Take It Outside, Boys
“Two guys in my office didn’t like each other and ended up in an argument one day. It escalated to the point where one challenged the other to ‘take it outside’ and the two of them fought each other in the front of the building, facing a busy street. So there were two out-of-shape, middle-aged dudes attempting to punch and kick the crap out of each other, but failing miserably (I wasn’t there to witness it, but I was told it was hilarious). They were both fired shortly after that.”
Letting It All Hang Out Landed Both Ladies In Trouble With The Boss
“Well, it all started at the company Christmas party a few years ago. At the time, the secretary was a friend of the boss’s wife. Both of the gals were attractive with decent bodies.
In any case, things started to get a little wild at the office with all of the drinking and festivities, and a bunch of us eventually found ourselves at the local gentleman’s club along with the boss, his wife, and the secretary. It didn’t take too long for the wife and secretary to make it to a stage, where they danced around with one of the dancers. Ultimately, both had their tops off and were fully exposed for all the employees to see. From the look on my boss’s face, I knew right then that his marriage was in trouble and the secretary’s days were numbered.
The divorce and personnel change didn’t take very long after that. Fun night.”
A Particularly Paranoid Patient
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“I was working as an administrator for a forensic psychiatry clinic. We were located on one of the top floors of an office tower filled with regular business people, and our clients were always causing issues and harassing the other tenants.
A few months ago, one of our patients thought that his social worker had called the cops to come to get him as he had an open warrant (she hadn’t because she knew he’d go ballistic, but was planning on alerting the police once he was on his way out of the building). He barricaded himself in the bathroom, climbed up into the drop ceiling as far as he could, and started ripping wires out, yelling that he was going to electrocute himself so he wouldn’t go back to prison. We had to evacuate the waiting room, which caused a fight between two other unstable patients…
The police ended up doing an extraction while dressed in riot gear. They got him out just as he was starting to bend the pipes for the fire sprinklers—he caused about $5k worth of damage and now the local health authority was paying for a stand-alone psych clinic to be built because, surprise surprise, the clinic got us kicked out of the office tower.”
When Hard Work Is FINALLY Recognized
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“This happens all the time, so it’s not uncommon to me, but it is as messed up as anything in my mind.
Two jobs ago, I had a boss that would always take credit for my work. I passed along my work to him for review, he’d pass it along to his superiors and he’d tell me that they liked what I had done, good job.
He eventually got promoted, but me? Nada. He told me to put in more time.
A couple months later, when he was out of the office, his superior comes to me and says, ‘Hey, so and so typically creates this report for us and he told me that no one else here could do it, but I was hoping you might take a look at this sheet and see if you can replicate it for this week’s numbers.’
I looked at what he handed me and said, ‘Oh, yeah, I built that. I can have this for you in no time.’
He looked at me strangely.
Well, turns out not only was he stealing my work, but he was badmouthing me. My boss’s boss was genuinely surprised that I could have come up with those reports because, apparently, I was just someone who was best suited for data entry.
Eventually, he realized that pretty much all the analysis he received was straight from me and not from my boss. I ended up getting promoted, reporting directly to the director, and my boss, well, I don’t know what happened to him behind closed doors, but he kept his job but half his reports went to me. And by half, I mean two clients, but hey, it was a start.”
A Very Dedicated Clientele
“I was a manager in an adult store that had apartments above us in our complex. I heard an argument upstairs and a shot came through the ceiling. I never found out where the bullet wound up, the police recovered it. I called the police, and 911 told me the police were already called; they arrived before I even put down the phone. An officer in full SWAT gear came in and told me there was an armed hostage situation upstairs and said we had to evacuate. Well, you don’t have to tell me twice. I was gone.
But here’s the messed up part.
I had three customers in that store who all stood their ground and refused to leave until they purchased their items. DID YOU JUST SEE THE BULLET THAT CAME THROUGH THE CEILING?!? But no—we aren’t going anywhere without our videos. One of them had not even made up his mind yet, he said, ‘I’m going to need another ten or fifteen minutes and then I’ll be ready to leave.’
I just turned to the cop and told him to feel free to arrest these guys, I’m leaving and locking the store down.
The manager said he got calls from those customers complaining I wouldn’t let them rent their videos before leaving the store. Not that he took their complaints seriously. Not with bullet holes in his ceiling.
Anyhow, it turns out there was an apartment upstairs being used as a brothel. The Madame, who was working independently, was being shaken down by some gangsters who just decided she was going to work for them and hand over her profits. That was messed up. And I never knew it was there because if I ever heard anyone moaning, I would just assume someone left one of the TVs on.
I kept checking the shelves that were underneath that bullet hole for months afterward, wondering what the bullet hit. I know I heard bits of something bouncing around the store. All I ever found were pieces of plaster from the ceiling.”
Giving New Meaning To The Word “Deadline”
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“I worked as a tax accountant for a regional (top 25) accounting firm. The partner in charge was a complete workaholic. He didn’t trust any of his workers and tried his best to complete every project himself. He was known for working long hours and at the height of tax season, he could easily pull 120 hours in a week.
One particular season, as the deadline approached, he decided to pull back-to-back all-nighters. He came into the office on a Saturday and did not leave the office until Monday. I know this because I pulled one all-nighter with him and my tax manager pulled the second all-nighter with him. I left the office with him on Monday to hand deliver some documents to our most important client. He made it to the conference room at their offices, collapsed suddenly, and died of a heart attack. I did chest compressions on him until the paramedics arrived, but he was dead by the time they got there.”
Those Shorts Must Have Been Made Of Kryptonite
“So here’s the deal: I work for a church with a food pantry, job assistance, and many other things to get people back on their feet, or at least taken care of. We help a lot of folks, in the tens of thousands, most of which are cool, but some of our homeless folks are ‘colorful.’
So, one day, the secretary ran into my office and said, ‘You need to come see this!’ We walked out and there was a guy in nothing but a pair of Superman underwear. I had never met this guy before so I think I freaked him out as I started walking towards him. He sprinted, without looking, across an intersection of a six-lane road and a four-lane road in the middle of the day. He froggered dozens of cars, ran into a Walgreens, and immediately got thrown out and ran the other direction. ‘That was weird,’ I thought.
About half an hour later, I went out for coffee and a volunteer came up to me with a pair of gym shorts. ‘These are for Superman.’ We didn’t know his name at this point. The guy was back and hanging out in front of the church in nothing but his Superman tighty whities. I approached him:
Me: ‘Hello, my name is [my name].’
Him: ‘Hey man, I’m James.’
Me: ‘How are you doing?’
Him: ‘I’m great! It’s a beautiful day!’
Me: ‘Good stuff. Hey, we have a little rule, while you’re at the church, or in the church, you have to wear pants. You don’t have to wear shoes, or a shirt, or anything else, just pants.’ (This was summer in South Florida, plus we let folks clean up and hang out in the AC if they want to.)
Him: ‘I don’t want to wear pants. Is that a written rule?’
Me: ‘Not really written, it’s just a thing we all kinda do here.’
Him: ‘You know the second I leave, these shorts are coming off.’
Me: ‘Yeah man, that’s fine. You can even throw them away when you’re done. But while you’re here, you have to wear pants.’
Him: ‘OK.’ He puts them on and hangs out for a while. The odd thing was, he seemed totally normal besides not wanting to wear pants.
On the way home, I saw the shorts discarded on the side of the road.”
She Didn’t Know Where Else To Turn
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“I worked at a Walgreens pharmacy.
A woman came in one night who was walking very stiffly with one arm held across her chest. She asked me if we had any sort of power chair because she wasn’t supposed to be walking. I said no but we did have a wheelchair, and I could push her in it if she needed.
I called someone over to cover my station and wheeled the woman back to the pharmacy and through her conversation with the pharmacist, I learned that she’d just been released from the hospital after a dangerous open-heart surgery and had been given only a one in ten chance of survival. She was by no means an older woman; I would’ve guessed she was somewhere in her late twenties, was very attractive, and wearing a shirt that said, ‘Built Ford Tough.’ She didn’t know what to do to take care of herself after the surgery and a pharmacist was the only person she could think of to ask.
When she and the pharmacist were done talking, I spent almost an hour wheeling her around the store as she did her shopping, then checked her out myself. I got the feeling she didn’t want to leave and after I’d put the wheelchair away and gone outside to empty the front trash bins, I found her crying in her car.
The pharmacist later explained to us that she’d probably been too afraid of dying to want to be alone.
Oh, and on my second night working there, someone completely blew up the bathroom with what looked to be projectile diarrhea.”
She Went Into Hysterics Over Her “Stolen” Car
“One time, a lady (who was…ditzy, for lack of a more polite term) ran back into the office one day at closing time, crying and wanting to call the cops because her car was stolen. A report was filed, everyone got their panties in a wad about the lax security at work, yadda yadda.
Summer faded into autumn, then to winter. One day, someone walked through the parking lot and saw something shiny down the hill, in the woods. Yep, it’s Ditzy’s car. It turns out she drove a manual and was in the bad habit of not setting her parking brake when she thought she was on level ground. The parking lot is ever so slightly inclined toward the woods, for water runoff purposes, and quickly drops down the further back you go…”
A New Disaster Every Day
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“I literally just started a job working front desk at a psychiatrists office maybe two weeks ago now. As you can expect, there are a lot of interesting people that come through there, but it’s the phone that is the worst.
I’ve had to deal with people who call up ten times a night with a new message for the doctor each time and who get obsessive about it. I’ve had to deal with manipulative parents trying to get info about their adult child’s disorder and then threatening me when I explain that it is illegal to share that info and for me to even read the file really. I’ve had to deal with exes of patients literally stalking them and trying to get me to tell them when their next appointment is. I have been a suicide hotline for three people now and probably many more in the future. When I intake new patients over the phone, I have to ask them for a brief description of the problems they are experiencing, and the things people have told me in those moments are incredible. One that sticks out was a woman who had PTSD from being physically abused and had just gotten out of the hospital after a suicide attempt. She told me all that over the phone like she was telling me how to spell her last name.
Most recently, I had to call an ambulance for an elderly lady while she was sitting in the waiting room for her appointment. She became disoriented and could no longer stand up. She was at the psychiatrist’s office to get help for her depression as a result of her chronic illnesses. It was the first time I’ve ever called 911 in my life. Afterward, I just went outside and smoked about three cigs in a row. Then went back to work and acted like nothing happened.
Despite how stressful this job can get sometimes, I really, really love it. I have had mental health issues myself, and it’s really cool being able to help people like me get the treatment they need even if I can’t afford my own right now due to lack of insurance.”
An Interstellar Visitor
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“This isn’t at my current office, but the one at my last job, which was a small company. We had our office in a suite on the 4th floor of a 5 story building. The main entrance had been locked down for months because of construction they were doing on a bridge right in front of it, so we all had to use the side door, which was left unlocked until 7 pm.
So one day, two of my coworkers and I were sitting at our desks when this random guy walked in holding two Tupperware containers, one of which appeared to be spaghetti and some utensils on top of them. He just stood there looking around the room, until one of my coworkers finally asked, ‘Can I help you?’
He kind of snapped out of it and then said, ‘Yes, can you tell me how to get to planet Earth?’
At first, we all assumed ‘Planet Earth’ was the name of another business in the building, so we asked him if he knew what floor it was on. This seemed to freak him out. He started saying, ‘Floor, floor…I don’t know..I…’
We finally realized that his guy was probably messed up on something and could possibly be dangerous. Luckily, my other coworker thought fast and told him he should ask the information desk on the first floor (there was no information desk or even a business on the first floor). The guy finally backed out of the room and walked away. We quickly locked the door and called our boss to warn him, since he was just a few doors down. He called the cops but by the time they came, the man was gone.”
When The CEO’s Away, The Employees Will Play
“We’d ordered some large plastic ziplock bags but when they arrived they were far larger than anticipated. So, of course, my coworker decided to climb in and the receptionist then proceeded to seal it up and start dragging him around the office. It was about this time the CEO walked in to see his employee being dragged down the hall, sealed in a plastic bag looking like some kind of giant, clothed fetus. It was uncomfortable to say the least.
The CEO’s response was, essentially, ‘What the heck? Wait, nevermind, I don’t want to know, just get back to work.’ Nobody was fired; it was a good company.”
She’s Nice, But She Seems Spacey…
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“I interviewed a woman for a job and she did amazingly in her first interview. Funny, friendly, and knowledgeable. We called her back for a second interview with another manager and she did ok, but nowhere near as good as she had on her first interview with me. He said that she was ‘spacy’ during his talk with her. 15 minutes or so after she left, the other manager and I were walking out to go to lunch and discussing her. Just as I was saying, ‘I didn’t see her being spacy at all she was—‘ I had to stop because there she was, sitting in front of our offices, smoking the devil’s lettuce in her car. It looked like she had a fog machine going in there.
We made eye contact, she got this panicked look on her face, rolled down the window and yelled over to us, ‘Don’t worry! It’s okay! I have a medical card for this!’
For those wondering… Yes, we did actually hire her. Beforehand, I had a chat with her about smoking appropriately, telling her if she needed a special medical dispensation I could put her in touch with her our corporate HR team to work out the logistics, but I also told her that until that was settled to not smoke at work. She came on… and she’s done awesomely; one of the best IS Support people we have.”
All Part Of The Job
“I used to work at Planned Parenthood, so…you know…bomb threats and fake anthrax letters were commonplace.
I was the director of education and outreach. The country was on high alert about anthrax at the time so we were being extra careful. We had had a couple threatening letters that turned out to be hoaxes, but we were all a little more jumpy than usual so we may have overreacted a bit.
Anyway, one day I was sitting in my office and an employee walked in with an industry trade magazine (yes, they have them even for family planning) and she had white powder on her hand and a frightened look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she said she had opened this up (it came in a large envelope) and there was white powder sprinkled throughout the pages. I immediately took it from her and told her to follow me into the kitchen so she could wash her hands. Then it dawned on me that the protocol was to immediately seal yourself and the potential anthrax threat into whatever room you happened to be in at the time. We closed the door to the kitchen and called our security guy. They brought the duct tape and sealed us in. Several hours later it was determined by the fire department and police that it was just a powder used to set ink that hadn’t been properly shaken off the pages. I don’t know how they knew this given there wasn’t any time to test it, but whatever. We lived.
The bomb threats were a pretty regular thing, so I became desensitized to them, but I know for a fact they were very frightening for our patients. We would have to clear out the building and sometimes these people were in paper robes (men, too…we did vasectomies) standing in the parking lot. I felt really bad for them and we would try to surround them to keep them away from prying eyes on the street.
My favorite thing was when I would wear red to work and the protesters on the street would scream stuff like, ‘You’re wearing the blood of the unborn!’ Good times.”
There’s Always That One Guy…
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“There was this guy who was ‘different.’ He wore clothes too big for him, never had a belt, was a bit hairy, wore glasses, had old, beat up shoes, was a bit smelly, and talked real weird. Imagine having a conversation with someone and having to stifle your laughter because the other person talks funny. Real funny. And strange.
He was also a very, very great human being. Wonderful person. I made fast friends with him while everyone else in the building ridiculed him.
One day, I got a message from my boss saying, ‘He needs you. He’s bleeding and no one knows why. Please go talk to him.’ She knew I was his only friend.
I was on a call and couldn’t do anything at that moment, but when I got off, my other boss came and said he came out of the bathroom with a beehive of paper towels bloody over his hand and said, ‘If I take it off, I’m going to bleed all over.’ Then I ran back into the bathroom. But they’d already handled it, and they just wanted me to figure out how he injured himself.
After a meeting, I noticed he had a band-aid on. I asked him what happened.
Him: ‘Do you want the truth or do you want me to lie?’
Me: ‘Just tell me, bud.’
Him: ‘I stapled my thumb.’
Me: ‘Oh, how’d you manage that?’ (trying really hard not to laugh).
Him: ‘Well, I was stapling my pants…’
I lost it.”
“Thankfully, He Paid In Cash”
“I used to work for a men’s cutlery and bric-a-brac store. In 1989, we had an incident happen at our Baltimore Harbor location involving a cheap ‘samurai sword’ we used to sell.
The company VP, who witnessed this unfold, always ended this story with, ‘Thankfully, he paid in cash.’
It was the Christmas rush and a gentleman came in and purchased the sword. As he was being rung up, he was looking over the sword at the edge and the tip like a fine craftsman. The cashier asked, ‘Would you like me to store that behind the counter while you complete your shopping for the day?’
‘No thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll just use it right here,’ and then he proceeded to run himself through with the sword down to the hilt and the blade came out his back. The cashier screamed and the customers fled the store. Someone called 911. The man dropped to his knees and just stayed in that position, looking sheepish, like he expected to be dead, but was still quite conscious when the paramedics and police came. Eventually, they cut the hilt and blade tip off, wrapped him up, and took him to the hospital.
Later, the man wrote a letter of apology, stating his girlfriend has left him at Christmas and he acted inappropriately. Lucky for him, he missed every vital organ with his abrupt seppuku.”