“What’s The Most Insane Complaint You’ve Had About An Employee That Turned Out To Be True?” (35 Answers)
Some employees are more proactive and responsible than others, but some care so little about their jobs, it’s surprising the things they do during work hours. Their activities often become a cause for complaints, which can cover nearly any scenario, from disagreements between colleagues to actions on the verge of being inappropriate, and beyond.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community discussed such complaints after one of the users asked what was the most insane complaint about an employee they’ve ever heard that turned out to be completely true. Their answers covered all sorts of instances, ranging from disturbing to shocking, so scroll down to find them on the list below, and see for yourself just how difficult some employees can be.
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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...
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.
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.
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.
Lady in our appartment building did the same thing. Told everone she was terminal. Even sold her appartment to the neighbours for a very reasonable price, cause she wouldn't be needing the money once she died. Then it turened out she wasn't sick and the appartment she 'sold' was a rental.
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 of, 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.
Hired a guy on a trial basis. He was super polite and careful when speaking to me, but several of my female employees told me when I wasn't around he was creepy. After about 5 days, one came to me and said almost verbatim: "I think he's a r****t." She just a had a gut feeling about him. So I ran a background check on him... yep, he was a convicted r****t.
Yeah, that's why background checks ideally come before hiring...
“Our night supervisor bought a ten foot python and walked around the warehouse with it around his shoulders” Checked the videos. Yep, bloke had a python. At one point he put it down, and then spent the next half hour trying to find it. Was the final straw - sacked him.
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**es 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.
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.
Night shift at a packing line. We had two new temps and they were polar opposites. One super bubbly religious guy who was pretty emotional (cried during his favorite songs) the other guy was grunge, pretty cynical but a damned good worker. Well they both ended up working on adjacent lines and I was training them. Things were great till the bubbly guy decided it was his mission to befriend the grunge guy. Grunge dude wanted to be left alone so he could work but bubbly guy kept going to our team lead to tell her he couldn’t understand why grunge wouldn’t be his friend. My team lead comes down and tells them to play nice and be friends. (She was despised by most of our crew) she’s oblivious, I told her that bubbles needs to leave grunge alone but she wouldn’t have it. Grunge walked out. And bubbles cried for two nights straight then never came back.
The cemetery director was selling plots, pocketing the money ($750), and selling the same plot to another family. The second family would show up ready to bury their deceased only to find the grave already being used. He got away with it for a year.
I can't fathom how someone could get away with this for a *year*. What did the people who found the plot already in use do, just leave the coffin on the ground and walk away without complaint?
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.
We had a coworker do that with coupons when I worked in a restaurant. Our chain would mail out coupons, servers would hold them until a customer paid cash. If you were really lucky you could get a 20-40% off and have a large party. Most of us only used a couple a month (to offset crappy tippers). We got busted because "head waitress" was using a couple dozen--per shift.
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 guy call in sick so he could go to the same company’s christmas party.
When my wife was in college she worked as a teller at the bank. Tellers were responsible for checking out and checking in a certain amount of cash on every shift. One of her coworkers doing the evening shift decided to take the money to the casino with the idea that he would replace it in the morning. Unluckily for him there was an audit in the bank the next morning before he came in and he was fired on the spot.
Same thing happened in the movie Empire Records. Didn't work then either.
I (HR Head) got a call from a “sex chat administrator”, informing our official account is unpaid. They will take legal action if we don’t pay immediately. I thought it was a joke. Anyways we did get a legal notice! Then legal and HR investigated. The “sex chat” company sent a phone call copy. As soon I played it, my HR lady screamed- I know this guy, he works in supply chain!!
Later on, we realised we had a employee who used to make phone “sex chat” calls using our company landline. We politely told him to pay up and settle the matter. Then issued a final warning letter.
How about making him pay the bill then firing him instead of a "final warning letter"? That behavior won't stop, he'll just try to be sneakier about it next time.
On his second day at KFC, he tried walk out with two buckets of chicken and ran right into our boss.
When I worked at Sams club, one of the cashiers pocketed a few grand from his drawer and put it on Facebook.
We were a new club, so if that much money went missing, it would have taken them a while to figure out. Or so I was told.
One of the managers overheard and they put two and two together. He got arrested and was fired.
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
Employee said he was sick and then came to same restaurant for dinner as a customer
Brilliance should surely be rewarded with extra free time to pursue intellectual interests.
I had a number of complaints about a new member of staff, they said that she kept taking off her shoes, pulling dry skin from her feet, and eating it. I thought the staff were lying and being mean about her just because they didn't like her... Until I saw her do it. She didn't finish the week as she quit.
This feels like some sort of tic or compulsive disorder that she probably didn't have a solid handle on.
My brother eats his scabs. He's not allowed to cook for me.
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Okay, if you're disgusting enough to do this, why, why on earth would you do it where people can see you? Did she honestly think this was normal?
Wonder what the thought process is. Peel, wonder what this tastes like? Yum tasty?! Need more! (😱🤮)
Why would employees make up such a weird thing? If they didn't like her, there are better ways to sabotage her. Reading through this, it seems like there are a lot of managers who ignre their employee's complaints. People quit because of bad managers. Do better.
I remember years ago i had to take a " Break" in a psychiatric ward and there was a lady that did this. She did this at the dinner table. I wonder if theres a name for this like Hot Pocket is a name for something else.
And I invested in a "foot care kit" to look after my feet not too long ago... Softest heels I've had in years.
I used to cut the skin off mine. One day I spilled the cuttings and my dog ate them!
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.
This definitely won’t be as crazy as all the other stories, and is definitely not even closest to the craziest person I’ve had to go to HR about/was called in to report on, but it really stuck with me:
This guy was bullying another one really, really badly. Like American high school movie in 80’s badly. Reason? He was from out of town. That was it. I thought there HAD to be more to the drama, went to the place, interviewed a few people, watched it happen myself, and… damn, yeah, it seemed like this guy could NOT take the fact that this kid (20s) was from another state. I was absolutely expecting the sort of drama that building was more famous for (baby daddies, sleeping with someone’s wife, etc). Nope…
In school, bullies often went after "the new kid". And although bullies get older, they don't grow up.
Had someone ‘turn in’ a co-worker for doing 90+ on an interstate with a loaded trailer on the back. Guy insists he wasn’t going that fast. Installed gps. He was. Fired him. He was stunned.
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.
I worked for a staffing agency early in my career. We got a call that one of our placements was taking his lunch break and not clocking out for it.
He was taking 2 hour lunch breaks. Also, _He brought in his George Foreman grill and cooked for himself and everyone in a highly flammable warehouse._
Another story, same staffing agency.
We had a guy who was placed with a company that gave him a car and card for gas. A week after he started, he was paying for his friends and family members gas with the company credit card *at the same time, in a line at the gas station.*
So many crazy stories from that place…
Our store helped catch a guy doing this. He was using his company gas card to buy gas for his own car, plus tobacco products, snacks, etc. We thought it weird that he could buy more than just gas, and asked a different driver about it. Driver explained it was so they could purchase oil, windshield wiper fluid, maintenance stuff at the gas station. Right quick made a bunch of copies of receipts and called the company. Driver never seen in our store again, and now they need copies of their itemized receipts with milage documentation.
We had this guy as a delivery driver. Super nice, quiet, never showed any signs of anger even in stressful situations.
We started getting calls mainly from older women, that our delivery driver(we had our logo on both front doors) was cutting off, flipping off, yelling c*nt, at these women.
I didn’t believe it at first. I thought maybe they cut him off, he honked, they wanted him fired so made up some big story.
Then the back window got busted out of the vehicle. And then the radio looked like it got punched out for whatever reason. Everything came together and we found out he had huge anger issues. He stopped showing up so it solved itself, but it was crazy how good of a front he put on.
When I see bad driving from a branded vehicle I photograph it and send it to their HR.
"Not the employer but..."
A store I worked at had a lady who would write down customer's information and repeatedly sign them up for the store credit card (to keep her goals where they were supposed to be). Needless to say when the customers saw their credit reports...
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've (unfortunately?) have never suffered from that thought, I was sure that some people were that stupid. But the more you look, it was far more often than not that they legitimately just didn't get "it".
Local hardware store had an employee jacking and putting it in a coworkers coffee. True story. People found out and he was arrested.
Our worker took a s**t in the toilet of a vacant apartment that didn't have running water and then didnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt any toilet paper, either.
I wasn’t the employer but my coworker at a sandwich shop when I was 17 would “steal hours” by coming back to the store to clock himself out a couple hours after he left. We made minimum wage and he was canned after the fourth time he did it. He stole, at most, 40 dollars with that brilliant strategy.
My husband worked at nightclub when we were in college.
The manager told all the staff that the price on the POS was wrong and mix drinks were £2 (rather than £1). At the end of each night she would cash up and pocket all the extra money. She did it for about a year.
Really smelly farts.
Seriously. People requested to move desks.
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If you are going to do crime boys and girls, do it big. May as well get ten years for a billion dollars rather than 10 years for 100 dollars.
People who steal a billion dollars don't get 10 years. They get promoted.
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Employee stops showing up to work. We're trying to contact him to make sure he's okay. He was pretty close to come of our other employees so we were all legitimately worried. He shows up a couple weeks later and appears emotionally broken. Tells us that his 7-year old daughter has cancer and that he's been with her in the hospital in a nearby major city and that he's quitting. We're concerned, we've met his kid at a company event, she's a real good kid. We offer to hold his job or look at some remote work options so he can keep working. We end up paying him out. His replacement turns out to be close friends with his family. Daughter wasn't sick. The former employee just wanted to move to this other city. No idea why he made up the story.
He probably had already started a new life in that other city... May have been dating someone from there for longer.
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The frequency of stories like these makes it seem as though all criminals are stupid. The fun part is that no, criminals have the same range of intelligence as the general population. The stories we hear are always about the stupid ones because they’re the ones who get caught.
When I worked in the vault at the big bank in Connecticut in the early 80's, I had a heist all planned out. I'd do it on the day the Fed trucks delivered currency. Had a coworker with a pilot license. At showtime (lunchtime, when there weren't many people around) we'd back a car into the vault ramp, load the bags of money and head for the airport, where my friend would be waiting with a fully fueled twin-engine plane. We'd load the plane and head for somewhere with no extradition to the US. I was thinking Cuba. I figure wr would have about 60-90 minutes before serious pursuit would be ramping up. We could have left with about 10-15 million, a lot of money back then. Never did it, but it was a fun thought experiment.
There was a Twilight Zone episode where the main character started hearing other people's thoughts and an old man was planning a nefarious heist - turns out he just daydreamed about it every day 😄
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I read almost every single one of these here on BP before. Do better. Edited spelling
I was given a verbal warning for 'using big words' on members of staff... The complaint was raised by a girl who either stole, or helped steal a grand out of the tills, before trying to get me pinned for it... Me being the only person who was nowhere near the cash all day... Takes all kinds and the managers need a good head or they become part of the problem.
If you are going to do crime boys and girls, do it big. May as well get ten years for a billion dollars rather than 10 years for 100 dollars.
People who steal a billion dollars don't get 10 years. They get promoted.
Load More Replies... Employee stops showing up to work. We're trying to contact him to make sure he's okay. He was pretty close to come of our other employees so we were all legitimately worried. He shows up a couple weeks later and appears emotionally broken. Tells us that his 7-year old daughter has cancer and that he's been with her in the hospital in a nearby major city and that he's quitting. We're concerned, we've met his kid at a company event, she's a real good kid. We offer to hold his job or look at some remote work options so he can keep working. We end up paying him out. His replacement turns out to be close friends with his family. Daughter wasn't sick. The former employee just wanted to move to this other city. No idea why he made up the story.
He probably had already started a new life in that other city... May have been dating someone from there for longer.
Load More Replies... The frequency of stories like these makes it seem as though all criminals are stupid. The fun part is that no, criminals have the same range of intelligence as the general population. The stories we hear are always about the stupid ones because they’re the ones who get caught.
When I worked in the vault at the big bank in Connecticut in the early 80's, I had a heist all planned out. I'd do it on the day the Fed trucks delivered currency. Had a coworker with a pilot license. At showtime (lunchtime, when there weren't many people around) we'd back a car into the vault ramp, load the bags of money and head for the airport, where my friend would be waiting with a fully fueled twin-engine plane. We'd load the plane and head for somewhere with no extradition to the US. I was thinking Cuba. I figure wr would have about 60-90 minutes before serious pursuit would be ramping up. We could have left with about 10-15 million, a lot of money back then. Never did it, but it was a fun thought experiment.
There was a Twilight Zone episode where the main character started hearing other people's thoughts and an old man was planning a nefarious heist - turns out he just daydreamed about it every day 😄
Load More Replies... I read almost every single one of these here on BP before. Do better. Edited spelling
I was given a verbal warning for 'using big words' on members of staff... The complaint was raised by a girl who either stole, or helped steal a grand out of the tills, before trying to get me pinned for it... Me being the only person who was nowhere near the cash all day... Takes all kinds and the managers need a good head or they become part of the problem.
