If you thought soap opera-worthy drama only happens during Thanksgiving or on TV, think again. Workplaces are usually festering with gossip, romances, and even affairs. There’s a reason why Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men, and even The Office are so popular. After all, we spend almost a third of our lifetimes at work, and it’s not all spent doing our jobs.
Recently, one netizen asked others to share the juiciest office drama stories from their workplaces. “What is the craziest office scandal that happened at your job?” u/Aarunascut wrote. And people had stories so juicy they could even make Hollywood screenwriters jealous. From illicit office affairs to CEOs embezzling funds and fleeing to Honduras, these employees have seen it all.
#1
We had a Marine steal and sell well north of 5 figures USD in gear from the Force Recon guys attached to us.
He was in advance with headquarters and had access to pretty much anything already staged.
Image source: graceandpurpose, PoppyPix / freepik (not the actual photo)
#2
CEO was caught hooking up with the head of accounting in his office on a weekend. CEO then took all the petty cash, drained whatever he could out of the business account, and both of them fled to Honduras. It was a pretty crazy exit as the company went down in flames less than a month later after all the hidden accounts that were in default and collections came to light. People took the computers, desks, chairs, tvs, etc. as payment for their missing paychecks upon their exit.
Image source: FartingGnome, freepik (not the actual photo)
#3
We had this tech named Helen, who shortly after she got hired became friends with one of our dispatchers, John who has been married for like 15 years.
John and Helen often had breakfast and lunch together. Helen kinda hated her husband (dude was a legit POS), and her friendship with John quickly turned to more. For months he started going on break for about half an hour or more or even just going home early right after she would clock out. Everyone knew what has happening.
Somehow her husband found out. He called our business line, and told whoever he spoke to that he was coming for John and was going to shoot his a*s.
We had a police presence around our complex and my boss went and got his handgun out of his car, and a a mass text was sent out to everyone warning the drivers to call the lab and make sure it was safe, and if they weren’t able to reach anyone then stay away until told otherwise.
Nothing ended up happening except for Helen putting in her two weeks. However, John still takes his breaks to go meet up with Helen to bone in one of their car before she goes into work, despite the death threat.
Image source: Bad-Selection, benzoix / freepik (not the actual photo)
#4
Our c suite offices had full frosted windows from the floor to the ceiling so you couldn’t see in at all unless the door was open. But they weren’t very sound proof.
We had a married couple that were both devs. Everything seemed fine and no boundaries were crossed in terms of pda.
The husband was out to lunch and the wife went into the office room. After a while the rest of the staff heard the sounds of spaghetti being stirred and daddy issues being made. By instinct everyone assumed it was the husband in there… Until he walked back in from lunch. The room fell silent. SILENT.
The husband charged in and all hell broke out with our cto and the husband beating each other and the wife running out looking exactly how you’d expect… Messed up hair, clothes and messed up makeup.
The next day the frosted windows were changed so you could always see people’s feet and legs.
Image source: sandman795, pressfoto / freepik (not the actual photo)
#5
I worked in a small suburban library; turns out the bookkeeper(who’d been there 27 years, her mom had been on the board)had been embezzling funds for years, to the tune of 44 grand. From a library. Nice. Always hated her.
Image source: MissSally300, ageing_better / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#6
I was working as a government contractor a couple years ago. We do shift work and work in teams of three everyday as a full-motion video analyst. One day our branch chief got a call from his boss and the man had a list of people that needed to come to his office immediately. Turns out the people on the list were participating in a private chatroom at work talking trash about their coworkers as well as inappropriate comments about some of their female coworkers. Needless to say they were escorted out of the building and we had to draw from other teams in order to get back to full man power. Watch what you say in work chatrooms. They are monitored and and archived.
Image source: Exotic-Kale-9940, yanalya / freepik (not the actual photo)
#7
Guy’s wife was going through long lingering death from cancer. Whole office is there for him for years while they are going through treatment, then hospice. She dies. First day back from the funeral he and THE HEAD OF HR announce they are engaged. Then they get married a few weeks later. People were flipping out, but nothing ever came of it. She knew all his insurance details about his wife’s care, about her life insurance, his retirement, that he owned his home and a rental house. The payoff was worth risking her job.
Image source: say_the_words, rawpixel.com / freepik (not the actual photo)
#8
Dudes were stealing scrap copper pipe. They were probably clearing $100, maybe $200 a month at most. Given their jobs they had to be making $75 to $80k as technicians. Got fired and the company pressed charges because they were hiding the copper pipe and sneaking (so they thought) back after hours to take it.
Image source: sneaky518, EyeEm / freepik (not the actual photo)
#9
Managers created a list of employees and ranked them all by performance, likeability, and salary and tallied up how much money they cost the company each year. They left this list in the board room and everyone saw it.
First they said it was fake (but it had their signatures) then they said it was just there so they could figure out where to improve. One day shortly after all this they finally gave up trying to cover it up and just started firing people who they deemed to have cost the company money. All of the managers kept their jobs and got bonuses.
Image source: anon, Phil Hearing / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#10
I worked at a major telecom company and our Regional President was fired after he got drunk at an off-site meeting and made a pass at our female CFO (who was admittedly very hot.) He did this in front of a hotel with SEVERAL subordinates watching. When she awkwardly but politely told him no, he berated her because apparently she’s slept with several higher ups and he thought she was passing on him because he was short.
He was flown out on a private jet 2 hours later and we never saw him again.
Image source: anon, Chris Leipelt / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#11
I don’t know all of the details, but I believe a person was fired for some kind of financial fraud. Before they left, they drilled holes through their computer’s hard drives.
Image source: CreativeGPX, achimprill / freepik (not the actual photo)
#12
On a team trip, a coworker attacked me and kissed me. I pushed her away and got away, went to our manager and told her what happened. She (manager) said I needed to “be careful” because pushing this too hard would be a career limiting move. She said she’d deal with it.
After a couple weeks of having to work with her every day, I went to HR and said “if I did this to her, I’d have been fired the next morning.” HR lady said “yep.” It took months to get rid of the woman who attacked me, all while I was kind of waiting to get fired to make it all go away.
Image source: BackItUpWithLinks, Drazen Zigic / freepik (not the actual photo)
#13
While in the army up at fort Lewis one of the brigade commanders I met was cool as the other side of the pillow, shook his hand and got a nice award from him. I transfer to fort Bragg in nc and come to find out a year later he holds his entire family at gun point and almost has a shootout with the Seattle police force. PTSD is no joke and don’t let anyone ever tell you different.
Image source: anon
#14
I work as a forensic expert/investigator Florence A police officer came to me and my colleague asking us to try to find any hair or fingerprints on his wife’s shirt. He suspected that she was cheating on him. But his wife was the lieutenant at the police station so we couldn’t even if we wanted to investigate the lieutenant she found out and fired him but as they were married they thought the dismissal was for revenge so they fired her too
Image source: Able-Juice3519, National Cancer Institute / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#15
Two employees were (obviously) having an affair. She came in one day with a huge ring ( obviously not a 3 carat diamond). They were planning divorces and going to get married. He goes on vacation with family, doesn’t show up on first day back to work, calls manager to say he moved, and would mail his badge back. She has a nervous breakdown and ended up divorced and alone.
Image source: VTtransplant, Ray Shrewsberry / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#16
One of the accounts at a company I was working at was suddenly fired and escorted off by security. He looked pissed and threatened to come back and shoot up the company. We had the door locked for weeks and we had to call in to have the secretary let us in. We found out he was watching porn on his work computer. HR had been screenshotting his computer every time he did. It went on for weeks before HR decided enough was enough. Anyway he couldn’t deny it. He even watched it on his work phone
Image source: Appropriate_Sky_6571
#17
Girl dated a guy (A) and got pregnant then broke up with him to date another co worker (B). 3 months postpartum and she’s pregnant again with the new guys (B) baby but he cheats on her with a co worker (new woman) and now she’s dating another co worker (C). Law enforcement if you couldn’t guess….
Image source: FaithlessnessWeak800, freestocks / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#18
The Executive Chairman punched another C-level. He then resigned / was asked to leave.
Image source: Miserygut, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#19
The cops (FBI?) raided corporate HQ. I worked out of a different office and I don’t recall how we found out about it. The company may have put out a very generic email that probably warned against conjecture. To my knowledge, that was the sole communication we ever received about it. Turns out the CFO had embezzled millions.
Image source: Obvious_Speakeasy
#20
A job I took moving cross country was chock full of crazy shenanigans.
A few that happened my first 6 months:
PM was fudging his expense reports, staying extra days in locations on his own but billing them as paid for by the company, or extending his rental car while home so he doesn’t have to drive his own. He got fired for failing to support me when we were down a dispatcher, but that report led to these findings.
An Account Manager, which was my position just in a different city, was using the corporate credit card to bribe contractors to take jobs. She’d pay for their groceries, gas, etc to make sure jobs got completed. We got our corporate credit cards taken away after that.
A number of law suits that varied from Harassment to Ill treatment of contractors, as well as wage theft caused the company to file for bankruptcy. IMO Karma came for them because it was bunch of arrogant a******s who thought their s**t didn’t stink, and treated everyone else accordingly.
Another good one was while I was working retail, I walked in on the Asst. Manager blowing the Store Manager. No one got fired, but the AM was mad the SM wouldn’t break up with his gf for her, and planned to say he s******y harassed her. I let him know it was coming and she ended up fired then.
Image source: leese216, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#21
The manager borrowed money from the “top” sales rep. To pay him back, put deals in his name that came in on their own.
Both got jail sentences, and the corruption found ended up shutting down the entire division.
And yes, you’ve heard of the company.
Image source: randomsryan, EyeEm / freepik (not the actual photo)
#22
During the annual company picnic, one of our notoriously tight-lipped accounting folks, let’s call her Jane, apparently decided it was time to really let her hair down. After a few too many glasses of wine, she found herself atop the karaoke stage belting out tunes like a contestant on a talent show.
But the real kicker? Jane wasn’t just singing—she was revealing office secrets between songs. Everything from the truth behind mysteriously disappearing stationery to who really broke the microwave in the break room. The crowd was in stitches, and cell phone videos of her performance went viral within the office.
By Monday, the videos had somehow reached the higher-ups. They weren’t too thrilled about the breach of office etiquette and confidentiality. Management called an emergency meeting, but instead of the expected reprimand, they announced a formal karaoke contest as a new annual team-building event, thanks to Jane’s unexpected display of spirit and surprisingly entertaining accusations.
Jane still works in accounting, but now she also heads the party planning committee – and the microwave has never been cleaner.
Image source: BrielleBailey61
#23
Manager Kim, very pretty but got the job because her location was closed down. One of our new hires took a liking to her, they were roughly the same age, so they hit it off. And he was a big flirt. Eventually, the tell tale signs of special treatment appeared, and we all knew that new hire (Jim) was sleeping with her. She also had a daughter, about 20 or 21, absolutely gorgeous.
Jim has a son, Jimmy, who worked there too. Jimmy actually had more seniority than Dad, and we knew Jimmy was sleeping with a supervisor (Amy). Amy was married, and Jim tried to explain the infidelity as Amy was a****d in her marriage. But some of us would go on trips together, and there were never any clues to that. Not to say that isn’t happening. But also, these stories are 10 years old, and Amy and her husband are still together.
Eventually Amy and Jimmy break it off, and Jimmy starts seeing the manager Kim’s daughter.
In the meantime, Kim and Jim are having issues. She starts flirting with another subordinate at the time. Jim finds out, there’s a fight, and he quits. But as part of the special treatment, some responsibilities were solely his job, and nobody else was legally trained or signed off to pick up the slack. Which led to a 💩 show right away.
A week later Kim was terminated. Jimmy and the daughter are married, and have a child, making both Kim and Jim grandparents that have to get along because of that. But otherwise they probably wouldn’t even see each other.
Image source: Throwaway_inSC_79
#24
The chief engineer is the husband of the program manager (his wife is his boss). This was allowed because one of them technically works as a contractor under a different company. Then the chief engineer got caught sleeping with another colleague. I wonder how his performance review went that quarter.
Image source: Dos-Commas
#25
We had the cops come by our office and hang out. Turns out an employee who was getting let go had made some threats about coming to the office and shooting it up. They tracked him down before he got anywhere close and the whole episode lasted about 10 minutes but it was a thing for those 10 minutes.
Image source: JJQuantum
#26
At my last job, the person who was head of the most… humanitarian division of the company was part of the varsity blues scandal.
Image source: champagneformyrealfr
#27
We worked for a Drilling Contractor and hired smaller companies to do the work for us. (Subcontractors)
Boss was getting money under the table from subcontractors we hired. He’d get up to 10% back from these $20,000 – $500,000 invoices we’d pay to subcontractors.
Boss created a fake company to skim left over money in our job budgets. Say we saved a little bit of money in materials? He would pay his fake company that remaining money.
Boss was still getting a Salary. His base was like $87,000 to begin with.
3 income routes and on top of that he was a terrible boss.
Image source: percent77
#28
The branch manager at a company I worked for in Wilkes-Barre, PA was a complete idiot, and had gone on vacation to Jamaica over Christmas break. When he came back, he showed us this picture of him rubbing sun screen on the back of some woman named Urkelgruh, who turned out to our big boss from corporate, Jane. Our warehouse guy Dave emailed the picture all over the company. Most of the warehouse guys who previously hated Mitchell gained a lot of respect for him that day, though.
Image source: potlizard, Glenn Carstens-Peters / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#29
World-renowned museum. Director is married to wife who is art historian, writer, and works at museum. Head curator is married and she and director start relationship while still married to spouses. Open secret. Always together at events, in press, ate lunch together. Got divorced from spouses and been happily married for 30 plus years.
Maybe NOT such a scandal after all. Hm.
Image source: Few_Carrot_3971
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