No matter how hard companies work to ensure a safe and drama-free work environment, there are always going to be a couple of bad eggs thrown into the mix. Here, these employees reveal the most discreditable things that have ever taken place in their place of work.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
It’s Not You I’m After
“Right before our holiday lunch at a previous employer, I was sitting in the stall in the bathroom and overheard someone explaining to the building security guard how they had found a camera tucked behind one of the urinals.
Well as you can imagine, that creeped me out. I mentioned it to the CEO and the next day he sent out an email advising everyone. Of course, this set everyone off, but after some time, the scandal died down and things continued as normal.
Since the incident, I made a habit of looking behind the urinal flushing mechanism every time I went to the restroom. I did this faithfully for about five months until one day I felt something strange behind the lever. When I grabbed it and pulled out the unknown object, it felt like my stomach flipped in on itself.
In my hand was a USB pinhole camera. Cursing and in a deep state of shock, I marched right out of the bathroom and was head straight for the CEO’s office to turn it in.
Right before I reach the office door, I heard someone desperately whispering my name from down the hall. When I turned to see who it was, I was even more confused.
To my surprise, the person calling me over was one of my favorite colleagues. He was an amazing co-worker and close friend of mine. He was someone I trusted and had gone to happy hour with more times than I could count. He slowly approached me and with his head bowed down he mumbled, ‘It’s mine.’
My jaw dropped. I had no idea what to do. Not only was he someone I liked, but he was also the sixty-year-old CFO of a multi-million dollar company.
My co-worker asked me to step outside. Still flabbergasted, I followed him out to one of the balconies where he immediately tried to justify his actions. My co-worker claimed that the CEO had made him do unethical things for years. He then started vomiting details of ‘shady’ business practices. My coworker then dropped another bomb by telling me the CEO was his target but not because he wanted to frame him.
No, he was infatuated with him. He went on about how he was in love with him and how he was in his obsession too deep. I was too stunned to even speak.
Then out of nowhere, my coworker began sobbing and begging me not to tell anyone. I spent the last half of the day just staring blankly at my computer before driving to a park and screaming at the top of my lungs.
Later, I sent the CEO a text and asked him to give me a call but did not mention why. Once he answered, I took a deep breath and explained in grueling detail what happened.
The CEO was at a loss for words. I remember us holding the phone in complete silence.
Over the next couple of days, I felt an indescribable awkwardness when passing my coworker at the coffee pot. My CEO wasted no time getting the police involved. I felt numb as I relayed the information I had gathered. Then a day later, I watched as my co-worker was led out of the facility by security.
As he walked by me, he stared at me with completely dead eyes.
Turning him in was undoubtedly the only decision available, but this one incident completely ruined the guy’s life. I felt bad but at the same time, I didn’t. I just hate that he did this to himself.”
Hot and Heavy
“Years ago, I was an IT intern at a small medical group in upstate New York.
One day while I was working, I came across three supervisors who were huddled around a reception desk and asked me to come over and log into the receptionist’s computer. In the back of my mind, I wondered where the petite young receptionist was, but I promptly went over and did what was asked of me.
Once I logged in, I discovered something that undoubtedly would change the future of the company forever.
As soon as the computer was unlocked, the receptionist’s emails were on full display. Email exchanges between the receptionist and one of our IT administrators somehow had been forwarded to the entire global address list.
It was a clearly flirty exchange between the two. However, in the last couple of emails, things got extremely hot and heavy:
Receptionist: ‘Yeah, I bet you’re thinking about me all the time.’
IT Administrator: ‘Yeah, I think about kissing you all over, baby. Can’t wait to have you in my arms.’
Other emails revealed more explicit conversations between the two. The IT admin, who was married I should add, had left a week before because he was offered a different position elsewhere. Unfortunately, the receptionist, who was married and pregnant, was still employed. However, once those emails came to light, I never saw her again.
I headed back to my division and saw that EVERYONE was cracking up. The IT Director sent out an email to the entire company asking everyone to please delete the previous email without reading it, to which our telecom guy exclaimed, ‘Yeah, right after I forward it to everyone I know!'”
Sorry For Your Loss
“Years ago, I worked in a large office. There was this one man who worked there that was reserved and often kept to himself. He was not paid much but was the sole breadwinner for his family which included himself, his wife, and their six small children. It was no secret that he worked two jobs to support everyone. He often worked overnight as a paramedic and came into the during the day to work. As expected, he was a mess most of the time.
There were times when organized food drives and the staff would bring in food and leave it on a table so this man could – with dignity – take food home to feed his family. We all knew how much he struggled and wanted to help in any way we could.
One day we received word that my co-worker’s wife had passed away. We were all aghast! What was that man going to do? He already struggled to keep his family afloat. I remember being painfully worried about him and wondering how in the world he was going to look after six children all on his own.
The whole office was abuzz about what was going to happen to his family and about what we could do to help.
The following day, my coworker was at work, as usual, toiling away. When people extended their sympathies to him, he simply nodded and kept working, keeping his eyes locked on his computer screen.
There was no conversation. Everyone assumed he was too distraught to talk so they left him alone.
The cause of death was cancer. Nobody knew his wife even had cancer, but sometimes people are very private about things like that.
We all kept asking each other about funeral arrangements, but my coworker told everyone there wouldn’t be any because he couldn’t afford it.
It was all very strange until about two weeks later when things started falling apart. Three ominous-looking men came in wearing suits and carrying briefcases headed straight for my coworker’s desk.
As it turned out, Ron’s wife was alive and well. They ‘faked’ her death to cash in on her life insurance policy.
Being that there was no dead body, no death certificate, and, oh yeah, no death, it didn’t take long for suspicions to arise. The crazy thing was, they didn’t even try to ‘hide’ his wife. She was at home taking care of the kids!
My coworker wasn’t exactly the brightest star in the sky.
It was super awkward running into him in the halls after that!”
What Does This Mean?
“A few years ago, I was managing a call center in Scottsdale, AZ. When I was first hired, the company only had about one hundred employees. Because of how small the organization was, practically everyone knew each other by name. There were cliques left and right, but at the end of the day, everyone got along and were like family
Three years later, the place experienced a massive expansion. By then, we were up to about fifteen hundred employees, and we even had a couple of satellite offices.
Now, when a company grows that fast in that small amount of time there are growing pains. As a manager, I had to stop worrying about hiring the absolute best, and instead, I started hiring somebody to take on responsibilities fast.
Unfortunately, people who weren’t a part of our ‘family’ and were downright wrong, ended up becoming part of the team.
There were some minor indiscretions at first. However, as more time passed, things escalated.
I won’t go into detail but the really scandalous thing that happened involved me. I hadn’t done anything, yet I found myself right in the middle of the worst scandal I have ever witnessed.
And it all started when I received a rather innocuous email:
‘Hey Garrett, I got the cheese for the V.’
When the message popped up on my screen, I remember just staring at it for a long time. I didn’t recognize the sender’s name at all, but they were definitely an employee. I had no idea what they were talking about. Was it slang for something? Was it an inside joke sent to me by mistake?
I kept mulling it over for a bit and responded:
‘What cheese?’
Within minutes I received a response:
‘You know. What I owe you for the V.’
I was completely lost. I ended up calling over one of my younger employees to see if she knew what the email could be talking about.
She looked at me curiously before she made her way over to my monitor to have a look. After reading the email, the employee snorted with laughter before looking at me like I was the crazy one.
‘It means you have the money for either the Valium or Vicodin I gave you. Now give me my money!’
She was clearly having fun with me. I wasn’t amused, but I thanked her for spelling it out before I looked in our employee directory. Almost immediately, I found another person with my name. As if it wasn’t obvious enough, the email was not intended for me. This entire ordeal had been a simple case of somebody being lazy when they typed in the recipient and let autocomplete do the work for them.
It quickly dawned on me that our once family-friendly, close-knit workforce, had drug deals being arranged via our corporate email system. This was bad. As an outsourced call center, we serviced about fifty different companies. If there had been an arrest, we would have had to turn over all our email records, which would have caused several clients to leave, due to the exposure of tons of private information.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I went to the Vice President who oversaw all major operations. As delicately as I could, I broke the news to him. The very next day, an internal investigation began that had several embarrassing consequences. I wasn’t privy to all the details, but what I can tell you was that there was a crapload of drug use and drug sales going on within the company.
In the end, the company realized it couldn’t fire thirty percent of their staff. Instead, some token firings took place, particularly of the dealers. Those that got to keep their jobs were disciplined with demotions and deductions in pay.
However, one sad casualty was…me. It was WELL known that I was the guy who started the downfall of the drug trade there, so I was persona non grata for the rest of my tenure there.”
Naughty Bros
“This happened within a year after I left the company I used to work for. In the early 2000s, the internet was just making headway within companies so there wasn’t much control over what employees were able to access within the web. Viruses were not exactly a huge problem yet either.
One day, an individual showed up in the lobby of a major corporation, and he walked up to the receptionist demanding to see the CEO of the company. Of course, the receptionist asked to find out why.
The guy then proceeded to tell her he had an unpaid bill for the CEO for many thousands of dollars. The kicker was the charges were incurred while surfing the website he owned.
Let’s just say the website in question provided adult entertainment.
Obviously, it didn’t take long for word to spread around that the company was responsible for the charges. Ensuring this event, an investigation was initiated using an independent firm to determine how such events occurred.
Once the investigation came to a close, it was revealed that one individual was in possession of a corporate credit card and decided to make purchases on the inappropriate website. Unfortunately, this employee told friends within the company and provided the password information for them to access the website as well. Since it was ‘free,’ some of these friends also passed along the access information to other friends outside of the company.
Needless to say, a lot of people were accessing the website on the company’s dime. As it turned out, many of the individuals were surfing this site during work hours as well.
In the end, all employees involved were fired on the spot. A few employees within the IT department were also implicated. As a side ‘benefit’ of the investigation, they also unearthed other employees using company computers for online gambling. They, of course, ended up getting the axe as well.
I knew some of the employees involved personally. One even asked me to help him get a job at the new company I started working for. I told him I would, but I also told him he should tell the truth if he was asked why he was fired.
Even had he been the only one involved, these things have a way of coming back up. But in this case, too many people were involved, and the story was well known in the industry, even though we lived in a major metropolitan center.
Here’s a happy ending for you: My friend was honest and ended up getting hired.”
Spilled Beans
“A very long ago, I worked for a company that had an owner that was a Class 1 asshole. For example, one year Christmas fell on a Saturday. We asked if we were going to get Friday off, but the owner scoffed and said, ‘Why? You’re already off on Christmas!’
During this other incident, the owner introduced his wife as ‘my wife,’ without even mentioning her name. It was as if his wife were just an object to him. Over time, he quadrupled the size of his office, even though we were already in cramped quarters. His renovations made two, sometimes three, employees share a single desk. It was a nightmare.
At the end of the day, this boss of mine also printed out all of his emails only to crumble them up and throw them in the garbage. It was such a waste, but of course, those of us who worked later than him would straighten them out and read them to get the dirt on him.
One day, we found a memo where he was asking his boss to find some excuse to fire a pregnant co-worker because as he put it: ‘It’s going to cost us too much if she has that baby. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay someone who’s not working.’
Outraged, the late crew anonymously mailed the discarded memo to the pregnant woman’s address. Sadly, she didn’t do anything. We never found out why.
A few months later, we found a memo stating that the company had been sold and we were all going to be let go by the end of the month. After further reading the memo, my boss was told to keep the news a secret from us until the very last day because we needed to run the business until the new owner’s crew came in at the start of the next month.
In other words, we were all going to be fired without notice.
That memo was photocopied and left on everyone’s desk. The next morning, the entire place was covered in a heavy blanket of awkwardness. People were fuming around the office and openly criticizing the owner and higher-ups about their heartless decision that they didn’t think would be put on blast.
The owner scheduled an emergency meeting. Once everyone calmed down, he started by saying, ‘As you know, it’s our policy to always keep employees informed about what’s going on …’
The entire room burst out laughing. The owner turned red from embarrassment and anger. The end result was that he agreed, in writing, to provide one month of severance pay if we stuck it out until the end.”
Namaste
“One day, an employee asked to take long lunches of about two hours on company time to take a yoga class. Because she was a star employee, her wish was granted without any issues. Amazingly, she didn’t have to make up her time, and her work got shifted to other people.
This went on for a couple of months. A lingering hatred of yoga started to simmer amongst others within the office.
Then someone had an idea.
This employee had also been deemed a good employee. So, he marched into our boss’ office and asked to take off every midday to go to the gym. His request was also approved. This same employee then took the liberty of inviting a few other employees under him to the gym. His work,as well as theirs, was then shifted to other people in the office, including me.
He also didn’t have to make up for the time he spent at the gym.
Hostility and jealousy continued to fester in the workplace.
A few weeks later, another employee asked to leave work early. Her reason involved taking care of her child on company time. Astonishingly, her wish was granted. Then, her work was shifted to other people.
The other employees in each instance were in the customer service department. With each request that was granted, sales, administration, and various roles were slowly transferred to customer service.
The issue was that customer service didn’t get the same exceptions.
Eventually, about thirty employees were getting off work early to do yoga, go to the gym, for childcare reasons, and any other reason under the sun. These employees belonged to multiple departments, excluding customer service. Customer service consisted of less than seven employees including the manager. Yet, we were overloaded with the responsibilities of everyone while they went out to enjoy their lives on the company’s dime.
Regrettably, I was in customer service. One day, We held a meeting about how the recent changes were unfair. After talking things out amongst ourselves, we all chipped in and got a treadmill to use on our controlled fifteen-minute breaks. However, the treadmill was quickly seized by the other thirty employees for their use.
This lit a fuse in the office. Every ounce of pent frustration finally blew up.
A few days later, the owner stopped by the customer service department during one of the luxurious workout and childcare exodus. He came waltzing in with a huge smile on his face and tried to boost morale amongst everyone as they did the work of others that had gotten off early.
I mentioned to him that if he looked at the hours he paid out to the thirty employees he let roam free, it amounted to sixty hours of work every day and he received no return. I then pointed out the company could save money by terminating some employees taking off.
It was crummy of me but I, including everyone in the office, was completely fed up. The owner ended all granted exceptions the next day.
It came as no surprise when five of the thirty quit within two weeks. Everyone in customer service got pizza and cupcakes as some sorry excuse for an apology. We even got our treadmill back along with a TV with cable to watch during our breaks.
The moral of the story is to never grant exceptions to employees unless you can grant them for everyone.”
Redeemed
“A young man was accused of stealing some money from the office I worked for. One note was missing, but it was a banknote with a high denomination. The young man swore he didn’t know what happened to it, yet the evidence, although circumstantial, lead back to him. Therefore, everyone suspected him as the culprit.
However, I was extremely unhappy. Yes, the entire situation was disappointing, but I was more concerned about a potential error or miscarriage of justice that might affect him for the rest of his life.
So, I ordered a thorough search of the office. Literally, everything was turned upside down. We looked inside and under filing cabinets, but found nothing but cobwebs. Everywhere we looked only painted a grim future for the young man.
The next day, I arrived early at the office to find my secretary crawling on the floor. She desperately wanted to make sure nothing had been missed. I joined her in another thorough search. Writing someone up for such a serious offense was something I had never done before and didn’t want to do.
Eventually, she opened one of the drawers of the metal desk where the cash was kept. That desk had been checked before, but this time she pulled out the drawer as far as it came and reached inside.
After feeling around, I heard my secretary gasp as she suddenly pulled out the missing bank note!
It got hooked on a tiny metal spike and was hanging behind the back of the drawer.
It was a relief to recover the missing bank note, but that poor kid and the allegations he faced was quite the scandal.”
A Go-To Story
“One time, my coworker and I received a visit from Human Resources. At the conference, they asked their opinion about another worker who was on the same team as them. My coworker told them how the employee in question was a little weird but was a hard worker so she had no real complaints.
One of the representatives from Human Resources started to giggle nervously until he finally admitted the reason behind their meeting. Apparently, they suspected that same employee of peeing on the corners of some of the meeting rooms in the middle of the night.
My coworker and I exchanged horrified glances at each other before looking back at the representative.
The company hid some night vision cameras in the rooms. In the footage, they captured him working very late before crashing on a couch in the room. After waking up early in the morning, the employee was then seen urinating in the corner on the opposite side of the door. For whatever reason, he did this in several meeting rooms.
HR had to this employee for obvious reasons. Within a day or two later, we got new carpets in the meeting rooms.
I had the pleasure of knowing the story because I worked in a division of the company that does lots of filming and editing, so they asked to borrow the cameras from us.
Eventually, word spread throughout the building. I don’t think they will ever forget about it either.
The story is an iconic go-to at office parties.”
Leave A Message…
“Many years ago, before everyone had a cell phone and email, my company had a central voicemail system. It was an eight-hundred number you dialed to get to your private inbox. Anyone with the number could leave messages for an individual or a group.
One day, I dialed in to check messages and thought I had a new voicemail from one of our sales managers. Instead, I heard a strange woman’s voice on the other end.
She said, ‘I want everyone to know about the sluts you have working there.’
I was absolutely floored. Then I heard a forwarded message from a woman telling a man in her sexiest voice she couldn’t wait to see him at their hotel. This woman then went on telling the man to get some rest because she was ‘going to keep him up all night.’ To my amazement, the woman then said what she was going to do to him, in explicit detail, all on the voicemail.
After listening to the voicemail, it suddenly dawned on me that the second woman’s voice belong to one of my coworkers. Putting two and two together, it dawned on me that she left the message for another one of my coworkers that worked in the same office. I knew both of them were married, but not to each other!
The man’s wife had somehow found his password, listened to the message, and forwarded it to the entire North American division of our company. Her first message along with the inappropriate one was shared with over two thousand people!
The woman involved resigned soon afterward. I think she was embarrassed beyond tolerance by the stares and whispers as she walked through the halls at our corporate. The guy, however, was gently pushed out of the company within six months.
After that incident, we were all ordered to change our passwords. Afterward, we received lectures on the importance of keeping passwords secret and that the voicemail system was for professional use only.”