Most people just want to keep their heads down at their job and simply work hard until it's time to go home. That can be difficult, if not impossible, when those workers accidentally stumble into something they were never supposed to be. Whether that's an affair taking place, shady business practices, or terrifying experiments, these people absolutely wish they could go back in time and unsee what they saw. These people took to Reddit to share their stories and we've compiled the best of the best here.
Content has been edited for clarity.
Shredding Party
“Leaving work late one evening, I saw the HR director and CFO in a dark office shredding papers (no, that’s not a euphemism). I didn’t say anything but quietly walked on down the hall. Two weeks later, we were raided by the SEC and several people were charged with cooking the books. The shredding party was too little too late – we were already under investigation and the feds already had the goods on the company by the time the C-suite started trying to cover their tracks. I was a peon in IT and never had a clue that the trajectory of the feces was about to intercept the coordinates of the multi-bladed atmospheric agitator. I was interviewed by a very large and intimidating agent, but since I didn’t know what the papers actually were I couldn’t provide any evidence for or against.”
Using It To His Advantage
“I saw the salaries of everyone working at the company I was working at – it was a smaller, start-up digital ad agency with about 60 employees total. Someone from HR was making copies of a document that listed everyone’s salary, and left the original on the glass of the copier. I found it and turned it back in, but not before I went through that list to see what everyone else made and discovered that a couple new hires working the same position as me were making more than me. So after turning it in, I met with my manager and used my newfound knowledge to my advantage to successfully negotiate for a raise (along with a tacit promise that I wouldn’t divulge what I knew to anyone else in the company).”
Hope It Was Worth It
“I had a patient who was close to death, so we called her daughter. She came and we set her up in the room to stay until her mother passed. She brought her boyfriend which is not abnormal. I walked in to do my routine check and they were doing it on the cot that was set up for her maybe 15 feet from her dying mother.
I freaked a bit. They were both thrown out by my supervisor, though I wasn’t sure what the appropriate response was. Her mother was dying so I thought maybe just throwing out the boyfriend alone would be better so the patient wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t know the relationship. Though she didn’t seem sad, she was laughing about it up until she was told to leave and she didn’t protest being asked to leave at all.
I stayed with the patient until the end and I hope she found her peace and she never indicated she was the wiser. She was pretty close to death and was unconscious most of the time, so I wasn’t going to mention it when she was lucid in case she hadn’t noticed. Because seriously, I still can’t comprehend the daughter’s actions.”
She Got Some Unexpected Help On Her Case
“I am a criminal defense attorney. One of my clients was picked up for trafficking and was definitely guilty, but in order to help himself out successfully we set up a bust on a much bigger dealer. The District Attorney’s office had been slow to act on the case and we could not figure out why. I had an idea, but no one would confirm what I thought was going on. I couldn’t go and point blank ask other defense attorneys, including the one for the guy who my client busted, because my client was a ‘confidential informant’ (CI) on the case. We’re the other guy’s case to go to trial, my client would have to testify for the State.
I finally learned what was going on while I was interviewing a different client in jail. I was sitting in the ‘public’ side talking to my client over a phone. It just so happened, a few feet away from me, in the private attorney room was the defense attorney AND the guy my client had busted. And they were both super mad at each other.
There is this thing called attorney client privilege. The idea is that anything you say in private with your attorney is supposed to stay secret. But those attorney interview rooms ARE NOT sound proof. And guess what, if you’re going to be shouting at your client, your conversation suddenly isn’t going to be privileged. Some things I learned:
-The defense attorney had no idea who my client was, and for whatever reason his client was not giving up the name of my client to him. Might have been some trust issues there.
-They had wildly different opinions on the possible success of the case.
-Defense attorney’s words, ‘If you take this to trial and the CI says what is in this report, you’re doomed.’ The State had not disclosed to me said report.
-They had until the end of that week to make a decision about the case.
I finished up my interview with my client (while taking notes on both cases) as they were still in the middle of their argument. So in one broad stroke, all because of a frayed or broken attorney-client relationship that spilled out into me being able to hear a few feet away, I learned pretty much all of the information the District Attorney’s office had refused to tell me and why everyone had been dragging their feet. Soon after, I was able to use the information I received to resolve my own case. So, to sum it all up, my client was facing at least 8 years in jail for Trafficking. In part because of a privileged conversation I overheard due to an attorney and his client screaming at each other, I got his sentence reduced to a little over a year.”
He Looks At Funerals A Lot Differently Now
“I used to do fire safety equipment inspection (installation and sales too).
I’ve only told my family this and my closest friends. I was doing an inspection for fire extinguishers in a funeral home, and this usually involves me inspecting the entire facility. Usually I enjoy this part of the job, but when I had to go to this funeral home, which I won’t name for good reason, I seriously had nightmares after that day.
I was walking with the owner, and full disclosure, working with the dead can tend to leave some people’s communication skills with the living a bit ‘off,’ and he was taking me room by room and explaining how he got into the business, etc.
And then it happened. We walked in a room and a poor elderly woman was…almost like floating in water due to rigor mortis. She was completely nude, having been recently ‘worked on’ and she was just floating on the table. Her arms and feet literally were at different heights lifted in the air, her head was as if she were attempting to sit up…
The owner apologized, but what could you really say to someone after something like that happens? Attending funerals were never really ‘hard’ for me before, the deceased were clothed, but this was just horribly different for me. I’m not fond of going to funerals now. I tend to not peer into the casket anymore.
I kid you not, the woman was in my dreams that following night. I can still see her and picture the entire day in my mind.”
Should Have Cleared That Search History
“Years ago, a colleague had an old smartphone that he brought in to give to another coworker as theirs broke. The phone was sitting on the new owners desk but she hadn’t yet tried it out, as it was still charging after months of not being used. We were talking about how cool it was with the coworker (smartphones were not widespread yet), and I picked it up to see how it felt in my hand. I pressed a button and the first thing that I saw was a Google search for ‘lump on butthole.’ I quickly put the phone back down.
This must have been the last thing he searched for when he last used it a long time ago, and forgot about it…”
He Probably Saved That Kid’s Life
“I worked for a downtown metropolitan hotel for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot I wasn’t supposed to see. Probably the worst was a kid with an old man.
I checked this guy in at like 1 in the morning (not uncommon because people travel at different times) but he was alone. Like an hour later he asked for something like a towel or blanket. Anyways, dispatched our runner to deliver it. After the runner comes to me and says he thinks something is wrong because he caught a glimpse of someone and the old guy was trying hard to block the entrance.
Being that we were supposed to take stuff like human trafficking seriously, I asked our maintenance to cut his power so we would get a call to come up to try and fix the problem. He does and I go up with him to apologize for the inconvenience because the guy was also a top tier member. Sure enough we hear a kid in the bathroom.
I tried to ask who the kid was and the old guy tried everything to shut us down from throwing his status around to bribing. Called the cops and let them deal with it.
I had the next two nights off. Was called in my last day to meet a detective to take my statement with HR and a lawyer from the hotel chain’s legal team.
Talked to the cop a bit afterwards, and she told me to just kinda keep quiet about it all because I could be called to testify if there was a trial.
Never ended up getting called, but for a few months I would run the old man’s name through our in-house system to see if there were any company notes on his account. Took like 2 months, but his status was revoked and his name popped up on our DNR (do not rent) list.
So I didn’t learn specifics, but learned it was bad enough for me to talk to cops and be prepared to testify if needed.”
Wasn’t Such A Cute Date After All
“I was bartending and it was slow. I was putting away glasses by the only two people sitting at the bar. They seemed like a new couple, very touchy, etc. At some point I noticed that she was wearing a wedding ring and he was not. Right as the music died down between songs, he turned to her and said:
‘You know, they’re going to ask you where you were when he drowned.’
They definitely knew I heard them. I was like two feet away. I froze for a second and then turned and went straight into the kitchen. I was freaking out with the kitchen staff and trying to figure out what to do. When I came back out they had paid cash and left. I debated calling the police, but had no other info besides what I thought I heard. I freaked out for a few days. Never heard anything about anyone drowning. I didn’t keep it a secret, either, I have told this story a LOT. And this was a small town where people have nothing better to do than talk, so if there was a scandal, it was common knowledge what I had heard.”
He Knew Things Seemed Too Good To Be True
“When I was in college I worked at an arcade/minigolf joint that seemed to have zero interest about actually making money, but was never in any kind of financial trouble. When I got hired, the owner literally said ‘I pay minimum wage and I expect to get minimum work for it.’ I worked the front counter, and collected money for mini-golf and sold cups of coins (or you could just use the coin changer). The till was completely busted and would be off by $50 or more in either direction no matter what you did.
I realized very quickly that I could just pretend to ring up golf fees and cups of tokens and pocket the cash, so I’d pocket $30-40 every shift, and nobody seemed to care. One of the assistant managers let me take a break twenty minutes after I’d just taken a break because some of my friends had shown up and wanted to smoke with me. He was like ‘That is totally more important than your job.’ It was awesome.
Then one day I walked into the owners office while his secretary was recording figures in the ledger. I can read upside down pretty well and it was very obvious that the figures she was recording had nothing to do with the business we were doing. We sold maybe $60 of golf fees a night, and maybe $100 in coin cups, but she was recording $600 and $1000 for each. I commented on the discrepancy and quipped about how someone would think we were in the laundry business and she got really squirrely and told me to leave the office.
The next day the owner called me into his office and we had a very circumspect conversation about how much I was enjoying working there and enjoying the perks of the job, and I very much got the sense that he was trying to decide if I was going to tell anyone anything. Apparently he decided I wasn’t (and I wasn’t), and so I kept working there.
About a year later the owner was arrested for money laundering and we all got fired. Still the best job I ever had. The mob is an A+ employer, would work in fake business again.”
“I Felt Like I Had Witnessed The Mafia Talking About A Murder”
“I do conventions and corporate events for a living.
I was once called into a room to fix a power cable. It was a meeting of a worldwide, well-known house paint manufacturer. It was a closed door meeting and I had to be let in to do my job quickly.
They didn’t stop talking as I did my work.
‘We’ve pulled all the units from production and recalled all units on the shelves, but the ones still in transit can not be recalled. They might be caught when they reach the sales floor if the retailers are still watching the recall, but it will have been weeks since we issued it.’
The guy who then responds to that states that they can prove they did their diligence in court with the recall and any units sold to consumers will be the retailer’s fault.
I never did get to hear what the recall was for but they seemed pretty tense over it, legally speaking. So I doubt it was quality control.
I felt like I had witnessed the mafia talking about a murder.”
Who DOES That At Work?!
“I saw this at my job many years ago. I went to check the mailroom as I was waiting on some important documents to arrive. I noticed the doors were closed but since I was a supervisor, my card worked for the mailroom in case we needed in. I opened the doors and then started to walk around a little wall in the room that divides it with mail slots. I see a worker is in there through the holes. I turn the corner and I was about to say his name, but just as I turn, I see he has a portable DVD player with an adult video on. Dude was playing a solo. Just turned around and walked out. Who the heck jacks one at work in the mailroom of a semi busy office building? For a bank, no less, so cameras are all over. Including tons in that room alone.”
Who Should Be More Embarrassed Here?
“I work on a landscaping/lawn crew. One day we were finishing up at a house and I was making rounds to see if there were any tools of ours laying around. Once I made it to the backyard of the house, I peeked around the side of the house opposite of the gate that I had entered the backyard from. There was my boss, who is a woman, squatting down and taking a pee. We locked eye contact and then I ran away as fast as I could.
She broke the ice about it all less than 10 minutes later, ‘OKAY, SO DID YOU SEE ME TINKLE OR WHAT?!’”
They Couldn’t Believe The Doctor’s Actions
“I was at a Thanksgiving lunch with coworkers at PF Changs. I worked in a doctor’s office in the front desk. I was also dating my coworker from the front. Most of the staff showed up for the lunch, including several doctors from the group.
Time went on, we ate, we drank. Then we drank some more. At this point, people started to trail out, heading to other functions or just going home. It was probably creeping on 4-5 pm at this point and we’d been there since about noon. Now it was just me, my girlfriend, another girl who was a surgical coordinator, a male doctor, and a male PA. The other girl, we’ll call her M, was about our age (mid-twenties). My girlfriend and I were actually friends with her at the time and had hung out with her and her boyfriend of several years many times. The doctor is the youngest of their group, though he was in his early 40s. He’s generally a cool guy, though his personality sometimes reflects that he was likely a jock back in the day. He also has a wife and two daughters under 5 years, I believe one of them was maybe a year old at the time.
As I said, time went on, people left, and soon, the PA left as well, leaving just us four. My girlfriend and I were pretty smashed, so we weren’t really paying attention to the others. We were really into each other, being kissy and shooting the breeze. As I took a sip of my drink and sent a casual look around, I see the Dr and M right next to me, full on sucking face. I discreetly turned back to my girlfriend and tried to calmly whisper, ‘LOOK AT DR AND M!’ My girlfriend was in disbelief. I’m not sure if we were obvious, or if maybe they got a little too hot, but a couple minutes later, the doctor said, ‘It’s getting late, I’m gonna head home.’
M followed with, ‘Yeah, me too. I have to get to my family,’ We played it cool, said ‘Yeah yeah, of course. We’re heading out in a sec too, have a good night.’ As soon as they walked out the door, we ran to the windows and watched them both walk together to M’s car. They sat in there for a while. Dr emerged a few minutes later and walked towards his car. We gave it a few minutes and then left.
We never told anyone, although we’ve had to face his wife a few times since then. It’s not someone getting killed, but it was pretty scandalous and was shocking at the time.”
“I Was Seeing The Elite Discuss How To Keep The Common People Down”
“Back in 2012, I ran a food truck in Chicago. Chicago apparently let the restaurant association practically write the food truck ordinance. The ordinance stated that trucks could only be parked for a total of two hours at a time. We needed more time than that to make the sales we needed to be profitable. My boss had a few restaurants and the restaurant association wanted him as a member so we got to sit in on a meeting and make our case about the parking time. During this meeting they were having a discussion about how to kill the new minimum wage laws that were being discussed. It was like I was seeing the elite discuss how to keep the common people down and made me so incredibly angry.”
Well, He Didn’t Want To Be A Snitch
“My family owned a construction company and when I was a student, I was working about 30 hours a week in between studying and was on site. I came to check in with my foreman, who was in his truck, to see what he wanted me to do next. At first, it looked like he was looking for something and then as I get there, I could see his pipe. The dude’s getting high on the job. I looked at him and he looked up at me and went, ‘Oh god,’ and all I said was, ‘I didn’t see nothing,’ and walked away.
It was a weird/dodgy afternoon as I was straight up working around machines the guy was operating, but I never told my Dad. I needed that job and as sure as heck didn’t want it known in his 60+ workforce that I was a snitch. I never was treated like the bosses’ son after that.”
Definitely Not For Teenage Eyes
“One of my first jobs was working at the local fire department while I was in high school (I was 16-ish). Mostly just answering phones, data entry, and organizing files. One of my duties was to take the photos from a digital camera that was used to document fires, accidents, etc. Mostly just fender benders and house fires. The house fire pictures were kind of neat to sift through.
Well one of the accidents they responded to and got pictures of was a construction accident where a construction worker got mangled in some equipment. I was sifting through fender bender pictures and all the sudden come across the most gruesome images I’ve ever seen. 15 years later and I can still see the pictures vividly in my mind.”
There Was No Reason For That Pay Difference
“My previous boss hired me and a classmate of mine. I found a copy of my offer letter for work on a shared work server. I also found my female co-worker’s offer letter. I was hired one month after her but for more money (I am male).
We were both equally qualified and situated. We both graduated law school at the same time from the same place. We both interned in similar offices. Yet, she had actually interned in the office we ended up working in and had built a professional relationship with the boss. And she was hired to do more serious work than I was. I will also fully admit that she is one of the best note takers ever and she is a hard worker. There is no reason why I should have been paid more.”
Someone Had A Dirty Little Habit
“Back in 1997, I started work at a new job and took over the office of a salesman who had recently been fired. I was in IT, using the same computer that had been setup for Sales. My first task was to install all the software I’d need.
The computer hard drive was almost full, so I poked around and found a TON of folders filled with dirty pics and videos. Went to my supervisor, and he said to delete it, warning me that the salesman had been fired for downloading adult material.
Over the next few weeks, I kept finding secret folders on the the company’s network. Not only had he downloaded enough of this junk to max out his computer’s HD, he had the network at about 90% capacity.
When I was done deleting all the folders I could find, the server capacity was less than 50%. Dude was seriously addicted.”
Laughing All The Way To The Bank
“My severance check. Apparently someone at the payroll company addressed it to me instead of HR. Opened it at my desk and laughed, packed up my stuff and left.”
Secrets In Politics
“So this was back in 2012. I was working as a room cleaner at well known hotel on an island outside of Stockholm. We were having the then ruling government as guests for some summer break conference thing (in Sweden, the government gets a couple weeks off in the summer). Anyways, I was going room to room cleaning and I always knock if there is no ‘do not disturb’ sign up to avoid awkward moments like walking in on someone in the shower, etc.
I was almost done with my shift and had only the suite left to clean. I knocked on the door with no answer, the suite is really big so it could be hard to hear if you were far away, so I knocked again with no answer. So I just opened the door and started cleaning. Everything goes smoothly but then I hear that someone is in the bedroom so I knock on the door and a male voice answers: ‘Don’t come in.’ 20 seconds pass and then my female coworker comes out of the room wrapped in a blanket and I could see the Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt sitting on the bed wearing only his boxers. Shortly after, he and his wife divorced. She was also in the government which caused some problems for the party. I promised my coworker not to tell anyone, so this never came out to the press. Ended up dating the coworker for two years and we would have a laugh about it from time to time.”