagaries of his temperamental whims and make workers feel afraid of his potential reprimands for the least little thing. It turned what once was a pleasant, productive environment into an oppressive, fear-dominated workplace."
Back2Bach
The Filth
Chuck E Cheese Wink GIFGiphy"Chuck 'e cheeses was literally the most unsanitary place I have ever been in, the kitchen was crawling with roaches, the balls in the ball pit actually had mold on them even after they where clean, which by the way they used a pickup truck and a drive through car wash to do that, and the rat costume reeked to such a degree that the only people who could be inside it where the 2 people who had no sense of smell. The boss was also just the biggest a**hole and would regularly harass his own employees."
froopty1
This is why I work from home. Although that isn't the safest either.
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.