tell us some weird work stories

susiestar

Roll With It
Um, Lil, I was still in high school. In my high school you could take college classes at the local university. I only needed an english credit and a history credit to graduate, so I took college classes on the school district's dime. My mom was a prof and I grew up as a professor's brat, so I knew this guy would be roasted in oil for what he had done. I went everywhere with a camera at that time. I had blackmail pictures of ALL of the stuck up witches and the bullies at my school. None of my teachers could ever figure out why they never ever messed with me or my friends. It was because my daddy taught me to get even. First. I knew who got up to what, where and when. No one ever noticed me or my camera - they made jokes about how no one noticed me. So I took pictures when they didn't notice me. If they tried to mess with me, they got one warning, one.

Then Mommy and Daddy got photos, along with whatever group would mess up their futures the worst - their church group seeing them smoking and sleeping with two boys at one time or photos of them shoplifting sent to the local cops and the Rotary Club that was giving them a scholarship, you get the idea. And yes, I did those things to people. Some of those people don't even realize that I am the one who did that to them, they just know that someone sent photos of their misdeeds after I warned them. But I did get left alone. I did get credit for enough from enough people that even at my fifteenth reunion I had the rep as the One You Just Didn't Mess With. I heard about it from someone else as I don't do reunions. I live in this town, I don't need them.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
I did send one kid's mom a gift subscription to Playgirl from her loving son. He just really wouldn't stop messing with me. She was a born again Christian with zero tolerance for pornography and he had a major love of pornography. I knew she would believe he sent it. He missed a week of school because she beat the heck out of him. She was a good foot and a half smaller and a hundred pounds lighter than he was too. He knew I sent it but never could prove it. I gave him that innocent "who me" look like he was nuts and went about my life. Every couple of years he tries to get me to admit to it, like I am that stupid. We both know I did it. Now that he has teenagers we laugh about it and he admits he had it coming, but I still admit nothing to his face.

Yes, I still am that mean if you make me that mad. But you have to work really really really hard to get there.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
I'm thinking Susie needs to write a movie script. :bravo:

You guys were talking about lunch thieves. We didn't have anyone quite that brazen, but I did have a coworker who liked to take candy off my desk. I really didn't care that he had some, but he never asked first. One day I added some candy to the mix that I purchased especially for him at a joke shop. It would turn your mouth entirely blue. He popped one into his mouth and left the lab to go to a meeting with the higher ups.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Lil, I was still in high school.

Okay...That ups the creepy factor quite a bit.

Mommy and Daddy got photos, along with whatever group would mess up their futures the worst - their church group seeing them smoking and sleeping with two boys at one time or photos of them shoplifting sent to the local cops and the Rotary Club that was giving them a scholarship, you get the idea. And yes, I did those things to people.

:bow: You are my hero.

I'm thinking Susie needs to write a movie script.

My thoughts exactly. I was reading that post thinking, "This would be an awesome movie plot!"
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Oh, y'all have NO clue. I am a rank amateur compared to the stuff my father used to do. He was always quietly complaining to me that I let people run all over me.

We never let my mother know about any of this until WAY past the statute of limitation though. Her sensibilities were just a little off. She felt bad for the other person sometimes.

I remember being about 14 and walking down my dad's hometown and seeing this grown man run out in traffic to get across the street to get away from us. I asked my dad what it was all about. The man and 3 of his sportsball playing buddies beat my dad up one day just for fun (my dad or one of his cousins probably mouthed off - to be fair, they really all do look alike). My dad waited about two weeks until they thought they got away with it and then he went after them. One he got coming around a corner with a 2x4. He dropped a brick on another one. I forget what he did to the third. The 4th was the guy who crossed the street some 40 years later. He got the worst of it.

He was still waiting.

But you can't do that stuff now without going to jail.

Though one of my high school classmates stalked a girl we went to school with. She dated him for a short period of time. Several of us found out that he had been following her and taking photos of her, even in her own home. Her dad was a State Trooper and even his threats didn't keep her safe from this guy. The guy's mom was a psychiatrist who wrote textbooks (no wonder he was so messed up was our take on it) and any complaints were met with "well, he is on medication and has 'issues'. No, he had a Mommy who made excuses for him.

We turned the tables on him because she was a really sweet girl that everyone liked and she was flat out terrified. We set up cameras outside his bedroom and caught all sorts of freaky stuff going on, we filled his car with trash through the sunroof (more than once), we followed him all over town doing all sorts of really illegal stuff and got him caught time and time again until his parents finally ran out of money to pay the lawyers. It took us about six months on and off, but he ended up NOT going to hte fancy private college he planned on, or any college at all because he was stuck in the county and the local university wouldn't accept him because he had four restraining orders against him. He didn't know that you couldn't go to the state college if you had been in trouble as an adult and had ROs held by anyone going to the school. He stalked to members of local sororities and in our little town they are fairly powerful organizations especially if you are just a townie. And since he was not already in the greek system, and was 18 but still in high school due to his birth date, he was considered a townie regardless of how powerful his Mommy was.

As I said, mostly I mind my own, you have to really bring it to my attention/make me angry. This guy mostly caught my attention because he developed photos of the one girl in the darkroom at the high school and he left a bunch of photos of her that she clearly would NEVER have consented to having taken (through her bedroom window) in the dryer one day and two of us found them and he always sort of hit the Creep-O-Meter in the red zone. You know, that guy that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end but you don 't know why until you know why? Well, then when we knew why, we realized he was 18 and she wasn't even 14, her dad was a cop, and even that didn't bother this guy. So we bothered him. No one should scare a 14 year old girl like that, Know what I mean??
 

svengandhi

Well-Known Member
I have had the best laughs in awhile reading these stories.

At my first legal job, there was a secretary who was probably in her 50's (like I am now). She sat near the copy machine and every so often, she would jump up and scream: "The flashes! They are upon me!" run out of the room and then come back 10 minutes later with a new shirt on. I laughed - for 30 years - until it happened to me. At the same job, there was a sweet British secretary who always had a small shopping cart with her. One day, my friend was standing near it and it started meowing! The woman was bringing her cat to the office because she couldn't bear to leave it home alone. We liked her so we never told the boss. He found out when he discovered the cat sitting on his desk, eating the tuna that he used to scoop straight out of the can. He asked all of us whose cat it was and nobody confessed. Then the cat ran away. This was in 2 World Trade Center and we had to search most of the 100+ floors before we found it. The cat was adorable, the boss was not.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
svengandhi, my coworker calls them "power surges."

Here's a current weird work story. I am working with a child who is 13 but behaves more like a 3 year old. I worked in a preschool for 9 years, so I know I am accurate.

Let's call the boy Damian. I don't know what Damian's actual diagnosis is, but I know very well that he is not on the autism spectrum. He proudly announces that he has "issues." Oh, my, yes. He has many. I suspect ODD based on his behavior. He hates the number 10. Every time someone says, "ten" he says, "eleven." Most of the time this is just a low level annoyance. Sometimes it can be problematic. I was reading a math test to him and the word "attendance" showed up many times. Finally, I asked him if we should power through the problem or if he just wanted to answer it without thinking about it. We had another question concerning 10's placement that he also could not handle. I finally discovered that if I just pointed to the number 10 and didn't say the word that he could cope better.

He also hates apples. Anytime someone mentions the word "apple" he says, "ewww." You have no idea how many times apples appear in an ordinary school day.

And lastly there are the pencil points. He can't have any pencil pointing at him. If they are, it freaks him out and he can't concentrate. Similarly, he can have no one sitting behind him for the same reason.

Damian is also the most disgusting human I have ever met. Most of my day, I have to sit next to him. Anytime someone coughs or clears their throat, he acks like Bill the Cat. Lately, he has started spitting. Spitting outside. Spitting on the floor. Spitting into the trashcan. Finally, we had him spit into a tissues, but he did it so often that I was really getting grossed out. When he was wasn't spitting, he was blowing his nose loudly. By Friday afternoon, I had reached my limit. I had to move away from him just to maintain my sanity.

So, I came up with a terrible sentence that Damian would absolutely hate. No, I will not torture him with ever reading it to him, but my coworkers thought it was hilarious.

The attendance of the tenants from the tenement at the circus tent was ten fold better than ten years ago. Ten tenacious jugglers with tendrilous tentacles were intensely tending to juggling ten apples, albeit tentatively.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Jess works in a funeral home. She loves it. She works up front doing basic office work and handling families during visitations and occasionally standing by memorial books at funerals. Last weekend she was working and a young 20ish guy came in and just wanted to 'look around'. This isn't as unusual a request as you would think, apparently.

But this guy seemed sketchy in spite of his nice shirt and dress pants. He kept looking over his shoulder. Then she caught him trying to sneak back into the prep rooms where they actually embalm people! She was the only person there and he was not happy to be asked to leave. She told him that legally she was not allowed to let him back there, and if he went into the hallway she would be forced to call the police. He had to leave the premises immediately.

She was laughing about it because by the time he left he looked like he was going to pee his pants. She apparently convinced him it was a felony to go back there without permission. She is pretty sure it was a fraternity prank of some sort (probably right - it is about that time, fraternity pranks are a total PITA in this town.) and she decided to totally mess with his head so he would leave and she wouldn't have to deal with him again. She did leave a note for the person on the next shift just in case.

I think most people would just make them leave. Only one of my children would mess back with them. I am so proud.

Last night she had a visitation. The family of the older man had a 5 year old. He was sure the man was a vampire and was going to eat him. The man hated him. The boy set his christmas tree on fire because if it was pretty with lights, it would be prettier on fire. So the kid was positive that the man would come back as a vampire and eat him first. Jess thought this little boy was about the cutest thing ever. The boy had an older brother who kept teasing him. Jess finally pulled the boy aside and told him that the man would totally eat his brother first because his brother was not only closer to the man, but also a larger source of food. This completely made the little boy's night. And made the parents laugh like crazy.
 

1905

Well-Known Member
Here's a funny one about a substitute who came in for me. The lady was 20 minutes late for work, missing her (my) morning duty greeting buses, monitoring kids. She then took another 15 minutes to walk to my class, what was she doing? Then as we were about to get started working she made a huge display of her breakfast all over our back table, she had to do reading back there, not eat breakfast! Then, she realized she forgot her badge, at that point, oh well, she didn't need it-she's busy. But she ran out of the room and was gone for 20 more minutes, breakfast all over the table still. She came back, made a huge noise pouring ice and ginger ale into a big cup. Seriously, she then stood up and shouted she needed more ice and left the room again! She was wandering the halls when the vice principal ran into her and asked her what she was doing out of class. She said she was getting her tea. You can't just leave class to get tea, even though she told the other teacher about getting ice. Now reading is over, time for science she took out her book and began to read it at the back table! The other teacher in the room gave her instructions and she did them for a minute, then back to reading. Next math, the kids were doing line plots, she was given the manual to look over before her math group and said she understood it. BUT, she had the student's drawing rectangles. That is not line plots, a simple number line is all, so easy. Anyway she then left me a note that she didn't understand math and ran out of the room saying she was sick. She went to the nurse and said she had to go home. She left right then. Imagine!
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
Wow! She was the substitute from :censored2:. We have a sub with whom I have to work sometimes. She immediately hones in on the toughest kid in class and starts a fight. It is awkward, and the administrators are constantly running to her. Even she sounds better than the eating lady.
 

Nomad

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Funny and memorable work place story
One of my first jobs was a summer job working within a credit union of a large company.
I was about 16 or 17.
This was eons ago.
People had passport savings account booklets.
They would deduct money each week from their checks and I had to post it in their booklets.
There was a new, huge computer...that was sort of like a giant typewriter.
I placed this guy's book into the machine and promptly deposited 1 million dollars into his account.
Geez Louise...I almost had a heart attack.
For one thing, it was impossible to "erase" this from his book.
The owner of the Credit Union heard me carrying on trying to figure out how to fix it.
She was the coolest woman in the world.
This was at a time when there weren't too many women owners of financial institutions and not even that many managers.
She corrected the error and simply drew a line through it and made a new entry and made sure all the math was right and all the records reflected the correct deposit, etc.
I think about that woman and that event A LOT. It was a great time and a great memory.
 

KTMom91

Well-Known Member
Had an interesting week last week, all involving fourth graders. I was wearing a yellow T shirt and denim capris, and a boy told me I looked like a minion.

Six boys were working together on a project, and were sitting on the floor near the back of the room. Suddenly five of them leaped up and hurried into the center of the room. I asked them what was going on. The response? "He farted."

Somehow someone discovered a computer game where they test compatibility by entering names, and this provided great amusement. I finally had to shut it down by pointing out that none of them were going to be getting married in the fourth grade, so they really didn't need to be worrying about this.

And finally, one of the boys (isn't it always the boys?) found a little kids' book in Spanish about taking a bath. He was hysterical because it was "so inappropriate" for showing drawings of naked butts. I reminded him that everyone had a butt, and people do take baths and/or showers, and this was designed to show little kids how to bathe themselves.

Substitute teaching is always so interesting!
 
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