At work, people are supposed to be professional, right? That's not always the case. Sometimes, co-workers stick around because they know how to do their jobs well or they've just been there a while. Regardless of why it can lead to behavior that just shouldn't happen in the workplace. These situations can be awkward for everyone involved and sometimes, lead to people being fired. Read these stories and see just how unprofessional these co-workers can get.
This Guy Was A Straight Up Thief
“Installed cable for a while, one day I was training a new kid and saw him snatch a wad of cash from an old lady’s dresser.
After I saw that, I told him we had to go back to the warehouse to pick up some equipment I needed, and when we arrived I told him to hang out in the truck and I’d go pick up the gear and come right back so we could hurry back to the site. Went in and called the police then the supervisor to tell him what happened. I waited in the truck saying the warehouse manager was having trouble with finding what I asked for until the police arrived,then I took the money and I gave the police the address of the woman who he stole from. Went back and told her, along with the police, what happened, finished the job and never saw that kid again”
HR Lady Played Him Harder Than He Played Himself
“Part of my job was remote tech support for small-med businesses. We managed antivirus, firewalls, servers, you name it.
I get a support ticket from a law firm we worked with one day with the subject ‘addition to firewall whitelist.’ Looking at it, this person was asking me to add a specific adult site through the firewall.
Now, I have seen this from time to time. And hey, if you get yourself a virus, that just means more money for me. I figured that since it was a law firm it might be legit, maybe for a divorce or revenge thing. Whatever the case, it’s not my job to care.
I thought that since I did not recognize the name on the ticket that I would call in and double check. I wanted to be sure this user was authorized to be making these changes and all that. So I call the company and ask to speak with the boss or the local IT guy. Neither were available, but someone from HR was open who was previously authorized to make these kinds of changes. After a short hold she picks up.
After reintroducing myself, I explained that I had received a support ticket from ‘xyz employee’ asking to add a site through their firewall. She sat silent on the phone for what may have been longer than absolutely necessary, then pipes up saying, ‘You know what, go ahead and complete that ticket,’ then hung up on me.
No problem. A few clicks later and the site was whitelisted, I marked the ticket as complete, and moved to the next ticket in the system.
Not 15 minutes had passed and I get a call from that company. It was the HR lady. She calmly explained that they had caught the employee beating off in his cubicle and had fired him on the spot, and would like the site removed from the whitelist.”
Waking Up In An Ambulance
“One Saturday night this past summer, I woke up in an ambulance. Apparently, I had been attacked while walking home from a wedding near my house, but I have absolutely no memory of it at all.
I called out of work on Monday because I was super hurt (stitches on my face, black eye, REALLY bad concussion, the whole deal) and my boss (a woman, younger than me) immediately started grilling me, ‘How much did you drink? Do you get blackout often? What were you wearing? Are you going to the news about this?’ She went around to all the bars in the area – it’s a small town – to ask if I had been there that night.
The harassment about it was worse than the actual event because it lasted for weeks. She kept asking for more and more and more doctor’s notes to ‘explain’ what I’d done, and taking away my responsibilities because I ‘couldn’t be trusted.’ At one point she told me, ‘I want you to bring back a doctor’s note that says you need to be put on light duty’ even though 1, I didn’t need to be on light duty and 2, my job was sitting at a desk.
According to her, I should have been able to remember what happened and since I didn’t, it was obviously my fault.
My doctor told me how illegal it was and asked if she could scan a picture of her middle finger and send it to my boss. I think she was serious (she’s about my age and awesome!). I said no at the time but now I wish I had said yes.
After about a month, I had to quit because I couldn’t go into work without having panic attacks. It sucks because I LOVED that job.”
Don’t Trust A Double Agent
“One guy at my work went to go work at a competitor down the street. Sounds normal right? Except for small one detail- he never quit working for us.
Basically, he would drive back and forth between Company A and Company B all day, ‘attending meetings’ and such. He did this for a few months before a group of my coworkers were out to lunch talking about something and his name came up. This is what happened:
Well a group of coworkers from Company B were there and overheard the guy’s name and came over and said, ‘Oh hey you know this guy too?’
‘Yeah he works for us over at Company A.’
‘Wait, that’s weird, he works for us over at Company B!’
Realization ‘Hey, wait a second…’
Long story short, he was immediately fired from both jobs, blacklisted from the industry, and ended up doing some jail time for fraud.”
A Crazy Old Boss
“My old boss was insane. One time, we had a meeting with a representative from a new payroll service and he asked me to sit in so I could learn how to use it. In the middle of the tutorial, he interrupted the poor guy, pointed at the two of us and said, ‘You two would make beautiful babies. You should ask her out!’
I excused myself and later heard the guy ask my boss if we had an HR department and suggest to him that we hire someone for that. My boss was too stupid to realize that he (the rep I mean) was almost certain I would inevitably sue him, which I did not because he was beyond broke. He regularly did things like this, and worse things, but that was the first one to pop into my head. I have a million more stories that were actually scary. Like, he threatened to kill people, pulled weapons on people, pulled a tooth out that wasn’t loose out of his 10-year-old kid’s head with a pair of pliers, and much more.
He also pulled a weapon on a pizza delivery guy who went to the wrong door. He threatened to beat a debt collector with a wrench. When DFCS got called on him and his wife, he went nuts, called me, and told me he was going to shoot up the place. The only reason I didn’t take him seriously was that he was out of state. I did change the code on his weapons’ safe, though.
After I left the business, he beat up his wife and she got a TPO (temporary protection order) against him but dropped it. He gets out of everything. I haven’t heard anything about him recently as I’ve made a concerted effort not to, but I agree. The dude belongs in prison.”
The Co-Worker Who Didn’t Understand Boundaries
“I had a co-worker that was a great employee except for one thing. He was a toucher. He’d walk up behind girls that worked with us (mind you, this was a professional office setting), put his hands on their hips or shoulders and just, rub them, for lack of a better term. It didn’t stop there either, he’d lean in and whisper in their ears. Not only was he an Uncle Touchy Time, but he was also a ‘close talker’ (to the girls). He’d lean in as far as he could trying to see how close he could get his face to theirs. What made it even worse (if that’s possible) was that he was in his late 40s and a lot of the girls he was doing this to were in their mid-20s.
One girl went to our boss and told him he needed to reign this guy in. She didn’t want to make it a big deal and didn’t want to go to HR, but she really wanted him to stop. That put my boss in a bad spot because he didn’t want to get this girl involved (because she asked not to be) but not reporting something like this to HR could really backfire on him. He took our co-worker aside and told him he needed to cut it out, STOP touching and stay away from the girls unless it was a work-related conversation and even then, to be very cognizant of their personal space because this is something that can affect his career. Of course, this stupid schlemiel just can’t understand what our boss is trying to tell him and maybe three weeks after their conversation he leans over the back of this girl’s chair and starts to whisper her name while his lips are right on her neck (we got that detail after the carnage was done). She stood up, screamed in his face to get the heck away from her and marched into HR.
HR investigated (it took like three days) and they told my boss he needed to fire this guy immediately because once this girl lodged an official complaint, they started interviewing all the girls on the sales floor and in customer service. HR told him almost every one of them had a story for her about this guy’s ‘hands-on attitude.’ My boss said she was loudly flipping pages over in her notebook while she was talking to him to illustrate just how many accounts there were. So my boss tells his boss, ‘We need to let this guy go because if we don’t and he does it again (and everyone was sure he would), the lawsuits would put us out of business.’ So, he gets fired and genuinely cannot understand why they were letting him go. In a weird way, I felt bad for him, but he wouldn’t listen to anyone when we’d see him do this and tell him it was a really bad idea.
Oh – and a bonus thing that was really gross: there was a very attractive girl that worked in sales and when she left her desk to do whatever (lunch, go home etc…) there was a couple of disgusting mouth breathers that would go into her cube and sniff her chair.
In case you’re wondering, that place went under in like 2005.”
When Ya Gotta Go Ya Gotta Go
“Worked at a popular clothing retail store in the mall back in high school. One of the ones where the staff wears earpieces & walkie-talkies to communicate with each other and the people in the inventory area.
One afternoon on a busy Saturday, one of my co-workers – lets call her ‘Beth’ – was M.I.A for like 15 minutes. My manager, trying to find her to help on the floor, called over the headset (reminder, every employee can hear this)
‘Hey, Beth, where are you? We could use some help out here.’
… silence for a few seconds. Manager again: ‘Has anyone seen Beth anywhere?’
After a few more seconds of silence, Beth responds, and I mean yells into the headset, ‘I’M TAKIN’ A DEUCE, JUST GIVE ME A MINUTE!’
Now every employee can barely keep it together, in a packed store with customers everywhere. Hilarious, but highly unprofessional.”
Outside The Scope Of The Job
“I had to pick up Sudafed for an employer (now former employer) from a pharmacy. It was not a job where it was appropriate for me to be doing errands like that. It was an office job. I’d like to say more, but I can’t. I went to the pharmacy once per week for several months. Eventually, the pharmacist asked me if I had an addiction problem. And yes, this was in Canada, where you can pick up that type of Sudafed without a prescription.
I told my boss that this had happened, and they said, ‘Well you weren’t supposed to go to the same pharmacy every week! Of course, they’ll figure it out if you do that.’ It had not occurred to me before that point that my boss might have had a problem with opiates.”
Okay, This Dude’s A Creep
“I had a coworker who would frequently try to buy people’s lunches from them. Not, ‘Hey, I’ll give you $10 for that full meal.’ I’m talking ‘Hey, are you gonna eat the rest of that sandwich that you’re in the middle of eating? I’ll give you $2 for it.’
We’re lawyers. He can afford his own dang sandwich.
I was talking to him one day with some other coworkers and he says, ‘Wanna see a picture of my daughter?’ We think sure, whatever, kid pics. Nope. His high school age daughter and a couple friends in bikinis on Spring Break. He looks at us and says, ‘She’s hot, right?’ He was a weird guy. Doesn’t work here anymore.”
Not In The Play Place! Come On!
“I worked at McDonalds. My married female manager began banging my boyfriend behind my back in the Play Place. I am not excusing his behavior at all but this girl had literally been my best friend for five years.
She basically told him she could blow him better than I could and acted like a gigantic floozy. She also gaslighted me whenever I thought something was wrong to the point of calling me into a meeting with our store manager to ‘prove her innocence’ because she ‘didn’t understand why I was being so hostile and mean to her.’ I didn’t know what to believe and I genuinely thought this girl and I were friends.
Found out what was going on. I told her husband. Boyfriend got a beating from her husband and came to me telling me it was a bar fight. I showed him the screenshots of their disgusting text messages her husband had forwarded to me.”
Keep Those Calls Private
“I worked in a big office space in the financial district of a big city. They had a very professional work culture. I was there as a co-op student. I was working when I heard a woman stomp past my cubicle, huffing and puffing. She started getting louder as she got closer to the stairwell, which was about 15 feet from my desk. I looked and she’s on the phone. She opened the door to the stairwell but instead of going in, she just stood there with the door open. Then she started going OFF to whoever she was talking to on the phone. I’m talking full blown screaming, calling this person every name in the book, swearing like no tomorrow…the whole office could hear her. People started standing up. People were often on the phones at this place with important clients…
Someone told her to stop and take it outside, that this was a workplace. Queue her second temper tantrum. Then she stomped into the stairwell and we could hear her going off about how everyone on the floor was a ‘stupid idiot.’
I never saw her again after that day.”
The Worst Smelling Co-Worker
“I was a seasonal salesperson at Sharper Image, so several people got hired around the same time. One of the new people was…odd. To start with, he smelled intensely like B.O. all the time. He tended to ramble when he talked. He’d talk about really inappropriate things in a louder than normal voice all the time. Like, one time he started telling me, while we were on the sales floor, about his intimate preferences. He said he liked it really rough, liked to ‘really give it to her.’
I’m a woman and while I didn’t take him talking about this to be intended to harass me, some of my male colleagues who couldn’t help but overhear were very uncomfortable with him talking to a woman about that. And obviously, that was just inappropriate to be talking about on the sales floor anyway. So I and a couple other salespeople talked with the manager about it, who had a serious conversation with him. But the last straw was when he told me that he had a ‘policy’ of drinking from any open beverage container that was left out in the back. So if you had a drink open in the break room, he drank from it. Every time. He told me this after he’d been working there for a few weeks at that point. We all had open drinks in the back pretty much every day. I immediately told everyone to get rid of their drinks and told the manager about it. He didn’t come back after that.”
No Means No
“I have two separate coworkers guilty of the same crime and I find it incredibly unprofessional.
One of them works a different shift than I do and comes in on his days off to sell food. A lot of my other coworkers like his food and buy it regularly. I’ve tried it a few times. It’s okay, not great. Not something I’m going to spend my money on. I’ll just bring in my own lunch. So he’ll come in and say, ‘I made beef and noodles today! Come buy!’
I’ll say, ‘No thanks, I’m good.’
He’ll say, ‘Why not? You’ve bought my food before! Come get some today! I made beef and noodles!’
I say, ‘No thanks. I brought my own lunch today.’
He’ll say, ‘Save it for your supper and have beef and noodles for lunch!’
I’ll tell him, ‘I didn’t bring any cash today, so I can’t pay.’
He replies with, ‘You eat it today, you owe me tomorrow!’
I’ve told him straight up, ‘No! I don’t want it!’ And he left it on my work table and the next week demanded the money I ‘owed’ him. Dude! I said NO. NO MEANS NO!
I told him I hadn’t asked for his food and I hadn’t eaten it so I wasn’t paying for it. He laughed it off and said I could owe him until next week. He came to me every week (sometimes a few times) asking for the money I ‘owed’ him. I kept repeating that I hadn’t asked for his food and I hadn’t eaten it, so I wasn’t paying. Thankfully that entire time he ‘refused to serve me any more food until I paid my outstanding balance,’ but he was still hassling me for money every week.
I eventually paid him the $8 just to get him to leave me alone. Unfortunately, this put my ‘account’ in good standing and now, he pesters me to buy his food again every week. But he hasn’t just left anything at my workstation again like he did that last time. I’ve told management that I don’t like being harassed by this guy and that I’m not obligated to buy his food and it makes me uncomfortable, but it doesn’t appear that anything has been done about it. Unless, of course, management talked to him and that’s the reason he’s not just leaving food behind and trying to force me to pay for it later. He does always try to guilt me though, saying, ‘I made one just for you! Are you my friend? Or my enemy? Help me out! Buy my food!’ Still no!
My other coworker brought in these spicy off-brand Cheetos. Ghost pepper flavor. He offered me some and I politely declined.
Me: ‘No thanks.’
Him: ‘Oh, but you HAVE to try these! They’re so good! You’ll love them!’
Me: ‘I don’t like spicy things (not strictly true, but it seemed like a polite way to get out of eating the Cheetos).’
Him: ‘Oh, they’re not that spicy. They’re really flavorful. Just try one.’
Me: ‘No thank you, I’m really not interested.’
Him: ‘Come on! You have to try at least one!’
Me: (getting peeved) ‘Actually, no I don’t. I’m an adult and I can make my own choices.’
Him: ‘You’re not living your life to the fullest. It’s really sad. I’m just trying to help you. Just eat one.’
No! No! NO GOSHDARNIT, I SAID NO!!! I’m trying so hard not to throw a tantrum but for God’s sake, how many times do I have to say no to these people?!”
A Racist HR Manager
“Our office manager and human resources person was making a very loud and very racist impression of Asian people while several Asian clients sat in the waiting area of our office. Basically, 20 feet separated them and the phrases, ‘Me love you long time’ and ‘Ching Chong,’ were said repeatedly. What’s worse is that we work in employment law.
We actually had a running joke that she was the female Michael Scott. I was compelled to make a video of all the things Michael had said that was similar to her but never got around to it.”
A Request She Couldn’t Fulfill
“I worked at a reproductive health care clinic. I believe my director had some mental health issues. Her mood changes could be terrifying. I was the youngest supervisor in the clinic and it seemed that this woman liked to target me in some very negative ways.
I quit work the day she came into my office with a surgical knife in her hand and asked me to cut her ear. When I declined, she sliced it herself. I fainted.
Apparently, she had a torn earlobe that she wanted to be repaired. Her insurance denied her claim as she was not medically indicated. They did tell her it could be repaired if any further damage occurred. I refused, she Van Goghed.
If she wished to do this, she could have done it by herself. There was no need for her to come to a junior staff member requesting assistance mutilating her ear. I still don’t know why she chose me. The clinic had many other medical staff, nurses and doctors on board.”
Surprise Massage!
“When I worked as a hostess in a restaurant, our manager would try to give us back or neck rubs in front of customers. He also would come up behind us and grab our sides, trying to surprise us. He also hid my phone one day and thought it was hilarious. Supposedly he had been fired before for banging a waitress near the dumpster during a Christmas party but for some reason, he was hired back. Another one of our managers liked to wipe flour off my butt and joke about making out in the freezer and told me all the time he wanted to mud wrestle with me.
Now I am an accountant in a professional office setting. I had a co-worker who loved to spit seeds loudly (and would spit them on the floor), put his feet up on his desk, shout at his wife on the phone, and chew out random customer service people.
I also had another coworker who came up to the above-mentioned coworker and told him, ‘I just have to kill something RIGHT NOW or I’m going to go crazy.’ He was really into hunting.”
Thank You For Your Service
“I was in an army unit and we had someone dropping logs in the shower. Just awful. The Command Sergeant Major got ticked off the third or fourth time it happened and called my office about it. We had a serial dumper on our hands. I was a photographer. CSM wanted evidence. I was the lowest rank, so guess who got to go and shoot the doodie?
I walk in the locker room and the janitors are standing there waiting. All I heard was that the CSM (highest enlisted member of my unit of about 1,000 people) wanted these pics and I don’t want to disappoint him so I start going all CSI on this turd. I’m getting high angles, birds eye views, I put the camera on the ground and take a couple shots. The janitors, bored and annoyed say, ‘Are you done? It’s a turd, it’s not a super model. Can we clean it up now?’ I sheepishly nod, shuffle out and email the evidence to the CSM.”