Not all jobs are the same, however, they do have some things in common. One being, unexpected situations on the job. These workers recall the wildest thing that happened while they were on the clock. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Ouch! Waiter Had A Hot Spill
“I used to work in one of those event halls, where you hold wedding receptions or Bar Mitzvahs as a waiter. In an attempt to squeeze as many guests as possible, management would always have us set up the tables extremely close to each other, and it made it really difficult for the waiters to navigate to their tables, especially with a tray full of dishes.
Once, I was bringing some tea to my table, and I had to squeeze myself in a very narrow passage between two other tables. The only way I could get through was to place the cup of tea on my tray and lift it over my shoulder so I could squeeze through. Then a waitress that was serving one of the tables I was squeezing between accidentally backed into me, knocking the cup over on the tray, that I was holding basically next to my face. Luckily for me, it only spilled a little bit on my arm and not my face, but a customer in the other table wasn’t so lucky. She got a cup full of scolding hot tea on her back and shoulders.
She started screaming in pain, and I ran to the kitchen to get her some ice, completely ignoring my arm which also got burned from the tea. By the time I got back with some ice, the lady was gone, presumably some of the other waiters helped her and she left.
But the story is not over. The lady complained to the manager, and she also blamed me, because she thought I just went away without offering any help after spilling the tea on her. So the manager came to me all furious and started to yell at me, ‘How can you do this? The very least you can do is offer help and not run away!’
When he was finished, I told him that first, I didn’t run away, I went to the kitchen to get ice, and when I returned the lady was gone. Secondly, I got burned from the tea as well, and I ignored it to try and get ice as quickly as possible and continue serving my table. And finally, none of it would have happened if they didn’t insist on cramming so many tables together, in a way that made it difficult and dangerous to carry anything to the table. I was gone within the week.”
Gymnastics Facility
“I was working at a gymnastics facility when a lady came up to the front desk to tell me a little girl was in the bathroom and had an accident. Pee accidents were fairly common, lots of excited little kids who aren’t always great about asking to leave class if they have to go. So I grabbed our bin of loaner leotards, thinking no problem, we’d find something that fits, bag the wet one, and she’d be back in class in a minute.
I knocked and opened the door to discover this wasn’t pee. There stood a tiny five-year-old girl, with her leotard and shorts pulled down to her ankles, covered in poo from the waist down. It was also all over the toilet, the floor, and her hands, as well as an enormous pile still in her shorts. I remember wondering how that much poo could have come out of such a small person.
She said, somewhat frantically, ‘Sorry, I had a tummy ache!’
Yeah kiddo, I bet. I managed to put on a cheerful smile and told her it was no problem. We’d get her cleaned up and pick out something new to wear. Not an easy task with just a sink and paper towels. Halfway through, she started to tear up and asked if that ever happened to anyone else before. I lied and told her of course it had and that was why we have extra clothes. After that, she was smiling too. Told the same lie to mom when she picked her up,
‘Oh it’s really no big deal, accidents happen!’ I said.
The mom didn’t exactly smile, but I think if I had said it was a unique incident, we never would have seen them again. She was always super nice to me, so I didn’t want her to feel bad.
In next week’s class, her mom brought her up to the desk. They wanted to return the clothes (washed and folded) and say thanks. The girl handed me an envelope containing a ‘Thank You’ card. Inside the card, she had done a sketch depicting the incident: A short stick person scribbled all over with a ton of brown crayon, next to a tall stick person holding a purple blob, like the leotard she’d borrowed. Both with big smiles. And taped to the card was a chocolate lollipop.”
Video Store Had Its Own Drama
“I was working at a video store my last couple of years of high school. So my usual shifts were evenings to close (five to eleven) during the week. Normal high school gigs earn a few bucks and the respect of work. Along with me, there were several other students, mostly college-age students. We all got along for the most part, but the ones you really bonded with were the ones on your regular shift. One night, I came in and there was a guy working my shift that used to come into my old job. We bonded and soon became good work-friends. I always looked forward to working if ‘Joe’ was working. He was a trip because he was a few years older than me. I think he was around 20 or 21. So he would have all these great stories of the bars and gentlemen’s clubs. I used to think he embellished quite a bit, but you let it go because it was entertaining. This went on for a few months and would make the nights go by pretty quick.
Then one day Joe didn’t show up. It was odd because he was usually on time or 20 minutes early. Then the next night he didn’t show up, then the next. I asked my manager where ‘Joe’ was and he didn’t know. Then on a busy night (Friday or Saturday), Joe came in. He looked terrible. His hair was grown out (usually shaved down) and his clothes were a mess. He basically looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. I really didn’t bother him, just stayed clear and let him approach me before I asked where the heck he was.
Finally, we both were assigned to the returns (the VHS/DVDs that were returned from customers had to be rescanned in and put back on the shelves). So while we were restocking, he came in super close to me.
He said, ‘If you see a guy with slicked-back hair, a long leather coat, and a scruffy beard, call the police.’
I chuckled and said, ‘Yeah? Why is that?’
He said, ‘He’s wanted by the police for murder.’
I looked at Joe and his face was dead straight. I knew he was telling the truth as he just looked scared, tired, and worried.
So I muttered out, ‘Oh, okay? What happened?’
So Joe began to tell me in detail what happened. It was so crazy and out there I didn’t know if I believed him at first. So I didn’t say anything and just kept my thoughts to myself. Well, it got pretty busy with the rush of customers so the manager put us both on the registers. As I was cashing people out, I got a customer with about three or four movies. I turned to put the movies on the other side of the theft detector near the door and that was when I saw this guy standing two feet from me, looking at me with dead-black eyes. I quickly realized he had slicked-back hair, a leather coat, and a scruffy beard. I turned to Joe and saw him jumping up on the register and jumping over the counter through a bunch of customers and running into the back. I turned back around to this guy and he was running out the door.
The cops soon showed up and arrested Joe. Joe was wanted for murder along with this other guy. Apparently, they killed an elderly man and chopped him up in the back of Joe’s car, and dumped him into the river. What came out in the news was pretty much exactly what Joe told me about what happened.”
The Pee Test
“I worked a job a few years ago for a company that sold to new ownership. So one day these cars with a bunch of guys in suits rolled up to announce that everyone in upper management was fired, and here were the replacements. Everyone else was now required to do a job interview and see if they kept their job. Also, they were going to pee tests at the end of the day for everyone they decided to keep.
Absolute panic in every way. Upper management was packing their offices, cursing, and crying. Middle management was running around trying to figure out what was going on, keeping things functioning, and preparing for job interviews. Meanwhile, about four employees were very focused on the words ‘pee test’. One of which went and hid in a shed on property with a five gallon jug of water and proceeded to drink the entire thing. He then vomited and went into a seizure during his interview from desalinating his body. Another guy went home for lunch and came back with his infants pee in a bag taped to his thigh.
The best part though, was the pee testing itself. I think only one person legitimately failed theirs. It was for weed. He didn’t seem to care honestly. But, about 10 to 12 people were ‘flagged’ as failing for all sorts of crazy things from weed to other types of illegal substances. I think one came back positive, but it turned out it was a combination of cheap tests, and prescriptions they took from their doctors. They told me I failed mine and it had to be sent to a lab for authentication. Then I was told the cup arrived at the lab empty because the lid wasn’t tight enough and I had to take it again. This took two weeks before I was allowed to return to work without pay.
I stayed like three more months and bounced. The new management was terrible and lazy. Blamed everything on the original employees and would say stuff like,’If you all were so good at your jobs, why did we have to buy the company?’ all the time.”
“That Was Day One Of My Healthcare Journey”
“Ten years ago, in between career paths, I got a job in a hospital as a telemonitor, someone who monitors heart rhythms all night and looks for signs of heart attacks or problems. During orientation, they told us that if they page ‘Dr. Strong’ to a specific part of the hospital, that meant a patient was being combative. As a small rural hospital, each floor would have to send two employees to attend the Dr. Strong’s call.
On my first day on the floor, ‘Dr. Strong’ was called overhead and my new coworkers thought ‘dive in head first’ was the way to go and sent me. Now, after years in that place, I’ve attended thousands of these events, and sometimes they were nothing, and sometimes it was like a fight club at work, but nothing came close to the first one, on my very first day out of orientation.
I and my coworker, a CNA (certified nursing assistant) named Shawn, headed down to the Emergency Room to attend the Dr. Strong’s call. A scrappy, four and a half foot woman who was clearly addicted to substances and had lived a rough life decided to go into one of the trauma rooms and rip the morphine line/IV directly out of what I could only describe as a giant Norse valkyrie of woman, and shove it into her own vein. Well, the lady who had the IV in was none-too-pleased to wake up that way. She was in a trauma room getting morphine, I was not sure what her issue was but that was not something they did on a whim. She woke up, saw what was happening, and stood up, easily having two feet over this other woman, and just started getting physical with the other lady.
‘Scrappy addict’ woman was not going down without a fight, clambers onto her back like a spider monkey and they both went at each other. Both of them had serious injuries throughout the fight. ‘Valkyrie’ lady had a black eye and cut lip, but scrappy addict’s eyes were both swollen shut by the time we pried them off each other, restrained them, called the cops, and gave statements. That was day one of my healthcare journeys.”
What Was Going On At Home Depot?
“When I worked as a cashier at Home Depot, I was outside in the garden center when this guy drove his van really slowly from the lumber exit all the way across the parking lot to the other end of the store where I was and parked before getting out and just kind of laying in the grass.
I said, ‘You good dude?’
He wiped his forehead and said, ‘Yeah, I just think I’m having a heart attack.’
I said, ‘Oh. Um. Okay, one second.’
So we called 911 and then I had to call the manager and let him know, but I was super nonchalant about it on the phone.
I said, ‘Hi Matt, there’s a guy having a heart attack in the garden.’
He replied, ‘WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? HELLO?!’
It was kind of funny, but also not for that poor man. I never got news if he was okay or not because my shift ended about an hour later. There was also a lady who tried to step over this makeshift fence we had that we kept the trees in the parking lot. It was only about two feet tall but she got her toe on it and fell and broke her leg.
There was also this lady named Cheryl, who thought she was hot because she was married to a retired football player. One day, she came in and started beating one of our plant vendors. When we told her we were calling the cops, she tried to angrily drive her SUV away but accidentally backed it into a pallet of ceramic pots and then pulled forward and smacked into the front end of a cop car. They found a flask of jack in her purse and she was arrested, which was fine because she was crazy. She used to buy 600 bucks worth of plants and then return most of them a week or so later. Everyone hated her.”
Sandwich Shop
“I worked at a very popular sandwich shop, known for its ‘fresh’ eating. The owner of the store hired me, and within a month I was a closer. Soon after, I was the main closer. I ended up getting all the responsibilities of a manager without any of the authority, or recognition. One day, a guy walked in and asked to speak to a manager. Being the only one there with anything close to that responsibility, I asked him what I could help him with.
He said that the sandwich that he ordered online was messed up and that he needed a refund. I informed him we can’t do refunds, but I can give him credit for next time, or make him a new sandwich now. He proceeded to scream, saying that if I didn’t give him his money back, I would regret it. I informed him that if he didn’t calm down, I’d have to get the police involved.
Then he attempted to climb over the makeline to grab me, but luckily I was able to back away and stay out of his grasp. He ended up throwing his phone, hitting me in the face, and cutting my eyebrow open. Luckily, another customer had called the cops a while ago, and they walked in just then. I think it goes without saying that he got arrested, and I pressed charges.
And yes, the owner did berate me, saying I need to work on my people skills or that wouldn’t have happened. He also wrote me up.”
Bread Delivery
“So I was doing night-time delivery of bread all around Melbourne, to stores and markets. Well, one night I was taking my usual shortcut through the back of Brighton which involved driving up a driveway and then turning through a grass park that got me into the next main street. I had to take this shortcut to avoid two main intersections off Nepean Highway.
As I was driving towards the end of the bay road, I saw heaps of blue and red flashing lights at the end of the street on the highway. I assumed it was a drinking bus but it was three am on a Tuesday morning, so kind of unusual. As I got closer to Nepean Highway, I was basically confronted by a ton of Special Operations Group police officers pointing their weapons in my direction so I came to a stop and held my hands up, out of just instinct.
Anyway, two officers waved me towards them whilst most of them all were sort of looking further back. As I got to one of the guys waving, he told me to pull over on the left and don’t move until told to. I was asked who I was and what I was doing and more importantly how I subverted a complete lockdown of this street during an active shooter.
I straight-up admitted how I cut through the park to cut the red lights out.
And at that very moment, I heard some popping of weapons sort of halfway back down the bay road. Then I was told to get the heck out of there immediately and I saw a group of dudes sort of just storming off up the bay road.
I found out when I got home at six am that I had driven right through a terrorist attack by a single guy with a weapon who killed a homeowner during his rampage.”
The Dry Cleaners
“My dad used to work for a dry cleaning company many years ago. The owners were stingy and had no regard for their employees’ wellbeing. They had a faulty clothes press (think giant George Foreman grill) that wouldn’t stay open and would slam down and lock. Anyway, my dad was working in the vicinity of a woman colleague when all of a sudden she shrieked in pain. He turned around and she had her hand caught in the clothes press. She was screaming for help and begging my dad to do something. The press had locked but because her hand was bigger than a shirt and the latch was basically jammed. It took my dad about 30 seconds to force the latch open, while the woman was conscious the entire time. When he finally got it open, she collapsed and my dad said her hand was actually sizzling like cheese on toast. Part of her skin was stuck to the inside of the press too.
She was rushed to the hospital where they managed to save her hand but she lost 80 percent of her hand’s mobility from the damage.
Many people had complained about the clothes-press but the employers never bothered to fix it. She sued the company which ticked off the employers. My dad even overheard them complaining about her.
They said, ‘Can you believe that girl is suing us? We gave her a job and this is how she repays us!'”
Teacher
“One day during lunch duty, a four-year-old raised her hand. She said that the boy next to her said that he was going to go to her house, kill her mom, and bury her in the yard while the girl watched.
Me, knowing immediately I needed to report this but also tried to console the girl.
I said, ‘That would upset me too if someone said that, but sometimes people say things they don’t mean to hurt us -.’
I was then cut off by the boy in question, ‘I did mean it. I’m going to kill her mom!’
Of course, when I reported it, it was brushed off. The kid was known to have a behavior problem, which actually led a teacher to quit. She had just started two months after school started and she was tired of getting beat up, bit, and spat on. Our disciplinary action was ‘don’t pay attention to him and when he’s good to reward him.’
I couldn’t even hug the girl to make her feel better about what the boy said to her. That boy’s voice still haunts me to this day.”
Math Tutor
“I used to be a math tutor for high school kids back when I was in university. I was tutoring this 15-year-old kid, Chris, who had a 20-year-old sister who still lived at home. I was going over a geometry problem with him one day, when his father started screaming in the living room, calling for the daughter to come out. They had an epic fight, with him calling her every name in the book, while Chris and I were cowering in his room trying to figure out what was happening.
Turned out his sister had cheated on her ex-boyfriend and the dad found out a few months after the break-up. Instead of being the bigger man, her ex-boyfriend decided to mail her parents all the nudes he had amassed during their time together, along with a note telling her that he found out about the cheating.
Usually, our lessons lasted an hour, but I ended up staying three hours that time because the fight lasted so long. And I ended up sneaking out, I didn’t want to trouble them about paying me that time. They already had enough issues.”