Most times, you hear people complain about their CEOs, bosses, superiors, what have you, but it’s not that often you hear it the other way around.
Sure, bosses have to have something (if not a lot of things) to complain about, but their comments are often reserved, conservative and ethical because it comes with the territory.
Well, it’s come time to spill the beans, and so Redditors—mostly current or former CEOs and managers, but also sometimes other people—shared stories of the craziest things they saw employees do.
The post went viral with almost 10,000 upvotes, and generating over 5,800 comments. We’ve gathered the best of the best below, so vote, comment, and why not share some of your bizarre employee stories in the comment section below!
More Info: Reddit
#1
Had a see through water bottle that was filled with vodka. He started the day off fine but was legless by lunch. Drove him home (40mins each way) because he couldn't afford a cab. Talked the owner out of firing him and instead we helped him get into a program. That was 4 years ago... he's the production manager now. Model employee now in fact.
Image credits: docious
#2
I manage a small weld shop. Generally, I don't care about less than clean background checks or pot, as long as you come into work every day and get s**t done. Finding reliable welders is difficult, so a lot of s**t flies. This sometimes leads to weird employees. This one guy we hired stopped showing up. After like 3 days days, he walks in the door. He's bright red from being sunburnt to s**t, and his clothes are torn to shreds. Dude was drinking on a little aluminum boat and somehow got lost at sea. He looked like Tom Hanks from Castaway! He didn't have cell phone reception, so he wasn't able to call me. He did take a bunch of pictures over the few days he was lost at sea, though. Including one where he was being rescued by the coast guard. I gave him the rest of the week off. Cost guard took him to the hospital, he checked himself out, and immediately came into work. Didn't even go home and shower. Odd dude.
Image credits: s****rplug
#3
I was doing a weekly call monitor on one of my better employees and found he was doing an Indian accent. I was a bit surprised so I went back and listened to 5+ calls of his from that week and found he was doing different impressions for almost every call. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Micky Mouse, Apu from the Simpsons, a pretty solid Christopher Walken and a few others.
Image credits: w**dmoneylol
#4
Pencilowner said:In the navy we had a broken accommodation ladder(it's a stairway attached to the ship for embarkation and debarkation that isn't always used if there is a brow on the pier) it was due for inspection and rather than fail the inspection the guys just unbolted it and let it fall overboard.
Yerok-The-Warrior replied:
Typical! LOL!
My Army unit was loading a fast sealift ship with our vehicles for an overseas deployment. At the port, the transportation specialists were telling us where to stage and where to load. They had us back our own equipment onto the ship.
One vehicle was about to strike the side of the ship and all the transport guys immediately turned to face the opposite direction. Since I noticed their behavior to be odd, I asked one of them why they did it. He replied, "If we witness an accident, we have to do paperwork."
Image credits: Pencilowner, Yerok-The-Warrior
#5
Seven65 said:I had an employee call a French woman a frog and then start ribbiting. That was kind of awkward
hamakabi replied:
I once mentioned to my manager that I had a friend who was learning chinese.
She asked how anyone could ever learn that language when it's all "ping pong ching chong ching" Then she noticed the Chinese customer standing behind her with his mouth open. Yeah, that didn't go over well with corporate.
Image credits: Seven65, hamakabi
#6
Heh.Back in the retail book industry in ages past I had this employee...
He would take a 'bathroom break' anytime an employee got called into the office.
Why? Well, because he had discovered (somehow) that if you went to the men's room and stood on the toilet and lifted one of the ceiling tiles, you could sort of make out conversations in the manager's office that was adjacent.
He also discovered during one of his frequent smoke breaks that there was an access hallway for grounds maintenance (this was in a shopping mall of sorts) that also had a ladder that went to the roof. He'd occasionally vanish and basically go sit on the roof. If no one could find him, he couldn't get in trouble, he figured.
Image credits: writermonk
#7
Referred to a Chinese customer's baby as "a cute little chinky"' when my coworker(who also happens to have Asian heritage) pointed out that it was incredibly racist, the employee replied "oh it's fine my boyfriend is black" the weird part is he was Filipino, not black ( as if it excuses racism anyway)She was shocked when we didn't renew her contract.
Image credits: deleted
#8
I was a supervisor at a bulk food store. Had a staff member who was responsible for sweeping the floors. He would regularly snack on what he swept up.
Image credits: [deleted]
#9
HR hired an employee to work on the mine I manage. He showed up 45 minutes late wearing shorts and crocs. I proceeded to fire him on the spot. Got a framed letter from corporate jokingly congratulating me for having the shortest tenured employee in company history.
Image credits: [deleted]
#10
Watched a cashier ring up his friend and pretty much give him everything for free. Nobody likes the store but don't make it so obvious.
Image credits: deleted
#11
Took a temp job leading the Santa's Village at Bass Pro while waiting on my contract to start at my career job. The people you hire are usually...interesting. One girl on her first shift was on her phone as I walked back to the department. I wasn't in uniform yet but told her, "You aren't supposed to be on your phone on shift." She screams, "Who the F**K ARE YOU?" I walked away, clocked in, wrote her up, and came back to her with write up.She turned out to be one of the better employees.
Image credits: Superschutte
#12
Not too crazy, but pretty stupid. I had a girl that worked for me at a Mortgage Company pull the credit report of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend (no idea how she got her social security number) and then went on the girl's Facebook page posting messages about all of her debt, and past due accounts, and the crappy kinds of car that she drives, etc. Got an angry call from the girl who ended up being a pain in my butt for a while.Edit: Forgot an interesting part - We fired the girl, and about a week later an agent from the department of Treasury comes in asking questions about the girl. Turns out, she was being investigated for a series of fraudulent things, including operating as a loan officer without a license, and taking out a bunch of federal student loans in her grandfather's name. He wanted information because in investigating learned that she had been fired from the company for some sort of malfeasance, and he wanted the details. She went to jail for a while eventually.
Image credits: beer_hearts
#13
Was middle-management at my old job. I had a team below me, but PLENTY of (awful) people above me. Had one of my people specifically request only closing shifts, because it was easier on her family for child care purposes.After a month of this, she b*****d at my (f*****g awful) boss about no shift diversity. He "talked" with me about it, ignored that fact that she had requested it, and demanded I give her day shifts. So I gave her three day shifts, she missed all of them. Blamed me for not giving her the night shifts she wanted. My (f**k-wad) boss yelled at me for giving her day shifts too, despite me telling him this would happen when he forced me to do it initially.
Fired the girl for missing so many shifts, she recruited five guys (the fathers of her various children) to come yell at me for ruining her source of income.
Image credits: KhaosElement
#14
I once fired a guy and he tried to go back to work. His crush was in the clock in room when I had to tell him to leave again. He cried on my shoulder as I walked him out of the building. Not because I fired him but because I told him to leave in front of his crush.
Image credits: [deleted]
#15
I had an employee call and tell me her mother died. Well, I got an anonymous phone call from someone telling me she was lying so I called the number I had on file to send my regards and I get an address to send flowers. In the meantime the office had collected an envelope of money to help with the costs of the funeral and missing work. When I called, the mother answered and was shocked to find out her daughter used her death as an excuse to go to Vegas for the weekend. When she returned I help a big meeting with everyone in the office and presented her with the envelope of money and flowers, she took it and faked cried. I called her into my office to reveal that I knew and fired her and took the envelope back. She said she "don't give a f**k" and left.
Image credits: deleted
#16
Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Busy as hell. A customer comes up to me to tell me their server just dropped a platter of nachos on the ground in front of them. Yelled "f**k" in front of the family, then walked away without cleaning up any of it. Pull her aside and she is visibly drunk all of a sudden. I ask her if she has been drinking. She screams in my face "You want to go to war b***h?" Fire her on the spot. Found out she did 7 shots in about 30 minutes.
Image credits: boydarilla
#17
I work for a consulting firm - we once supplemented one of our project teams with an older woman (external contract hire) who purportedly had tons of experience. She owned an entire work stream including execution work and did so poorly that we also had to refund her fees and a first year consultant had to redo all of her work. She was getting about 500 / hour as a "Subject Matter Expert". We came to find that she was basically using her time to plan her daughters wedding. She never worked with our firm again.
Image credits: level 2 PigNewton16
#18
Went out for smoke breaks like 5x a day, eventually got to a point where he couldn't wait to get outside and would light up in the elevator to get a head start.2 days after that mishap he took his lunch break and came back very drunk. I think he worked a grand total of 7 days hired-to-fired.
Image credits: sugaronmypopcorn
#19
Back when I was a gas station clerk, my manager would deal drugs while on the clock. He'd take people into the back office to talk to. We all knew what he was doing, mostly because he all but admitted it.And because we all knew, someone eventually said something and then the company tried to make him take a drug test. He just quit, instead.
Image credits: izwald88
#20
We had a guy that would vanish in the middle of the day for roughly 3-4 hours, then return at the end of the day. Come to find out he would go home during that time, play with his dogs, smoke weed and then come back to work. When we had to sit him down and explain he couldn't just leave, he totally flipped out and told us all to "go f ourselves and to f*****g fire him". He got a warning, and still works here, and HR still does nothing when he disappears.
Image credits: ill_sleepwhenimd**d
#21
We noticed that she was falling asleep a lot a work so that got all of our attention. She usually took ten minute naps through the day, which isn't a big deal because you can have breaks, but our alarms went up. One of the employees heard a crinkling beer can in the bathroom one day. Saw her come out the bathroom and checked the trashcans 10 minutes later. Beer confirmed. Also some weird blood spots on paper towels too.We searched her belongings and found several other beer cans and a funnel. Noticed that she didn't have any alcohol on her breath.
Mfw we realized she was butt chugging the Miller High Life to get lit at work.
Image credits: UncouthPigeon
#22
Not an employer, but mine sure was pissed. We had a co-worker that called out of work/left early all the time, bawling her eyes out, because her dad was in and out of the hospital, in very bad condition. We all felt so bad for her, rushed to cover her shifts, offered whatever we could do to help.Shortly after I got a different job, I heard she had called out for a whole week, because her dad had died and she had to help plan the funeral. The company sent their condolences, we all offered our help some more.
A few days later another co-worker checked this girl's snapchat, and found dozens of pictures of her and her friends going out to clubs and partying all week. Shortly after she brought this up to the GM, they saw her dad walking around the mall out store was in. They talked to him, and found out he'd never even had the flu that while time, much less been in the hospital. She got fired. And then text spammed the other co-worker to "please talk to the GM I know I f****d up but please you got to help me."
Image credits: AMultitudeofPandas
#23
The owner made me cut hours while keeping his son on at full-time. As a silent protest, everyone took an extra-long smoke break that day. When I went outside to corral the troops, I overheard the craziest thing: an employee defending me against the charges I was a weak, a**-kisser who failed to stand up for them!"He's got to feed his family just like everybody else."
And she continued to defend me even after the others labeled her a Quisling, which was really crazy given the state of education in America. I'm shocked they even knew what that meant.
Image credits: laterdude
#24
I have so many stories about this dude, me and my former boss interviewed him for a position in IT and I got a really weird vibe but my boss was really impressed by his cv (lots of stuff like "cisco certification course teacher") and I was about to quit so I didn't really put up a fight about it and he was hired.Day 2: He brought in a three feet long rc helicopter and put it in his office.
Day 3: He was told to order a laptop for himself (part of the job was ordering it stuff) and bought the most expensive computer he could find, im talking titanium and a 10k$ price tag.
Day 4: He ordered a office chair in leather with built in massage stuff.
Day 5: BIG argument with my boss and he was told he couldn't do anything without me approving it first.
Day 8: He told me he wanted to apply for public ip's for every single piece of equipment at all the company offices (several thousand ip's) because NAT sucked. Turns out he didn't know what it was (cisco teacher remember)
Day 9: He changed the domain admin password to a password some dudes at a irc channel had told him was the most secure password in the world.
Around day 15: He told me he needed time off cause his girlfriend had left him for his rc heli instructor and he was scared she would take stuff from their apartment.
There is so much more, he was fired a few weeks after I left. Last I heard he was selling vpn services to people using his own home broadband connection.
Image credits: [deleted]
#25
Was cashier manager at big box store. There was a useless kid that finally stopped showing up. A few days go by, and I see him walk in, so I assume he's going to come up front and we can do the whole formal exit process since he missed shifts. He never comes up front, nobody has heard from him.So a few weeks go by and we just terminated him. I go back to the lunchroom one day, and useless kid is sitting there. I ask what he's doing and he says he's on break. I'm like lol no you stopped showing up weeks ago and were terminated. He leaves to go "back to work".
I confirmed with all managers he was fired, not working in another part of the store. He shows up in the lunchroom again a few weeks later.
Turned out he didn't want to tell his mom he doesn't want to work. He kept letting her drop him off, he'd hang in the lunchroom for a bit because his mom apparently is friendly with another employee, so this way it looks like he still has the job to his mom.
Image credits: [deleted]
#26
Not a boss, but used to work for a MSP, they had an office with a big tile missing in the ceiling.Apparently they had this accountant who was working late one night, next day, everyone comes into the office and they find said ceiling hole. Turns out, the accountant heard god calling her from the ceiling, she proceeded to climb up her desk, into the ceiling, and managed to get into one of the offices next door.
Image credits: MaveDustaine
#27
Patamarick said:When I was a kid working at a grocery store, another cashier would often buy and then chug a half gallon of milk to get sick to go home.
Job was horrid, so it was entertaining at the time.
Deleted replied:
I worked with an older diabetic lady at Taco Bell. She would chug regular soda so she would have a diabetic reaction and then be sent home. Pretty sure she was actually trying to lose her feet to diabetic complications so she could collect disability checks.
The EMTs all knew her by name.
Image credits: Patamarick, deleted
#28
I worked at a casino in California, in food and beverage. We had just hired a kid who was fresh from "culinary school" (he didn't know anything at all). So he started back makin the pub food.Something like his third night I'm outside smoking and I see him walking by with two security guys. This can't be good.
Turns out this genius had decided to go take his lunch break, meet his friend in the parking lot and drive around the parking lot smoking. You know. The casino parking lot, full of cameras, other employees, security guards etc. (and mind you, you could get away with plenty of stuff on your car, lord knows I did in my days) so he must have been so painfully obvious, as this was also like 6pm and still dusk out. Come on man.
Image credits: Liarxagerate
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