Bad employeers can really hurt a company. Their inability and unwillingness to carry out their responsibilities as well as indifference to everything that's going on around them creates a toxic environment where even good workers can become stressed out and unhappy, which, in turn, can lead to even lower productivity and increased absenteeism.
And while some of these slackers are pretty good at hiding their shortcomings, others are not. So when a Reddit post asked platform users, "What's the most insane complaint you've had about an employee that turned out to be completely true?" many had tea to spill. Below are some of the most memorable answers from that thread.
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I used to work at a rural hospital in Texas. We had a surgeon who was always asking the assisting nurses to leave the OR to go get some random supply. You are never supposed to have only one person in the OR, but he would always figure out a way. These were minimally invasive surgeries that just required sedation so there were no other assists besides nurses, no anesthesiologist, etc. He was the only physician. The door would also “mysteriously” lock and the nurse would have to knock to get back in. One of our nurses got fed up and knew something was going on, so she set up her phone to video him. It turned out he had been sticking his, uh, “manhood” in patient’s mouths. He was of course fired but horrifically did not lose his license.
A colleague checked out of the mediocre but adequate hotel where we were having a conference and checked into a 5 star luxury resort. She then submitted an expense report for her stay at the luxury resort.
She claimed that she felt unsafe in the original hotel, but did not elaborate.
Someone called the hotel, which checked the security camera footage. At least 4 separate men tried to enter her room that first night. No wonder she left.
Mechanic here. I had a coworker whom would poke a hole into customers tires just so they would come back and buy more (yes he did it to new tires as well). Finally caught him one day after I found it odd that it was only the customers he put tires on that kept coming back for more tires, at first I thought maybe he wasn't putting enough air into them so I kinda hawk eyed over him without him knowing and sure enough he would put the tire on the rim (we have a special machine to put tires on rims) and he would put a small slit with his pocket knife in the tread on the tire. Caught him red handed doing it. Fired on the spot. F**k you Brett.
Many years ago, the bookshop I worked at hired a new employee with terminal cancer - very sad, since she was quite young. She wasn't around too much due to the chemotherapy etc., but when she was in she worked in the children's department. She was actually a pretty good children's bookseller, and was a huge fan of a fairly major American children's author; she ran the UK branch of his fanclub and knew him personally, he occasionally flew her out to the States for events.
One day, she wasn't in, and all employees were called to a staff meeting. We were informed that she had passed away. There was a lot of sadness; her close colleagues were devastated.
Only... a few days later one of our staff happened to go into a branch of McDonalds in a nearby town. Guess who was working behind the counter? Go on, guess.
Turns out she was never ill. She had made the whole cancer thing up, as well as *faking her own death,* for reasons that we never really fully understood. The general consensus was that it started out as a way to connect with her author hero and kind of spiralled from there; in the end she couldn't handle living the lie any more and so... just up and had her mother tell people that she'd died. And then got a job in Maccie D's a few miles down the road, and was surprised when she got found out.
That was a pretty what-the-f**k sort of experience for us all.
But isn't working at McDonald's a widely accepted equivalent of death?
As an area manager for a chain of electrical stores, one Saturday I got a garbled voicemail telling me: 'store manager', 'deputy manager' and 'sales manager' at a certain location had shrink-wrapped 'a sales guy' to a wheely-chair, put him in the back of the delivery lorry -unrestrained- and done doughnuts in the car park so the poor lad was getting smashed into the walls & bulkhead with no way to protect himself, as all limbs were confined due to the dozens of layers of shrink-wrap. One of the 'warehouse guys' was in the back filming the whole thing on his phone...
Until I saw the video and the absolute state of the poor sales guy, I really thought I was being pranked.
He ended up with 2 broken arms (one broken in two places), 1 broken ankle, severe bruising almost all over and a bleed on his brain.
Horrific.
That the guy was stalking a female employee. It was a 24 hour retailer and she was a morning shift and he was night shift so I just thought there was no way they knew each other. Then one day I was filling in for a different manager and he came into the break room and was taking pictures of the morning shift schedule. I asked him why and he told me some story about another employee just wanted him to send their schedule etc. I came in on my day off later that week during day shift and caught him staring at her from a different aisle while she was stocking. She had no idea, he would follow her home and watch her house and all that. She was 17, he was 38. I called the cops and had him escorted off the property and helped her get in touch with the right resources for a restraining order. He ended up violating the order multiple times and is in jail last I heard.
I like the follow through in pointing her to the resources she needed, after dispatching with the creepo
One of my employees stole a credit card from her co-worker and took all of the office employees (including her victimized co-worker) out to a nice restaurant for lunch. When the victim received the credit card bill she noticed over 20 charges she did not recognize including from Wal-Mart. She went to the store and got security footage from the day of the charges and found her co-worker on camera with a cart full of products. It took her over 1 year with the evidence to get the police to arrest and the DA to prosecute her.
Working in a bank. Had a teller (about 19 year-old) get pissed about the way a customer (retail store owner) would send in her deposits at the drive up window.
The teller complained about the customer on Facebook! Tagged the lady personally, as well as the store! Customer called the bank and told me, furious of course. I told the customer we would investigate, I asked the teller. She straight up admitted it, and says "What's the customer or Branch Manager going to do about it? My Grandfather is friends with the bank President."
I called HR and Bank President on conference. Girl lost her job in under 15 minutes of me receiving the call from the customer. Breach of customer confidentiality in banking is a MAJOR law violation.
I knew a guy who worked at subway back when they gave out stamps. Basically for every six inches of sub you bought you earned a stamp and once you filled a card with 8 stamps you could get a free six inch sub.
So this guy started only giving stamps to customers who asked for them. If they didn't ask he pocketed their stamps and grew a sizeable stack of complete stamp cards.
Then over time he started cashing them in. When a customer paid with cash he would ring it in as a freebie, place his own completed stamp card in the till, and pocket the cash. Customer got their sub, subway's till was balanced, and he had an extra five to ten bucks in his pocket - everybody was happy.
He worked there for a few years and word was he racked up a few thousand dollars running this scheme. No idea if anybody complained, or if he was ever caught, but he did buy a motorbike.
That's genius. Not even sure whether he'd be breaking any laws doing it.
Just remembered one that was super bad. Security guard at a mall. This coworker, probably late 30s-esrly 40s, was a really weird dude. Pretty sure he was barely functioning autistic but also down right gross and would frequently take people's left over food out the trash and eat the rest if they didn't finish. Anyways one day this dude finds a woman smoking outside one of the doors and it's a no smoking property. He bold face lies to the woman about what he can and can't do and threatens to give her a 500$ fine for violating fire safety laws unless she sucks his d**k. She asks for an hour to think about it and asks for his number to get in touch with him. She gets his number and immediately goes up to our camera room and asks for the big boss and tells him what happened. By boss, understandably doesn't believe her at first. She then calls him on the number she got and puts it on speaker phone. She asks him to explain the offer again before she decides to follow through. He explains it all again while boss man listens quietly in the back ground. Boss man picks up the phone and yells at him that he's fired and to drop all his stuff off and that he'll be arrested in the spot if he ever comes back.
Had a new hire (as in less than a week on the job) at a movie theater, where I worked as a supervisor, throw a very loud, unbelievably childish tantrum in front of a lobby full of customers because her direct supervisor asked her to sweep up some popcorn that a customer spilled. She kept screaming "I ain't cleaning up someone else's mess! Make them (the customer) do it!" She was 24 years old.
The meltdown she had when she got fired for her tantrum was nuclear, with lots of screaming & threats of how her parents were going to "call the company and get all your
a$$e$ fired!". The next day someone *claiming* to be her dad did call & tell us that we "are going to rehire my daughter & apologize to her and fire (named her supervisor and manager) or else." but nothing more came of it, the top manager just laughed & hung up.
I've yet to ever see such an epic, entitled tantrum before or since.
This sort of thing isn't new. I worked at a gas (petrol) station once where somebody threw up all over the bathroom. A co-worker said it "wasn't in my job description" to clean up the mess. She didn't exactly throw a tantrum, but she also wasn't the person to clean it up.
I just fired an intern because he thought it'd be funny to smack one of the girls on the a*s. Upon further investigation, she had been having anxiety coming to work because he would ask all sorts of ridiculously inappropriate questions. For example, he asked her if she had a good weekend. She told him it was a good weekend or some plain answer and he then asked her if it was because she f****d her boyfriend a lot. Needless to say, her anxiety was warranted and we fired him as soon as we could. The mood in my group seems a bit more relaxed this week...
None of these will beat the guy who worked at the local pinata factory who was caught f*****g the pinatas. He was caught on CCTV and fired. He later sued them because he claimed they rigged the pinata to f**k up his d**k.
Huge well known international company. Young straight-out-of-college guy just hired (as in, first day the same week), who had moved from eastern europe to corporate location. Cue company ski trip. Free booze. Some of his new colleagues/"friends" told him that this woman was checking him out.
He wasn't exactly sober, and started hitting on her. She told him to knock it off, that she wasn't interested. He kept being pushy. Large scary dude beside the woman told him to knock it off. He swung at large scary dude, and promptly found himself face first in the snow.
The woman in question? Head of global HR. The large scary dude? Head of global corporate security, ex military. The young schmuck? Fired.
Had an employee that was actively robbing local banks on his days off. I believe he hit 8-9 different banks before he got caught. Found out about it during an early am FBI raid of the employee locker/break rooms done in conjunction with a raid on his house. To say it was a shock was an understatement. He wasn’t even top 20 of my list of potential felonious employees.
She was peeing on the chairs in the office. No, she didn't have any sort of health issues. She just didn't feel like walking to the bathroom.
AFAIK she still works there.
So I worked retail and we got this guy named something like Gus.
My boss tells me, "Hey this guy's got anxiety, go easy on him OK?" And so I was like, okay that's cool I get it I can relate. I do everything I can to help him make sense of the infernal godforsaken hellscape that is retail.
It starts off with little forgiveable things -- forgetting a task here, forgetting things there, accidentally giving the wrong info and things like that. You know, newbie retail stuff like that.
He quickly devolved in popularity as his complacency grew over time and his helpful attitude shrank. My guy started f*****g around during his shift, getting caught on his phone while ignoring backup cashier calls and things like that. He would make stabbing motions behind the manager's back to other employees, tell off new employees, and play it all off like he was some innocent dope who didn't know any better.
None of this got him fired. Day after day was a new complaint from an employee about responsibilities he shirked or a customer about blatantly wrong info like, "Oh yeah we have another location up on the hill" and we didn't. No idea whose son he was, because that was apparently all kosher.
What ACTUALLY got him fired is the one day he brought a dog and a super expensive dog collar into work. He claimed he almost hit the dog on the way to work and it was running around wild, etc etc. He tried to sell the dog collar to a customer, then tried to "adopt out" the dog to a coworker.
This coworker was competent enough to take the dog to a vet whereupon they found a microchip and contacted the actual owners. THAT'S where the fun started.
It came out that Gus never found the dog at all. He straight up KIDNAPPED this dog from his neighbor and tried to pawn it off, knowing full well what he was doing. The guy lawyered up immediately, tried to sue Gus and threatened to sue the store and the store manager if Gus wasn't fired.
Suffice to say, Gus was gone the very same evening. Nothing else came of it, but we talked about him for years and years.
This was shortly before I joined. I'm the dispatcher for a food delivery service. Just a local thing. Anyway, we had this driver, right at the start of the pandemic. She apparently decided enough was enough one day. The complaint was that she was an hour late, wasn't wearing mask, was very confrontational and messy. While being sternly reminded to wear a mask, we got another call from the customer. They had found her mask, in the mashed up French fry and ketchup soup that she had made of a kids meal in the order, the chicken fingers were eaten down to the burnt ends. They got a full refund and were offered to have a fresh meal bought by another driver but refused. The original driver was confronted. Whereupon her reply was "Oh yeah that's where that went! What? I was hungry. Fat little porker answered the door coulda missed a meal or two. What yes gonna do? Fire me?"She then tried to sue for discrimination and said she was fired because she was gay
Yeah, gay people can also be AH's and criminals. There is no correlation.
Had a coworker who always had a really strong stench and thought it was just bad BO. Turns out she was addicted to mothballs and was licking them during working hours. The chemicals give off an unbelievably strong smell through your skin. We got complaints about her odor but didn’t take them seriously (thought people were just being a******s) until someone saw her actively licking on the job.
Something else I would add is it was the kind of smell where you could never really quite put the finger on what it was, but once we figured it out it made a *lot* of sense. It doesn’t smell exactly like the real thing, but like it’s been processed through your body/skin lol. We were also very wary of being discriminatory which is why it wasn’t discovered earlier.
Ive got a lot of these.
Customer complained employee was stealing. Didn't believe it, at first.The gayest man I've ever known was stealing Playboy magazines. No idea why. Got caught with them. Multiple copies of the same issue. Fired.
One employee was spotted by a customer pleasuring himself on the roof before the store opened. Also used a magazine. Didn't believe it. Staked out the roof. Turned out to be true. Fired.
One customer told me the bookkeeper is up to something because she didn't get a receipt for a space she rented. Didn't believe it. Turns out, this employee was pocketing a few hundred at a time when a vendor paid in cash. Was doing all kinds of embezzling that wasn't easy to catch. Fired. Jailed.
One customer walked in on an employee who was masturbating. There was a lock on the door. Lock not used. Fired.
Customer spotted receipt showed coupon when they paid cash. Coupon code should have been cleared out of the system years before. It was 100% off coupon. This employee made an extra $100 or so per shift. Fired. Jailed. Mystery as to how they found the coupon code.
One customer found a camera in the women's restroom. I knew right away who it was. Staked out the camera feed until I saw him go in. Fired. Jail.
One customer was hugged by an employee. No idea why. It was the employee's first day. Fired.
One customer spotted a security guard selling meth to his friends. He had been selling meth and other drugs on his shift for over a year. Added bonus when we got rid of him, thefts went way down.
One customer complained an employee pointed and laughed when an old lady fell. Reviewed the tape. It was pretty pronounced. She had tripped on an end cap, fell, and wasn't able to get herself up. He was pointing and laughing for a while. When someone else helped her up, he was berated about doing nothing. Not fired, though.
Once had a co-worker selling shrimp from the dumpster. Picked them out after brunches. Popped a few on a skewer, and sold them in the bars that night. Got caught in a bar with the manager, and the CCTV caught him dumpster diving. They had him arrested.
I was the head night auditor at an upscale airport property. Had a youngish night auditor who put a room into out of order status and let his friends in to party and have an orgy that he joined during his lunch break. He got caught because of a noise complaint. Police called, he was fired and blacklisted from being hired back.
I had a friend who worked as the night receptionist in a aparthotel. When it was quite he pimped out the room to hookers. He made quite a bit of money, even paid a cleaning lady out of his profits.
We had to terminate an assistant manager for walking by other employees and farting near them and walking away. He was warned about it first and kept doing it.
A police officer in NJ was fired for that. He's now chief of police in a s**t hole town in Texas.
A chain restaurant here does student discount of 30% off. One of the waiters, who was a student himself, would use his own student discount whenever a table paid full price in cash, and keep the difference for himself.
Only got found out because head office emailed the manager to check why one student had eaten at the restaurant 5 times a day for the last few weeks.
i would have been that student who had eaten at the restaurant 5 times a day for the last few weeks with no problem, because I can feel hunger I have to snack and be reminded to eat, so I when I'm out somewhere away from home I usually order/buy from the same place 7/10 times in one day, I would be like .... I'm just hungry I'm sorry T_T
Critical items at the jewelry counter were anything over $500 and had to be counting at the start and end of each shift and shift change.
Items keep coming up missing and one of the other employees complained that it was a certain lady stuffing it up her hot pocket.
Security took her to the bathroom. It was true. She had a men's necklace shoved up there. I can't imagine who she was gonna give that too.
That a employee took a women’s phone number from her account at the store we worked at and called her.
I never thought anyone was that stupid.
I had a coworker TRY to get me fired (we were both up for the same promotion) by setting me up for something like this. I rented a woman a car, and commented to my coworker how beautiful she was after she left. When she returned the car, I was out and the coworker helped her. Gave me a piece of paper with her # on it, says she left it for me. I thankfully never called it, because when she came in the next day to retrieve an item she left in the car I was at the counter and kinda asked her if she wanted to go to a local festival that weekend. She blushed, and said she was "flattered, but married." Jerk had pulled her # from her contract and wrote it down trying to get me fired!
Local hardware store had an employee jacking and putting it in a coworkers' coffee. True story. People found out and he was arrested.
my friend used to work in HR at this holistic wellness place and one of the staff members who always had one of those reusable straw cups was literally dRINKING HIS OWN PEE OUT OF IT like during meetings and everything!!?!??! she quit pretty soon after.
There used to be an outdoor store in Tucson called "Bob's Bargain Barn." The place was great, and it is too bad it's not there anymore. One Saturday morning I showed up and a guy came up to me - one of those strangers who acts really familiar right off the bat - and says I just missed the coolest demo of a new filtering straw. The salesman apparently urinated into a cup right there in front of everybody and then drank it through the filter straw. There was still a cup of whiz on the table where he was demonstrating.
While working at a well known hardware store, had a coworker build a hideout in the insulated aisle. He would disappear for hours while clocked in, no one knew where he would go. One day he's being escorted out, apparently a manager found him sleeping in his hideout.
Our worker took a s**t in the toilet of a vacant apartment that didn't have running water and then didn't say anything and left. They know they are supposed to use bathrooms in the offices/clubhouses because vacant units never have running water. The complex didn't find it until three days later, when they brought a potential tenant for a walkthrough. It had been over 100 degrees all week. The woman i spoke to said there wasn't any toilet paper, either.
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OK not strictly employee story .... but this reminds me of that obnoxious co-worker I once had. I was working in ICT, back then a really male dominated environment. She would usually show up at work in tight skirts, lots of make-up and ample cleavage and used her appearance to get things done. Also used to brag about her tech knowledge which really wasn't there. So one time we were both part of a 3-day training course. All the time she contradicted the teacher because she knew better, up to a point where we were getting behind on schedule because so much time was lost with these discussions. The course itself was not too difficult, so almost everybody (about 10 ppl) passed the exam after the 3 days. Except one person. Guess who failed.
Several of these stories involve people being fired for flatulence, which seems ... odd?
Coworker at a coffee shop allegedly put his penis in a customer's tuna sandwich. (I was on lunch at the time but fully believe he would have.) Henceforth he was known as D**k Sandwich. Shortly after that the entire closing team got fired for being potheads -- EXCEPT this dude. And I ratted him out hard. I'm normally not much for snitching, but he was the worst offender and if we were going down, he was going down with us. He did not go down -- in fact, he got bumped up to supervisor with everyone else gone. But I hear he got himself fired "for doing something stupid" within a couple weeks, so. (As to how stonergate started in the first place -- friend of mine liked to clean his pipe in a cupful of espresso machine cleaner. One night he left said concoction in the back office. Lot of real geniuses at that job, let me tell you.)
OK not strictly employee story .... but this reminds me of that obnoxious co-worker I once had. I was working in ICT, back then a really male dominated environment. She would usually show up at work in tight skirts, lots of make-up and ample cleavage and used her appearance to get things done. Also used to brag about her tech knowledge which really wasn't there. So one time we were both part of a 3-day training course. All the time she contradicted the teacher because she knew better, up to a point where we were getting behind on schedule because so much time was lost with these discussions. The course itself was not too difficult, so almost everybody (about 10 ppl) passed the exam after the 3 days. Except one person. Guess who failed.
Several of these stories involve people being fired for flatulence, which seems ... odd?
Coworker at a coffee shop allegedly put his penis in a customer's tuna sandwich. (I was on lunch at the time but fully believe he would have.) Henceforth he was known as D**k Sandwich. Shortly after that the entire closing team got fired for being potheads -- EXCEPT this dude. And I ratted him out hard. I'm normally not much for snitching, but he was the worst offender and if we were going down, he was going down with us. He did not go down -- in fact, he got bumped up to supervisor with everyone else gone. But I hear he got himself fired "for doing something stupid" within a couple weeks, so. (As to how stonergate started in the first place -- friend of mine liked to clean his pipe in a cupful of espresso machine cleaner. One night he left said concoction in the back office. Lot of real geniuses at that job, let me tell you.)
