40 Stories Of People Taking Stupidity To New Heights At Their Job, Shared In Online Thread
There are varying degrees of how much you can mess up at work: [1] "oh, it's fine, we'll fix it in a jiffy", [2] "well, this is serious, but not without a solution", [3] "this is bad... this is very, very bad..."
And then there's everything that Redditors in this AskReddit thread were on about, listing the worst things their coworkers have done on the job.
We're way past "I sent the wrong invoice to the client" territory. Oh no, we're in the zone of regret that's usually home to "I just destroyed a 400K machine" or "I can't use the work computer to surf the dark web?" situations.
Enjoy.
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Late 90’s, I was a custodian in a NYC public school to pay for college. One of my coworkers accidentally spilled about 15 gallons of gasoline in the school parking lot. He didn’t want to get in trouble for spilling that much gas so he thought the best course of action was to burn off the gasoline. Of course gasoline burns with huge billows of black smoke so he panics and tries to put out the fire BY DRIVING HIS CAR OVER THE GIANT PUDDLE OF BURNING GASOLINE. Fire department shows up within minutes and sees him doing donuts in the giant fire and they spend a whole hour screaming at my coworker about how f*****g stupid he was.
Edit: and in 1997 when this happened, gas was 97¢ a gallon. He could have replaced all the gas for less than $15.
Can't believe NYC in 1997 you could get gas for 97 cents per gallon He's lucky he didn't blow up in his car.
when I first started driving in the early 90s, I would put gas in my car by digging through the seats for changes that fell out of my friends pockets when I drove them to school.
Load More Replies...I remember when it cost more for a deluxe gas station muffin than it did for a gallon of gas. Filled up my Nissan Sentra for $10.
How do you "accidentally" spill 15 gallons of anything? I knocked over a 5 gallon gas can once while trying to refuel my lawn mower, but I can't imagine more than maybe an ounce or so escaped! 15 gallons is at least 120 pounds! A small person! Sorry metric folks, lol!
in high school I got a ticket for falling off my car and running after it through a red light Infront of two cop cars in a parking lot.
I asked one of the new kids to stack the shoe department.
Easy if but a bit boring. I showed her, stack by brand then size, big at the bottom, small top yeah?
She decided to organise it by the color of the boxes instead because it looked prettier.
Took me hours to fix that mess.
Never understood why small sizes at the top... obviously most smaller people have smaller feet and can't reach them...
Small shoes weigh less than big shoes, even if the boxes are the same size. Stacks are more stable with the heavier boxes on the bottom. Make them top-heavy by putting the large sizes on the top, and they're more likely to fall down when you try to remove boxes.
Load More Replies...At least it wasn't Gabriel, alphabetizing by the first word.
I went to this new record store that specialized in hard-to-find records. Nothing was alphabetized! -- Mitch Hedberg
I see what you and Mitch did there. It took a sec though
Load More Replies...When I was a kid and worked at a big box electronics store as a "roamer" (basically help people find stuff) it was slow, so a co-worker and I decided to alphabetize the DVD section (I worked there and couldn't easily find stuff quickly!). Thought I was being consciousness and pro-active! Easier for everybody! Nobody ever told us they were seemingly stocked at random for a reason - the distributor or whatever paid for placement! Store director was livid!
I also have people at my job who decide to rogue and make their own categories, I don’t understand why this happens. I had to have 3 crates of stamps resorted because someone sorted them into categories we don’t use to stock stamps. I couldn’t figure out why stamps were not getting restocked when we had so many; workers could not find the ones they wanted. Just do what is asked please 😭
I had a coworker that smelled of booze at 7am.
Supervisor told him he smelled like booze, and made a couple of “get lost/go hide somewhere” remarks.
Coworker was offended, and *demanded* to be given a breathalyzer.
Coworker blew hot and was terminated. The end.
Had a coworker who often smell's like beer. Barely 21. Boss helps by hiding "I think it's my perfume you smell" "oh maybe someone spilled something under the window" (worked in a small shop in the Inner City with a pub directly across). She left our shop to move back to the city where her family lives, and had a horrible car crash because of intoxication. 7 am on a Wednesday, on her way to work. She lived but will never live without pain and the help of others. Wondered often when instead of covering her the Boss would have helped her or maybe kick her out for being drunk things would be different for her now.
I think it was Boss's very subtle way to tell coworker, he can actually smell it, instead of covering. It just backfired, because... too subtle, maybe? But yeah, should have kicked him out.
Load More Replies...That story reminds me of one of the top stories here in Germany in the 90s. Christoph Daum, one of the big football coaches of a top team, tried to defend himself in TV against accusations of doing cocaine. He said, he would do a test to prove he is clean. Well, the test came back positive and he simply told the journalists, he didn't expected them to be really able to detect the cocaine. He didn't realized, they can track down traces of it in hair probes over months. He ended up being the laughing stock for years in national TV.🤣🤣🤣
Some people are so used to the feeling of being drunk that it feels normal to them. Therefore they don't think they are drunk, even though they are. Because they feel like they are in control, they think they only drank a little and don't qualify as drunk.
Wow, so drunk he made the bad decision of insisting to prove he wasn't drunk. That is a new one!
He opened a Skype window (yes, this was ~10 years ago) and started messaging me to s**t-talk a person who was in the same call as us.
Except, he forgot he was sharing his screen.
Office manager pitched the idea of having a live shooter drill, and not telling anyone in advance.
Oops sorry I stole yours before reading the comments
Load More Replies...hey even better lets attach guns to the walls that automatically fire
It almost happened recently at one of the childcare sites that my wife manages. When they found out about the supervisor's plan they shut down.
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Worked with a lot of hazardous chemicals. Had a coworker who was notorious for being on his phone. We had to use a pump to put a hazardous chemical into a tank. Problem was you couldn’t look at the destination and pump the pump at the same time. Someone had to pump and someone had to watch. So I specifically asked said coworker to not look at his phone this one time. Tank overflowed and spilt the chemical everywhere because he was staring at his phone. Took hours to clean up.
Ahhh yes. Had a fueler overfill an aircraft when I worked at the airport. 100lbs of fuel just spilling out of the wing and you couldn't stop it. Had to get everyone off the plane, flight was cancelled, massive fun...
After checking the correct lock-out tag-out procedure was followed, I assured an employee that it was safe to change dies on a horizontal press. But he was skeptical so unbeknownst to anyone he put a piece of tooling steel about the size of a coffee can under the die base. Some of you know where this is going. He made the tooling change, forgot his “safety measure”, and cycled the press. We all heard a $400k press eat itself in a fantastic swan-song of a noise that would take Stephen King four pages to describe.
No idea what any of that means or if they meant "dye", but absolutely love the description of the press unaliving itself!
die, is the metal form that stamps things. its the shaped bits that squish the thing being stamped. dye is coloring.
Load More Replies...Ouch. I work in a huge precision engineering workshop ; we have a team of guys constantly making sure that this level of idiocy is never reached (for instance, the last pair of laser cutting machines that were installed cost £750k each and they're installing another 4 over the next year. This is on top of the hundred or so machines already in place) ..
My father designed one of the first Lindy star sapphire factories. When they tested the equipment, they forgot they already had a slug of the material in there. Dad had a Lindy star ashtray for years.
My father designed one of the original plants that made Lindy stars. When they first started up the equipment, they forgot they already had a slug of the material in there. Dad had a Lindy star ashtray for years.
You mean a ram stop bar and forgot to remove it? I think that's what you mean. "on the bolster" instead of "under the die base". And yes, that does make a lot of noise and gravel
Telling the manager on duty, “I’m not the one eating it, so why should I care?” when the manager was trying to explain to her how to correctly prepare a customer’s food.
Ex Michelin Chef here ; that sort of attitude was an immediate kick out of the back door, followed by your belongings, usually having been dunked in water or oil (if feeling charitable), or pissed on, if not, then followed by being told to f**k off if you demanded your wages. Happened twice in my 37 + year career.
Reasons why I quit being a pastry chef in school, I don't think my mental health could've taken it 🥲 but I always admire good chefs ❤️
Load More Replies...Sadly, it seems like you find people with the same attitude in every line of work.
Not sure why you got a down vote for this very true comment.
Load More Replies...I hate avocadoes, never eat them. If I ever worked in a sandwich place, and a customer wanted avo or guac, I'd do it, because *they're* the ones eating it, not me. I was a grocery cashier for a number of years. Can't tell you how often I was asked, "Which is better, Brand A guac or Brand B guac?" Or, "Which avocado is better, the smooth skinned, light colored one, or the rough skinned, dark colored one?" I'd honestly tell them, "I don't like avocado, so I'm the wrong person to ask--but let me find out for you." And I would. That's part of good customer service.
Smoking in front of propane tanks after being told not to because one might be leaky. When I reminder her, she put her finger up to her mouth as if to shush me so the boss did not hear. She did not understand what the potential was and just thought it was a dumb rule.
She was not a smart woman.
She once asked if Virginia was between New York and New Jersey because an online man was telling her he’d pick her up on the way. She was 51.
She also didn’t drink water because Pepsi had water in it and it made her more thirsty.
Kinda makes me want to reach back through time and slap all her teachers' faces.
Load More Replies...Yup she's dumb for smoking next to any type of gas tank. As for the drinking water, it doesn't quench my thirst.
Overtreated water makes me thirsty too. I have found that the ones with electrolytes (salt) do not give me the same issue.
If your propane tank is leaky then you have bigger problems than this.
No, mam, if you're trying to get home from Virginia, New York is the wrong way. Florida is in the opposite direction.
A guy I worked with sent a spreadsheet round with all the women in the office ranked in a spreadsheet and graded overall based on 1-5 scores on ‘tits’ ‘a**e’ ‘legs’ ‘F**kability’ and ‘banter’ He was somehow shocked he didn’t pass his probation
Shocked he wasn't immediately fired. Should have been black-balled.
most men here do not fall into this category (at least going by the comments) but if you are one who thinks this sort of behavior is okay, just imagine if your own mother was on that list, or your sister, or even your daughter? Nothing wrong with finding people attractive but when you start saying things and doing s**t like this, you are wrong and creepy as hell.
I cannot BELIEVE, in this day and age, that this stuff STILL happens. Or is this a long time ago?
it still happens. There are enough man-boys out there have the brain capacity of a wet cardboard box.
Load More Replies...You met Mark Zuckerberg while he was prototyping Faecesbook?
I think you are misunderstanding. I think he "finished" by getting fired. that is how I read it at least. I hope I am right.
Load More Replies...Tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail woulda been good:)
Oh I got one. So I used to work corrections and I was training this new guy, it was way before our job formalized training, idk why it took so long. Anyway my shift supervisor asked how he was doing and I straight up told him that he wasn’t going to make it. There wasn’t anything specific just a gut feeling. I guess since I couldn’t articulate the exact reason the supervisor signed off that he was trained. About 2 mos later he is working outside in the rec yard with other COs. One of those COs was a female with a large chest that she liked to poke out. Well mosquitos were out and about and so the COs got into a game of slapping mosquitos off of each other. Well homie saw a mosquito right on one of ole girls boobs and instead of maybe just waving it off he open hand slapped the mosquito and left his hand there for about a full second before taking it off. Naturally she complained and he was let go the next day.
Not done yet. My brother is a retired firefighter and a couple of years after the boob slap incident my brother was sharing all of these funny stories of a relatively new guy they have in the dept. He says the guy is nice and works hard but when it comes to initiative and critical thinking skills it’s just not there. For instance at a fully engulfed house fire everyone is running around doing their thing like unrolling hoses or staging equipment like axes/pikes and he’s just kinda standing there watching the house burn. My brother who was a captain at the time tells ole dude to grab the fan off the truck, idk the technical term but it’s a big fan they put at the front door to blow oxygen out of the house. Well it’s a big heavy fan and has rollers and a telescoping handle similar to pieces of luggage. Dude gets it down and just sets it on the ground and goes back to watching the fire. My brother then has to tell him to bring the fan to the front door. Ole dude stares at the fan and doesn’t know what to do. My brother has to walk over there and pull the handle out and homie is like “ohhhh..ok”. Ole dude sets his axe down, that he’s been holding this whole time, in a ditch with tall grass, leans the fan forward and begins to drag it on the road. This not only tears the body of the fan up but the fan is heavy enough it’s tearing up the road a bit as well. Eventually someone points out the wheels and again he’s flabbergasted by the technology. All the stories my brother shared he never said his name but once and my head snapped. I described the guy and turns out it’s boob slap guy. I then told the boob slap story and my brother was like yup, that sounds about right.
"a female with a large chest that she liked to poke out'? Pretty sure when you stand up straight they just poke out on their own...
Not necessarily. Some of them point due south. Not mine, of course.
Load More Replies...Misogyny alert (thought not surprised based on chosen career) "she liked sticking out." As a size E we do not like sticking them out. We can even buy XL size shirts and they still "stick out."
Even at a double d a v neck shirt doesn't leave much to the imagination. Thank gods for camis
Load More Replies...As a WOMAN, with a large chest, I hunch over and scrape the floor with my boobs. I don't want men to think I am poking them out ... LOL
The majority get them through the "good ol' boy" network. Doesn't matter if it's white collar connections through Boss Hogg or blue collar connections through them Duke boys, they are all connected somehow.
Load More Replies...I used to train new officers in the jail I worked at. Only guy I ever trained that I refused to sign off on got accepted anyway because we were hurting so bad for people. About a year later he got a bag full of razors stolen out of his desk drawer and the entire facility had razors banned for about a month as a result. Nobody was pleased with him. People tried to blame me cuz they knew I trained him but I would tell them "You can check his files, you won't find my signature on anything."
I saw a tattooist I worked with tattoo "Laugh now cry Ladder" across a guy's chest...He was let go/ and a few years later a guy came in with "Warior" across his upper back in bold letters wanting it fixed. Same tattooist lol.
Depends how much effort you put into climbing the later.
Load More Replies...You're supposed to sign off on designs before they start inking. Baffling people aren't catching mistakes.
Shouldn't be that hard to fix, just remove the extraneous R and adopt a terrible fake Italian accent
A hostess at a restaurant I worked at on college. The owner taught her how to use the register. When things slowed down we found her ringing in things into the register. She was " practicing ". She rang in over $2,000 of nonexistent charges. Took the owner three hours to correct it after closing
Most POS now have a "training mode". Someone should have first taught her how to put it in training mode, but then she might forget to put it in sales mode and then you have a whole different problem
They had training mode 30 years ago when I worked in a supermarket during my uni holidays. It had to be set by a manager, otherwise staff could put it in training mode to scan their friend's shopping. It was also a rule that you couldn't serve your friends or family.
Load More Replies...We had a training credit card with thousands of money to practice our new register program. Although it was only for that one controlled session, it was still super fun. And when we run out of money the instructor added more. (Of course all was cancelled after the training). That's about the only experience ever I have of being rich.
My dad's firm got one of the first IBM PCs and we got an accounting program for it. We created a dummy Invoice #0001 to see how it worked, then went to erase it and start again, but the Accountant wouldn't let us. So their genuine Invoices began with #0002 🤦♂️
Many years ago, working in retail, I had two employees who thought that they could get away with ringing up a fake sale, writing "VOID" across it, and taking the money out of the register. They could not understand how the boss discovered money was missing. I almost wanted to explain that it had to be a real sale they were voiding, so that money had been put into the register before they took it out - but that would not have been fair to their next employer!
I forgot to hardpress the enterbutton between sums and ended with a tally of many hundred million trillions , boss not impresses.
why would voiding transactions take hours? also her plan was a good one to get better with the register to be faster when it was busy. Some systems even have a *test* option for just that purpose. edit... I meant to add a comment to the post, not reply to Hugh!
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Taking out and using a vape pen in a clean room area that had an acid hood with butanol, nitric acid, and hydrofluoric acid in it.
Suffice to say he wasn’t employed for long after that.
HF (hydrofluoric acid) is one of the nastiest substances on the planet. Clean labs are supposed to be clean--like really, really clean. No dust. Ultra filtered air. Gloves, paper booties, etc. You don't vape in a clean room.
I think it's safe to assume you don't vape in any lab or room that research is being held in. Call me old fashioned.
Load More Replies...in basic terms, the idiot was lucky he didn't go kaboom.
Load More Replies...If the fume hood was working properly, there was probably not much risk, since the fumes are the ignitable part. The battery exploding is a different risk. The real danger might have been overwhelming the exhaust system so that the dangerous fumes were "not* being vented away.
This guy had a good high paying job with a pension, was there about 5 years, good worker, he was finding and watching [adult content taboo beyond any set of morals] on the company computer on company time! The cops visited! His life went downhill fast.
Yes 🤣 Anyone have an idea what [taboo beyond any set of morals] is? I can't follow the link 😅
Load More Replies...I left a job once (I'm female) and my replacement (male) watched BDSM videos on his computer. Boss called me to ask if I loaded them on the computer. No you stupid f**k, I would know enough that I wouldn't do this.
"yes boss, because I have fantasies of hog-tying you before taking my lunch hour so you won't text me stupid f**king work questions while I'm in line at the Kurger Bing drive thru"
Load More Replies...At an old job: someone decided to watch a little NSFW video during a conference call — but forgot to hit his mute button. We could all hear the “dialog” and accompanying heavy breathing. The poor host was all “could you PLEASE mute your phone,” the rest of us were obviously laughing. He didn’t get fired, but he did have to have a couple of super awkward conversations with management.
Heheh had a guy do this at one of my previous jobs. No idea what he was watching but he forgot he had his speakers on full blast and all you heard was moaning LOL ahh
My father once lost a job in the banking industry because the police did a raid on a triple-X theatre and he was one of the patrons. Oh well. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...
In high school, working at a Chinese restaurant, was there basically to take orders and bus tables. Another dude I vaguely knew from high school got hired there. Nice, popular dude, but not much common sense. Within his first two weeks, he went to make himself some food (we were allowed to do that to a certain extent), and he dropped some wontons into the deep fryer. When he decided they were done, and as we were having a conversation, he just REACHED HIS HAND into the oil to retrieve it. I don’t think I even reacted for a moment or two, and then rushed forward. He somehow ALSO didn’t react for a moment or two before pulling his hand out and yelling out a cartoon-style “YEEOUCH!”
He went to the hospital, and quit the job.
For 'Not much common sense' read ' utter cretin, tiny brain, no sense at all' ..... On another level though, I used to know a guy who used to make up a really thick batter, dip his finger in it, THEN, dip it into the deep fat fryer and leave it for 30 seconds or so .... he was an idiot too, but bloody funny with it.
Way back when it was time to slaughter pigs they would boil the heads in giant kettles to make head cheese and I guess you could dip your hands in quickly and repeat multiple times until you made gloves out of the fat enough to protect yourself. Per my grandmother - my grandfather did this as a teenager proving teenagers haven't changed much
Load More Replies...Yikes! My brother ended up at the Vanderbilt burn center after an accidental deep fryer oil spill. He was lucky he didn’t end up with permanent nerve damage in his hands. Wonder if this moron did!
In high school (early 80's) one guy (who was in the top 10 academically in our class) was working at McD's and accidentally dropped a chicken nugget into the fry grease and reached in with his hand to retrieve it.
For some reason I can see my brain phasing out temporarily and doing something like this. 🤦♀️
My best friend, he took his mop bucket and poured it down a water fountain instead of using the closet with a sink that was literally right next to the water fountain. He got fired the next day.
After I had some renovations, I hired two cleaners, to help me clean the huge mess. One of them went to empty the bucket of dirty water, she passed the toilet and poured it straight into the (clean) bathtub! She was very annoyed when I told her that now she has to clean that mess on her own time, that I'm not going to pay for that extra time.
EWWWW this is why I don't drink from water fountains... never could again after watching a kid puke in one in elementary school
Once when I was on the till someone dropped a bottle of coke which cracked and sprayed everywhere. I managed to grab the bottle pretty quickly without getting sprayed and opened it a bit so it would stop spraying. then I asked a coworker who was nearby to bring me a bucket of water. What did he bring? Well, a bucket of water. Cold, with no soap or other cleaning agents. And no Mop either.
Telling the senior operations person for the office that they would "take a sick day as an extra day of vacation". To be clear, neither I nor the ops person really cared, but it was the equivalent of telling HR that you were fraudulently taking time off. Really boneheaded.
Also, this person started at the same time as me and then made a huge stink when I got promoted and they didn't. Basically subtly accused our bosses of sexism..
The catch? You AUTOMATICALLY received a promotion upon completing a series of certification exams (which I had). She had not. It was the most unremarkable promotion in history and she decided it was a hill to die on. She quit a few months later.
I own a smoothie place. We're required to have a grease trap attached to our sinks, to catch stuff like peanut butter, almond butter and larger pieces of fruit and stuff. I used to make the employees take turns cleaning it out (it only has to be done once every couple of months). Had a fairly new employee whose turn was coming up tell all her coworkers that if she was told to do it she'd call in sick. I heard about this and was pissed, as all the employees know I never ask them to do anything I haven't done myself. So I tell her that on Wednesday she's cleaning the grease trap. Wednesday comes along and she calls out sick. When she shows up for her shift the next day, I tell her that she has to clean the grease trap first thing because I didn't make another employee do it since it was her turn. She handed me her stuff and quit, and I cleaned it myself. It was totally worth it to see the look of horror and disbelief on her face 😂
I had colleagues comment loudly on the shop floor that because they couldn't cancel the mother's day trip that one of their daughter's had booked, and they had work that day anyway (they worked pretty much the same shifts) they were going to pull a sicky. Not sure if they got punished for it. Those same colleagues got caught by another member of staff stealing from the shop, by failing to scan every item. They got caught because they stupidly didn't deactivate the security tag.
Running a walk behind crown stacker in a stock room. Stock room was separated from warehouse and receiving dock with 10’ door ways and a big wall covered in plywood. This idiot had just put up a pallet and didn’t lower the forks enough, and completely nailed the wall with the forklift. Luckily all cosmetic damage but it was dumb af
It was me. I was the coworker.
At least you admitted it. I know of a person running a fork lift with several pallets on it and got mad at someone and literally ran them over.
At the factory where I worked someone did this but they ripped out the gas lines in the ceiling. The entire factory had to be evacuated and some coworkers were lighting up as they walked out of the building excited for the smoke break. There are some stupid stupid people in this country.
I drove a Raymond in a wholesale club...one night I had some time to kill, so decided to move some stock into the correct aisles. Took a pallet of Downy fabric softener off the top of the rack and lowered it as I drove--total no-no, but we did it all the time. Didn't lower it enough by the end of the aisle, snagged it on an AC unit and flooded the aisle with April fresh blue goo
I'm a nurse; my MedAid (certified and licensed) dispensed one pain med at a dose prescribed under a different med; giving the patient 10x the recommended dose (and didn't recognize the mistake for 6 hours) to a 90lb older lady. Luckily this woman's organs were shutting down and didn't metabolize the med; she had 12 doses of narcan. And was alive, awake, and chatty thru the entire ordeal. No lasting effect if essentially being overdosed.
Dodged a bullet there. Sadly the phrase ' luckily her organs were shutting down' are probably the wrong words in this case in the long term.
Not really because had her organs not been shutting down, she would have died from overdose. OP said that she is alive. Just because your organs are short down and are an older lady, doesn't mean you are dying. It can be reversed.
Load More Replies...Medication errors are scary things. Best practice is to always have orders and doses double checked but this is hard when clinicians are already so swamped with work. I know an amazing nurse, really dedicated and cluey, and one day I walked into the lunch room to find her absolutely devastated. She'd made a mistake when setting up a blood transfusion for a patient that essentially means they were given the blood way too rapidly - it sent the patient into severe heart and respiratory failure. Thankfully they survived and there was no long term effects once the failure was reversed, but it has always stuck with me as an example of how even really good clinicians make mistakes. Checks are so important because our brains are fallible. We've all made mistakes at work no matter how good we are, and for most of us we're just lucky that we haven't been in positions where the mistake could kill somebody
I'm a little confused at this one. First, if she didn't metabolize the med, how did she OD? And if she was OD'ing, how was she chatty and awake? Maybe they meant after the narcan, but then again, how could the narcan work with no metabolization? Am i incorrect in how that all works? I'm not a medical professional but I have seen people OD and by definition, they are not chatty or awake.
Why did she get 12 doses of Narcan if she wasn't metabolism the drug
Put a bunch of freshly sharpened knives in a sink that was full of soapy water and didn’t tell anyone. Another coworker got like 5 large cuts on his hand while reaching in to start cleaning dishes.
I've seen aftermath of this kind of thing happening and it's not pretty
My mum taught me this very young after a neighbour did it and my mum had to help bandage up her hand.
Imagine it, 6th grade hospitality class, this one girl that everyone in the grade hated put 2 knives in the soapy water, I reach my hand it, the water turns red. 3 weeks later as I was was bringing a tray out of the over she walks past and "accidently" shoves me, cue a burn on the hand.
My son always wondered why I had a rule that you don't put knives into a sink full of soap suds. I've accidentally grabbed a hand full of OUCH!! maybe half a dozen times in my life.
And if it's *hot* soapy water, that can really aggravate the bloodflow, making the injuries a lot worse.
That happened to me. Of course, I was the one who put those knives there in the first place, so ...
I learned a new phrase a few months ago "A falling knife has no handle".
We just had a high voltage KVA transformer installed in my warehouse, I asked the electricians to install it high so it wouldn't be hit by a hi-lo. About 3 hours later one of my managers decided to hop on a sit down hi-lo and move some freight. He was not trained nor given permission to drive this machine. Well as luck would have it he flies past my office with the forks extended high. Yep, he punctured the transformer and boy what a spark show. He actually bent one of the forged blades which I have never seen before. He knocked out the power for our building and the surrounding neighborhood. He survived the incident luckily but I fired him on the spot. Good times...
Had a temp job during my high school holidays installing new machinery at an aluminium foundry. ( I think the word is foundry : they melted aluminium in a electric oven and made castings.) It was closed during the company holiday, and the floor manager (who was planning to take his holiday later ) decided the forklift driver was too slow. So he, without a forklift permit, drove like an idiot and rammed the forks into the main power panel. The entire area (several factories and a residential block) was blacked out for the rest if the day, our ears took a few days to recover, he was in the ICU a week but made a full recovery. Yes : I can guess what those forks looked like.
aluminum smelting uses SO much power. The reason Alcoa was built by Niagra was to be closer to the power generation. I can only imagine what happened to the floor manager. he is lucky he wasnt vaporized.
Load More Replies...I was working in a little shack in a construction yard that stored tools and equipment. One of the shop guys walked over with two full jerry cans and a smoke in his mouth. Even the token yard idiot came over and was like “wtf is wrong with you?”
One of my cousins decided to bang away at a gas can with a hammer...my dad (his boss at the time) strolled over, looked at him and said, "Plan on living long?"
My cousins grandfather died in a similar fashion. I was only 3 so don’t really remember it happening other then the commotion being discussed and talk of the funeral. His grandkids had taken baths while visiting and lost several plastic (I believe LEGO) pieces of toys down the tub drain. He had the bright idea of pouring gasoline down the drain to dissolve the plastic. While smoking a cigarette.
I remember a gas station in small town Nova Scotia in the early 60's where the owner would be filling a car with gas, a lighted cigarette in his mouth and his ear up to the filler pipe. In those days there was no such thing as auto shut-off on the pumps so you had to listen for the sound of the tank filling up. Never understood how he didn't blow himself up :(
It's defintitely stupid, but the chances of a cigarette igniting gasoline is actually very low; You can literally put out a lit cigarette in a puddle of gas and it won't catch on fire. The flame from the match/lighter that you use to *light* the cigarette is a much different story, however.
even if it was a low chance it's a chance that's too stupid to risk.
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Admit to not having spoken to any of the business stakeholders, but instead "made up their own story."
This was at the end of what was supposed to have been a four-week information-gathering phase of the project.
That afternoon, when one of the managers went to escort her from the premises, they found her by the printer with a stack of confidential documents.
I worked in billing and they made this one woman a manager. We both came in early and I could hear her spend a couple of hours calling around to lots of people and chatting - not really working related stuff. When they fired her they found lots of stashed away work she didn't bother doing hidden in her cubicle and apparently she'd taken a lot home to dispose of too.
At an old warehouse job, on this dudes first day he offered the general manager a cup of Hennessy he was drinking out of. Never seen someone get fired faster than that since.
its weird how alcoholics and drunks think everyone else wants some. I had a store manager at a convenience store/deli that I worked at in HS who put rum in his diet coke bottle and would stash cheap beer in the coldbox. I didnt really care until he started making us stay way past closing because he was so dunk and couldnt finish his duties so we would have to scramble to do them. then he started offering us beer (I was 17, sure I would go to keggers but not drink at work). I finally told the District manager and he showed up and smelled the managers warm diet coke and the guy was let go. The day after we were able to close and leave at the normal time.
He cupped a piece of wood in his hand and tried to cut through it with a skill saw. He set the depth on the blade so it was just enough to go through the wood without hitting his hand. It hit his hand. Luckily, the depth wasn't enough to go all the way through, but it was still a hospital trip and a lot of stitches.
My brother did that to his thumb with a hand saw. I don't know how he didn't notice but he needed stitches and a brace thing because it went through part of the bone
Colour the background of a word dock blue so she could get a blue piece of paper.
The blue paper was right next to the printer and had been there for months.
She printed daily.
Ever wonder how blue paper get into the stack at the first place?
In our office we used to print certain things on certain colors and sometimes not all sheets got used so a few would get left in. It's amazing how much of our paperwork has gone electronic, especially how fast they made it work during the pandemic
Load More Replies...I’m fairly certain we could all agree that a backup of anything is a physical replica of an item or data file, preferably placed in a location foreign to that of the original so that the unavailability of one does not affect the availability of the other. With this in mind, I once asked a guy to backup the contents of an entire server on to another server. He was meant to spend a few hours completing this activity and verifying it had all been copied in full without any data corruption. I come back the next day to find a shortcut in server 2 that was pointing to the folder in server 1. This same guy knocked the Production servers over the weekend and didn’t tell anyone. Our company was fined $250,000 USD. This same guy once logged into another server to complete some maintenance work and got hit with a Windows update notification. He accepted the update, got locked out and had to wait over an hour for the update and reboot to complete. This guy wasn’t fired, he is now the Tech Lead in another team.
Hopefully not for your company. Sounds like a PEBCAK error. (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard).
Which goes to show the 'Peter Principal' in all of it's glory. He'll probably end up as the US President. NO, WAIT, we've just had one Peter Principal candidate there up until recently .... Please, never again, my chuckle button would never recover if #45 became #47 while he was in jail ....
Yep. Promoted to the level of his incompetence.
Load More Replies...Ah yes, "we don't want to fire you for whatever reason, so we have to promote you". I knew dozens of those during my working life. All of them ended up as project managers.
Windows updates are the very devil. As for backups, you can guarantee that the backup is the time when a single fault will destroy both the working files and the backups. Avoid both if you can.
Error 40: The error is 40 cm from the screen (or keyboard)
Printed the boss’ face in the toilet so people don’t pee on the floor. 😂
Brilliant idea !! Now for something for the ladies' loo, often it's even more disgusting than the men's.
I think this one is in the wrong place. Isn't there a Greatest Ideas Of All Time thread?
Is it normal to accept that men just don't try very hard to aim unless given a reason to?
Co-worker held a block of dry ice in her bare hands and asked, "what is this?" The box it came out of had a hazard sticker that said Dry Ice and then a bunch of cautions, like use gloves or tongs to pick up.
I was in a school play where there was dry ice being used (can't remember what for, maybe for creating mist). Some clown picked up a piece of it and put it into his mouth
There was a news story about a shop selling a treat that was pulled out of dry ice and you would have 'dragon's breath' when you ate it, of course it was only a matter of time before someone was injured
Load More Replies...I worked in a chemical lab after school in high school. Boss's nephew a college chem major worked there one day. We used pipettes to add chemicals and used a bulb for safety but he used his mouth and took in a drink of some acid. so instead of rinsing out with a lot of water, he took in a taste of an alkaline thinking it would neutralize. he forget it was a exothermic reaction and burned his mouth. idiot
I was a volunteer for a show at my elementary school. Part of the show needed dry ice to be cut into pieces. The woman in charge of cutting the dry ice had been trained to hold it in a way that wouldn't freeze her. A little bit flew off and hit me on the neck. it has been 8 years and I still have a scar.
Get a four gang extension lead, plug a computer and monitor into it, take the plug around a pillar, looking for somewhere to plug it in, and plug it into itself.
And get distressed that it did not work.
Oh, the number of times I've had to explain to colleagues that they have done this...
I have actually seen the old "surge protector plugged into itself" in the wild
Anytime I hear this (and I've seen it myself) I'm reminded of an exec that installed his own 5 port switchbox at his desk and plugged a CAT5 5 into 2 ports, creating a loop. The way the tech explained it to me was in this particular case, it gradually spread through the network wreaking havoc. First the office went down, then the whole floor, the whole building, then it began to spread through the entire corporation as the servers had growing issues with the loop. Best I remember it took about 2 weeks for the problem to be resolved, in a worldwide corporation. After that a rule was made that no one was allowed to install anything on the network except authorized techs.
my mother wouldn't use extension leads as she believed the electricity wouldn't be as strong by the time it got to them and would cost more to run for the extra power needed (this is before anything is actually plugged into them 🤦♂️).....I did convince her once that her old fashioned brass barometer needed special new batteries,she was convinced it was broken because she never saw the "hand" move
One dude once photocopied a slice of pizza. We found cheese and stuff inside the machine for weeks. Was pretty funny though.
Was it a top scanner thing? Or did he successfully get all the way through the machine? That's impressive...
Assuming he shoved it through the copier if they were getting cheese out of the inside of it.
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I once watched a fellow auto technician attempt to clean up the threads on an axle nut he marred up with a giant tap on a pneumatic impact gun while holding the nut in his hand. Needless to say, it slipped and tore the ever loving s**t out of his hand, requiring a hospital trip and several stitches.
He's the only tech I've ever seen that was so careless and stupid that he damaged axle nut and driveshaft threads often enough that he actually went out and bought a tap and die set of whatever monstrous size those threads were. It was something like an M28x1.5.
Naz if you're reading this, you're a f*****g idiot.
M28x1.5 means that the thread pitch is 1.5mm from one peak to the next. Not 1.5 inches long. It is actually a fine pitch for a 28mm thread.
Load More Replies...Yep, might as well apply tap directly to hand and save time
Load More Replies...LOL, I just spoke to a Naz (F) just Friday (it's Sunday). She was a pest control company receptionist.
short for Naznine usually. If it a guy, its usually short for Nassar.
Load More Replies...There were 2 of us installing an air conditioner. He had a bit of work outside that required him going up a ladder about 3 or 4 feet, not high. I was inside doing wiring. I heard a loud thud and scream, so I ran out to see what happened. He fell off the ladder. I've seen gruesome injuries from stupid thing like this before, so I ran outside to help him out. No injuries, he picked himself up and got back at it, I went back inside. Five minutes later, same thing. I walked out to check on him again after a small fall. He was ok again, but I told him to chill out and watch what he's doing. I went back inside. Heard another thud from outside. He fell again. I just looked out the window the third time and went about my business.
I get the feeling he was throwing himself from the ladder for attention. Or to get workman's comp.
What the H*LL was he doing that he kept falling so much? Did he not know how to use a ladder or that they can be moved so you don't have to overreach? So many questions here.
Cutting his hair at the bar, he was the bartender…
I just imagine myself working and every time I turn to the register to see my reflection in the mirrored shelf (as in: a shelf that has a mirror as a back wall) reminding me to finish shaving my skull.
Load More Replies..."need it for tonight's specials, boss, the manhairtan and the hairtini"
I once convinced a guy in the bar to let me cut his pony tail off. I'm neither a bartender nor a hair dresser, however he looked a lot better when he left than when he came in, and that's not the alcohol talking.
My coworker blasted the volume of his music not realizing the 3.5mm jack isn't connected to his phone. He thought he was hearing it from his earphones lol. Our CFO whose office is near our department came marching outside to the employee floor and shouted "Who the hell is playing that?" (in our native language). Someone had to call his attention, we couldn't laugh at the time but it was hella funny later that day lmao.
Edit: for anyone curious the song was Low by Flo Rida. It was popular at the time I believe it's in early 2010s when that happened.
We have this absolute wretched c**t of a coworker that kept running his mouth about how he's not scared of heights "back in the day we didn't have safety equipment and I worked on skyscrapers, you know that photo of the guys eating lunch on the beams? I was doing that but I was better than them, I used to jump between the beams" stupid s**t like that all the time.
He went up a ladder once at work like 10ft up and he started screaming like he was dying. 2 coworkers came over to him and he said "I can't move, I need you each to grab one of my feet and move it down the ladder for me." So 2 people moved his feet down the ladder like he was a puppet while he screamed and moaned like he was dying the whole time.
Friend is a tower crane operator. They had this one young guy that would never attach his safety line when going out on the boom. Veteran worker was with him one day, hooked his line on real easy then started berating the kid about being out there with no safety. Kid stands up turns and says "I don't need one, you couldn't push me off this thing". And with that, the veteran worker gives a push and off he went. Friend said the look on that kids face was priceless. Needless to say, they never had to tell him again to hook up before going out on the catwalk.
Worked at a place that rotated new staff constantly... Here's a few I saw get sacked.
1 - fly tipped his rubbish from a job install (whole van load) down a country lane, left all information on all the boxes then claimed he took it to the recycling place but they followed him and dumped it down a country lane...he was on a tracked van and drove down the lane it was found at.
2 - crashed the forklift into the warehouse door, complained he was too hot and couldn't cope, then started punching himself in the head...left and never came back
3 - sat down and watched Jeremy Kyle in the staff room every day for 2 weeks, didn't do any work, and was sacked.
4 - wouldn't do any work, sat there eating food from the breakfast van every day, and destroyed his desk by drilling holes into it or stabbing screwdrivers through it.
5 - stole a stupid amount of logitech equipment from the warehouse, posted it only on ebay with his skate in the background that had his name written on then claimed it wasn't him (stole around 40k worth of equipment)
6 - walked up to a female member of staff pit his rear end basically on her arm and farted, didn't want to do any work, and was sacked after 1 day
7 - Walked in and quit instantly with no notice, peed into the back of his van over all the stock that had to be binned. Use to p**s into his van a lot so there was jellyfied p**s all over the place.
8 - general manager new to the company walked in and told all the women they aren't qualified to do their jobs. Sacked instantly.
9 - decided to buy a pumpkin from the shop and try carve it in the office with a knife then said to the top manager "who are you?" When she asked what he was doing These are what I can remember for now, there's definitely way more but cba typing them all. Edit: Just trying to think of some more whilst at the gym
10 - One guy didn't like a woman in his office, she was meant to train under him. Made constant complaints about her and refused to train her whilst saying "I don't want a f*****g woman in my office" went on for a while with constant arguing and SHE was sacked...found out later on when she came to hand the keys into me with a big smile on her face that they paid her 20k not to sue the company
11 - Engineer didn't want to work for the company anymore, decided to smash his van into the back of an old ladies car, break his laptop and his phone all within a couple of days then was sacked off. No idea why he didn't just leave...
They need to be using a temporary employment service because it sounds like they have been hiring male pigs, thieves and non potty trained brats
They need to fire Human Resources because they obviously can't do their job to filter out the losers.
Load More Replies...Female here. I live in an immigration hotspot so I've been fortunate to work with people from around the world. Was a warehouse lead (the place I worked had a ton of Temps come through my department.) One day a new guy from the Middle East (the majority of middle eastern men were great employees, & hired in), anyway the new guy comes in works two hours (first break) he comes up to me & I quote "I don't like working with women, I quit". Well good luck getting any job in America.
#11 didn't just quit cause if you quit you can't collect unemployment insurance.
Wally took a fistful of painkillers and fell into such a deep sleep, we thought he was dead. He was let go shortly thereafter.
I saw a guy do that once, on a long train trip. I asked what was that handful of pills he just downed and he said "codeine", and while I was naively trying to remember what condition that particular medication is for he explained that he wanted to have "a chill train trip". He passed out too, of course, but woke up apparently unharmed an hour or so later. Dude was a real character.
Suck up dead fish with a shop vac.
Better or worse than microwaving? Asking for a number of places I used to work
I have one...dude gets fired and proceeds to argue with management that he has not been fired. Gets a bunch of his buddies to come intimidate management into allowing him to keep the job...tense situation, security got involved, etc. Finally convinced this guy that he did in fact lose his job, so he took a bunch of proprietary, highly confidential information and hid it in his house, taking out from time to time to show to his friends and brag about how great he was at the job. He has since re-applied for the same position...
I can't help but think this guy sounds like Trump.
Load More Replies...Worked for a temp job once, dude took some l s d, asked me if I would help him fight everyone in the shop when they came for him. Another guy came in worked good, drank a 40 during lunch and passed out in the parking lot. Fun times.
Not dangerous, just funny. A coworker at a lounge/restaurant came up to me and said, "That band they hired isn't very good. They just play the same songs every night."
Had a new hire in the warehouse decide that shoving crystal meth up her lady parts was okay since she wasn't snorting or smoking it. Oh and she did this while across the table from me, while talking about her daughter who her mother had custody of because of said meth hobby. She also tried to fix her car with zip ties. She ran off the road and bent some control arm. she decided zip tying a block of wood to it would hold the 4000lb car. Last I heard she had been arrested, did a short stint in county and is now clean, and back with her daughter. I wish her well but after seeing someone reach into their pants and shove meth in her hooha, I am happier not knowing her.
And what a bonus for anyone who had unprotected sex with her.
Load More Replies...I have a couple: My wife had a co-worker who advertised her side hustle in the little weekly small-town newspaper . . . and had her work phone listed as the contact. Then she couldn't understand why she got fired. At a place where I used to work they had a guy who was off working alone one day. The boss walked up on him and found him sitting in his truck drinking a beer. When told that wasn't acceptable and he was fired he responded with "But I was on break!"
This should be entitled "40 More Reasons to Respect and Appreciate Serial Killers"
Working in a computer factory around 25 years ago, and had to train two new starts how to do my job because the guy from the training department was doing it wrong. I leave for the day at the end of my shift. Next morning I get told the two new guys had been sacked for trying to steal high value components in full view of a CCTV camera, and a security guard sitting six feet away.
I have one...dude gets fired and proceeds to argue with management that he has not been fired. Gets a bunch of his buddies to come intimidate management into allowing him to keep the job...tense situation, security got involved, etc. Finally convinced this guy that he did in fact lose his job, so he took a bunch of proprietary, highly confidential information and hid it in his house, taking out from time to time to show to his friends and brag about how great he was at the job. He has since re-applied for the same position...
I can't help but think this guy sounds like Trump.
Load More Replies...Worked for a temp job once, dude took some l s d, asked me if I would help him fight everyone in the shop when they came for him. Another guy came in worked good, drank a 40 during lunch and passed out in the parking lot. Fun times.
Not dangerous, just funny. A coworker at a lounge/restaurant came up to me and said, "That band they hired isn't very good. They just play the same songs every night."
Had a new hire in the warehouse decide that shoving crystal meth up her lady parts was okay since she wasn't snorting or smoking it. Oh and she did this while across the table from me, while talking about her daughter who her mother had custody of because of said meth hobby. She also tried to fix her car with zip ties. She ran off the road and bent some control arm. she decided zip tying a block of wood to it would hold the 4000lb car. Last I heard she had been arrested, did a short stint in county and is now clean, and back with her daughter. I wish her well but after seeing someone reach into their pants and shove meth in her hooha, I am happier not knowing her.
And what a bonus for anyone who had unprotected sex with her.
Load More Replies...I have a couple: My wife had a co-worker who advertised her side hustle in the little weekly small-town newspaper . . . and had her work phone listed as the contact. Then she couldn't understand why she got fired. At a place where I used to work they had a guy who was off working alone one day. The boss walked up on him and found him sitting in his truck drinking a beer. When told that wasn't acceptable and he was fired he responded with "But I was on break!"
This should be entitled "40 More Reasons to Respect and Appreciate Serial Killers"
Working in a computer factory around 25 years ago, and had to train two new starts how to do my job because the guy from the training department was doing it wrong. I leave for the day at the end of my shift. Next morning I get told the two new guys had been sacked for trying to steal high value components in full view of a CCTV camera, and a security guard sitting six feet away.
