Bad employeers can really hurt a company. Their inability and unwillingness to carry out their responsibilities as well as indifference to everything that's going on around them creates a toxic environment where even good workers can become stressed out and unhappy, which, in turn, can lead to even lower productivity and increased absenteeism.

And while some of these slackers are pretty good at hiding their shortcomings, others are not. So when a Reddit post asked platform users, "What's the most insane complaint you've had about an employee that turned out to be completely true?" many had tea to spill. Below are some of the most memorable answers from that thread.

#1

She was peeing on the chairs in the office. No, she didn't have any sort of health issues. She just didn't feel like walking to the bathroom.

AFAIK she still works there.

Image credits: tempthethrowaway

#2

Our worker took a s**t in the toilet of a vacant apartment that didn't have running water and then didn't say anything and left. They know they are supposed to use bathrooms in the offices/clubhouses because vacant units never have running water. The complex didn't find it until three days later, when they brought a potential tenant for a walkthrough. It had been over 100 degrees all week. The woman i spoke to said there wasn't any toilet paper, either.

Image credits: easy0lucky0free

#3

Had a coworker who always had a really strong stench and thought it was just bad BO. Turns out she was addicted to mothballs and was licking them during working hours. The chemicals give off an unbelievably strong smell through your skin. We got complaints about her odor but didn’t take them seriously (thought people were just being a******s) until someone saw her actively licking on the job.

Something else I would add is it was the kind of smell where you could never really quite put the finger on what it was, but once we figured it out it made a *lot* of sense. It doesn’t smell exactly like the real thing, but like it’s been processed through your body/skin lol. We were also very wary of being discriminatory which is why it wasn’t discovered earlier.

Image credits: sleepylun3

#4

Mechanic here. I had a coworker whom would poke a hole into customers tires just so they would come back and buy more (yes he did it to new tires as well). Finally caught him one day after I found it odd that it was only the customers he put tires on that kept coming back for more tires, at first I thought maybe he wasn't putting enough air into them so I kinda hawk eyed over him without him knowing and sure enough he would put the tire on the rim (we have a special machine to put tires on rims) and he would put a small slit with his pocket knife in the tread on the tire. Caught him red handed doing it. Fired on the spot. F**k you Brett.

Image credits: The_Sad_Penis

#5

“Our night supervisor bought a ten foot python and walked around the warehouse with it around his shoulders”

Checked the videos. Yep, bloke had a python. At one point he put it down, and then spent the next half hour trying to find it.

Was the final straw - sacked him that arvo.

Image credits: anon

#6

I had a number of complaints about a new member of staff, they said that she kept taking off her shoes, pulling dry skin from her feet, and eating it.

I thought the staff were lying and being mean about her just because they didn't like her... Until I saw her do it.

She didn't finish the week.

Edit: a couple of people are asking why she was fired for this. She wasn't, she quit about a week later.

She didn't really get on with the other staff, because they all thought she was a bit gross, and she quickly got into a bad mood because of it.

I'm not entirely blaming her. I said before that I thought the staff might be 'lying'. The reason I say that is that it is a small group of staff, and they all collectively decide pretty quickly if they like or dislike someone. If they decide they like you, you're golden. If they decide they don't like you, you are shut out. By all of them.

Its quite a brutal environment, psychologically I mean. But she got cold shouldered pretty quickly, and left before the week was out.

Image credits: Fire_The_Torpedo2011

#7

Many years ago, the bookshop I worked at hired a new employee with terminal cancer - very sad, since she was quite young. She wasn't around too much due to the chemotherapy etc., but when she was in she worked in the children's department. She was actually a pretty good children's bookseller, and was a huge fan of a fairly major American children's author; she ran the UK branch of his fanclub and knew him personally, he occasionally flew her out to the States for events.

One day, she wasn't in, and all employees were called to a staff meeting. We were informed that she had passed away. There was a lot of sadness; her close colleagues were devastated.

Only... a few days later one of our staff happened to go into a branch of McDonalds in a nearby town. Guess who was working behind the counter? Go on, guess.

Turns out she was never ill. She had made the whole cancer thing up, as well as *faking her own death,* for reasons that we never really fully understood. The general consensus was that it started out as a way to connect with her author hero and kind of spiralled from there; in the end she couldn't handle living the lie any more and so... just up and had her mother tell people that she'd died. And then got a job in Maccie D's a few miles down the road, and was surprised when she got found out.

That was a pretty what-the-f**k sort of experience for us all.

Image credits: vaz_de_firenze

#8

None of these will beat the guy who worked at the local pinata factory who was caught f*****g the pinatas. He was caught on CCTV and fired. He later sued them because he claimed they rigged the pinata to f**k up his d**k.

Image credits: anon

#9

Once had a co-worker selling shrimp from the dumpster. Picked them out after brunches. Popped a few on a skewer, and sold them in the bars that night. Got caught in a bar with the manager, and the CCTV caught him dumpster diving. They had him arrested.

Image credits: pineapplewin

#10

I used to work at a rural hospital in Texas. We had a surgeon who was always asking the assisting nurses to leave the OR to go get some random supply. You are never supposed to have only one person in the OR, but he would always figure out a way. These were minimally invasive surgeries that just required sedation so there were no other assists besides nurses, no anesthesiologist, etc. He was the only physician. The door would also “mysteriously” lock and the nurse would have to knock to get back in. One of our nurses got fed up and knew something was going on, so she set up her phone to video him. It turned out he had been sticking his, uh, “manhood” in patient’s mouths. He was of course fired but horrifically did not lose his license.

Image credits: anon

#11

Had an employee that was actively robbing local banks on his days off. I believe he hit 8-9 different banks before he got caught. Found out about it during an early am FBI raid of the employee locker/break rooms done in conjunction with a raid on his house. To say it was a shock was an understatement. He wasn’t even top 20 of my list of potential felonious employees.

Image credits: naptrapped

#12

I (HR Head) got a call from a “sex chat administrator”, informing our official account is unpaid. They will take legal action if we don’t pay immediately. I thought it was a joke. Anyways we did get a legal notice! Then legal and HR investigated. The “sex chat” company sent a phone call copy. As soon I played it, my HR lady screamed- I know this guy, he works in supply chain!!

Later on, we realised we had a employee who used to make phone “sex chat” calls using our company landline. We politely told him to pay up and settle the matter. Then issued a final warning letter.

Image credits: ridersofthestorms

#13

Rotten tooth found baked into their pizza.

Image credits: jazzpenis

#14

my friend used to work in HR at this holistic wellness place and one of the staff members who always had one of those reusable straw cups was literally dRINKING HIS OWN PEE OUT OF IT like during meetings and everything!!?!??! she quit pretty soon after.

Image credits: squorl_gorl

#15

Critical items at the jewelry counter were anything over $500 and had to be counting at the start and end of each shift and shift change.

Items keep coming up missing and one of the other employees complained that it was a certain lady stuffing it up her hot pocket.

Security took her to the bathroom. It was true. She had a men's necklace shoved up there. I can't imagine who she was gonna give that too.

Image credits: stuckNTX_plzsendHelp

#16

When my wife was in college she worked as a teller at the bank. Tellers were responsible for checking out and checking in a certain amount of cash on every shift. One of her coworkers doing the evening shift decided to take the money to the casino with the idea that he would replace it in the morning. Unluckily for him there was an audit in the bank the next morning before he came in and he was fired on the spot.

Image credits: iamkiranrao

#17

I was the head night auditor at an upscale airport property. Had a youngish night auditor who put a room into out of order status and let his friends in to party and have an orgy that he joined during his lunch break. He got caught because of a noise complaint. Police called, he was fired and blacklisted from being hired back.

Image credits: Faethor_Ferenczy

#18

Used to work as a night auditor at a hotel and one day I was told one of the daytime workers was fired. She was this really sweet older lady who worked part time and it was really hard to get fired there so I was very curious. Several customers had complained, concerned that there was something very off about this woman. She was slurring and just seemed very off that day. Management was concerned, at first thinking there was a medical issue. After a few more incidents, they checked the cameras and found out she was taking shots of vodka throughout her shift. Like, an absurd number of shots. I can't remember how much, but I remember being rather impressed that she could function at any capacity.

Image credits: EndyBendy33

#19

This was shortly before I joined. I'm the dispatcher for a food delivery service. Just a local thing. Anyway, we had this driver, right at the start of the pandemic. She apparently decided enough was enough one day. The complaint was that she was an hour late, wasn't wearing mask, was very confrontational and messy. While being sternly reminded to wear a mask, we got another call from the customer. They had found her mask, in the mashed up French fry and ketchup soup that she had made of a kids meal in the order, the chicken fingers were eaten down to the burnt ends. They got a full refund and were offered to have a fresh meal bought by another driver but refused. The original driver was confronted. Whereupon her reply was "Oh yeah that's where that went! What? I was hungry. Fat little porker answered the door coulda missed a meal or two. What yes gonna do? Fire me?"She then tried to sue for discrimination and said she was fired because she was gay

Image credits: Professional_March54

#20

A chain restaurant here does student discount of 30% off. One of the waiters, who was a student himself, would use his own student discount whenever a table paid full price in cash, and keep the difference for himself.

Only got found out because head office emailed the manager to check why one student had eaten at the restaurant 5 times a day for the last few weeks.

Image credits: UncleSnowstorm

#21

One worker in my factory got a big sick leave (signed by a physician). Turns out she went to compete in Survivor (Koh Lanta in France). Saw her on TV. She then came back like nothing happened, the company wouldn't dare fire her due because of the bad PR she could make.

#22

Call centre agent, not one of mine thankfully, had a customer call and claim someone had used her card details to order a takeaway. She sounded crazy except she named the take away and it was a local one.
Dude lost his job and had a criminal fraud charge for an 8 quid lunch. Fricking weird.

Image credits: Half-blind-bear

#23

Ive got a lot of these.

Customer complained employee was stealing. Didn't believe it, at first.The gayest man I've ever known was stealing Playboy magazines. No idea why. Got caught with them. Multiple copies of the same issue. Fired.

One employee was spotted by a customer pleasuring himself on the roof before the store opened. Also used a magazine. Didn't believe it. Staked out the roof. Turned out to be true. Fired.

One customer told me the bookkeeper is up to something because she didn't get a receipt for a space she rented. Didn't believe it. Turns out, this employee was pocketing a few hundred at a time when a vendor paid in cash. Was doing all kinds of embezzling that wasn't easy to catch. Fired. Jailed.

One customer walked in on an employee who was masturbating. There was a lock on the door. Lock not used. Fired.

Customer spotted receipt showed coupon when they paid cash. Coupon code should have been cleared out of the system years before. It was 100% off coupon. This employee made an extra $100 or so per shift. Fired. Jailed. Mystery as to how they found the coupon code.

One customer found a camera in the women's restroom. I knew right away who it was. Staked out the camera feed until I saw him go in. Fired. Jail.

One customer was hugged by an employee. No idea why. It was the employee's first day. Fired.

One customer spotted a security guard selling meth to his friends. He had been selling meth and other drugs on his shift for over a year. Added bonus when we got rid of him, thefts went way down.

One customer complained an employee pointed and laughed when an old lady fell. Reviewed the tape. It was pretty pronounced. She had tripped on an end cap, fell, and wasn't able to get herself up. He was pointing and laughing for a while. When someone else helped her up, he was berated about doing nothing. Not fired, though.

Image credits: bunnieluv

#24

I was a production control analyst in a call center about ten years ago. Saw and heard more than you'd probably believe. Helped to term out more people than I will ever be comfortable with.

The most insane but true complaint came from the housekeeping staff. He walked up to me one day and said, "I got to close the men's restroom for a bit. I don't know who done it, but you need to find him. Someone has smeared his solids all over the walls in there, and I dunno 'bout you, but I'm not lookin' forward to cleanin' it up, and don't want to have to do it again."

It took some detective work, but we found him; a guy had been hiding his mental illness when he started work there, and apparently hadn't been taking his meds in awhile because he didn't want us to find out, even though he had insurance through us. So he went nuts and started smearing his own s**t all over the restrooms. There were apparently some other aberrations that led us to him and were listed as the actual behavioral reasons for his termination, but I never got the details.

Image credits: AnArdentAtavism

#25

When working in a food environment I once had a coworker hide a laxative in a slushy. Needless to say that person didn't work there for very much longer.

Image credits: Coreeeeee

#26

While working at a well known hardware store, had a coworker build a hideout in the insulated aisle. He would disappear for hours while clocked in, no one knew where he would go. One day he's being escorted out, apparently a manager found him sleeping in his hideout.

Image credits: Sweet_Spice_Pepper

#27

We had to terminate an assistant manager for walking by other employees and farting near them and walking away. He was warned about it first and kept doing it.

#28

Just remembered one that was super bad. Security guard at a mall. This coworker, probably late 30s-esrly 40s, was a really weird dude. Pretty sure he was barely functioning autistic but also down right gross and would frequently take people's left over food out the trash and eat the rest if they didn't finish. Anyways one day this dude finds a woman smoking outside one of the doors and it's a no smoking property. He bold face lies to the woman about what he can and can't do and threatens to give her a 500$ fine for violating fire safety laws unless she sucks his d**k. She asks for an hour to think about it and asks for his number to get in touch with him. She gets his number and immediately goes up to our camera room and asks for the big boss and tells him what happened. By boss, understandably doesn't believe her at first. She then calls him on the number she got and puts it on speaker phone. She asks him to explain the offer again before she decides to follow through. He explains it all again while boss man listens quietly in the back ground. Boss man picks up the phone and yells at him that he's fired and to drop all his stuff off and that he'll be arrested in the spot if he ever comes back.

#29

As an area manager for a chain of electrical stores, one Saturday I got a garbled voicemail telling me: 'store manager', 'deputy manager' and 'sales manager' at a certain location had shrink-wrapped 'a sales guy' to a wheely-chair, put him in the back of the delivery lorry -unrestrained- and done doughnuts in the car park so the poor lad was getting smashed into the walls & bulkhead with no way to protect himself, as all limbs were confined due to the dozens of layers of shrink-wrap. One of the 'warehouse guys' was in the back filming the whole thing on his phone...


Until I saw the video and the absolute state of the poor sales guy, I really thought I was being pranked.

He ended up with 2 broken arms (one broken in two places), 1 broken ankle, severe bruising almost all over and a bleed on his brain.

Horrific.

#30

One of my employees stole a credit card from her co-worker and took all of the office employees (including her victimized co-worker) out to a nice restaurant for lunch. When the victim received the credit card bill she noticed over 20 charges she did not recognize including from Wal-Mart. She went to the store and got security footage from the day of the charges and found her co-worker on camera with a cart full of products. It took her over 1 year with the evidence to get the police to arrest and the DA to prosecute her.

#31

I worked in a call center. Coworker would prank call annoying customers. One time she forgot to block our number. Customer called to complain and even called the news.

#32

Had a new hire (as in less than a week on the job) at a movie theater, where I worked as a supervisor, throw a very loud, unbelievably childish tantrum in front of a lobby full of customers because her direct supervisor asked her to sweep up some popcorn that a customer spilled. She kept screaming "I ain't cleaning up someone else's mess! Make them (the customer) do it!" She was 24 years old.

The meltdown she had when she got fired for her tantrum was nuclear, with lots of screaming & threats of how her parents were going to "call the company and get all your
a$$e$ fired!". The next day someone *claiming* to be her dad did call & tell us that we "are going to rehire my daughter & apologize to her and fire (named her supervisor and manager) or else." but nothing more came of it, the top manager just laughed & hung up.

I've yet to ever see such an epic, entitled tantrum before or since.

Image credits: FarmerTex

#33

I knew a guy who worked at subway back when they gave out stamps. Basically for every six inches of sub you bought you earned a stamp and once you filled a card with 8 stamps you could get a free six inch sub.

So this guy started only giving stamps to customers who asked for them. If they didn't ask he pocketed their stamps and grew a sizeable stack of complete stamp cards.

Then over time he started cashing them in. When a customer paid with cash he would ring it in as a freebie, place his own completed stamp card in the till, and pocket the cash. Customer got their sub, subway's till was balanced, and he had an extra five to ten bucks in his pocket - everybody was happy.

He worked there for a few years and word was he racked up a few thousand dollars running this scheme. No idea if anybody complained, or if he was ever caught, but he did buy a motorbike.

Image credits: gutterferret

#34

Local hardware store had an employee jacking and putting it in a coworkers' coffee. True story. People found out and he was arrested.

Image credits: anon

#35

So I worked retail and we got this guy named something like Gus.

My boss tells me, "Hey this guy's got anxiety, go easy on him OK?" And so I was like, okay that's cool I get it I can relate. I do everything I can to help him make sense of the infernal godforsaken hellscape that is retail.

It starts off with little forgiveable things -- forgetting a task here, forgetting things there, accidentally giving the wrong info and things like that. You know, newbie retail stuff like that.

He quickly devolved in popularity as his complacency grew over time and his helpful attitude shrank. My guy started f*****g around during his shift, getting caught on his phone while ignoring backup cashier calls and things like that. He would make stabbing motions behind the manager's back to other employees, tell off new employees, and play it all off like he was some innocent dope who didn't know any better.

None of this got him fired. Day after day was a new complaint from an employee about responsibilities he shirked or a customer about blatantly wrong info like, "Oh yeah we have another location up on the hill" and we didn't. No idea whose son he was, because that was apparently all kosher.

What ACTUALLY got him fired is the one day he brought a dog and a super expensive dog collar into work. He claimed he almost hit the dog on the way to work and it was running around wild, etc etc. He tried to sell the dog collar to a customer, then tried to "adopt out" the dog to a coworker.

This coworker was competent enough to take the dog to a vet whereupon they found a microchip and contacted the actual owners. THAT'S where the fun started.

It came out that Gus never found the dog at all. He straight up KIDNAPPED this dog from his neighbor and tried to pawn it off, knowing full well what he was doing. The guy lawyered up immediately, tried to sue Gus and threatened to sue the store and the store manager if Gus wasn't fired.

Suffice to say, Gus was gone the very same evening. Nothing else came of it, but we talked about him for years and years.

Image credits: DEEPTHROATHOTDOGES

#36

When I worked at Sams club, one of the cashiers pocketed a few grand from his drawer and put it on Facebook.

We were a new club, so if that much money went missing, it would have taken them a while to figure out. Or so I was told.

One of the managers overheard and they put two and two together. He got arrested and was fired.

Image credits: anon

#37

I'm late, but whatever.

I work at a 911 center and one of the people in my hiring class got fired for not putting calls in.

People would call 911, and this f**k nugget would go through the entire call taking protocol, and the whole time was never entering it.

He got caught immediately because we have a secret squirrel "check ride" where trainers listen in on your calls for a few weeks after you're told you're all signed off.

We could all hear him getting berated through multiple closed doors.

Worst part, was that he got fired after I had worked his half of a shift trade so I got boned and still had to cover my original shift.

#38

We had this guy as a delivery driver. Super nice, quiet, never showed any signs of anger even in stressful situations.

We started getting calls mainly from older women, that our delivery driver(we had our logo on both front doors) was cutting off, flipping off, yelling c*nt, at these women.

I didn’t believe it at first. I thought maybe they cut him off, he honked, they wanted him fired so made up some big story.

Then the back window got busted out of the vehicle. And then the radio looked like it got punched out for whatever reason. Everything came together and we found out he had huge anger issues. He stopped showing up so it solved itself, but it was crazy how good of a front he put on.

#39

This wasn’t 100% this kids fault but it also was.

I was at popular icecream and yogurt chain. Not national, but popular locally. We had some proprietary recipes that were a huge hit.

So one day some people came to one of our stores saying they were a documentary crew making a film about our product and could they film how we made it.

Kid gave them the red carpet, even let them write down our temperature settings, recipes, machine model numbers, everything you would need to make our product.

He really meant well. But damn if that didn’t lead to a dozen copycat stores the next year....

#40

Had a complaint call from someone get forwarded to me from an external line. Said the person threatened to fight them, spit on them, and called them a whole lot of rather offensive names. Asked for the name (thanks nametags) and got the most mild mannered staff member we had. Couldn't believe it but I passed it on up to my manager. We had cameras. Every word was true...blew my f*****g mind let me tell you.

#41

A colleague checked out of the mediocre but adequate hotel where we were having a conference and checked into a 5 star luxury resort. She then submitted an expense report for her stay at the luxury resort.

She claimed that she felt unsafe in the original hotel, but did not elaborate.

Someone called the hotel, which checked the security camera footage. At least 4 separate men tried to enter her room that first night. No wonder she left.

#42

This definitely won’t be as crazy as all the other stories, and is definitely not even closest to the craziest person I’ve had to go to HR about/was called in to report on, but it really stuck with me:

This guy was bullying another one really, really badly. Like American high school movie in 80’s badly. Reason? He was from out of town. That was it. I thought there HAD to be more to the drama, went to the place, interviewed a few people, watched it happen myself, and… damn, yeah, it seemed like this guy could NOT take the fact that this kid (20s) was from another state. I was absolutely expecting the sort of drama that building was more famous for (baby daddies, sleeping with someone’s wife, etc). Nope…

#43

A busboy had sex with a customer in the bathroom. I was a manager. We also had all of these steps of service such as “use the guests name at least 3 times”, “thank them abs invite to em to return”, “anticipate the guests needs and exceed expectations”, “surprise the guest with the unexpected.” So he tied in all these aspects into to totally railing this person in a bathroom stall. Granted I think this was during the sex and the city premier and what a Samantha power move of that guest. Things eventually turned serious because well, it wasn’t like no one saw. And he said, “I don’t understand- you didn’t get mad the first time”. Imagine writing that report for the gm. In the morning I had a few missed calls, we closed late. Everyone thought it was a joke. ‘‘Twas not

#44

At my very first job, there was an employee who kept eating chips and farting incessantly. All 5 of us were seated in a tiny back office, with our backs to each other. Every time she farted, she'd laugh to herself and the stench of her fart would fill the cubicle space. Then she'd grab a handful of chips and chomp noisily, spraying crumbs all over the floor. This went on throughout the day for months, until someone lodged a complaint with the manager.

Thus I sat through my very first round table conference with my officemates, listening to my boss lecture a 50 year old on why she should not be farting and eating chips all day long. Unfortunately they didn't fire her because she was the relative of one of the higher ups.

#45

I had a guy call in sick so he could go to the same company’s christmas party.

#46

I’m not an employer but I found inappropriate photos of a female coworker taken by a male coworker on our shared computer network.

I was doing a search on our shared network for photos of our boss, to put together a montage for his retirement, when I came across photos of the female coworker’s (clothed) butt taken from the male coworker’s cubicle., while she was standing speaking to another worker he snapped photos of her butt. There were also videos of her working that he took from between his computer monitors. Just straight up creeper s**t.

So I showed my supervisor the photos and he informed HR, who confiscated his computer and work phone to do their own investigation. Thankfully I didn’t search any further cause apparently there were d**k pics as well, which I’m glad I do not have to see.

He was put on paid leave for like a month, while HR did their investigation, without having a clue why. He ended up just quitting, I guess he figured he was going to be getting fired anyway.

#47

Huge well known international company. Young straight-out-of-college guy just hired (as in, first day the same week), who had moved from eastern europe to corporate location. Cue company ski trip. Free booze. Some of his new colleagues/"friends" told him that this woman was checking him out.

He wasn't exactly sober, and started hitting on her. She told him to knock it off, that she wasn't interested. He kept being pushy. Large scary dude beside the woman told him to knock it off. He swung at large scary dude, and promptly found himself face first in the snow.

The woman in question? Head of global HR. The large scary dude? Head of global corporate security, ex military. The young schmuck? Fired.

#48

Not the employer for this story, but it's still pretty wild.

One evening I had a regular come into the gas station I worked at while I was in the back room cleaning out our boiled peanut pots.

When I heard the door ringer I came to the front to man the register and he was standing at the front door, stiff as a board and not moving.

He sees me and looks relieved, gathered his usual items then approached the register.

He then tells me he's glad I was working that night, because in my night off he came in and didn't see anyone in the store. Gathered his items and waited at the register. He waited a while before noticing the door to our back room was open, and went to investigate to see if someone was in there and didn't hear the ringer.

Apparently he caught my coworker mid.. uh.... self pleasuring. And immediately left the store.

I was mortified and he was even more so.

Apparently the coworker was talking with his then separated wife over text message, and they were mending their relationship and decided to send him some nudes.

#49

The phantom poo smearer, some filthy swine was smearing poop in one of the ladies bathrooms which resulted in the cleaners threatening to walk off the job, and I had to find a specialist cleaning company to sort out the mess.

After a lengthy investigation it turned out that the smearer was a C level executive.

#50

Scene: A Restaurant

Scenario: one of my employees comes up to me and complains of how our head chef (been around 25 years vs not 25 years) was clipping his toe nails in the kitchen like every day. And idk how fast they grow but I didn't believe it. Til the guy who complained quit and I was so stunned I actually went through the tapes...he did

#51

I am a head HR. I got a complain of witchcraft in one of our stores. One store employee complained that her team members blamed her of witchcraft and tried to put her on fire! WTF I thought.

Anyways we investigated. A store lady caught her husband with pants down in her home. She Went to shangoma (African traditional healer) who asked for trial by fire for her friends. So she tried to do some magic thing in store!

Anyways we fired all of them. Got dragged to the labour court. Judge asked the lady- why she tried to put her colleague on fire and if it is right! Her reply and defence- “after all I am a human being”!

#52

We had a girl once that was dogsh*t at giving tech support, but somehow ended up topping the customer satisfaction survey scores. The team complained that it was impossible as we knew what she was telling the clients, and every ticket she escalated was a shitshow. A few months later my colleague and I discovered a string of fake clients in the CRM, but no relation to her. We started investigating and suddenly we found a list of matching phones, which we finally mapped to the employee in question (and two friends of hers). Management would've never connected the dots in a million years, and suddenly she was fired and asked to return all the RMA's she had done in those tickets (about 5k value in goods).

#53

Had a woman at my place of employment who enjoyed mining her nose and smearing whatever she found on bathroom stall walls. Heaven only knows if she did it elsewhere.

Coworkers taped post-its on the stall wall proclaiming said person disgusting. The person showed their appreciation by decorating the post-it with nose candy.

Enough complaints were finally filed that there was a sign put up in that bathroom to 'not put body waste on the walls'. Stopped for a bit. Sign vanished. Snot resumed. Multiple signs now in that bathroom. Few months later the pandemic hit, so I didn't have to see it anymore.

Heard from someone in HR not long ago that they legit staked out that bathroom to find out who it was. She apparently left the company by choice later.

You have to be a special type of disgusting to pick your nose and choose to put it anywhere else but the toilet paper four inches from your knee.

#54

Working in a bank. Had a teller (about 19 year-old) get pissed about the way a customer (retail store owner) would send in her deposits at the drive up window.
The teller complained about the customer on Facebook! Tagged the lady personally, as well as the store! Customer called the bank and told me, furious of course. I told the customer we would investigate, I asked the teller. She straight up admitted it, and says "What's the customer or Branch Manager going to do about it? My Grandfather is friends with the bank President."
I called HR and Bank President on conference. Girl lost her job in under 15 minutes of me receiving the call from the customer. Breach of customer confidentiality in banking is a MAJOR law violation.

#55

tl;dr
Admin assistant committed fraud, resulting in her boss and eventually her being fired, because her dog had a nervous condition.

My boss lost an internal power struggle and was soon fired. The official reason given was he was submitting fraudulent expense reports. I’m not promoted but given all of his responsibilities and I inherited his administrative assistant. Suddenly charges for car service, local hotels, and local liquor stores appear on my corporate credit card. I ask the admin about the charges and she gives me an explanation that’s plausible but that I know isn’t accurate. I called the credit card company and contest the charges until they provide more info. I also started doing some of my own research on the charges. Turns out the admin assistant was an alcoholic who lived with her dog in the local hotel I was getting charged for. She was having the car service pick up her booze at the local liquor store and deliver it to her at the hotel. Why? Her dog had a nervous condition and he liked that hotel. He would get upset if she went out to the store after she got back from work, so she used the car service so she wouldn’t leave and upset the dog. She charged the expenses to my boss’ and my corporate cards because we owed her for making her come to work and leave her dog alone. I got her fired and successfully fought the credit card charges. Even though I found the person actually committing the fraud my boss was still considered ‘fired for cause’ because he signed the expense reports with the fraudulent charges.

#56

On his second day at KFC, he tried walk out with two buckets of chicken and ran right into our boss.

#57

I wasn’t the employer but my coworker at a sandwich shop when I was 17 would “steal hours” by coming back to the store to clock himself out a couple hours after he left. We made minimum wage and he was canned after the fourth time he did it. He stole, at most, 40 dollars with that brilliant strategy.

#58

Happened recently. Driving job. I don’t really have to worry about the person recognizing this, he sucked so bad with computers that I nearly ended up with a manslaughter charge during onboarding. Ok, I get this person through onboarding, my boss and HR get him through orientation, we set him out to train. Trainer comes in, exasperated. Dude can’t drive (the easy part of the job). He can’t secure cargo (the more challenging, but still easy part of the job). He starts crying while driving. He ignores instruction. This goes on for a week. Trainer says he’s not going to pass the guy. I tell my boss his options are to either have him retrain under another trainer, do a ride along, draw his own conclusions, or term the guy. Eventually, my boss does the ride along. The guy nearly causes a wreck, while doing exactly what he was told not to do, with me in front of him not three minutes ago. During his ride along, he runs two stop signs and nearly has a head on collision. Boss wanted to give him another week as long as he didn’t f**k up his paper work (this is my domain, and I’ve been known to make people reconstruct their entire day from scratch if they f**k it up bad enough). He proceeds to back out of the lot with both hands off the wheel. Yeah, that’s it.

#59

The cemetery director was selling plots, pocketing the money ($750), and selling the same plot to another family. The second family would show up ready to bury their deceased only to find the grave already being used. He got away with it for a year.

#60

Really smelly farts.

Seriously. People requested to move desks.

#61

That the guy was stalking a female employee. It was a 24 hour retailer and she was a morning shift and he was night shift so I just thought there was no way they knew each other. Then one day I was filling in for a different manager and he came into the break room and was taking pictures of the morning shift schedule. I asked him why and he told me some story about another employee just wanted him to send their schedule etc. I came in on my day off later that week during day shift and caught him staring at her from a different aisle while she was stocking. She had no idea, he would follow her home and watch her house and all that. She was 17, he was 38. I called the cops and had him escorted off the property and helped her get in touch with the right resources for a restraining order. He ended up violating the order multiple times and is in jail last I heard.

#62

My boss at a tech company was abusive AF to me. Among many other things she made me do push-ups for every minute I was late if I was late due to public transportation delays (somewhat normal for the commute I had).

For “team bonding” she would take us out to drinks and proceed to get blackout drunk. She was also sleeping with two of the other people on my team. There were multiple times at said “team bonding” events where she and one of my other colleagues disappeared into a bathroom...

I brought up some of this with HR when I quit, but no one ever looked into it... although she ended up getting fired a few years later due to sexual harassment.

Worst boss EVER

#63

"Not the employer but..."

A store I worked at had a lady who would write down customer's information and repeatedly sign them up for the store credit card (to keep her goals where they were supposed to be). Needless to say when the customers saw their credit reports...

#64

That a employee took a women’s phone number from her account at the store we worked at and called her.
I never thought anyone was that stupid.

#65

I was working for an agency in NY and we went to a client meeting for starting a new project in Boston. One of the project managers who worked for the same agency in LA office flew in from LA and joined us for the week long meetings with the customer. Super nice guy who did his homework and gave really good presentations and everyone liked him. After wrapping the meetings whole week, I few back to NY on Friday. The later week, there was supposed to be video conferences with the client but they sent an email last minute saying that they are cancelling all meetings. Well, none of us thought much about it and carried on with the day. In the evening, we got to know from our boss that the di**head sent his d**k pics to a female employee who was our client. None of us could believe this but it turned out to be completely true.

#66

Had a random citizen call up to say she’d witnessed one of our delivery drivers pull up on the side of the road and throw a parcel out the window into the gutter. It was two suburbs away from where it needed to be delivered. Our guess was that he wanted to knock off early and couldn’t be effed driving to the delivery address.

#67

I worked for a staffing agency early in my career. We got a call that one of our placements was taking his lunch break and not clocking out for it.

He was taking 2 hour lunch breaks. Also, _He brought in his George Foreman grill and cooked for himself and everyone in a highly flammable warehouse._


Another story, same staffing agency.

We had a guy who was placed with a company that gave him a car and card for gas. A week after he started, he was paying for his friends and family members gas with the company credit card *at the same time, in a line at the gas station.*

So many crazy stories from that place…

#68

Had someone ‘turn in’ a co-worker for doing 90+ on an interstate with a loaded trailer on the back. Guy insists he wasn’t going that fast. Installed gps. He was. Fired him. He was stunned.

#69

Not the employer, but one of my co-workers got fired for taking work from other team members' done folders and signing his name to it.

He was doing this so he could take extra-long lunch breaks to preach to customer* at the food court across the street.

#70

She left an unbelievable and unflushable gigantic turd both in and out of the toilet.

I went in to the bathroom to deal with what was surely an exaggeration, and probably a nasty diarrhea mess. But no. There was a single unbroken enormous log that was hanging down over the outside of the toilet seat, going up over the seat and back down through the hole into the drain as far as the eye could see. All in one piece. Flushing had no effect. None. It didn't budge, it didn't wiggle. Nothing. Gravity didn't even pull it apart where it hung over the side of the bowl halfway to the ground. It was ... well, it was unbelievable.

No one knew what to do. No one wanted to clean it up. Someone wondered aloud if we should send her to the hospital. Honestly, I can't remember what happened next, only that there were tools involved, but I can still see that monster turd like it was yesterday. It was in 1997. I could never look her in the face again. I just kept wondering HOW?

Mattie, wherever you are, I hope you're doing better.

#71

I was shift lead at a Gas Station and I had a customer tell me that one of my guys (like 80 years old) told him to "F**k Off, eat s**t and die, pussy." After the customer rolled his eyes at the price of cigarettes. I talked to my guy because I was sure that at very least, the circumstances were different.

Happened just like the customer said, my guy apparently didn't realize his speaker was still turned on and said it as soon as the customer's back was turned. Guy turned around and that started an even bigger verbal fight.

I was mulling over what to do about it but the very next morning, employee showed up drunk to work, yelling about a bonus check that "They owed him" and he got fired.

#72

Story from when my dad worked at a construction site people thought this guy was stealing tools but no way a early 20s skinny guy would steal from dudes who are all giants and some criminals turns out he did and he got a visit from what I heard to say the least.

#73

Computer repair guy at work fixed a girls computer, she didn't have a password on it so he logged in and then added himself as a friend on her facebook. When she got her PC back he started sending her messages about how sexy she was and such. He no longer works here.

#74

I just fired an intern because he thought it'd be funny to smack one of the girls on the a*s. Upon further investigation, she had been having anxiety coming to work because he would ask all sorts of ridiculously inappropriate questions. For example, he asked her if she had a good weekend. She told him it was a good weekend or some plain answer and he then asked her if it was because she f****d her boyfriend a lot. Needless to say, her anxiety was warranted and we fired him as soon as we could. The mood in my group seems a bit more relaxed this week...

#75

Ran an in-house training course, apprentice from another dept was sent along to see if she’d be a good fit for this job. Small room, lined with computers along 3 walls with me and a projector at the front. We had lots of practical examples to work through throughout the day so each person sat at a computer for the duration. We all agreed a 30 min lunch. She demanded a longer lunch as she had ‘things to do’. I declined her a 1.5 hour lunch break. She took it anyway. She then used her computer to apply for a job during a practical part of the course. She had chosen a computer at the back so I could see what was on her screen from my position at the front. I paused to get everyone’s attention but she was so engrossed in what she was doing she didn’t notice. I let the silence hang, which usually works and people look up sheepishly, but she still didn’t notice. Everyone in the course was now looking at her screen and we could all see she was applying for another job. Got through the course and reported her to her manager who fired her. She left the company a negative Facebook review naming me as a bully who harassed her because of her mental health.

#76

I worked on a cruise ship. One of the women that worked in the spa was having sex with one of the guys who worked on the bridge, and she got pregnant. The company told her she'd have to go home and come back after she'd had the baby. She got mad about this and decided to steal a bunch of spa products and pack them in her luggage to sell when she got home.

She was having a hard time fitting it all in her luggage, so she took all the products out of their boxes to make it easier to pack them. She then put the empty boxes into a *clear plastic garbage bag* which she left *out in the hallway she shared with the other spa workers* for the cleaners to take away.

One of the spa workers saw the garbage bag full of empty product boxes and told the spa manager. They had to let the woman try to get off the ship with the stuff because legal reasons, so the security manager told US Customs to make sure and check her luggage when she got off in port to go home.

Customs asked her to open the suitcase, and said, 'Whose stuff is this?' She said it was all hers, at which point the spa manager and security manager come out from behind the curtain and she was busted.

Customs gave her a choice between being prosecuted for theft or accepting a 10-year ban from the US. She took the ban.

#77

Employee said he was sick and then came to same restaurant for dinner as a customer.

#78

I was a manager at a fast food chain back in the day and we had a head office complaint that a guy on the first window had poked his head out of the window when a car pulled up and instead of taking their money he leaned into the car and took a toke on a fat spliff.

We laughed about it because it seemed entirely ridiculous but followed it up by watching the CCTV.

Our faces when we realised that it was another employees car that had been at the window and that was exactly what had happened were priceless.

Surprisingly he got fired and later went on to join the army.

#79

My husband worked at nightclub when we were in college.

The manager told all the staff that the price on the POS was wrong and mix drinks were £2 (rather than £1). At the end of each night she would cash up and pocket all the extra money. She did it for about a year.

#80

I managed a girl who was a loose cannon. She was an alcoholic who had multiple appointments every week. Psych, Physio, solicitors, all of it. She was constantly disappearing from work at random hours for like half a day and as her drinking intensified she would show up stinking of booze. I’m a former alcoholic and the same age so I tried my best with her. Anyway, she was on the long stretch towards getting performance managed but she sped it up herself.

We shared a building with the council and knew all of the staff, including the council rangers who patrol the streets/give tickets etc. One morning on her way to work she saw a street sign she wanted to take to give a friend (cannot tell you why). She pulled a screwdriver from her bag (why she had it, again, cannot say) and unscrewed it while standing on a milk crate in front of one of the rangers.

She brought it into the office, told everyone, asked another staff member to hide it for her in case ranger came looking then also put photos of it on Instagram with the office and company signage in the background. We had a meeting planned that day about her absenteeism and she told me because she thought it was a good laugh. Anyway, took a few days but she quit when HR started investigating.

#81

I worked an admin job and a new hire came in and we thought something was up with him as he was always spaced out but decided maybe he was just settling in.
One day he then called in sick but turned up 5 minutes later, had no recollection of our conversation, walked up the stairs to the office and walked straight into a wall. When he got to his desk he watched sport on his computer (which was facing the whole office). We asked him to highlight some lines on a page and then he coloured the whole page in.
We told our boss we thought he was on something and he thought we were exaggerating until he kept doing things like this and we had to let him go.
We later found out he was a drug dealer selling out of his bedroom.

#82

I used to work on a trading floor and one of my juniors brought me a client he'd discovered himself. After speaking with the guy I decided not to proceed because I didn't think he was eligible for the investment. A few days later, I got a call from the client asking if the money had gone through... turns out my junior had sold him on the deal himself and instead of giving him the company bank details for the transfer, he gave him his own instead. Needless to say the client wasn't too happy.

#83

Night shift at a packing line. We had two new temps and they were polar opposites. One super bubbly religious guy who was pretty emotional (cried during his favorite songs) the other guy was grunge, pretty cynical but a damned good worker. Well they both ended up working on adjacent lines and I was training them. Things were great till the bubbly guy decided it was his mission to befriend the grunge guy. Grunge dude wanted to be left alone so he could work but bubbly guy kept going to our team lead to tell her he couldn’t understand why grunge wouldn’t be his friend. My team lead comes down and tells them to play nice and be friends. (She was despised by most of our crew) she’s oblivious, I told her that bubbles needs to leave grunge alone but she wouldn’t have it. Grunge walked out. And bubbles cried for two nights straight then never came back.

#84

News story in NZ recently - guy posting on shoe/foot fetish sites (things like ejaculating in a co-worker’s shoes) etc identified as a shoe store employee. Had been doing this for a while, including targeting young female coworkers etc. So gross.

#85

One of my current coworkers told me this story the other day:

He used to be a manager at a fast food restaurant. He said that one night, after a busy rush, a woman called his store to complain that her fried food item had hair all over it. The manager denied this claim and ensured the lady that the food items had never been in contact with hair and would never have left the store in a dirty manner. He backed his store and employees all the way and insisted that the woman was mistaken.
Upon further investigation, one of the kitchen employees admitted that she had dropped a food item on the floor that night and didn’t want to risk having the customer wait an extra 5 minutes to make a new one.