tell us some weird work stories

susiestar

Roll With It
I worked at a bank and a secretary in the next department asked me how to find a program file, what to look for if it didn't run. I told her that she probably needed to look for the .exe file. I didn't know her boss had removed solitaire from her system because she was spending up to 30 hours a week playing it and not working (her department was one of the busiest in the bank and she was notorious for putting big $$ clients on hold until they hung up). She went into her system files and found solitaire and reinstated it, then told her boss that I did it. Her boss told my boss that I did it for her and that I knew that they took it off of her system!!! I told my boss that I knew NOTHING about solitaire being gone! That she told me she lost a program she needed to run a client file and wanted to know how to find it and make it run and that tech services could not get there before her boss needed the file. I told her only to look for the the .exe file. I did not even touch her computer.

Luckily my boss trusted me and no one trusted a word out of her mouth, so I was believed.

Working on that floor was so strange. The VP in charge of the biggest department was the biggest jerk. He had some serious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) issues. His secretary had to go and highlight his stocks in the paper each mornings because it took to long for him to find them on his own. He could spend an hour playing office putting but not 60 seconds looking for 4 stocks in the paper. There were 6 departments on the floor and no one could make microwave popcorn because this one man couldn't stand the smell of it. One VP went ahead and made a bag of popcorn one time and the screaming went on for three hours - the head VP had the man fired for making a bag of popcorn. It was the silliest thing any of us ever heard of. The other VP turned around and sued for several million dollars and won, which burned the owner of the bank bigtime, and cost the VP that hated popcorn his bonus for a quarter. Many of us little people who were not directly impacted thought it was all truly funny.

My boss was in a unique position. We controlled appraisals for the loans that the powerful VPs did. If we didn't approve the numbers for what they wanted, they couldn't do their deals, and my boss couldn't be pushed or bribed. His wife was related to owner of the bank and he was given a lot of leeway and if he said a deal wasn't worth the amount the VPs wanted to loan on it, they VPs could scream all they wanted, the bank owner would back my boss. So my boss never once screamed. He just smiled and sat back and said no. It could be a lot of fun to watch because he was often the only person in town who said no to some of these very powerful bankers.

Some of them tried to make me influence my boss or they tried to be mean to me if my boss wasn't doing what they wanted. My boss never once put up with that. He told me to never be rude but to never put up with it. If they got really mean, to tell him, but to feel free to politely tell them to put them in their places. One VP was female and for some reason thought she could use me to run her errands. I have no idea why she thought I would do her dry cleaning and deal with her mutt, but I didn't work for her. She had her own very good secretary who didn't do those things. Sure, I wasn't busy at all, but that didn't mean I did errands for anyone other than my own bosses and only those errands if I was in the mood. Which I never was. Unless they paid extra. So the day she came and dumped four loads of laundry in my office and ordered me to take them to a dry cleaners ten blocks away like I was her slave, well, it didn't go over well. I called her by her first name (which she hadn't invited me to use) and told her that I only did laundry for my children. SInce I hadn't given birth to her, she could schlep her clothing back to wherever it came from before I put it in a trash can before my bosses saw it cluttering up my office. Thanks, sweetie. The sweetie was because she called me 'honey pie' as she ordered me to take it to the dry cleaners.

We had a dry cleaner who would pick up and drop off in the office, but they were expensive and seh was the cheapest woman known to the office. The gifts she gave to her secretary for holidays were always regifted from years past and always out of date. The one year her secretary ate one of the gift baskets, the poor woman spent Christmas in the hospital with food poisoning!
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
My clerk reported that I had said, in a loud, rude, voice, "FINALLY my clerk gets to work!"
Lil. I know you are a nice person. I had to stop reading your post, it was so painful for me to read. It triggered the memory of this incident, which I will soon describe.

But first I have to set the stage: You know how snow dogs differ from other dogs? I read a book once that said "regular" dogs descended from jackals and the northern breeds from wolves, causing the difference in personality, the gist of which is the jackals have a hierarchal social structure, the wolves, fraternal.. True or not, it stuck with me.

I am a snow dog. I can seem meek, sweet, a follower or passive. But at heart I am fearless, egalitarian and independent. I am at heart a loner. I do not do "authority" well in that I can be hard to control. I do not cause problems but I will not do what I will not do.
I'm a NICE person.
Like, Lil, I am a nice person. Culturally, I am touchy feely, which means I might touch your arm when I talk to you very occasionally.

Well in one prison years ago, the boss was very mad at me, for being a Husky or Samoyed. A clerk colluded with him to accuse me of "violence in the workplace" accusing me of "grabbing" her arm and trying to hurt her. The boss used this accusation to try to put me on defensive. All of my colleagues knew what was happening, but they were afraid to support me. Nothing came of it, but it did prompt me to transfer, which was a good thing. I did not get any paper in my file, thankfully.

One by one, the other coworkers were set up too. Eventually the boss (it took maybe 10 or 15 years more) was fired for stealing millions of dollars from the State. Actually, in some ways this was a good job. To cover his own corruption the boss let all of us work only 5 or 6 hours a day in a 10 hour shift (we had contracts that allowed us to leave when work was done.)

There are so many stories I have, from work.
clerk that was fired for dumping her work in the confidential shred bin instead of doing it!
Good idea!!
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Well in one prison years ago, the boss was very mad at me, for being a Husky or Samoyed. A clerk colluded with him to accuse me of "violence in the workplace" accusing me of "grabbing" her arm and trying to hurt her. The boss used this accusation to try to put me on defensive. All of my colleagues knew what was happening, but they were afraid to support me. Nothing came of it, but it did prompt me to transfer, which was a good thing. I did not get any paper in my file, thankfully.

One by one, the other coworkers were set up too. Eventually the boss (it took maybe 10 or 15 years more) was fired for stealing millions of dollars from the State. Actually, in some ways this was a good job. To cover his own corruption the boss let all of us work only 5 or 6 hours a day in a 10 hour shift (we had contracts that allowed us to leave when work was done.)

:holymoly:

Speechless. Just can't even imagine.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
This one also involves food.

Many years ago, when husband was in advanced training in the Army, I decided to send him a "care package": a dried Kosher Romanian Sausage (neither of us are/were at all Romanian).

This delicacy is about half beef and half garlic and black pepper. I carefully wrapped it for shipping with consideration of that fact. I also labeled the package on the outside so husband knew to unwrap it under "controlled" circumstances due to the garlic situation.

What neither husband, nor I knew was that all parcels had to be opened in the 1st Sgt's office.

husband is going, "Uh, Top, you REALLY don't want me to open this in here..." Long story short, he was ordered to open the package of very potent Romanian sausage in a small, windowless, un-airconditioned office on a very hot day.

That was immediately followed by gagging and choking and ' PRIVATE! GET THAT THE @#$%$#! OUT OF HERE!!!

husband said the office still reeked of garlic the next day. (and the sausage was delicious)

We had issues with a food thief at one place I worked. I dealt with it by bringing in leftover stir fried beef and veggies for lunch... that was doused in nuoc mam (fermented fish sauce. definitely an acquired taste). That cured the food thief, but I also had to deodorize the refrigerator.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
So... I wanted to respond the other day but I was swamped.

I have this coworker... Who has major hygiene issues. MAJOR. He retired from the Air Force, so it's not like he's incapable.

Seriously thick greasy nasty stuff on his computer equipment. He has major sinus issues and has handed me paperwork with snot on it. Constantly sniffing and snorting. He smokes like a chimney - I'd say 2 packs a day AT WORK, who knows at home. So, yes, he smells bad, too. Since I'm the computer guru around here, I've had to lay hands on his keyboard - scrub AND sanitizer. Had to use his phone once, when I saw how gross it was - I used hand sanitizer on my ear and face.

It's a running joke, unfortunately. EVERYONE knows about it. Management (3 contracts now) does NOTHING.

This guy also does very little actual work and picks and chooses what he DOES do.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Yup, Annie. And I'll bet if your co-worker were female, he'd have been out of there ages ago.

I did a short stint of doing deskside support and there is a very high gross-out factor involved in the work, up to and including serious bodily fluids.

(The food I can deal with) I have the sinus issues and in addition, bladder issues, but one can still be hygenic.

Food wise, one of my favorite miracle keyboard fixes was to stand the keyboard up on edge (before laptops were the big thing), tilt it towards me, and rap it on the desk a couple of times. You got a pile of snack crumbs, a chance to chew out a client about eating at their desk, and a newly functional keyboard.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
On of my favorite work stories was on me. I was a newbie tech support person and I got a call from an end user who informed me that he had a dead mouse.

I went off into mouse troubleshooting mode, going through all the steps while the user got more and more frantic. Finally I asked him to turn the mouse over, remove the battery cover and batteries, and I'd call deskside to bring up and install a new pair of batteries.

At this point he said, "There is NO battery cover! Just fur and little dead feet! I sort of of half swallowed my tongue and choked out..."Sorry sir. I'll call housekeeping for you."
 

Jabberwockey

Well-Known Member
You got a pile of snack crumbs, a chance to chew out a client about eating at their desk, and a newly functional keyboard.

Not true. I eat at my desk all the time and push my keyboard out of the way and STILL get all that crap in it. I turn it upside down and shake it out myself from time to time.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
LOL keyboards...

Mine constantly gets stuff in it, which is one of the reasons I keep canned air available. And hidden from others. But then, I work in a warehouse.

About 14 years ago, I got a call from another building that was part of my computer area. One of the workers could not get his Enter key to work. I dutifully headed over with a brand-spanking-new keyboard.

I tried his, and the Enter key was fickle, but worked. So I popped the key off to see if I could clean it. There was a paperclip wedged under it.

...

I still call Bill "paperclip boy" occasionally.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
I found out that canned air was "huffable" shortly after moving up north. I went to the nearest Office Whosis store to pick some up as I had a really hairy keyboard (shedding German Shepherd).

I go to the appropriate aisles and can't find the stuff anywhere. I finally ask a clerk. He takes me to a locked cabinet, gets out the requested two-pack, walks me to register, where I am carded, and allowed to purchase my canned air.

All I was thinking, after this was exlained to me was, "Frozen lungs! What fun!"
 

Jabberwockey

Well-Known Member
I knew it was but didn't really have experience dealing with people who did it till our son's friend J came to stay with us. I had two cans in the house at the time. After he'd been there a few weeks I needed one. When I couldn't find it I questioned our son and was told that J had used it on his guitar or amplifier or some stupid crap like that. Don't know if our son huffed any or not but don't believe for a second that J actually used it for its intended purpose. Pissed me off because that stuff isn't cheap!
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
It is very expensive. I need to pick up a couple of cans to clean electronics and various nooks and crannies. I'm curious as to whether I'll get carded down here or not.

Up North, I also got carded buying cold medicine containing DXM (had a horrible cough) and was only allowed to buy one bottle at a time. I knew that one could "trip" from high doses of DXM and apparently very intensely if one took enough of the stuff, but here's this 53 yr old woman mostly in pajamas in Walgreen's a 8 at night hacking and wheezing...give me my cough syrup!!
 

susiestar

Roll With It
I hate how the stupid idiots make it so hard for those of us who have not ever abused things to do what we need to do!! I sure won't get between you and your cough medicine when you are sick, Kat!

As a kid I was working in a combined grocery store and used bookstore. A little mom and pop place that was barely hanging on really. I was the only non family employee. All the area businesses adopted me as many of the customers did. One of my favorite customers was a very large man who worked in outreach for the Salvation Army. He was terribly sweet and treated me like his little sister. I even traded recipes by mail with his mother. It wasn't romantic, he was just new to the town and I reminded him of his little sister, plus he had a girlfriend his own age.

One day he was in the back of the store maybe 25 feet from the counter and this strange man in a long dirty coat walks in. It was the middle of May and already hot so that was odd and made me uncomfortable. I fiddled with the radio as the guy in the coat started to talk and Roy came to see what was going on. The guy started to talk about something being hot - I wasn't sure what, and all of a sudden Roy wrapped his arms around him in a big bear hug. Roy was about a foot taller than this guy and a LOT heavier, so the guy didn't have a chance. Roy got him out of the store into the alley and apparently scared the daylights out of the guy. I never saw the guy in the coat again.

I learned that the guy was going to flash me at least, but Roy threatened him and scared him because he didn't want me to have to deal with the court system at only 15 on such a sordid type of case. He thought it would do more harm to me than it would do to the flasher guy. He did get the guy's name and address and talk to some of the cops he knew about hte guy to make sure they were aware of him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2 years later I got flashed again. I was taking a psychology class at the university and still working at the same store. It was right after we opened on a Saturday. I was an avid photographer and had my camera sitting right on the counter. A man came in wearing a trenchcoat and asked about early Playboy magazines, which I didn't know if we had or not, as I avoided that department. Then he stood back and opened his coat and showed me everything.

I took four frames of his entire body.

Then I told he had just made a HUGE mistake. My name was Susie and I was in his class on this date/time. My mother was professor X. We could either excuse me from classes tests and just give me an A without making me do another thing, or we could pick up the phone and call my parents and the cops and the dean and let everyone know everything. I got my A and never had to attend another one of his boring lectures or take another test of his. I'm not proud of this now. But I don't really think calling the cops would have added anything positive to my life, especially at the time. Even with pho

I don't think anyone had ever been so afraid of me before then in my life. I have no idea where I got the guts to do that, or even where I got the idea. But he was quite happy to give me the A. He offered me money but I didn't want his money, that just seemed nasty to me. I never told any adult about it until I was in my 30s. My mother nearly had a heart attack and my father wanted to go and murder him. Seriously murder him.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
:916wildone:That was some quick thinking, Susie. I would have been too stunned to pick up the camera.

We had some nudity issues at the lab, but they were internal. We had one woman who like to strip completely naked and waltz around the ladies' room. I have no idea why she felt the need to do this at work.

Then there was Robert. He was a sweet man, but I think he was on the autism spectrum. He loved to go out "running" at lunchtime, but it was really more of a speedwalk. One day he was caught "jogging" on the traintrack right in front of a slow moving train. He got really hot on his jaunts and would return to work and take one of the box fans into his cubicle. One day he decided he would cool off better if he weren't wearing any pants. The trouble was, that I had the cubicle next to him, and since I was checking his work, I often had to come around the partition to return it to him. The first couple of times I told him it was inappropriate (at least he was wearing his underwear). I knew better than to report it to the supervisor, because they didn't handle personnel issues well. Finally, after many times of being nice and getting nowhere, I yelled over the partition, "Robert! If I come around this wall one more time and find your pants down around your ankles, I'm filing a sexual harassment suit!"

That worked wonders for me, but ruined the men's room for every single guy on our floor. Robert decided to go to the men's room, strip naked, and take an entire sponge bath in the sink. After about a month, the men's room on our floor was his personal restroom.

The apple story is a current one. One of the kids that I work with has "issues." (his word) He cannot stand the number 10 (the number I don't like), apples or pencil points. Every time someone says the word "apple," he says "ewww." Every time someone says the word "ten or tin" he says, "eleven." Pencils pointing at him freak him out, and he demands that they be redirected. He often hides the pencils in the room in strange places. On the surface, this doesn't seem to be a big deal, but you would be surprised at how often apples and the number 10, much less pencils, crop up in a school setting. If there is a math test and apples are in a word problem, he will demand that we skip the question rather than hear me say the word "apple." Yesterday, he got freaked out, because one of the boys was holding an empty cupped hand in the air. The phobic child said he was holding an invisible apple.

We were talking about tenements in social studies. Every time the teacher said the word "tenement" he would say, "eleven." I told him that "elevenment" was too hard to say.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
What is it with people taking clothes off at work? That would freak me out!

I did have a huge problem with a supervisor they hired at the bank who brought in her favorite employee. If the employee had been halfway good at her job or halfway nice it would have been fine. We were prepared to like both of these people, or to try to like them. They came in prepared to mess with us. At the time I was dealing with needing and then going through my first spinal fusion, so I was in a lot of pain. One day I was in the ladies room and I heard this supervisor and this other employee, both female, in the handicapped stall, having sex. VERY LOUDLY. It was the middle of the work day. I coughed and flushed the toilet and they giggled so they clearly knew someone was there, but they didn't care.

They were gone for an hour. The whole department, except for that one employee, was written up by that supervisor for taking too many bathroom breaks and taking too long in the bathroom on bathroom breaks the next day.

I had zero clue what to do about that! The VP in charge of our department came and asked each of us if we knew why we were written up for bathroom breaks. He was smart enough to get each of us alone, so I told him I heard 2 women having sex in the bathroom at this time on this date. I didn't know the hallways were videotaped for security. The rest of the floor wasn't, but the hallways were and the restrooms were in the hallways. He was the only one with access to the security and the supervisor didn't know it was monitored. She was on probation as a new employee and she was told she was allowed one more mess up of any kind in the next two years or she was fired.

She got fired less than 2 months later for being rude on the phone. This woman had NO manners unless she thought you were important. She thought that important people never answered their own phones, so she was rude to someone. That person turned out to be the nicest company president you could ever meet, and he called our boss's boss and said that she was the rudest person he had ever spoken to and he didn't want her to ever work with anyone from his company ever again. She and her pet employee were both gone in an hour. Her pet employee got to leave with her because she started screaming and crying when the supervisor got fired, you just don't do that in a bank! But it was funny to watch.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
I took four frames of his entire body.

This was, by far, the most awesome blackmail confession I've ever read. Kudos. :roflmao: Seriously, you were on the ball in college!

What is it with people taking clothes off at work? That would freak me out!

I'm quite fortunate in that we all have private offices, with doors that lock. I try to be quick, but have been topless a few times when people knock, changing clothes after a workout. I'm NOT going to a public bathroom when I have a whole office all to myself. just have to remember to close the blinds.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
It's tough to imagine two women having sex in a public bathroom. :itching:

Robert (the pants dropper) also loved rock music, WWII (the big one!), spiders and astronomy. I loved doing a really boring job of planting peanuts with him. I could get him yakking about one of his favorite subjects and learn a lot. The WWII interest got him into trouble one day. We worked in a secure building where police officers would drop off evidence. One day I had to help an officer bring in a giant bloody rock on a cart.

Robert was often upset and would dash out of the building in order to calm himself down. Most days his calming involved him playing air guitar and singing loudly and horribly off-key to Led Zeppelin songs. That put him into the quirky but harmless category. On bad days, he would run through the hallways shooting imaginary machine guns and shouting about Hitler.

On one of the bad days, Robert blasted into the lobby, fired his invisible machine guns and shoutedabout whatever was troubling him. An officer happened to be standing in the lobby at the time, but luckily I was there, too. I watched the officer reach for his gun. I had to quickly explain that what was happening was not a real threat.

Another day a group of us were headed out to lunch and there lying on the front sidewalk was a 10 foot tall marijuana plant. We didn't know what to do. We thought a police officer must have dropped it, but we were all afraid to touch it. After much discussion, we decided to send one person inside to announce that an officer had dropped "some large evidence" outside. The rest of us stood around it and guarded it until the officer returned.
 
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