Working in someone's home must feel like your walking on eggshells, but instead of organic, free-range eggs its the Fabergé kind. You're in someone else's personal space, their sanctum, where a litany of secrets and revelations could be revealed to you if you open the wrong cabinet or peak under their bed by accident.
You never know what's going to happen when you open their door, and that's what these people found out one day.
Reddit user, ConAir161057, wanted a look into stranger's homes when they asked:
"People whose jobs require them to enter someone else's house, what was the weirdest thing you've seen at a customer's house?"
Everyone has hobbies, and sometimes those hobbies involve collecting things. While you might imagine glass cases filled with small, porcelain baby angels or a wall of comic book art, some people choose to collect "different" things.
When Plants Are Your Children
"Customers built an additional room for their plant, Frank. It was a +30yo schefflera. It had the best sun and a huge pot and automatic watering."
"Def my kind of weird."
x4ty2
Everyone Collects Something
"Taxidermy chickens dressed in raincoats"
TheCookMan1
Leaving Behind What You Don't Want To Use
"I've done foreclosure clean outs. I'm amazed at how many people own sex machines, and how often they are left behind."
turningfoodintopoop
We Just Want Our Guests To Be Comfortable
"One Easter week, I tuned a piano in the home of a girl who was my music student."
"Her mother greeted me at the door in a Playboy Bunny suit and kept offering "refreshments" as I tuned her piano."
Back2Bach
What people do in their own bedroom with their partners in whatever consensual manner they deem acceptable is up to them.
It's when those choices leave the bedroom and start to impact other people that we have to raise our collective eyebrows.
That's One Way To Discipline...
"I babysat for this family that had a live in maid. A little weird but whatever. She was nice. Dressed in a strange outfit but whatever."
"Parents get back and ask me how the children were. Told them I changed a few diapers nothing big. Then they asked how the maid was. I told them she was fine. Woke up the kids once while she was cleaning."
"Mom gets this look on her face and disappears. Dad pays me and tips me well! Asks me to check on the kids one last time. I do."
"As I’m leaving I go to say goodbye to the Mother. She has the maid over her knee, and is just spanking her. Obviously I’m horrified."
"They explain their live in maid is actually a live in sex partner. So the strangest thing I’ve seen is a live in sex maid while babysitting."
cleaning-meaning
Classiness, Amid The Chaos
"Very large vanity style nudes of the lady, probably from a decade prior. Some were normal frames, one was like an old style velvet painting."
"The apartment was in squalor. Bugs everywhere, food just left out. Then you had those pictures."
"That was the weirdest."
Muliciber
Homes are supposed to be safe space, areas where we can unwind and be ourselves. Unfortunately, who we are can be a lot sadder than anyone might have ever known.
An Inescapable Odor
"It's not what I saw, it's what I didn't see."
"Old cat piss has the pungent aroma of ammonia. In this house it hit me like a truck."
"I saw no cats. I saw no dogs. Only humans."
Rhomagus
"You were smelling ~meth~"
ghostofaflower
Wrong Definition Of A Skylight
"Home healthcare worker. Met with a patient who refused to let me enter his house. Our first visits were conducted on the street, between his car and mine. As he grew to trust me, we graduated to sitting on his front porch. The outside of his house had seen better days, and could use some fixing up, but it really wasn't all that bad. It was the inside. At some point the roof had progressed from "needs work" to "caved in" and he essentially had no roof, as it was all hanging down in his living room. He didn't have the money to fix it, or a good tarp. But he did have the money for a tent. And so he lived in a tent inside his house. He still had electricity, and a partial roof over the kitchen."
floridianreader
A Testament To What's Lost
"Not really weird but sad. An 80-year-old woman who lived alone had a Christian type of "shrine" dedicated to her daughter in her living room. That's pretty normal I guess, she said she had lost her 40 years ago and kept her pictures and small items in it."
"But the thing is, it turned out that her whole house was filled with similar items. She had written things that she wanted to say to her daughter on small pieces of paper and taped them all over the walls and the cabinet doors. It was everywhere, and it was clear from what she'd written that she had been on her mind 24/7 for the past 40 years."
"My job was to do household chores and basically keep her company while I did it. One day she asked me to look for some items that her daughter had made. She had misplaced them and was worried that someone had thrown them away by accident. I couldn't find them at first, but she looked so defeated that I went to look for them again and actually found them in the back of her storage room. She was so happy. She said that I reminded her of her daughter because I searched so adamantly and didn't give up."
"She couldn't move very well and had chronic pain and would often talk about wanting to be with her daughter already. She was a super nice person, one of the nicest I've worked for. She was just in so much pain that I almost hope that she got her wish."
humanoid1013
Be kind. You never know what someone might be going through.
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Never doubt it, working in a factory is one of the most dangerous jobs around. Living day to day, completing tasks alongside massive machines with enough power to crush and shape metal, is of course going to make our fleshy, soft bodies quiver with fear. But, if you pay attention during safety training, have a good head on your shoulders, and follow all the rules, you can avoid injury.
Right?
Reddit user, Low_Capital5993, wanted to hear about when things went bad when they asked:
"Redditors who work at factories, what’s the scariest thing you’ve seen a machine do to a person?"
What's the point of all those training sessions about how far away to stand away from the grinding-smashing machine if not to avoid events like this?
Fingers: The Doll
"At a plastic factory a girl reached under a gate to try to pull a part that had got stuck in the mold out while the machine was shooting the next part. Her hand got shut in the mold when it closed and mangled her finger tips."
"Another time that I wasn't there a guy moved a panel off an electrical source to clean around it and got electrocuted. There was a complete breakdown of everyone's safety training. He was knocked unconscious and nobody remembered what they were supposed to do. The supervisor couldn't remember how to dial 911 because he didn't know how to use the phone to get an outside line since the phones were all connected to each other and you had to dial 9+ the number if you wanted to use it like a regular phone. The guy ended up being okay. He shot up after 30 seconds or so and yelled "I'm back". We had to retrain everyone on safety procedure after that."
itzsp3ll3dwrong
Too Late For Boot Day
"saw a coworkers foot get severed by a dock plate that was not secured property. I got red wing safety boots from the company. although I felt bad for the guywhen he came back to work in a wheel chair with his wife to say hi."
merrypooping369
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth is Fast
"I designed a machine that skinned cuts of meat. A guy at the factory we installed it at removed the safety guard so he could work quicker....thing tore his arm off up to the elbow and dragged him in up to the shoulder and held him"
Rumple-skank-skin
"Safety > Speed"
Hour_Wishbone9172
A Smidge Too Far
"I saw an 18 year old use his dominant hand to push dough into a dough slicer. He pushed too far and lost 4 fingers in an instant."
LunchInABoxx
Make The Sense
"Saw a dude slip off a boat, fell about 4.5 feet onto the metal tongue of the trailer and his shin just exploded."
"They drug tested him and he failed with flying colors."
DankJohnson
A Lost Future
"1978, was working in a corrugated paper plant, and there was a young guy my age, summer worker, on his way to a college basketball scholarship in the fall, was running a corrugated paper slitter, think two vertical rollers stacked one above the other with razor sharp knives on each roller, used to cut glued up packs of paper into strips. The infeed had a belt that pulled the packs into the blades and cut them into strips."
"I was not far away from him when I heard crazy screaming, and finally found where it was coming from, he had a couple of layers of the packs stuck together and stalled the machine. Instead of shutting it off, he grabbed the packs and pulled back on them, as he did, the machine torqued back up and pulled his right hand into a pair of the slitter blades, cutting his hand in two lengthwise, and also taking his ring and pinky fingers off. 44 years ago and I can still hear him screaming."
big_d_usernametaken
A body part doesn't have to be lost for an accident to stick with you for the rest of your life.
Next. Next. Next.
"Not a machine exactly but related to the machine."
"A maintenance employee climbed into a large silo that was used to store beverage mix. These silos have nitrogen pumped in on top of the product to achieve positive pressure and maintain sterility."
"The silo was empty of product but still contained nitrogen. First employee climbed in and passed out due to the lack of oxygen. Another employee witnessed this and climbed in to save them. That employee passed out too. I believe a third person did the same thing before someone figured out what was going on and they got help. No one died thankfully."
wrenchandrepeat
Cheap Owners Are Going To Lead To Injuries
"Not sure if this counts but I used to work at a cabinet shop which was an extremely unsafe work environment. Nobody really wore safety glasses since our boss only supplied one pair for the entire shop. Was making a cut on a table saw and this dude who I worked with tossed a piece of wood at the saw thinking it would scare me. Shot up and hit me right in the eye. Almost knocked me out. My iris tore off my cornea causing iris prolapse and now I have what looks like two pupils."
Migitmafia
Tie It Up
"I worked in restoration for a bit and one my coworkers with long hair was using a stationary belt sander. Watched it rip a good size chunk of his scalp right off. Never heard a man scream like that. Still haunts me"
Curiousthrowzone
That's The Sound Of You All Adjusting Your Seats
"A colleague climbed over one piece of racking, went to climb over another and fell with her legs either side of both pieces of racking."
"Her perineum tore."
"Disgustingly, and for me regrettably, she was in a hidden location when this happened, and the manager only found out what had happened when they spotted some blood on the floor and followed it out and to the colleague's car. My colleague was sat crying in her car, unable to reasonably control that vehicle in her attempt to drive to the hospital."
Never Pull From The Bottom
"To this day I don't know why he did it, but we used to have a 7ft vertical stack of heavy plastic boxes for storage."
"Dude wanted something from the bottom box, so instead of removing the higher boxes, he sat cross-legged on the floor just lifting the whole stack with one arm and reaching in with the other."
"I heard a shrill scream and turned and saw everything topple over and bury him."
diggergig
"She's lucky the manager saw the blood trail. She's luckier she hadn't hit her head and died in a corner of the factory which nobody goes near for days on end."
"She spent the afternoon having her notcha stitched up, and a further ten days off."
P0sitive_Outlook
And then, tragically, there are stories like these, the kind we expected when this topic was brought up.
Never Made It To The Hospital
"I watched a guy tip over a fully extended Genie boom. The fall arrest whipped him around like a sling shot and unfortunately he didn't make it to the hospital. On another job (bridge building crew); a foreman tossed a large scrap lag bolt off the deck of the bridge. It hit a man directly in the hard hat 40' below on the ground; he died instantly"
James_a420
Fighting For Life
"Not a factory but a crusher."
"Heavy duty machinery mishap, the guy's head got smashed pretty badly and after 2 weeks of fighting for his life, he didn't make it. I'm still shaken to my core from that."
feisty_throwaway
Gone, Before Anyone Knew
"My father and I worked in a box manufacturing factory. There is a machine called 'the shredder' which is an eight foot wide rotating crusher style blade that pretty much just shreds messed up orders that we can't ship out."
"One thing about the factory it gets super hot in the building. Someone had been working by the shredder and passed out from the heat and had fallen into the shredder and ended up getting chewed up from the waist down. Dead before anyone even noticed he was missing."
huxe-exe
"That’s my current job. We have a shredder not 8 feet wide but has a conveyor part, so much safety around it. About a 8 inch gap to feed board, a little safety wire running parallel to the blades and a pressure plate thing under the belt. That guy was proper unlucky"
Murfiano
Be safe, no matter where you're working. Last thing you want to happen is anything remotely close to what any of these people experienced.
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People Confess The Most 'Not Safe For Work' Thing They've Ever Done At Work
I used to work in restaurants and I cannot tell you how many of my former coworkers were caught fooling around on the job. The thing you have to remember about restaurants (especially lower end ones) is that everyone is dating each other.
Or at least they have. Or might be considering it.
The point here is don't get mixed up in any of that because it will come back to haunt you and make your workday uncomfortable.
And please, please, PLEASE do not go make out or have sex in the walk-in freezer.
That's just nasty (but people did it on the regular).
People shared their NSFW stories after Redditor NastyStarFish asked the online community:
"What's the most NSFW thing you've done at work?"
"For the scientists..."
"Microwaved a grape in the work microwave. For the scientists, cut a grape in half, leaving a small amount connected (creating an 8 pattern). Put it in a microwave, turn on and it creates a plasma (super heated gas)."
"Anyway, to stop it 'spitting' I put some kitchen roll underneath. Unfortunately the super heated gas ignited the paper and we had a small fire. Did I get in trouble? Nope the whole team was watching, even my boss. Fun times!"
MarkHowes
Now here's something I never thought I'd read. Now I know to never do this, so thank you.
"I mixed degreaser..."
"I mixed degreaser with bleach so mopping the floor could be done in one step and made chlorine gas."
Jpaynesae1991
My guess is the entire floor had to be evacuated. Hopefully they realized it was absolutely an accident.
"I accidentally..."
"I accidentally made an exploding steam engine out of a water pump."
cambium7
What?
How?
How do you even do that?
I don't want to know.
"I punched my boss..."
"I punched my boss in the face after I got beat up and he told me fighting is acceptable at work when I made a complaint."
Youwana_younggaychick
Since when is fighting at work acceptable? EVER?
Sounds like you're better off away from there.
"I work at a fetish clothing boutique..."
"I work at a fetish clothing boutique, frequently adding new products to our webpage. My most amusing one is definitely spending the majority of my day censoring penises in sheer underwear."
blackninjakitty
Something tells me working at a fetish clothing boutique or sex shop is full of NSFW surprises.
"I used to smoke weed..."
"I used to smoke weed on my lunch break and come in so freaking high. I planned to quit soon but noticed on my boss’s calendar that there was an event called 'drug test.' I quit before then but always wondered if that was meant for me."
lovelylola2019
"I took a bunch of Xanax..."
"I took a bunch of Xanax by accident and sat on the floor for my entire 6 hour shift and then went home and slept for 15 hours straight."
greghater
That you managed to sit on the floor for your entire shift makes me think you work security.
"I stood on top..."
"I stood on top of a moving bobcat (smallish construction equipment not angry wild feline) with a pole saw to cut some really high branches on a few tall trees. OSHA would have had a field day with that one. Definitely not safe for work. Do not attempt."
Lark2331
OSHA would have absolutely shut the entire workplace DOWN and they would have done it sooo fast.
"My wife and I..."
"My wife and I were in the same company for a while. We made out in the office once with her back pressed up against the sexual harassment poster."
BB-88
Hey, it's not harrassment if it's consensual!
"The concrete..."
"The concrete was redone one year. I drew a glorious 12 ft penis and was never caught."
JuanTheNumber
Maybe you weren't caught because they knew but didn't have concrete proof?
It seems people out there have had much more interesting times at work than I have. I think I like it that way. I'd rather not get physically injured... or worse.
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to tell us more in the comments below!
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Warning: Some NSFW content ahead.
Security guards do have an important job. Generally, they are tasked with securing the premises and personnel by patrolling and monitoring surveillance equipment. They might verify visitors, too.
It seems pretty simple, right? Well, you can trust that other people don't make this particularly simple job very easy. Let's just say that just about every security guard out there has a story involving human feces.
People shared their stories with us after Redditor Conscious-Cause-2917 asked the online community,
"Dear security guards of Reddit: What was the most f**ked up thing you've ever seen on your shift?"
"When I told him he had to leave..."
"Saw a guy s****ing into a bucket all the way at the bottom of our parking garage. When I told him he had to leave he tripped on his bucket and his butt had what I assume was blood all over it. It was horrible."
"He then picked up the bucket and put it in his van unsecured so I'm almost positive it later spilled in his van. I asked if he was okay and he said yes and just left."
KtheAvenger
I wonder if he had ulcerative colitis. An unfortunate condition. He might have been very embarrassed.
"I work for a private security detail that’s armed at most locations for a week I was posted at a small psych ward for the graveyard shift and was made to patrol the building and the areas outside the building just in case someone snuck out of their room and was hiding in the back."
This had happened a few weeks before one night I went outside for a smoke break and it was about 2:55 am around that time and as I was walking around I heard a loud ass scream so me not being curious, I took my ass inside and said f*ck that and an hour goes by and it’s time to do my patrol and what looked to be a tall ass creature was sitting next to fhe dumpster they had outside of the building."
"I grabbed my gun and then instantly it took off into the woods on the side of the building."
CHIEF_JUJU6101
That's unsettling!
I tend to stay away from all of the local wildlife, friendly or otherwise.
"Worked as a guard..."
"Worked as a guard at a condo where we had to watch an unstable and highly violent individual that was a menace to other tenants to report anything and get him evicted. We would stay on his floor and would take shifts in turns of 12 hours."
"One day as I was getting off my break and swapping with the on-site patrol guard the guy came out of his unit and threatened us. He would normally do this and at this point I had gotten used to it. This time however the other guard was closer to him than someone would be normally as he was going down the elavator and the man was closer to the elevator."
"As we ignored him and I sat down, the man swung a big right at the other guard just as the elavator came and darted for it. Before I could do anything I called 911 and immediately checked for the guard's pulse. Fortunately he came back to his senses quickly, suffering just a concussion."
"The guy was evicted from the site after police where called and I never worked there again."
mobeenshah
This sounds like it could have been soooo much worse! At least he was actually evicted.
"In public housing..."
"In public housing, there are a fair number of dead bodies that go unnoticed until they start to smell. In motels, there are a lot of domestic violence calls. One of the couples, usually the aggressor will attack security."
"Lots of sex workers and drug sales. This is universal in all types of motels, Motel 6 to the three star place. We aren't cops so there is little we can do other than call the cops."
"Another thing, we encounter way more out of place poop than we should."
Mysterydumper
This sounds like one dangerous assignment.
The "out of place poop" sounds like one of the more innocent elements of the job.
"Worked at a building..."
"Worked at a building that had an attached thrift store and saw a fire truck roll up to the entrance on the camera. Ran over to figure out what was going on, I had no calls or alarms going off.
"Turns out a morbidly obese customer had fallen off the toilet and gotten stuck between the toilet and the wall, and managed to call 911."
"The part I’d actually consider f**ked up was one of the firefighters pulled me aside after and said, 'We took a blanket off the rack to cover them up, but…you’re not going to want it back.'"
ChopperC110P
Probably not.
Hope you bought yourself a nice new one!
"I didn't see it..."
"I didn't see it but in our daily pass along there were warnings to be on the lookout for a woman s****ing in the stairwells."
fallingintothesky09
There's something about the privacy of stairwells that inspires serial crappers, and it's always really horrifying when you come across it.
"We had a guy..."
"We had a guy who was s****ing in our parking stairwell. Had to call the police on him to get him to finally stop."
KtheAvenger
See what I mean? These people are utterly relentless!
"We had a dude just out of his mind..."
"Worked security at a concert venue. We had a dude just out of his mind on some kind of wild stuff and had to pull him out and put him on the ground and zip cuff him."
"He put his face to the ground and got a mouthful of rocks and started chewing. Could hear all his teeth breaking and falling out of his mouth with sooo much blood. And he was just smiling like the joker."
"Moderate your drug use."
Live2Lift
This is horrifying.
Sorry you had to see that. Not something you'd easily forget.
"I work industrial..."
"A heroin OD. I work industrial, and it’s a whole mess of a story, but basically, this client employee ODed in a bathroom. During a power outage. While I was training a new guard on his first day."
MrLanesLament
Quite the first day he had.
Sorry you had to go through that.
The drug epidemic has had horrific consequences on society at large.
"I was patrolling..."
"Many years ago I worked armed security. I was patrolling at an abandoned refinery late one night when a silent alarm was tripped. I went to investigate it when a kid, no more than 19, drew down on me. I tried talking him down, but was unsuccessful."
"I tried so very hard. He was convinced that the copper he was trying to steal was worth more than his life. He shot at me and I returned fire. He missed me and I struck him in the head. Not one of my favorite memories."
UndeadTribe
Hopefully you've been able to have some therapy and find peace. Understandable that you don't like to think of it much.
"Someone had covered..."
"Someone had covered an entire restroom with feces."
Droodster
Okay, so we've graduated from stairwells to restrooms. Got it. Gross.
"Once opened an electrical room..."
"Former security guard. Once opened an electrical room to a bunch of swastikas and racist stuff graffitied on the wall in human feces. Only know it was human poop from the smell and the fact that there was a guy in there trying to finish his 'art.'"
ThatDamnedGuy
Okay, so now we've graduated from stairwells to restrooms and now electrical rooms. People will take their feces with them wherever they go, it seems.
While some security guards have quiet jobs where nothing ever happens (and probably get paid to sit around and watch Netflix), they are pretty much the minority.
Safe to say that people keep it... er... interesting wherever they go. Their feces might have something to do with that.
Have some stories of your own? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below!
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"The Office" was, of course, a piece of satire. Surely, no actual office workplace is that absurd, that full of that many inappropriate comments and behaviors, run that ineptly on a daily basis.
But we must remember that satire always has a foot in real life experience. A recent Reddit thread shed some light on the prevalence of Michael Scott antics in real life work environments. Read enough of these stories and you'll be left considering "The Office" a lot less far-fetched than you had assumed.
There were some common themes that cropped up in these comically horrible office leaders. A childlike humor was almost always present. Often, a woefully ignorant understanding of other cultures resulted in cringe-worthy microaggressions.
And, of course, there were several very involved office-wide activities that had almost nothing to do with making the company more productive.
Supersmaaashley asked, "Do bosses like Michael Scott actually exist? And if you work/ed for one, what's your craziest story?"
Wild Goose Chase
"He wanted a pomegranate for lunch and they were out of season, but that didn't stop him from sending me on a quest to every grocery store in town in search of a pomegranate."
"Multiple produce guys laughed at me, but that was the easiest $13/hr I've ever made."
Hard at Work
"I had a boss once who spent all morning locked in his office. He asked me to come in after lunch where he showed me a handmade graph."
"He then proceeded to explain that this was a chart of all the sex he had ever had in his life."
" 'See, here it is blank until I joined the army. Then I went to a sex worker here. That's where you see the big jump. I was on two tours but then got shot in the face. I came back home and you see how it just drops to almost nothing.' "
"I was astounded."
The Horror
"I had a boss sneak up behind a middle-aged female employee and pick her up, then immediately drop her down saying 'I didn't think you weighed that much!' He could not stop laughing."
"He was the principal. This occurred during passing period in a crowded middle school hallway."
-- jezebellrae
Wear's His Insecurities on His Sleeve
"I had a redhead boss who made us all sit down and watch a training video about how we shouldn't refer to him as a 'ginger' because it is bullying."
"No one had ever called him that."
-- RespectFar
Checks All the Boxes
"Organized a thoroughly awkward award ceremony once (that we never did again)."
"Asked a Mexican employee if his new baby's name was going to be "No Mas" during the shower we threw for him."
"Heard me once use the phrase 'economy of scale,' then used it wrong 5 minutes later in a conversation with different people."
"Didn't know the meaning behind 'Black Friday' and what it meant for a company to be 'in the black.' "
"Just like Michael Scott, only more of a di**."
You Just Can't Say That
"Never have worked for one myself, but my dad told me a story about his boss who was giving out awards to everyone in honor of how long they've worked there, and he would give speeches for each person."
"A woman employee received her award and he gave a speech about the story of how she came to work there. And he said, 'At first I didn't want to hire her because she was so hot.' "
"My dad's not working there anymore, but I love that story because I will never not picture Michael Scott giving Pam a Dundie and saying that about her."
Bigger Fish to Fry
"I literally had a boss who would stop us in the middle of our work and hold company-wide meetings talking about 9/11 truther conspiracies and chem trails. Mind you we were furniture-making company."
"He would get so caught up in his conspiracy theories that he forgot to order wood to make furniture one month."
-- PAzoo42
A Very Important Side Project
"I worked for a woman as her 'personal assistant/ cat sitter.' She was super rich and off the deep end nuts."
She had me order a mannequin online, and then paid me to take one of the mannequin legs to Nordstrom to try and see what suitcase I could buy that would fit the dismembered mannequin body, because she wanted to fly with the mannequin to Pittsburgh to display 'as her daughter,' dressed in her daughter's clothes, at that daughter's graduation celebration. buying the mannequin was a whole thing too."
"She kept trying to get me to order from "adult doll" websites because she didn't get it. lmao."
Company Incentives
"My boss used to carry around a backpack full of hammers and if you fell sleep at your desk he started banging a hammer on your desk until you woke up and then he would autograph the hammer and give it to you as a gift."
Anything But Work
"We had kidnapping drills one day, where we learned how to 'not be kidnapped'. Notably, this was a regular, boring office in a regular, boring suburb. No reason why kidnapping would be on anybody's radar..."
"He and several of the guys randomly broke out into a push-up contest. Again. White collar office. Middle-aged dudes in khakis."
"Couldn't remember the nationality of our Hispanic colleague. Tried to 'learn Spanish' to make her feel special when she returned from maternity leave. (1) What he learned was NOT Spanish, and (2) she was from Portugal. She knew like, five words of Spanish."
"Disappeared for four days. No call. No email. Wouldn't respond to any of our attempts to reach him. Finally, someone drove out to his house to make sure he was alive. He was. He'd just forgotten to tell us he was taking the week off, and then lost his phone in a lake."
"There were many, many moments like these. Great boss. Genuinely cared about everyone in the company. Occasional moments of brilliance, where he really got things done. But OMG, so many moments of ridiculousness."
The Great Golden Hamster Ball
"My boss is certainly Michael Scott-esque. When I first started I was essentially Pam as well since I was both receptionist and his assistant to some extent."
"My favorite story was back when we were prepping for a conference. Some context, he's terrible with the English language in general and will mangle phrases and descriptions to no end (how the turn tables...)."
"So on a group call he kept talking about wanting a 'golden hamster ball' to do giveaways with. Was raving about how great it would be spinning around while people walked by, all the while everyone on the call was just sitting in confused silence."
"However by that point, I had become so good at decoding his nonsense that I knew he was referring to a gold raffle cage and sent him image privately asking if it's what he was thinking."
"To this day he still talks about the fact I can read his mind and must be psychic. And he still refers to it as a hamster ball."
"All in all he's a pretty nice guy and a solid boss. Hired me based on a gut feeling and has been decent to me ever since."
"I think I knew it would be a good fit when during the interview he tried to tell me about the four pillars of the company and forgot one. Told me later it was Knowledge."
"I used Michael Scott as a reference point for an old boss of mine from the moment I started working there.
"He made Chewbacca noises on the regular because one of my coworkers' names sort of vaguely sounded like Chewbacca (it didn't), used voice to text extremely loudly in his office for no reason to send really personal messages..."
"...got really excited and wore a specific vest any time we had after-work outings scheduled, shouted the same like 7 references to old movies and extremely awkward hip-hop song quotes 100 times a day..."
"...and insisted on greeting all our international coworkers very loudly in their language (they all speak perfect English, of course), looking around for approval afterward, and then fully giggling at everyone's French accents on conference calls. He also told me a lot about an improv show he did for a full year after it happened."
Just a Complete Human, Flaws and All
"That said - he had all the good parts too."
"He never hesitated go to the mat for any of us whether we deserved it or not, he gave really sage business advice and great examples of how to face challenges out of absolutely nowhere, and he came to every community play I did in the 4 years I worked for him - and told everyone else in the office how good I was in it for the following month and chastised them for not coming."
"When things really got serious or bad in my life, he couldn't have been more kind, helpful, and supportive."
"Honestly? Probably the best boss I'll ever have."
Like a Spelling Test
"I had a boss that used to watch me through a gap in the glass partition between our desks. She wanted to see if I was paying attention during meetings."
"One day, I put a large folder to cover the gap and she freaked. I still laugh when I think about it."
-- harperv215
Questionable Hiring Practices
"Never have worked for one myself, but my dad told me a story about his boss who was giving out awards to everyone in honor of how long they've worked there, and he would give speeches for each person."
"A woman employee received her award and he gave a speech about the story of how she came to work there. And he said, 'At first I didn't want to hire her because she was so hot.' "
"My dad's not working there anymore, but I love that story because I will never not picture Michael Scott giving Pam a Dundie and saying that about her."
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