As much as we may not want to admit it, many of us love indulging in juicy gossip. Whether the stories involve a celebrity, an estranged cousin or a colleague, we can’t keep away from a good scandal.
To keep your appetite for drama satiated, Reddit users have been sharing the most shocking and infamous incidents that have ever occurred at their places of employment. So grab some popcorn and enjoy reading through these tales, and be sure to upvote the stories you’re glad you didn’t have to witness firsthand!
This post may include affiliate links.
Old man who owned our company retired and let his son run the company. Son got caught having an affair with a woman from the secretarial pool. Son got divorced married the secretary. Old man died, leaving the company to the son. The son died of a heart attack, leaving the company to his new wife. The wife went from secretary to owner in less than 5 years.
This was a pretty famous incident (at least amongst my work group) at a large company I worked for a long time ago…. My boss’s admin wrote a semi erotic sci fi fantasy western story with him as the main character. He wrote it on his work computer and when he was done he tried to email it to someone. He emailed it to EVERY person in the region who held a specific job, about 20 people. Needless to say, they shared it with anyone they could. By the end of the day it had been read by a vast majority of employees on the west coast. Hundreds of employees read this thing, with the senders name on it as well as IN it as the protagonist. Somehow, he did not get fired. I really have no clue how he didn’t. Anyway, it’s a thing of beauty. This happened in 2008 and I still have it saved in my personal email. I read it at least annually for a laugh. It’s got everything. Sex, cowboys, aliens that bestow rocket fart powers.
To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to the Reddit user who posed the question, "What was an infamous scandal/incident that had happened at your workplace?" Lucky for us, Swag_Paladin21, or @SwaggyG_2102 on X, was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda about how this conversation started in the first place.
They shared that nothing in particular inspired them to start this conversation, but when the question popped into their mind, they just had to reach out to fellow Reddit users. And thankfully, Swag_Paladin21 hasn't yet witnessed any crazy scandals in their own workplace. "I only work at FedEx during the summer, and I'm a full-time college student," they explained.
Let’s see, my old job had several:
Guy working on a machine got decapitated because he forgot to turn the lift off that was right above him. I was there but did not see it, however, production continued and all they did was section off the part of the plant he was at.
Another guy had a heart attack on the assembly line, witnessed as they tried using a defibrillator to bring him back, but we were all given very specific instructions as to not stop the line whatsoever.
A couple got caught having sex in the bathroom and the wife tried to claim that she was only helping him tie his shoes.
This crazy woman decided to come in on night shift (when she worked day shift), locked somebody in a supply closet and wasn’t found out until she was spotted sitting in front of the closet and singing to the person she was holding hostage.
I used to work at a big corporate law firm, and every year they would take on about 15 law students. One year, 3 of the students were almost identical. Kind of generically pretty honey-blondes, about the same height and body type, all with similar haircut, very similar glasses, similar clothing style, etc. 2 of them were with us for 3 years and the other for 2, and for that entire time people at the firm were mixing them up. So the first year, when they were still pretty fresh and literally nobody could tell them apart, one of them (or more??) got white girl wasted at one of the firm events. She (they??) started asking people to do m***y with her in the bathroom, insulted one of the senior partners, got in a fight with an important client, threw up at the bar, and made racist comments to the hr director about the cab driver and refused to get in with him so a second cab had to be called. The partners were furious, staff was furious, clients were furious, hr was furious. There were senior level meetings about it for about 2 weeks, but the problem was that nobody could say for certain which one of them it had been, or even if it had been only one. They were interrogated repeatedly but nobody confessed and nobody was able to implicate any one of them with any real certainty. So nothing happened. Only one of them ended up being hired on as a lawyer, and to this day (11 years later) nobody knows if it was her or not.
So the colleagues at the law firm didn't bother to know the interns. Oh wait, forgot it's a law firm for a sec there. My bad.
Had a pretty boy boss (ex airforce) that was a serious womanizer. He got his son a job at the same glass factory. The son was over the moon as his wife was having a baby. After, it was born, the DIL confessed that the father-in-law as the real birth father. Daddy cleaned out all his bank accounts and disappeared with the DIL leaving his wife destitute. The last I heard the son had a gun and was looking for his dad!
The OP also doesn't believe that dramatic stories such as these take place in all work environments. "I believe scandals are like rare events that happen in a fairly mundane environment," they shared.
As far as what Swag_Paladin21 thought of the responses to their post, they told Bored Panda that they really enjoyed them, but nothing in particular shocked them. "I knew that there was going to be some wild stuff that was going to be posted in the replies before I even submitted my post," they noted.
The crazy bunny hoarder lady. She was completely normal and forgettable at work, but turns out to have hoarded hundreds of bunnies in her home; filth everywhere, the usual animal hoarding setup. She quit when she was arrested and the bunnies were removed from her home and she eventually moved away. One of the terms of her release was that she was not permitted to have pets and all her neighbors had to be informed of her animal abuse and were instructed to call the cops ASAP if they spotted any signs of her collecting bunnies again. There were jokes at work for years about checking desks for hidden bunnies, and every time a new employee asked what the joke was, someone would Google her and find out about whatever her newest bunny-related charges were. She did not stop hoarding bunnies.
Bunnies are such delicate little creatures and require specific nutrition and care. They're silent sufferers. Sometimes it's tough to tell when they're unwell until it's too late. Even if you know what you're looking for in terms of sickness, with that many buns, I guarantee she lost a few or many. Also, every bunny owner knows that tidying/cleaning up after a bunny is a daily task. Bunnies themselves don't really have a scent but their pee is very strong. Those poor little things. I wish that woman a lifetime of split zippers and wet socks.
At my wife's workplace one evening, one of her workmates was being banged on the boardroom table by a manager, seen by a whole array of people at a 2nd story bar across the road. The colleagues must have thought the glass wasn't see-through from outside. Cellphone footage went globally viral in a matter of hours. One of the witnesses at the bar was a friend of ours, who sent a text to my wife when we were home that evening. After a few hours, my wife text her workmate to see if she was ok, because my wife thought the girl would have found out the global sensation by now. She didn't know, and my wife had to tell her that she was on a viral video of her being screwed in the office.
Come Monday, butt-prints were found on the table when people arrived at work. Poor girl agreed to resign while the older guy continued his career.
We had to do a sting operation in our work where a bunch of lockers over a couple months were broken into and all employee cash nicked. Didn’t take long to realise it always happened after pay day and the employee was talking in the lunch room about going shopping after work. Well we loaded up a camera in a locker and had a colleague announce loudly in the break room about going xmas shopping later and how they were worried about having so much cash on them. It turns out it was one of the managers. Honestly that woman was the shame of the place. Was immediately let go and last I heard was practically chased out of the town we lived in. (Her house/car was constantly getting vandalised).
Finally, the OP added that "workplace scandals are like school scandals, just less teachers sleeping with students and more people losing their jobs over the dumbest [or most] selfish of things."
Headmaster of my daughter's school had an affair with a parent. She and her husband blackmailed the school to keep quiet. When that tactic didn't work, they outed him by 1) throwing fliers around at a PTA meeting and 2) simultaneously sending whatsapp messages to the entire parent body.... Of the naked selfies he sent to her. This sparked a chain of events including press exposure (no pun), he said-she said. 2 very broken families and damaged children. Selfish as f**k. The next headteacher who took over was m******d shortly after.
Wow i would be more trying to find out what happened about the next headmasters redrum
I worked in a factory that had windows on one side. Upper management would give tours to important people to show off the factory. One of the maintenance guys got in a huge fistfight right next to the window just as a tour group walked by.
Someone was caught stealing scratch cards from the customer service desk, scratching them and trying to claim them from the lottery. Didn't know that the tickets aren't valid until "Activated" at the till, similar to online store credit coupons.
Also, the company's regional manager almost cost us our liquour license because he tried to force a checkout employee to run alcohol through for a suspected underageed customer and, when said employee refused even with the objections, tried to kick her off the till and run the purchase through himself (because she was still logged into the till, it would've been blamed on the checkout girl since the evidence pointed to her). The shift manager had overseen the argument and dragged his a*s out the back to give him the third degree, but not before asking for ID and refusing the purchase.
Turns out it was a police-sanctioned test purchase.
At one of our other stores. An ex-employee stole about 36k worth of lottery tickets (multiple entire books worth, and activated them) fully visible on camera. Stay off the drùgs, kids!
About 20 years ago I got an internship working in an office of a random factory near campus for one semester. It was a peanut butter factory. One day someone drove a forklift off a ledge into a giant vat of peanut butter.
I witnessed the discussion among managers of if/how the peanut butter could be saved. They ended up not saving it, but there was a huge fight as the general manager really really wanted to hide this accident.
You got my fork lift in my peanut butter. You got peanut butter in my forklift.
I was an English teacher in Japan and at one school we had these "private" rooms that were basically meant for 1 - 3 students and a teacher.
They were tiny rooms with a round table. The doors were made of transparent glass.
One of the teachers was caught having sex with his student on the table when she requested a private 1 on 1 lesson.
To be fair they were already dating and both were of age. It was, however, against school policy to f**k your students.
Another time we found a wireless hidden camera in the girl's toilet.
There was two goofball I worked with, lets call them Jim and Kevin.
Both of these guys were pathological liars, and pretty stupid to boot. As a couple of examples, Jim bought a sport bike her could barely ride and immediately claimed he was in the "Rough riders", a motorcycle stunt gang. Kevin would make outrageous claims like the exhaust on his truck netted him a hundred horsepower, or that Subaru was a German automaker. They were always calling each other out on their obvious lies, and loathed each other.
The controversy begins when we had the yearly shift bid, and Jim took a spot that Kevin wanted. It's seniority based, so Jim of course has every right to take the shift. Kevin didn't like that so he followed Jim to the local 7-11 at lunch and tried intimidating Jim into pulling his name. Jim goes to our manager and makes a complaint. Kevin denies the whole thing, but they suspend him while they investigate. So Kevin leaves and waits across the street for Jim to leave. He follows Jim home, but Jim is the smarter of the two and drives a police station instead. Kevin, being the moron that he is, follows him into the police station parking lot and is quickly set upon by the officers there. They drag him out of his truck and it turns out he was armed. Not completely sure what happened to Kevin after that, but we never saw him again.
I stopped at : "Kevin would make outrageous claims" because it made me want to go rewatch the Dr Evil monologue in Austin Powers XD "My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark."
A production manager and the HR lady had a fling going on. The general manager replaced her office door with a windowed door to cut down on their alone time. She raised hell with corporate to get it switched back because she required privacy with “disciplinary discussions”, neglecting the fact that disciplinary meetings always required 2 managers.
Work had to call in a substitute for me because I was at a conference. They called in a sub manager who had been drinking all day so they reported anyway. So, she goes to use the restroom in her state, locks herself in a stall and can’t get out. Instead, she knocks down two of the three walls of the stall. While drunk. Sent her home that night for good.
I was going to ask, "why didn't she just crawl under?" but realized that's probably possible just in the U.S
The 39 year old IT guy who drove five hours away to have sex with a 15 year old girl he met online. He got caught and was never seen again by anyone from the office.
Had an IT guy that didn't wash his hands after he pooped. He wore Nike shoes that were like super bright and vibrant, so if you were sitting in a stall, and saw those shoes next to you you'd know it was the IT dude taking a dump. You'd hear him wipe, flush, pull his pants up, and then walk out of the bathroom. His nickname was poopy fingers, and ever since then I have always had a thing of Clorox wipes at my desk. Like this guy would put his hands on your mouse, all over your keyboard, desk phone, and it was possible he had just taken a s**t before working on your computer. Several people went to HR, and for some reason they literally did nothing. People do this day still wonder why I don't partake in office potlucks. Well, one day ole' Poopy Fingers didn't show up for work. Then it became a few days, then about a week, and then a couple of weeks. People started asking, and looking around. Turns out Poopy Fingers was a huge c*****e dealer, and very involved in money laundering. The FBI raided his apartment and has been incarcerated ever since. That was approximately six years ago.
I was positive that OP was going to say that poopy fingers had contracted E. Coli, giardia, or Salmonella, but it took a different turn.
About 30 years ago a lady at my work k***ed her father because he had cancer and was in pain and asked her to. She was arrested, there was a trial, the whole thing. I live in a kinda conservative country so it was big news and hotly debated. The oddest thing was that our company paid for her defence. She was found not guilty although people said it was only because of emotions and not facts.
I can't imagine how hard it must be having a loved relative begging you to kill them because they are in so much pain and already dying. There is pain that drives you to insanity. The worst are the people who try and fight for mandatory life prolonging procedures. Horrible. Not enough that we force people to endure horrible, prolonged suffering we would call cruel if anyone did it to a dog, there are even people who even try to fight standard palliative care and easing the dying. There are people out there who try to ban the usage of hard pain medication for palliative patients because they have detrimental long term side effects or shorten the life span. Not for themselves or their loved ones, no, they want to make it illegal for everyone. Some people are so afraid of their own death that they can't even accept other people's deaths. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone euthanasia. But I do not think that life should be prolonged at all cost.
One teacher was accused of abuse because he didn’t give the girl a good grade. His reputation was ruined. An investigation cleared him.
Another teacher was caught taking pictures of students and was arrested and prosecuted; no alarms were raised by students but by his wife. He went to jail.
Both incidents happened at the same time.
Factory had a serial pooper. He was never caught, he would leave giant piles of poop all over the place, sometimes with cigarette butts in them. They actually made a poop task force of people who would routinely walk around the factories less busy zones in order to catch him
Manager was caught having sex with a married subordinate in a room that was open to anyone at the workplace. No one did anything about it until the dudes wife caught wind of it and called HR. They fired the manager and she’s actually homeless now.
More recently another manager with quite the promiscuous reputation was caught fellating two male subordinates in that same room! She was immediately fired.
When I was 17 years old I got a job at the neighborhood donut shop that my family had been going to for years. There were a lot of regulars who hung out and drank coffee (and smoked cigarettes) there for hours a day (this was before coffee shops were really a thing.) A few months before I got hired it got bought by a new owner and it was run by him, his wife, and his wife's mother who had all worked together at other shops. There was another waitress there who was a 17-year-old foster child. She spent a lot of time with the family, which didn't seem suspicious because they had an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old that she babysat and we thought they just felt sorry for her because she was in foster care so they included her in family outings.
Yeah, you can see where this is going. 🙄 Within 6 months he had left his wife, who moved out of state with her mother and the children, and moved the 17-year-old in. The regulars begin gossiping and he literally banned staff and customers from discussing him or the girlfriend, as well as staff from coming in when we were not working. Keep in mind, I had been coming into that donut shop my entire life at that point. My dad stopped going in entirely after that, except when I was working, and I think that was just to keep an eye on the situation. We lost most of the other regulars because they refused to stop gossiping about him and we were supposed to kick them out when they did. 🤣 I didn't really care, even though when I worked shifts with her she didn't do anything and I kept walking in to the back to find them making out which really grossed me out because he was almost 40. But when he told me I had to start sharing my tips with her I quit (we had never pooled tips before and she wasn't getting any because she wasn't serving anyone.) Shortly after I quit another waitress quit for the same reason and the few customers they had left stopped coming in at all. He went out of business less than a year later. I'm pretty sure he and the girlfriend broke up shortly after that, but I never saw or heard from either of them again. Ironically, I still talk to a lot of the regulars and my current mechanic, 30 years later, was one of them. 🤣 He and I still sometimes talk about back then.
One could discuss the relationship one way or the other. But no matter what you think on that topic, I think it's clear who was the brain behind the business and it wasn't the creepy husband. People don't turn around and suddenly become idiots after leading a successful business for so long. He always was an idiot and most likely cheated because the teenager 'finally understood his needs' and didn't nag him to behave like an adult. I bet he was sprouting how his wife had 'emasculated' him by 'undermining' his decisions and 'limiting his freedoms' as a man. While all she did was keeping him from destroying the business and their marriage. And then his teenage gf grew up and realised he was a 40 year old perpetual teenager.
Security work for a government acronym agency. 2 supervisors were having an idle conversation which turned into a disagreement regarding the interpretation of a procedure. They took their disagreement to a manager. Manager kicks it up the chain, which led to an investigation. The result of the investigation led to 37 people being suspended and 6 terminations. It made the news.
Accounting person would order construction material but had some of it delivered to his place. Company paid for his house. 😂
I heard a similar story. Even used some of the trades guys to build them an extra room and deck. No consequences that I ever heard of but people were speaking openly about it.
Worked in a fast food place in high school. Manager in his 30’s had a relationship with one of the employees, a high school senior. Faked a burglary of about $6k and manager got tied up to a tree and drove car off a cliff. Police saw right through it. Owners did not prosecute but fired both and made them pay everything back. The two stayed together and got married several months later. Not sure where they are now.
Single woman was notorious for dating married co-workers. The woman had lots of money and lured them with vacations, gifts etc. She took one on a vacation, the married guy told his wife that it was a work trip. Someone tipped his wife off and she met them at the airport and dumped his clothes in front of them and told him not to come home.
Another single woman had an affair with a married co-worker. She got pregnant. His wife said, end it now or I'm walking away with half of your pension, the house and kids etc. The guy got a transfer to another location leaving his pregnant with twins mistress in the dust.
We rented out a restaurant for the christmas party of our department. Things escalated quickly, people started snorting lines everywhere and everyone got s**tfaced. The department consisted of 80% uni students (m+f) age 19-26 and 20% single mothers age 40-50… A couple was caught f*****g in the kitchen of the restaurant and the party was ended by the owner. The kitchen had to be sanitized and the costs had to be payed by the two lovebirds… Needless to say our christmas partys looked different after that one…
When you allow alcohol at company Christmas parties, most people understand it’s like one and done. But other people never will. They will get shitfaced, act inappropriately, and totally show their a*s (sometimes literally) in front of their BOSS. Then they’ll vomit somewhere that isn’t the toilet, and have to be carried out and taken home, usually by an extremely embarrassed significant other—-and if the SO is the employee, you know damned well it will only happen once. Either the drunk is not invited in future, or the employee dumps them because they’re such an embarrassment. Remember folks, your SO represents you at your company’s Christmas party, or company retreat if you’re allowed a plus one, or the boss’ kid’s wedding, or the company picnic. Make sure anyone you AND anyone you date or marry actually knows how to behave themselves in public, or you can kiss any advancement in your career goodbye. Sad it has to be like that, but when it comes to your work, appearances actually are extremely important.
Years ago, our overnight shift manager was "caught" blowing dudes in the bathroom. Except she wasn't actually caught. She admitted it was how she motivated the overnight crew who got bored easily. But it was a good thing we replaced her with a c***k addict. Who ended up stealing a ton of our computer equipment. And would also blow dudes in the bathroom. We outsourced to India and haven't had any issues since.
Nightshift probably was very popular at that company for a while....
some guy went on the speakerphone of the hospital and started cursing bc he didn’t know he turned it on. he got fired
Note: this post originally had 45 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
In short, when the title says office drama, literally 80-90% of content involves co-workers banging each other. Got it...
From somebody that worked an office job - yeah, that's usually the thing that happens the most
Load More Replies...
Long ago two female Soldiers in my unit were having an affair, pretty much everyone knew but didn't "officially know". This was before Don't Ask, Don't Tell was revoked and they could have been dishonorably discharged. The unit commander quietly had them both transferred to different bases. I ran into one years later, she had retired as a Sergent Major (the highest enlisted rank) and was married to a woman (not the same one though).
In short, when the title says office drama, literally 80-90% of content involves co-workers banging each other. Got it...
From somebody that worked an office job - yeah, that's usually the thing that happens the most
Load More Replies... Long ago two female Soldiers in my unit were having an affair, pretty much everyone knew but didn't "officially know". This was before Don't Ask, Don't Tell was revoked and they could have been dishonorably discharged. The unit commander quietly had them both transferred to different bases. I ran into one years later, she had retired as a Sergent Major (the highest enlisted rank) and was married to a woman (not the same one though).
