The Quickest Ways Someone's Coworker Ever Got Fired
Reddit user mango-chocolate asked: 'What's the quickest way you saw a co-worker get fired?'
We've all made our fair share of mistakes; it's in our nature, honestly.
Sometimes we mess up so badly, it can ruin other things in our lives, like important relationships or our jobs.
But some people have messed up so badly at work that they lost their jobs in record time.
Ready to hear the tea, Redditor mango-chocolate asked:
"What's the quickest way you saw a coworker get fired?"
Check Your Pride
"In my old law office, a firm-wide email was sent out announcing the arrival of a new employee. We will call him Paul."
"So Paul decided to reply-all to let all of us know that he was aware of our recent legal defeats, that many people should be fired for these failures, and that his hiring was the first good thing our firm had done in years."
"The dude was a legal assistant right out of college with no experience."
"A minute after the email went out, I heard a crazy shout and then watched one of the senior partners run past my office towards HR (Human Resources)."
"And five minutes later Paul walked past with the HR manager and a security escort. He lasted less than 45 minutes."
- Left_Apparently
Lotto Fraud
"I worked at a lotteries company. A guy working in testing got access to production data and printed off some test tickets with some unclaimed winning numbers."
"He only did low amounts, like 500 dollars, and claimed three of them in three completely different locations around town."
"Of course, the company was interested in the story of someone who found a six-month-old lottery ticket and claimed it, but they were even more interested to find it was the same person going to three locations."
"Needless to say, when they realized the guy actually worked in the company, he got pulled into a room with cops a-waiting him."
- ThroughTheHoops
Weird Brag
"I worked at a bank, we were robbed at gunpoint. One of the tellers was quick to tweet out, 'Woooo, got the rest of the day off!! Feel free to visit me at work with a gun and ski mask anytime!'"
"They were fired upon walking in the next morning."
- seastrat
Totally Stopped Production
"An id**t pressed the emergency stop for fun on his second day at work."
"The emergency stop that he hit switches off all drives on the 100-meter-long paper machine. This means there is a loss of production for three to four hours for the entire paper mill."
"He was immediately escorted from the factory premises by two colleagues."
- daHawkGR
No Point Taking That Test
"I had a coworker get picked for a random drug test. She went back to her desk to grab her purse, and just left the building, never to return."
- brytewolf
Yes, That's What We Meant
"The boss sat her down to talk about her recent behavior at work."
"She whipped out her phone and started taking a video, saying that it was her right to record for 'when it goes to court.'"
"The boss said, 'Okay, this is the kind of stuff I’m talking about, you’re fired.'"
"This was at a Domino’s Pizza."
- kenb99
New Definition for "Side Hustle"
"Evidently, they robbed a bank on their lunch break."
"They came back like nothing happened, and then the cops showed up and took him down. It was crazy."
- Bob_the_Brewer
Quite the First Impression
"Pulling into the parking lot on the first day, she ran into a light pole that took out electricity to the whole site."
"She wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown into the front window."
"When we went out to see what had happened, she reeked of booze and there were empty liquor bottles in the back of the car."
"She never even made it to the front door, got a guest badge, or started her orientation training."
- LowBudgetViking
Haunting Upcharges
"When I was in high school, I used to do seasonal work at haunted houses which I did for four years."
"A new guy that they hired was supposed to help with parking. Now, in the three years that I worked at this haunted house, they never once charged people for parking (it was a very dark parking lot off of a cliff so had to make sure no one drove off of it trying to park)."
"This cheeky son of b***h started charging people five dollars to park."
"It was only found out after someone complained because they didn't have the money to go in with their friends because they had to pay for parking. I think the guy was only there a couple of hours before he got fired."
- rpgmomma8404
Missed the Training
"They got hired and then fell asleep during a meeting their first day and were asked not to come back."
- Snowstorm-3
"Same here. At a tech company, they hired a new developer, and the owner caught him napping at a desk on day one when he was supposed to be reviewing training materials."
"The owner had a chat with him, and told him whatever the reason, it was really bad form to fall asleep on the job on the first day."
"The new hire apologized, understood, and went back to the training materials. Not 20 minutes later, the owner walks by again and the guy is passed out once again, so he walked over, woke him up, and told him he was fired and to get out."
"I don't even think he made it to his fourth hour of employment."
- badtz-maru
Highly Questionable Explorations
"Early in my career I was an engineer at a refinery in the UK, and I was in charge of the QC lab. By law, we had to have external independent testing on the refinery fuel products to confirm they complied with government regulations."
"It seemed getting a job for the testing company was that you had to be an adult and had a driving license. The lab had a lot of very nasty chemicals either being tested or used in the testing or cleaning of the oil products."
"A new young girl turned up for the testing company and was dipping her finger into a chemical called phenol and stating that 'it makes your hand and arm go numb.' Phenol is a severe muscle relaxant (including your heart) and can kill you at very low concentrations."
"One hour into her employment we had paramedics on the scene monitoring her vitals and was released after eight hours. She didn't last the first hour of the first day and the testing company was fined pretty heavily."
- Nerdymcbutthead
AKA: Paid to Advertise
"A guy got hired in the first firm I ever worked for. He turned up for his first morning at work, and within an hour he had emailed the entire company (6,000 people) about his band and their availability for birthdays, weddings, etc."
"He was dismissed by lunchtime."
- BDATriangle001
"So he got paid half a day's wage to advertise his band to 6,000 people?"
"Man's a freaking genius."
- Oakcamp
Not-So-Quiet Quitting
"One day, Tim announced that he wasn’t paid enough and was going to basically sit at his desk doing nothing until he was paid what he wanted."
"20 minutes later, the boss walked in and asked Tim if he could have a word with him."
"Five minutes later, the boss walked back in and announced that Tim no longer worked there and if there were any questions."
"There were no questions."
- Few_Horse4000
Don't Be That Guy
"Interviewed a guy that was replacing someone who was leaving. Offered the job and was supposed to start the next day."
"Just so happened that we were having a going away party for the leaving dude that night so new guy was invited as a chance to 'get to know the team.'"
"The new guy shows up and proceeds to get absolutely s**t-faced and asked the head of HR if she wanted to go back to his place because he 'got a vibe' during the interview process."
"Next day, the new guy was a no-show so we were thinking bullet dodged. He showed up just before lunch clearly hung over making up some excuse for being late."
"The big boss came out and told the guy to get the f**k out."
- tizod
Optional Hours? Optional Employment.
"I fired someone who decided her second day that she was going to go out to lunch and not come back. The next morning she told everyone all about the shopping she did. She seemed confused about the expectations."
- dunwerking
Some of these stories are absolutely worth shaking our heads over, while others are truly shocking.
It's crazy the lengths people will go to in the workplace, despite the expectations that had already been clearly set.
If you view the rules as optional, your boss might view your employment as optional, too.
People Who Hooked Up With A Coworker Break Down The Aftermath
Reddit user Nuff-Do asked: "People that had sex with coworkers - how did that turn out ?'
We've all heard that love and work do not mix, and we've definitely heard that we shouldn't take relationships or friendships with coworkers to the next level.
Between having our work, our jobs, our income, and maybe even our reputations on the line, there's simply too much at risk.
But maybe sometimes, the affair won't turn out quite the way we expected.
Redditor Nuff-Do asked:
"People who had sex with coworkers, how did that turn out?"
Rewarded with a Trip to Italy
"I was a young Airman at my first base in California and I worked with a girl (let's call her Sarah) who was way more attractive than anyone my small-town Missouri a** had ever hooked up with before."
"For some reason, she was into me. She was into a few other dudes too, but at the time it didn't matter because I was 19 and stupid and she was a few years older and far more sexually experienced than I was. We had sex a few times and sort of 'dated,' but it didn't really go anywhere and I was heartbroken but cool with it."
"This was right after 9/11, so U.S. military operations were starting to ramp up and Sarah got deployment orders. They didn't tell her where she was going, but she was on the hook."
"Her reaction to the news was to tell our Chief that she was pregnant with my kid so she didn't have to go. I knew she wasn't pregnant and just using it as an excuse not to deploy."
"The Chief came to me and asked if I'd go in her place. As I said, I was 19 and even though I was a little scared, I signed the dotted line and told him of course I'd take the deployment."
"It turns out, the 'deployment' was to a NATO base in Naples Italy where I'd be paid about 80 dollars per day per diem on top of my normal paycheck."
"As soon as Sarah found out where I was headed, she called the Chief and told him she wasn't pregnant anymore and would like to take the deployment."
"The Chief denied her request and I spent an amazing eight months in Italy, being paid more money than I knew how to spend and having the time of my life."
- NewPac
Watching Them Move On
"We met thru work and dated for one and a half years. She cheated with another coworker who is married. We broke up. She started to date a different coworker. Not the married one. She paraded that relationship in my face."
"Everything was great until it wasn't. It really f**ked over my self-esteem and self-worth for years. It sucked that I had front row seat to her moving on."
- bluevacuum
"I feel that last part. When my ex moved out, she did it slowly over the course of like a month. She came over every day and packed up slowly until she finally got everything."
"The worst day was when she finally came and took her cat. I still remember sitting in front of the door and crying for hours after she left that day."
"There's a band called Pedro the Lion that has this lyric, 'My old man always swore that hell would have no flame. Just a front-row seat to watch your true love pack her things and drive away.'"
- FTG_Vader
"When I kicked my ex out this summer for having cheated on me, I gave her an arguably unfair timeline to leave before all of her possessions just went outside, and packed and moved everything for her to the garage overnight, since I couldn't sleep anyways."
"This is why. I simply couldn't handle those constant reminders and wanted it done and gone as fast as possible."
- DeceiverX
A Messy Breakup
"I had resigned and was leaving the company anyway but it was one of those classic hookups at a company party. We had fun for a while but then she decided to stop seeing me."
"I'm glad I had left the company by then; otherwise, things would have been messy."
- love_boobs_in_dm
A Huge Theft Ring
"I got fired and she got fired and all 20 guys she f**ked while we were dating were fired."
"I got fired under false allegations because she was my girlfriend and she was stealing from the store."
"She got fired for stealing from the store."
"The other 20 were fired because it was brought up that she was stealing and sleeping with managers and other coworkers while in a relationship with me. They thought that me and her were the center of a theft ring."
"Like, no... I don't steal so."
- butahoomach
A Promotion for Everyone
"So my wife of over 10 years, who had cheated in the past and I forgave her, got a huge promotion at work which caused us to relocate."
"I guess she got tired of me because she kicked me out and we were getting a divorce."
"Four months later, I found out that a co-worker had a thing for me, so I took my shot. The sex was amazing. It could be that it’s been a long time for me since sex with the wife was basically non-existent for the last few years of marriage."
"Me and the co-worker have now been dating for over a year and I haven’t been happier. So for me, it worked out for the best. And the sex is still great!"
- Unrealevil360
Too Many Options
"I worked at a casino as the only male cocktail waiter/bartender (roughly eight cocktail waitresses and four female bartenders). The floor was mostly women between the bar, servers, restaurant, and dealers."
"I slept with one of the cocktail waitresses for a couple of months even though I knew I had a bigger crush on her than she did on me. I also knew I didn't really want a relationship with her for a couple of reasons."
"Evidently, she told some people and gave me good reviews. After she quit and moved away, I had more interest than I really knew what to do with and kinda just went for it with anyone who showed interest that I was attracted to as I knew I had no more than a year left there no matter what happened. I ended up with four more of them over the course of a couple of months."
"One time on a shift, I looked around and all four were on the floor somewhere. All knew each other but I'm not sure any knew about the whole situation, and none were any false impressions of a relationship as far as I know so nothing bad came of it."
- CallMeLargeFather
A Family Man
"Not me, but she was working in payroll and he was a security guard. One day, a coworker saw the security guard walking her to her car. Immediately, she was transferred to another branch. However, they continued to see each other."
"Soon after, they got married after finding out she got pregnant. In the next five years, they had three daughters, with me being the youngest. My dad ended up passing away from brain cancer when I was just a toddler."
- Swimming-Site-7682
The Downfall of a Friendship
"I had one good experience one bad. The first one we ended up dating for a year and a half. We had a ton of fun sneaking around at work, and even though in the end he totally broke my heart, it wasn't a bad experience."
"The second one was very bad. Do not recommend."
"I thought he would be safer because we were friends, so I figured communication and rules would be no problem. Instead, we didn't communicate at all because we were both so worried about hurting each other's feelings."
"It ended badly with major assumptions on both ends and now it's very awkward and uncomfortable."
"It makes me sad because honestly, I just miss my friend. While the experience can be fun, I don't recommend it."
- laylalove89
A Suspicious Relocation
"Pretty fine. We worked at different locations in the company the first time we slept together, but we knew each other as she had trained at my location."
"One night we ran into each other at the bar and one thing led to another. A couple of months later, I ended up getting transferred to the location she was at and we just acted like it never happened."
"After a month or two of working together, we ran into each other again at the same bar, and history repeated itself."
"There was a slightly awkward moment a couple of days later when I had to find a way to give her back the necklace she'd left at my place without anybody noticing, but other than that, our working relationship didn't change at all."
- Nervous_Chipmunk7002
Messy Feelings Everywhere
"First time: super fun but I got more attached than she did."
"Second time: kinda fun but she got more attached than I did."
"Moral of the story: don’t f**k coworkers unless you’re SUPER SURE."
- Arch021
A Heartbreaker
"We dated for over a year and then one day she randomly decided to break my heart. Thankfully, we had stopped working together by that point. It still makes me tear up thinking about her, though."
- Electronic-Mud1634
Best Decision Ever
"We had an instant connection the moment she joined the foundation I had been working at for a year. We worked at the front desk together and we got to know each other very quickly."
"Neither of us enjoyed small talk and we would get angry emails from our unbelievably incompetent manager about the amount of laughter coming from the front desk. We got all of our work done, and then some, our manager just felt like she was getting left out. Which our manager was, but it was because she sucked."
"I worked from home four days a week before my new coworker started and a few weeks later she asked me why I was coming in every day. I told her something about training her how to answer the phones, which she instantly knew was bullsh*t (we got four calls a day, max)."
"The first time we hung out outside of work we told each other it would be a terrible idea to date. That lasted for about 10 days. The next time we hung out we slept together."
"That was a year and a half ago."
"We left the foundation after she told our manager that her 'management style' was untenable in an email. The two of us then called a meeting with her and we laid out a very well-planned strategy for departmental growth and change."
"Our manager nodded her head the whole meeting and told us how proud of us she was for taking ownership of our careers and how excited she was to implement our new plan."
"Three weeks later, they fired my coworker. They pushed me out, telling me that they no longer had a place for me (at my review the previous year, the CEO told me herself that she believed I had CEO potential)."
"We both have new jobs, she is a high school English teacher at one of the best high schools in the country and I became a private investigator."
"Her dad and I go to college football games together and our moms get lunch and do spa dates."
"We have been showing each other how to heal and grow as individuals and as partners."
"Right now, she's sleeping in my bedroom while I type this in the living room. I don't know what the future holds for us but I do know that she's the love of my life."
"Sleeping with my coworker is the best thing I've ever done."
- frankenfine305
"Marry this girl already."
- Long-Regular-1023
Redefining the Coworker
"Pretty good. We have a kid together. Granted we'd been married for seven years before we became coworkers."
"She always wanted to teach at the same school as me. The school grew enough that it needed a dedicated English teacher. She has a master's in it so it worked out."
- i_have_seen_ur_death
A Slow Transition
"We worked together for a couple of years and became close friends before we crossed the romance line one night after a lot of drinks. Honestly, it was and still is amazing. Happily married now over 15 years with two kids."
- theshannons
A Bartender's Love Story
"She's sleeping next to me, cuddling our cat."
"Turns out our chemistry working behind the bar together was also amazing outside of work."
- Eb_Ab_Db_Gb_Bb_Eb
We've all heard that love and work don't mix, and that we absolutely shouldn't get close to our coworkers, but from these Redditors, it seems that while things could get messy, sometimes it's worth the risk.
We've all known that one coworker who tried to show up as late as possible to work, or who looked for ways to take longer lunches or breaks.
Fortunately, most of us weren't in situations where a coworker was actively breaking the law.
Ready to stir up some drama, Redditor Autistic_chickpea asked:
"Redditors of HR: What are the biggest office scandals or dramas you’ve experienced?"
The Origin of the Stereotype
"Normal scandal. The owner left his wife for his secretary. BUT the wife owned 50% of the company and she made him pay through the nose for it."
"He was a total stereotype! The company had become really prosperous, he started working out, and got a really expensive sports car (Lamborghini, I think). Then he dumped his wife, was publicly involved with the secretary, left his company to be run by other people, and ran off to California, married, and had kids."
"He was kind of a s**thead before that anyway."
- LimeSkye
Report It to Someone Else
"The second or third Human Resources lady got drunk at the holiday party and groped a bunch of people, stuck her tongue in someone’s ear, and fondled a guy’s wife."
"The head of HR swept it all under the rug and told all the witnesses and people she grabbed to 'manage it properly.'"
"I quit pretty soon after that. F**k that place."
- SemiAutomnemonicIful
Quite the Miracle
"The receptionist and the land administrator had an affair and she got pregnant. Her husband had had a vasectomy years earlier. The office affair ended, and the receptionist and her husband maintained that it was a miracle from God."
"It’s a small town and everyone knew about the affair. It was a big scandal. The receptionist and the land administrator were both kicked out of the church they belonged to."
"Publicly, the receptionist and her husband pretended nothing had happened and that this was a wonderful surprise. But everyone knew it was not likely to be the husband’s child."
- Binky103
The Story Doesn't Add Up
"I worked in HR for a small fast food franchise. It somehow managed to be wild all the time but the most drawn out was one of the store managers called out of work because she had carbon monoxide poisoning and was in the hospital."
"Of course, we wished her well and that was that for a while."
"Then she disappeared for a few days. She showed back up and said she was having some personal issues. Yadda yadda. Fine."
"Well, then she called and said she had gotten arrested because she was giving someone a ride and they had gotten pulled over and found meth on the other person. Hm."
"We just had a sneaking suspicion so we googled this woman. And she had been arrested multiple times for drug-related charges, including the time that she had just disappeared. Apparently, they were transporting a f**kton of meth to sell when they got busted the last time."
"Oh yeah, and the time she got carbon monoxide? It was because she was cooking meth."
- PrairieBunny91
It's My Job
"I wasn’t in HR, but I was in management, and you would be surprised at how many people actually think this way. These are the type of people who tend to think they’re setting boundaries with their workplace, which would be a good thing, if that’s what they were doing, but they think this extends to what their boss can do."
"You can’t tell me I’m fired."
"You can’t tell me I need to come in on time."
"You can’t tell me what my schedule is."
"You can’t write me up. The only reason you’re writing me up is because someone ratted me out."
"You can’t tell me what to do, I’m an adult."
"That may sound ridiculous but people really do think like this. They actually think they run the show."
"And this is why you should be wary of workplace advice, too. You have some good advice about how to maintain healthy boundaries at work, but if you’re seeing sh*t like, 'Never work for a company that has a disciplinary policy, you’re a girl boss, not a child, YOU’RE in charge not them,' then you should probably ignore that advice."
- Zestfullyclean87
Just Won't Quit
"Oh dear Lord, I am friends with an HR attorney for a large agency. So so many stories but possibly my favorite is one where they walked in and fired one woman for dereliction of duty soon as she showed up for her shift. Like she was horrible at her job and barely performed, she was probational and it was clearly not working out."
"She and her boss left for lunch and when they return, they discover the employee was back on campus and working as if nothing happened. Even greeted them at the gates."
"They were shocked and asked why she was there when she’s been terminated."
"The employee answered, 'I’m working. You can’t just fire me. This is my job,' and proceeds to turn around, ignore them, and keep working."
"They again repeated she’d been terminated and she needed to go."
"She said, 'I reject that. I don’t accept your termination.'"
"She literally had to almost be dragged out. It was quite entertaining."
- Similar_Candidate789
Collection of Affairs
"Two concurrent office dramas that resulted in a mass firing."
"First, my boss (Male, late-thirties), an ex-middle school teacher, hired and then knocked up an 18-year-old he used to teach. This is after he showed up to work a month before with a black eye, a gift from the baby daddy of the other teenage employee he was sleeping with. He was fired, divorced, and estranged from his own teenage children."
"Meanwhile, his office enemy, another department director, was fired for paying her own employee to be her child surrogate."
- Diabolicaldessert
Waste Management
"Not Human Resources but recruiter here. Found out a potential candidate was fired from his previous job because he threw his boss into a dumpster. The dude was 6'5, so yes, he picked his boss up over his head and threw him into the dumpster. Had to admit I'm envious."
- Chewie8291
Pick a Terrible Option
"We had a team building day and the CEO made it so his team won. The three married people (not to each other) had sex in the hot tub."
"There was also the VP that was having an affair with his secretary so he beat and stabbed his wife to death and threw the evidence in the company trash."
"Or you could go with the guy that was trying to bankrupt a division of the company so his equity company could buy it. When caught he threatened to kill everyone."
- diegojones4
An Expensive Relationship
"Not HR myself but at the organizations I have been with, HR itself has always been the dumpster fire drama group."
"Here is my best one."
"This was 2016. I am a Quality Manager and was hired by a little capital equity group to go in and try to help out struggling businesses that they buy. Great job."
"I'm working with a pump company, a big manufacturing group that makes pumps for city water suppliers, chlorine mixers, big machines to add chemicals and filter sewer lines, public pools... big stuff."
"On paper, the company should have been profitable, but they were losing crazy amounts of money. Sales were strong, and margins were high, but they couldn't make ends meet."
"We go in and start digging. We uncovered a LOT of s**t, borderline fraud, and just incompetence."
"One thing we found was the HR Manager and the Engineering Manager were going to trade shows, conferences, and trainings together every three weeks or so. We thought it was weird to take an HR lady to a trade show or a conference on pump design."
"We did some digging and found expense reports and airline receipts that didn't match up and hotels near conferences that were canceled or didn't exist. Basically, they were taking romantic getaways to have an affair and writing up close to $175k on company expense reports by claiming bogus business trips."
"Things like a romantic week in Maui, a 4-day weekend at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC, Skiing in Vermont, Cancun, so many trips to Miami we couldn't even keep them straight, Cottage in Park City, Utah, a dude ranch in New Mexico... it was insane. All with fake conferences nearby or conferences that they paid for but never even showed up and signed in."
"And this is the messed up part. As soon as it all came out, HR fired the engineering manager and was like, 'Oh yeah, that was all his idea,' and then kept the HR Manager on for another year or so."
"And this lady is now an HR Director for a major aerospace manufacturing company!" - Angelfire150
Can't Pick Just One
"My mother was in HR for about 35 years. She has some wild ones, including:"
"The guy who didn’t turn up to work for 2 or 3 days, when it was finally flagged for HR they went over to his house, convinced a family member to unlock it for them (a spare key), and found him face down on the floor of his bedroom having had a stroke (the dude survived)."
"Or the air-con engineer who got blown up while doing some work. His workmate was on the roof and put the wrong rod in the wrong hole, causing an explosion. Fortunately, an employee found him while he was literally on fire in the corridor and dragged him to some showers, saving his life."
"The creep who set up spycams in the women’s locker room, caught him because he was on his own video placing the camera in its hiding spot after they found the cameras, and footage was reviewed."
"There are so, so many more stories."
- Hughesybooze
Caught in the Act
"Security footage showed my manager rummaging through a computer he had no reason to be on. IT checked out the computer, and they found he deleted some security footage... so they recovered it."
"He was fired for having sex with one of the employees at work. She was fired, too."
- Nemo68v2
Consequences
"Guy didn’t come to work because his wife was chasing him with a knife and got arrested."
"She was chasing him with a knife because she found out the early morning of work was meeting up with another married coworker and banging in a relaxation room at work."
"It ended with two divorces, a fine, unemployment, and a new lock on the relaxation room that you had to ask HR for the key to use."
"She also ran over his work laptop and phone with the car after he refused to give her the password to check for more deets about the affair. Those couldn’t be repaired. The MacBook had tire tracks and was bent like a banana."
- GlamourousPickle
History Repeating Itself
"Not HR, tech/software company were tipped off by their bank and discovered a financial analyst was embezzling funds (progressively more monthly for 2 years totaling $500k) he was fired and sued. As part of the settlement the company got his fancy BMW, condo, and his girlfriend’s engagement ring."
"Within about three months, he landed a top government job, having lied in his cover letter and interview, claiming he still worked for the software company. His girlfriend posed as a reference via telephone."
"He got promptly fired and charged. He was sentenced to one year in prison and three years probation."
"In the time between being fired by the government and sentencing, he had landed another corporate job (who were aware of both criminal incidents)!"
- McStau
To say that people working in higher-up positions have seen some things would be an understatement.
But even still, the things people try to get away with while on the clock is startling.
Rules People Have Tried To Enforce That Backfired Spectacularly
Most of us have worked somewhere or attended a school where there were some ridiculous rules in place.
Nothing might bring us more joy than to see some of those rules backfire.
To have a laugh, Redditor TabblespoonFarmer3 asked the sub:
"People of Reddit, what stupid rule at your work or school backfired beautifully?"
The responses their fellow Redditors came up with were simply glorious.
Micro-Managing the Clock
"A boss was worried we were 'stealing time' by using the bathroom for too long. So being the nutjob he is, he locked all the bathrooms in the building except the ones he could see from his office door, shut off water to them, put out-of-order signs on them, and he would sit there with a stopwatch timing us between walking into the restroom and walking out (these are all one-at-a-time restrooms) and then would call out the time."
"This was STUPID over the top and almost positive is illegal but he never made a policy officially restricting bathroom time... he just wanted to make everyone feel uncomfortable if they took too long."
"I discovered that with my height, it was really easy to go through the drop ceiling and over the half wall and I was the only other person using the men's besides my boss, who is short... so I went in... locked it from the inside and did my business and climbed out the ceiling leaving the door locked so my boss could not get into the bathroom when he needed to go and was forced to use the ladies... which led to our female employees complaining that he was taking too long in their bathroom."
"To this day, I don't know if he ever figured out how I was doing that."
- geoffbowman
"My boss started putting 'all staff required to start 15 mins earlier than indicated' on the roster. I started keeping track of my unpaid overtime and stung her for three paid days off. That’s not required anymore."
- muthaclucker
"I worked at this company that had mandatory 1-hour lunch breaks. Since we ate on the premises, our lunch break was often 15 minutes or so."
"We tried negotiating having shorter lunch breaks so we could leave earlier and beat traffic. The next day, an e-mail was sent from the owner stating the fixed work and break hours for the whole team, and they were to be followed with no exceptions."
"Cool! Next week, a big client called about halfway through our lunch, and nobody moved. It rang and rang until the said owner took the call, talked to them, and immediately came to scold us. 'Sorry, boss, as per your rules, we are off until 1 PM, no exceptions.'"
"A couple of weeks later, we did some work on-site for the same client. They were, to be honest, one of the coolest clients I ever had in my life."
"They took us out to lunch, and while talking we ended up relaying the owner's rule. They had a big chuckle over it, and while the project lasted, they made a point to always call while we were at lunch break just to annoy the owner."
- LGMHorus
"A place I used to work had a rule that executive-level staff needed to be contactable when on leave, so they had a section on the leave form for the address of where you'd be staying and a contact number."
"Some knuckle-shuffler in HR decided it applied to all staff and the shenanigans began. People would put down the address and phone numbers of sex shops, sports grounds, and medical clinics. I gave the latitude and longitude of the place I was going camping and the UHF frequency channel my radio would be tuned to."
- Flight_19_Navigator
"My company used to be a small startup. In my first year, I was the Project Manager and Architect for a global system rollout."
"I put in my vacation days for 'Burning Man' six months out (in February), and my PTO was approved. Then a few months later (~June) my boss (who had been head of the IT department) got a new boss (new head of IT)."
"With a month to go until 'Burning Man,' the new head of IT told me that my project rollout was too important for me to be uncontactable at all and that I would need to take a satellite phone to 'Burning Man' or my vacation would be canceled."
"We were still three months from going live but he decided that we were at a critical moment that I had to be available for."
"However, neither my boss or the new head of IT wanted to carry out the daily $18/minute satellite phone calls with me, probably because they knew it was violating some labor law. So they got one of the guys in the London office to call me in the Black Rock Desert each day."
"I said I wouldn’t take the calls before 1 PM, which was 9 PM for our man in London. Every day he called, he had had a few beers, and didn’t give a s**t about project updates, he just wanted to know what parties I’d been to and what art I’d seen."
- blue-mooner
Questionable Measures of Productivity
"Management decided that lines of code written per week were a good metric for determining software engineer productivity."
"You want a 3-line function stretched out into 50 lines? I’m your captain."
- smares21
"Not mine, but an old roommate of mine was a senior developer for a small company. It was an open secret that one of the other senior devs, a guy who had been there since the beginning, would sometimes spend time looking at plastic surgery photos, before and after shots, photos of active procedures, etc."
"He did it enough that people would poke fun at him about it, but he didn't seem embarrassed about it, and it wasn't harming anyone."
"Well, one day a project manager said something to the CEO about this guy's ongoing plastic surgery obsession, and the CEO flipped. He said that going forward, no one was allowed to use their work computers to access external websites AT ALL."
"Anyone who's ever been a developer knows that half the job is googling stuff, so this policy pretty much halted productivity in its tracks."
"It only lasted a day before the CEO retracted the rule, but let everyone know that their browser history would be monitored going forward. After that, no one really changed their behavior, they just started remotely accessing their home computers to browse instead."
- Salsa__Stark
"I worked at Starbucks for like 5+ years before and during undergrad and at one point our district manager thought it was a good idea to implement a 'just say yes' policy, where we literally weren't allowed to tell the customer no."
"It lasted for about three months and in that three months, our unaccounted product and waste went up over 300% because when the system didn't have a way to punch in a customer request we had to just do it anyway."
"We also got complaints from stores in surrounding districts because they had angry customers who were requesting things that were against local food service code, and told them that we did it for them at our store."
"I knew exactly how that policy was going to play out and I just laughed every time management was freaking out about the problems it was causing."
- yunglilbigslimhomie
"My spouse's workplace realized they didn't have a policy about sending sexual images or jokes as part of their email acceptable use policy, so they added it."
"Except they made it a firing offense to send or receive sexual content (I think the intent was to stop people from subscribing to such content). They also said that your access would be immediately revoked until a determination was made."
"So someone got fired for something else and decided to send their whole management chain a graphically sexual image, then report it using the anonymous tip line. IT got the report, concluded they did indeed receive sexual content and did as required: suspended all the involved email accounts, including the Senior Vice President's."
"The policy has since been reworded."
- loljetfuel
"The bottom floor of my secondary school was a square that had a corridor all the way around. After some incident where a kid got knocked over, they implemented a one-way system."
"Unfortunately, they were Very Strict on enforcing it. If you accidentally walked past your class, you couldn't just turn around. They seemed very proud of their new rule... until everyone started showing up late for class because they had to do extra laps of the bottom floor."
- FrosnPls
Saving Money
"My old workplace had a control freak bean (money) counter."
"At one point, she decided that any purchase of equipment must come with documentation showing that we had searched around the internet and could prove we got the best deal. Honestly, it was unenforceable, so our supervisor just told us to ignore it and that he’ll deal with the backlash."
"So one day, I had to buy some tools for the workshop, and I happened to come across a bunch of coolers on sale. It just happened that we needed coolers to transport stuff, so I bought one."
"I brought it back, we measured it and found it was the perfect size for what we had planned."
"It turns out that time, the bean counter was watching us. She came strolling into my supervisor’s office with a printout from Amazon and the boss in tow, saying that she had found a similar cooler for cheaper."
"My supervisor took a look at the printout. 'So you found a cooler that’s 2 dollars cheaper.'"
"'Yes!'"
"'How much time did you spend looking this up?'"
"'Just one hour of work.'"
"And you think [our employee] should have spent one hour of his workday shopping for coolers?'"
"'Yes!'"
"'You do realize we pay Rum $17 an hour? We needed three coolers. Right now, he grabbed those coolers while out on a supply run. And you’d rather have him spent an hour of his day, at $17 per hour... to save $6?'"
"'And while we’re at it!'" The supervisor pulls out a broken vice grip from under his desk. '... this is the Cheapo brand vice grip you approved. Now, this is fine for your regular at-home needs, but we’re a workshop and need some quality stuff. We have been using a Goodstuff brand vice for 3 years. Cheapo lasted six months. Do the math.'"
- Rum_N_Napalm
"I worked for a consulting company, traveling Monday through Thursday somewhere in my country. We had a pretty good hotel allowance (enough for 5-star hotels) and a great rule: if you stayed with a friend, you got an allowance (about a third of the hotel allowance) to buy gifts for the host."
"I got the rare treat of a 6-month project in the town of my best friend from childhood who was going to university. We made a great arrangement: I would crash at his place and spend the evenings drinking beer, watching movies, and playing video games. In return, I used the gift allowance to order dinner for the two of us."
"After submitting my first expense report, I was told by some HR drone that the gift allowance was supposed to not be used for food for myself."
"So I booked a room in a 5-star hotel, was upgraded to a junior suite because of my rewards status and invited my friend to evenings of beer, video games, and room service."
"After my second expense report, the project manager asked me about the tripling of the expenses compared to the first report. After explaining the situation and pointing out what sum of money it would mean over the six months, he got in contact with HR..."
"Two days later, the rule was rescinded. The project even got my friend (the then newly released) PS3 as a thank you for letting me stay with him."
- alphager
"I was working as a medical assistant at a private practice medical clinic. Our clinic manager wouldn’t allow the new receptionist to drive to the bank to deposit cash. Made her walk carrying the money bag so that she couldn’t 'drive away with the money.'"
"Bizarre. I know. That went on for a few weeks. Then the receptionist was mugged and over $1,000 in cash was stolen. She was allowed to drive after that."
- IndyMazzy
"The dealership I was working at decided they wanted to save money by not having the cleaning crew come in after hours. People started leaving the dealership to go home to go to the bathroom because they were disgusting."
"I lived pretty far away so I would just go use the General Manager's private bathroom."
- Jeheh
"We couldn't buy drinks at lunch with cash money, had to buy some vouchers. They were just cheaply made laminated pieces of paper."
"This was 2001, I was 13 and bored. Scanned the vouchers and printed them out on paper that kinda matched the color of the vouchers. and laminated them myself. They were horribly made and not even the right color on the backside. Also crudely cut out."
"I 'made' about a hundred of them and passed them out after I tried paying with them for myself and encountered no problems. Made some new friends and upped production."
"It took them about three weeks to find out but by then the fake ones had intermingled with the real ones and had already been resold to students via the student office. About half of the vouchers sold were fakes."
"Drinks were cash only from then on. They had no choice but to accept the fake ones for a little while longer though, as they had sold and charged for some of them."
- VloekenenVentileren
The protocols that are often set up at workplaces are questionable at best, but the stories told here are truly laughable.
Do you have any similar experiences with workplace or school rules backfiring? Sound off in the comments below.
The Absolute Worst Coworkers People Have Ever Had To Put Up With
While we may be happy in the job we're at, we've likely all encountered one of those coworkers who has this special way of ruining the whole work day for us.
But where some of us have only had that annoyingly talkative or meddling coworker, others have encountered far worse things.
Employees were ready to share their darkest coworker experiences when Redditor drlqnr asked:
"What's the worst coworker you've ever worked with?"
Every Workplace "Needs" a Savior
"I have several bad ones but the one that drives me the craziest is a lady who creates problems just so she can solve them."
"Ugh. She takes a simple job, finds the one tiny issue, blows that up and freaks everyone out, and then 'solves' it so she can be the hero."
"Just take one minute to fix the issue in the first place. It would save the literal hours she spends working everyone up so she can be their savior."
- SylkoZakurra
"I have a coworker who's very old-fashioned and strongly believes that males and females cannot be friends. Well, it just so happens that my manager and I, a male and a female, happen to get along quite well because of our similar ages and interests."
"She reported me to the other managers for it and accused me of sleeping with him."
- rosatenena
Why Were They Even There?
"My coworker likes to initiate conversations, then does long pauses where you go to say something back, then he cuts you off and keeps talking. He has entire conversations almost entirely by himself."
"He also likes to make changes to my paperwork before it's turned in... 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."
- Inu_yashu
Distractable
"I worked with a girl who would sometimes just lay on the floor and play on her phone. She would routinely flip out about something her boyfriend did and just start screaming curse words, sometimes in front of customers."
"She was eventually fired for smoking weed while on the clock."
- AtlantaFieldClowns
Starbucks
"I worked at Starbucks for a year (one of the very worst years of my life) and while I was there had a coworker named Eric."
"I was at the till the day Eric came in with his resume, and there under his name he had typed 'Architect of Imagination.' Eric was an aspiring writer, but he had trouble stringing a sentence together."
"He couldn't be on the machine because he couldn't remember how to use it or how any single drink was made. He couldn't be in a support role because he had no way of predicting or understanding what anyone else on the floor needed or even was saying. He couldn't be at the register because he couldn't mark a cup and even our most patient customers would inevitably raise their voices at his incompetence."
"Reliably, he would genuinely look like he was about to cry. I was so torn between rage and pity... he made a terrible job so much harder, but he was just so breathtakingly, pitifully, shockingly dumb. I have never met anyone like him, before or since."
"One night, I was thinking about something particularly vicious I had said in response to something particularly baffling Eric had done and found myself wondering about his life outside of our store. Was the world scary and confusing to Eric? Did it seem like life was just happening to him? I imagined him standing in traffic, looking vaguely surprised and confused, forgetting how he had gotten there."
"I looked him up on Facebook and was pretty disturbed by what I found."
"Eric didn't look awkward or scared on Facebook. He looked stylish and suave. He had product in his hair. Beautiful women in expensive-looking clothes smiled in his photos. Several posted on his wall, expressing what a good time they'd had with him recently, often citing a 'writing sesh.' It felt like I was on a different plane. It felt like I was having a stroke."
"So then my question became, who is Eric?? And who is scamming whom?"
"The popular theory in the store was that Eric was essentially a method actor, doing research for a book or script. I came close to asking him about it a few times, but I was so afraid that I was wrong."
"I imagined myself over and over asking, 'Are you a method actor, or are you really and truly this stupid?' It just wasn't something I could bring myself to risk."
"I wonder about him all the time, actually, and who he might be terrorizing today."
- systauroo
New Skills
"I worked with a guy who couldn't learn new skills. When he started he had to learn new programs and processes, just like anyone would at almost any job. He couldn't pick up on it, whether it was where to click in a software to get a certain result or how to fill out a report."
"Everyone on my team took turns showing him the ropes and it never sunk in. I remember being so frustrated because he could not figure out how to minimize a window. 'Top right corner, click on the straight line.' It took three to four seconds for him to drag the mouse to the corner and then he'd hover around it but never on it."
"Super nice guy, but impossible to work and collaborate with on projects because so much time was wasted."
- elevenghosts
Refusal
"I worked in a law office with a secretary who refused to do anything because 'she didn't know how.' She couldn't do documents in Word, scan or use the billing software and refused to learn. In a crunch, she would take things home for her grandson to do."
"Somehow she was hired on full-time after being a contractor (What the f**k?). When she was hourly she called in sick so she could just work enough to keep her Medicaid and government benefits."
- moekey
Good Recommendation
"I hired a cook on a good recommendation. He was just fine the first two weeks. Then I noticed food going missing. Then supplies started going missing. Then a customer told me that he had been adding auto 30% tips his food purchases."
"When I looked at the books, I saw that he had been adding 30% tips to ALL the credit card sales. And the cash rings were off from what should have been sold. I fired him that day."
"The next day he came in and apologized. Said he was on drugs and was going to rehab. I wished him well. The next day he tried to break in after close and was caught. Id**t."
- sirnando138
Taking Advantage of the Newbies
"I had a manager once who dumped trash on my desk on my third day there. She said it was to remind me that taking out the trash was part of my job description (it wasn’t, I was a research assistant at a mortgage firm)."
- litkat16
"Not necessarily a 'coworker,' but my old supervisor literally told me not to think, even if it's wrong that I do things her way, and not to ask questions because I should already know what to do. I had just gotten the position."
- mutantandproud95
The Worst
"My worst co-worker was one I worked with when I was a cashier at Walmart. She approached me and asked me to cash out her paycheck. I was still new at the job and never got training on how to do that function."
"She was sympathetic, so she walked me through how to do it. The transaction was over and done, and I went on about my day."
"I got called back a couple of days later by my managers and they circled me in an office and accused me of stealing. After tears, videotapes, and telling them what happened, they told me that apparently, this coworker of mine had stolen not only from me but several other people that day as well. They just wanted to confirm I wasn't in on the deal."
"F**k Walmart, and f**k that b***h for almost getting me arrested."
- jellojocks
No Negative Vibes
"Context: I work in a hospital as a nurse’s aide and my department focuses on transporting patients around the facility for tests and room changes. I work the night shift and this person started their shift at 6 AM."
"There was this lady I worked with that just had the nastiest attitude. Normally I can get along with most folks but this person just brought the whole room down with negative vibes. Nothing was ever good and she always had bad shifts."
"One thing she did that upset a lot of people was take patients down for x-rays and leave them down there to return to our office. The big thing to remember here is that even the lengthiest x-rays take maybe 10 minutes at the very most (2-5 mins on average for the scans). Every morning we got x-rays to do and I had to send her back down to return patients to their rooms after the x-ray technicians called right as she got back to our office."
"The instances of leaving patients were common, so I informed my boss several times in person and by email. Apparently, she had an attitude with every other department we worked with and never informed nurses that we were moving their patients (big no-no when meds and vital signs need to be done)."
"One day, she had abandoned a patient in the ER waiting room when they were waiting for a ride home and told no one, so security had found a patient just sitting alone for 15-30 mins without supervision."
"It took this and a year of recorded evidence for this person to finally get fired. When that happened, it was like a dark cloud lifted and a lot of people were relieved."
"Oh, and she tried to get various employees around the facility to sign a form to argue against her case. One person signed."
- Melissa-Crown
The Shrew
"When I was an intern, there was this old shrew who would call people into her office (my cube shared a thin wall), gossip, then call those people in to tell them what was said, etc."
"She would try to frame people for s**t she did wrong. She was so arrogant. And she refused to adapt to workforce modernization. For example, she refused to learn how to hyperlink in emails, documents, etc. A real ray of sunshine she was!"
- mandz_camz24
"I worked in childcare, and they had hired a new assistant/trainee teacher for my room(each room has 2 teachers)."
"She just constantly argued about the dumbest s**t, and always tried to argue with me about both company and state childcare policies because 'that’s dumb.' She also was late every day during her first week there."
"It all just started adding up until I was changing diapers and she was holding a 2-year-old child on her lap. I see a child biting another child and said, 'You need to go help them,' as I have a child in the middle of a very explosive poopy diaper change up on the changing table and can’t leave him there obviously."
"She didn't get up. I repeated it, and she said, 'Well, I have this kid on my lap,' so I said, 'Take him off your lap.' She responded, 'He’s strong,' like this grown-a** adult is unable to move a two-year-old off her lap because of some weird super strength."
"Then the child bit the other child again and at that point, I was mad and told her to get up and help them now. She then proceeded to say, 'So what, I have to watch these four kids while you just have ONE up on the table?!' like I was somehow supposed to have multiple children on the table at once to make her job of sitting on the floor making sure kids don’t get bit twice in a row easier, and our ratios were 4:1 anyways."
"I finished my diaper change, stuck my head out the door to my supervisor, and told her, 'Get this lady out of my room,' and they did after and wrote her up after reviewing the footage of the incident. She was fired for no-call, no-showing the next week. I’ve worked with a lot of idiots in childcare but she was so s**tty in such a short amount of time."
- ameliadenice
This is clearly where coworker horror stories begin, and we can only imagine where these stories would go if these coworkers had stayed in their positions.