These people recount the most horrible things they've done, whether on purpose or by accident, at work -- and how they somehow did not get fired.
He Sabotaged His Coworker
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“I used to work on an assembly line next to a complete jerk. He was obnoxious and everyone hated his guts. He liked to sabotage the work stations to make you look bad, and all of the girls especially hated him because he was overly aggressive toward them.
One day, I made sure to work upstream of him because the next person down the line from you is responsible for checking your work. I made four defective parts in a row because we were allowed five defects per month before getting fired. The supervisor seized the opportunity to fire him, and he didn’t even talk to me about the defects.
Everyone loved it, but I kind of felt bad afterward because I saw him crying on the way out.”
She’d Get Revenge On Rude Vegans…
“I worked at a vegetarian restaurant in college. There were vegan options upon request. A couple of times I would get a vegan customer who would be rude or mean. If that happened I just wouldn’t mark that the meal needed to be vegan.
They’d tell me, ‘This is the best dish i’ve ever had here!’ Well yeah, it’s because it has ANIMAL FAT IN IT!”
He Made Bank By Stealing
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“When I was between 14 and 16 years old, I worked at a mom and pop supermarket. Started as a bagger, then got to be a cashier, then moved up to porter/stock boy. When I started being a stock boy, one of the things I would stock was the shelf where we kept the smokes. This was the 1990’s, so the shelves were easily accessible to everyone and constantly being filled.
When I would stock the shelves, I would leave a carton or two in the big bulk boxes I was taking them out of. Then, at the end of the night, I would bring back the cartons that I didn’t stock out to my bike (or car when I was older). I would bring the cartons to school and sell them for about $20 a pop. Wound up making a cool extra $100 a week or so by doing this, which is huge for a young teenager in the mid-1990’s.
Years later, looking back on it from adulthood, I feel bad about it. I wasn’t stealing from a big corporation. I was stealing from a guy with a family and kids who ran a small business. On top of it, he was a really great guy.”
The High Cost Of A Hookup
“I was working as a regional airline pilot and was occasionally hooking up with a gate agent in a remote city in the Midwest. We were in the south and flying to Chicago Ohare with numerous thunderstorms in the vicinity between Peoria and Chicago. I purposely did not take extra fuel and ensured that our reroute would take us over my ‘friend’s’ city.
Of course, we diverted and I told the co-pilot (first officer) to get the flight deck ready and get the plane ready for our subsequent flight. I knew that it was the afternoon and this small airport was empty. I went inside for a little afternoon delight and continued the flight to O’Hare. I think it cost the company over $10,000 for my 10-minute pick-me-up.”
He Had It Coming
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“I threw a muffin at a customer. This man placed his order at the speaker asking for a macchiato and I ask if he means a caramel macchiato (completely different but more popular drink) and he says no. So I give him his total. Eventually, he gets to the window, pays, and I hand him his drink where he proceeds to completely lose his composure. He tells me that me this is NOT the drink he ordered and I’m a complete idiot, etc.
Come to find out he ACTUALLY wanted the caramel macchiato. This happens often so I told him we wouldn’t charge him the extra and I’d have it rushed out.
This isn’t good enough for him. He grumbles about deserving to get his money back AND the new drink, but I politely excuse myself from the window until the drink is made.
My barista finishes the drink and I hand it to him. He grabs it from me and drives forward. But he’s not done yet.
I’m talking with the next customer when this guy stops his car, gets out, and walks in between her car and my window. He leans in the store and hollers that this STILL isn’t his drink; he wanted it iced. I ask him to come into the front of the store since I can’t serve him like this, but no, he’d rather stand in front of this lady.
My coffee shop had a policy where we COULD NOT say no to a customer. I sometimes wondered if I would be expected to service someone intimately, as long as they asked while I was behind the register. I asked my barista to make the caramel macchiato again, but iced, and as fast as freaking possible.
I had gone to hide from this man again, but he begins yelling so I come back. Now he’s saying that he ordered and paid for a cream cheese muffin. I ask to see his receipt so I can show him that he didn’t pay for one and that we had been out of cream cheese muffins all morning, but he refused to show me his receipt. I’m trying to reprint the previous order but he’s yelling and my manager has made it clear that she’s not going to help at all. So I say ‘screw it’ and go to the pastry case and grab whatever kind of muffin we had.
Just as my barista hands the new latte to the crazy man I hurl the muffin through the window and hit him in the chest. It gets muffin all over his shirt and I say, ‘I’ll comp it for you!’ I was actually shocked when he quietly took the muffin and his now third drink and walked back to his car. The lady, who had been sitting stunned in her car the whole time, actually said, ‘well done’ to me.”
He Charged Everything To His Company
“I worked a job right out of college that I had to travel for 300+ days a year. I got per diem and a company credit card with literally no limit. The company bookkeeper was a mid-forties woman who had problems with pills as well as her husband and was determined to achieve full cougar status.
I proverbially dipped my pen in the company ink not two months into employment. For the next two years, I kept her happy and she overlooked the charges to my company credit card ranging from $200 dinners, hotel suites, gentlemen clubs, casinos, and Amazon.com.”
He Didn’t Tell Her What He Had Done
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“One of my favorite jobs was valeting at a five-star restaurant. I got the opportunity to drive just about any luxury or sports car out at the time, but it seemed most people who came in were upper middle class and their choice vehicles were Volvos or BMWs. During one of our busy seasons, I believe it was around Christmas, a company rented out the place for a company party and so both the lot and garage were all full. At the end of the night, a nice lady came up with her valet tag; I grabbed the tag, fetched the keys, and headed to the garage. I remembered backing in her car that night because it was extremely close to one of the support beams. When I got down there I noticed that we were double parking at this point so the room to pull out was tight. I started the car and threw it in drive, proceeded to pull out slowly as the other valets were getting their own cars. I heard a weird scratching and smashing noise once I maneuvered the car out of the space. I didn’t think anything of it since the garage was loud anyway but I thought I would check it out. Turns out I dragged the passenger side of the car from front to back all the way down the large concrete support beam.
That’s not all of it.
The street we were on was a one way so we often pulled out of the garage and just backed them down half a block to where the customers were waiting. So that’s what I did.
I got out, held the door for her, refused her tip and let her drive away, unbeknownst to her that I likely totaled her car seconds earlier.
I worked there for a whole year after that and never heard a thing about it. That was also the night her boss gave me a $400 tip because he was so wasted.”
He Completely Forgot Something So Important…
“I used to work at the Cheesecake Factory, where we had chicken and shrimp gumbo. One day I had Muslim guests — burkas and all — sit down with me. They explained pretty clearly what they could and could not eat and drink. I said sure no problem. They ordered the chicken and shrimp gumbo and I was like ok cool, that works. Problem is that this particular dish had pork sausage in it and I completely forgot.
It’s not called a chicken and shrimp AND pork sausage gumbo, soooo my bad. The lady was half-way through eating it when she asked me what that meat she was eating. If she hadn’t eaten most of it already I would have taken it back, but I just lied and said oh that’s beef, you’re good. I walked away like crrraaaaaaaappppppp.”
“I Steal From The Company Every Chance I Get”
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“I work the front desk at a hotel. It’s not the Ritz, but it’s a classy, well-known name brand. We have a strict ‘no cash payments up front’ policy to prevent people from paying for the room up front, charging things to their rooms at the bar or restaurant, and then skipping out in the morning without paying. I’ll get back to that later.
We also have one of the most grossly incompetent, apathetic, skeezy management teams I have ever heard of or experienced; they screw over the hourly workers like me at every opportunity. There’s no actual training program (‘learn as you go!’ was what they told me my first day), the property is understaffed and falling apart at the seams, they refuse to let me take breaks, they cut my hours and threaten to fire me if I complain about things, refuse to buy the materials and appliances for the rooms, work four-hour days and then complain to me for handling guest issues in a way they don’t approve of – I could write a book about this place.
Anyway, it’s a crappy, stressful work environment to say the least. I’m the only full-time afternoon shifter and I’m usually the only one on my shift, so I’m constantly being bombarded by crisis after crisis and having to become the superhero of customer service on a regular basis. So I steal from the company every chance I get to make up for my measly pay and terrible work environment.
It started off just eating from the gift shop and not paying for it as the manager never takes inventory like he’s supposed to, and guests steal from it all the time, so no one ever thought to blame me. After I found out that none of the cameras worked, it got even easier. We allow non-guests to pay for a daily pass to the pool and workout facility, but there’s no record of who or when it’s in use, so if they pay by cash, that goes straight into my pocket and no one’s the wiser. The best part was when I realized that the room inventory system doesn’t keep a record of rooms being put in and out of order (for maintenance reasons, or because someone was smoking in the room and we can’t sell it until the scent is cleared out).
I started letting people pay with cash under certain circumstances: if they were only staying for one day, and they looked like they’d be understanding if I explained the situation, I’d offer to give them a discounted rate if they paid in cash and promised not to call the front desk when I wasn’t working. I’d then put the room out of order for one day and have it automatically added back into the system before the housekeepers arrived the next day, so no one would accidentally sell the room to a new arrival and find out it was already occupied. The housekeepers might notice it was dirty when it was supposed to have been unoccupied, but the housekeeping manager is so incompetent and lazy that the records of who cleaned what room are constantly wrong or incomplete anyway. I also accept tips (bribes, basically) to upgrade people’s rooms or provide amenities reserved for upper-tier rewards club members, although that’s fairly common practice in the hospitality industry.
All in all, I estimate I’ve raked in at least a couple grand in the year I’ve been working there. None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for the incomprehensible levels of incompetence and general lack of interest in maintaining the business. All you had to do was let me take a break once in a while and stop lying to me about things getting better ‘soon’ because you were afraid you’d lose the one employee that is literally holding your business together and keeping the guests happy.”
She Berated Him Until He Snapped
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“I worked in sales with this horrible woman who was 30 years older than me. You see, she really didn’t like me. A 50-year-old woman who hated that a 20-something novice came on to the scene and broke all sales records. Well, this woman was not happy to no longer be number one.
This crazy lady proceeded to make my life miserable with insults every single day, without a drop of retaliation. Little did she know, I knew quite a bit about her personal life. One day she pushed me too far, right over the edge. I stand up in front of 12 sales guys, 23 journalists, and a managing director and scream, ‘Is it any wonder your husband ran off with the plumber?’ Cue mass hysteria and lots of tears.
Said co-worker then took the following eight weeks off with depression. I felt so bad after that. But today, I have no regrets. That’s right Susan, you deserved it! Jerk!”
He Is A Person Of Habit, Who Fell Out Of Habit
“I worked in a facility where we tested wafers of semiconductors. For some of the wafers, the process was: 1) Test on a machine, 2) Put the wafers in an oven for a period of time, 3) Test on a machine again. Then the wafers would go out to be cut and used.
The wafers would come to me, post-testing, in a plastic carrier that had twelve slots. The carrier was in a box with a latch. So I would open the box and put the carrier on a machine that would transfer the wafers from the plastic carrier to a metal one. Then the metal carrier goes in the oven. No problem.
One day, my supervisor comes to me with a carrier that has three brand new prototype wafers in it. No box. He says, ‘These have to go in the oven immediately!’ So I put them in the oven immediately.
Since I didn’t have the box to open, my routine was broken and I did not transfer the wafers to a metal carrier. ‘Hey, man, do you smell that?’
The plastic carrier melted in the oven and adhered, very well, to the silicon wafers, which then cracked in many places. All of this rendered the fancy new, super-high priority wafers totally useless, so essentially, I blew 1.2 million dollars in under two hours.”
You Won’t Believe What They Did To Their Coworker…
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“I worked at Pizza Hut in high school. We had this manager, who we’ll call ‘Jay,’ that was an absolute jerk. His life was one giant power-trip. One of those guys that takes his $8/hour job waaaay too seriously.
Anyway, if you aren’t familiar with Pizza Hut, they have a walk-in cooler in the back; I’d say it’s about 12 feet by 12 feet, and there are about 15 racks (with wheels) full of dough.
Fast forward to one Friday evening during rush hour when we were rather busy. My friend made up a story that he spilled some sauce in the back of the walk-in, and he told Jay that he had no idea how to clean it up. There was just too much sauce on the floor. Jay goes into the walk in to check it out, turns out there is no sauce. He’s in the very back of the cooler, though.
My friend and I proceed to scramble all of the racks of dough, making a maze of racks in the way between Jay and his exit. On our way out, my friend threw a towel over the handle to the exit, which glowed in the dark, just in case someone ever got locked in there.
Jay was stuck in there for at least 30 minutes. At first, you could tell he was trying to maneuver himself around the racks without knocking them over, but it was pitch black. The longer time went on, the colder he got, and the more frustrated. Eventually, you could tell he was just knocking over racks (from the loud crashes we heard).
Once Jay made his way out, my friend got fired immediately, but somehow he didn’t really notice that I was involved. He told the general manager, and I thought there was going to be a big scene, but the GM kind of blew it off. I don’t think he really liked Jay either. I feel a little bad about it looking back.”
He Stole From Someone In His Care
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“When I was younger, I worked at a home for deaf people with severe autism. There were five residents and one of them was completely deaf and blind. Coupled with his autism, he didn’t have a lot of pleasures in life other than wearing comfortable hats and necklaces.
One of the workers there decided on a whim that it would be a good idea to buy him a very expensive stereo set with a top of the line headset. There were attempts to get him to use it with the idea that he might like the feeling of the bass on his eardrums, but he never took a liking to it and so it sat in his room year after year.
I came back summer after summer and every time I went in his room I just saw it lying there collecting dust. In a spur of the moment decision, I took the headset home with me. No one ever noticed or cared, but that doesn’t change the fact that I stole from a blind, deaf, autistic man with epilepsy and, at the time, a broken jaw.”
This Definitely Wasn’t Sanitary
“When was 16 years old, I worked at Arby’s. My manager was always on my case to clean the bathroom, including the inside of the toilet barehanded, the walls, the floor, the sink, everything. I hated this job, so I swirled the mop around the inside of the toilet, used the newly-wet mop to take care of the walls, and then used it to clean the sink.
The way it worked was that we were supposed to have gloves and brushes, but our manager (a she) was awful at ordering stock.
She was fired for failing two consecutive health inspections after I left. The horror stories I heard after leaving were appalling, as well. The government may not work well, but it did its job at that store, and I was one of the arrogant little teenagers that caused it.
I had a lot of growing up to do.”
Lesson: Don’t Be Rude To People In Charge Of Your Packages
“In high school, I worked in the layaway at Wal-Mart and used to have to deal with the worst customers (the year-round layaway type of people are the worst customers Wal-Mart gets). One regular customer was particularly awful. She would always place small, useless crap on Layaway and then cancel it about a week later.
One day she came in in a particularly terrible mood and actually paid for one of her accounts. I decided that day was a good day to drop kick her package about 30 feet across the backroom. Turns out it was full of Precious Memories porcelain crap that we no longer sold.
She was furious. I was pleased.”
He Caused A Catastrophe
“I was working as contract tech support for a very large UK-based news/info company which ran a stock and commodities trading platform called Globex in the Chicago markets in the late 1990’s. There’s enough info to figure out who they were…
So part of my job was to remove the old trading station PC’s and prep the space for new replacements. Because the machines were to be junked and time was a factor, we used snips to cut off all the cabling on the backs of the machines, rather than undoing every little thumbscrew and fooling with all of it. I snipped the wrong cable, took down a whole wall of screens and three rows of trading stations, and put the client brokerage out of business for 19 hours. Result? My employers agreed to pay 75% of the average profits the brokerage made during that time period, which came out to be $2.3 million. I wasn’t fired.
My fifth week on the job I cost my employer $2.3 million and didn’t get fired. I wasn’t even their employee; I was on contract from a staffing agency. I was actually promoted to network support and put in the NOC a few months later.”
“I Have An Odd Feeling Of Being Watched…”
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“I used to work in a small hot dog restaurant where I would have to run the place by myself. I would be the only person working there so that means I had to make the food, do register, clean etc.
Anyway, since there was nobody else there I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. This allowed me to bring my friends in and just hang out while at work since hardly any customers came in during the day. One time my girlfriend and I were all alone and bored, so being teenagers we start making out.
We are making out for a good minute or so until I have an odd feeling that I am being watched. As I turn around I noticed a man just staring at us. After a moment of awkward silence, he says, ‘Someone’s bein’ naughty!'”
He Took Drastic Measures To “Stick It To The Man”
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“I used to work at a WalMart distribution center. One day we were unloading a truck full of TV sets. This was pretty hard and slow work loading them onto metal pallets. Around mid-morning, my manager comes over and says, ‘we get paid for quantity, not quality; unload these things faster.’
That day I probably broke at least 50 sets throwing them from the truck onto the pallet. I kinda felt like I was sticking it to the man every time the pallet rail would bust through the front of the TV box and obvious go straight through the screen.”