We spend 8 if not more hours of the day at work and that’s without commuting, which is a notorious time-eater. That’s also a third of our day, and it takes up 5 days a week. That means that in the US, a full-time employee spends an average of 2,080 hours per year at the workplace.
That also means it gives us enough time to gather some great memories and valuable experiences, as well as moments we’d much rather forget. And this post is about the latter scenario.
“What is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever had to deal with at work?,” someone asked on Ask Reddit and the sea of responses started flowing in. With 5,936 upvotes and 3,844 comments, the stories range from pure entertainment to something you’d see in a horror movie.
#1
Worked in HR for a non profit that hired people who are legally blind. That was the mission. One day, two employees got into a fight. One was partially sighted and the other totally blind swinging his cane. I had four witnesses to the altercation. But they were all totally blind and thus, couldn’t tell me what happened.
#2
When I worked in the NHS, I had to take part in an investigation about a poo on the floor in a community hospital. A patient had missed the bog, so it sat steaming on the floor. The nurse said, too busy, can’t clean that up, get the cleaner. Cleaner said can’t touch that, it’s biological waste. Went back to nurse who said find a healthcare assistant. Healthcare assistant said can’t do it, haven’t been signed off on the infection control policy. Escalated to sister who said the student nurse should do it. Student nurse vomited and ran out crying. I was in the building at the time and heard all the fuss. Thought FFS and cleaned it up myself. Got reported as I was just a manager and not clinical.
Image source: Deleted, Clay Banks
#3
My boss was making fun of a lady for calling in sick to work. In front of god and everyone. The person that called in sick, has ovarian cancer. I quit ten seconds later.
Image source: GranularTerror, Jonathon Burton
#4
I was working as a sign language interpreter in a classroom setting and the teacher’s aide decided to stand between me and the student, blocking their view. I asked her to move and she told me that she was doing it on purpose so that the student didn’t rely on me too much.
Image source: laur3lwr3ath, Sage RossFollow
#5
A coworker attempted to prove that you couldn’t actually hurt yourself slipping on a banana peel by stepping on one. After which he slipped and hurt himself.
I refused to write it up as an incident. It was too stupid.
Image source: Terytha, @mike.shots
#6
A coworker screaming at me for leaving food to rot in the shared fridge. It was my first day there and I hadn’t even unpacked my belongings yet.
Image source: idontdigdinosaurs, Darrien Staton
#7
I work in film and television. We were shooting in a pretty upper-class neighborhood and the woman living beside the house we were filming in decided that she hasn’t been paid enough. So a few hours into our day she starts playing opera music as loud as she can with all her windows open. After an hour or 2 of that and no one batting an eye she ramps it up and starts mowing her lawn.
Once that was done she just sits right on her property line with the mower going full blast until a producer went iver and kindly asked her to stop. I’m not high enough in the production to know how much she was asking for but apparently it was too much because he walked away shaking his head and told the sound guys there was nothing he could do.
Once night rolled around my boss decided screw this lady legs annoy her right back, so we got some 10k lights which are pretty goddam bright, and pointed then directly into her windows. It was basically mid day sun light blasting into her house at 10pm. That’s when she called the police saying that we were filming illegally (it was a full union show with permits and on duty police were also there).
So a cop pulls up sees the other police already around for blocking traffic, goes to the craft table and gets a snack and leaves. We turned off the lights to her house around 1am because we’re not animals.
Image source: Bojangles9000, gcowie
#8
Used to work in a Muslim country where this one guy would almost force me to go pray with him. I told him as nicely as possible that I’m an atheist and don’t feel comfortable being asked to pray. He complained to HR and I received a warning saying I was hampering the work place sanctity by expressing “anti religious sentiment”.
Image source: eventhorizon2093, Faseeh Fawaz
#9
As a teenager while working as a cashier at a store, I was robbed at gunpoint by two dudes with guns pointed inches from my face. The store manager and someone from corporate showed up shortly after the police came to show support. Immediately after the police left, both the manager and corporate rep tried to convince me and my other coworkers that also had a gun in their faces to keep the store open for the remainder of the shift (~6 hours). I was literally still shaking from the ordeal, and somehow they felt that I was good to work until midnight as a teenager. I asked to go home, as did everyone else. Management decided to compensate us for the trauma by paying us for the remainder of our shifts but, said that we still had to work our next shifts and could not call out. It’s amazing how insensitive some people in management can be.
Image source: ItsEarthDay, Midnight Believer
#10
Mcdonald’s employee here – customers. never in my life have i dealt with anything worse than an after church crowd on a Sunday afternoon.
the amount of straight up b******t that comes with working in fast food is absolutely not worth the pay and i will fist fight anyone that would like to argue we’re paid enough to put up with your s**t.
Image source: rainbow-nymph, Visual Karsa
#11
That would have to be the time I asked for time off on a Friday to go to my wife’s grandmother’s funeral. I knew we were in a big deadline crunch, but my wife was really broke up by the loss, and I felt I needed to be there for her.
I had been averaging over 50 hrs/week at this firm (salaried, so no overtime), with many weekends and holidays spent in the office, so I really didn’t feel I was asking for the moon, but I still felt bad leaving the team in the lurch.
Anyway, I realize that one task still had to be done Friday morning, and I was really the only person who could do it, so I asked my wife if it was OK that I ran into the office for a couple of hours in the AM to get it done. She was fine with it.
So I run in, and there I am, sitting at my computer, EARLY, on the day I asked to have off, wearing my funeral suit, and my boss sees me. So he sidles up and says, sarcastically, “So, I guess they cancelled that funeral, huh?”
F**k that guy.
#12
One time while working front desk at a gym, a woman complained that there were too many geese outside and they should’ve flown south by then and we needed to do something about it.
Image source: Wisterialaneresident, Steven LilleyFollow
#13
Kind of weird – but here I go. I work in politics and part of my job was reporting to my board the status of a various advocacy groups. Like what issues are they working and who funds them. With one group a major donor was George Soros. I put him on the list with all the other major donors for a power point presentation. A staff member freaks out and says I’m anti-Semitic because I listed Soros. I’m very confused because I thought the factually incorrect meme was that he was a Nazi (he clearly was not). Anyhow – HR gets involved and I have to apologize… me being of a family who was Jewish and literally chased out of Germany in the 1800s.
From then on if Soros was a donor I just put “major donor”. A board member asks who it is. And I refuse to answer. Staff member figures it out and accuses me again for being anti- Semitic for leaving him off.
Nobody would stick up for me, because they were terrified of her, so I took a buyout and got another job
Image source: DKmann, bruce mars
#14
Oh boy, story time. I Work in a fairly large factory, we had one employee who was in his late 30s who had apparently never been taught/learned how to use a urinal before. We received a few complaints from different people that it was uncomfortable in there at times. He would go in and drop his pants and undies to his ankles, pull his shirt up under his chin like a toddler and hands on hips just p**s away into the urinal. In all his years using a restroom with other guys he never noticed he was the only one getting almost buck a*s naked to take a p**s. It was a very awkward conversation to have with a grown man, thankfully he stopped doing it.
Image source: Eenvy, Ketut Subiyanto
#15
A co-worker took a work truck “hostage” until my boss paid him the 100 dollars that he was owed from a pay-cheque. He then sent her a pin on google maps of where it was parked in the middle of downtown.
Image source: marzie00, Nur Alamin
#16
I got pulled aside and told by my boss, “It’s been noticed that you tend to only work your scheduled hours and no more”.
I told him that 1) when needed I often stayed back to finish a task and b) If they wanted me there for more hours, I’d need to be paid for those hours!
He let me go and I heard no more about it. I’ve done enough unpaid overtime in my life, no more.
Image source: BuzzVibes, Andrew Neel
#17
My boss made us play a game to keep moral up: There were several rules like calling each other certain nicknames or you could challenge someone to “rock,paper, scissors”. If you break a rule or loose in “rock,paper, scissors”, you needed to do 10 pushups. It was all in good fun, or so I thought. On afternoon I didn’t feel like doing pushups, and my colleagues we’re kinda teasing me about it, but again all in good fun. Turns out, my boss didn’t like my refusal at all and fired me the next day. This was as a work and traveller in NZ, so not to horrible, although it still bugs me that I got fired because I refused to play a silly game lol.
TLDR: Got fired because I refused to play a silly game which had nothing to do with my job
Image source: R3v0lu710n123, Tim Cigelske
#18
I’m a nanny and I had one boss ask if I was interested in inducing lactation to nurse her child and the one on the way. She even gave a lactation consultant my number.
Another time when I was a teenage babysitter, one parent literally gave me a spanking. Now I was young, 14. But that was insane.
Image source: cleaning-meaning, Alexey Shikov
#19
My wife had a miscarriage when I was at work. I left to take her to the hospital and support her. The next day when I went to work I got written up for leaving.
Image source: grynch43, Stephen Andrews
#20
Call center setting. Someone came to me to complain that there was an inordinate amount of pubic hair on the flat top of the urinal in the men’s room. Went to check and there were a remarkable amount of pubes there. Nasty. And clearly placed there by someone on purpose.
Cleaned them off with a paper towel, washed hands vigorously, and continued on with my day.
A couple hours later, I’m told the pubes have returned. Not quite as much as the first time, but still too much for the universe to have deposited there naturally.
I and another manager have our suspicions as to the culprit. We try to catch him, but can’t get more than circumstantial evidence. Not enough to confront.
After a third iteration, I’ve had enough. And so call all the male staff into the board room and address them as a group that the disgusting behavior had to stop immediately, because there would be grave consequences for whomever was caught doing it. I make sure to make eye contact with the main suspect multiple times during the meeting.
It never happens again.
Still boggles my mind that I had to deal with that crazy behavior, but you know…call centers.
Image source: Plumpuddingdog, Yan Krukov
#21
Intern once thought that he could fax a physical object to the receiving machine.
He was trying to fax his belt to a friend.
Kid was either an acting prodigy or maybe he needed a life jacket to eat soup. I guess I’ll never know.
Image source: FieldneyRodnerfield, Minorprophet
#22
English as a Second Language teacher here. A mom came very angry to my coordinator to complain about the grades I was giving to her daughter.
Thing is… I gave her an A+ because she was super responsible, got everything right in her monthly exam and participated a lot.
Apparently I was not doing an appropriate job because she expected her kid not to be an amazing student.
But she was. Easily within the top 5 I’ve ever had. Smh.
Image source: Pumachef93, Scott Graham
#23
I had someone throw a drink at me through the drive-thru window, which is an unwise thing to do to someone standing in front of a shelf of other drinks waiting for the customers behind you.
Close second: we had a guy that robbed our gas station for like a month with a finger gun before he finally got caught. Everyone knew it was a finger gun, but you have to comply when someone robs the store so…. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Image source: JAHNOOSKA, Ross Griff
#24
I install flooring and I was working on the third story of a house newly under construction. Long story short while I was installing some flooring in some upstairs bathrooms (third story) some framers were scheduled to repair the stairs from ground level to the second story. There was no communication and I went downstairs to grab something and to my surprise there was no downstairs! The framers had completely torn out the entire staircase without checking if anyone else was upstairs! I ended up trapped on the second story for a little while until someone brought a ladder lol.
Image source: SlimesterG, Chris RubberDragonFollow
#25
I worked as a PA for a billionaire and when covid hit she still wanted me to come in to work (aka her house) but didn’t like that I had to take transit, so she bought the her neighbours house so I wouldn’t track covid into the house. So for over a year I sat alone in a 6,000 square foot home next door to her.
Image source: KittyKenollie, Yasmina H
#26
I work in the funeral industry, so I get to deal with new ridiculous things on a near-daily basis. For example, today I had to look for a bullet in a body bag, because the list of personal effects of a deceased that we got from the medical examiner included ‘ammunition x 1.’ This person was going for cremation, and bullets in a crematorium are a no-no for obvious reasons.
So, we looked and looked, inside the body bag, inside the clothing, pockets, shoes, under the body; I even shone a flashlight into the hole that used to be the deceased’s face to see if it was maybe still in the head-ish area, but no. So after 20 minutes or so of thoroughly searching this poor dead person, I called the MEO to see if *they* had the bullet. The girl who answered the phone checks with the morgue and comes back to say “yep, it’s here, we always take and keep the bullets!” Great! Then *WHY* list it on the personal effects sheet with everything else that is still with the body??
My job is weird as hell, y’all.
Image source: SleepySpookySkeleton, Pavel Danilyuk
#27
I work at a library. The amount of people who don’t bring their library card with them and then refuse to give me ID so I can look up their account is baffling. I’m just trying to prove they are who they say they are.
Also a mentally ill lady once told me that Osama bin Laden wanted to steal shoes from the artist formerly known as Prince.
Image source: cihojuda, Van Tay Media
#28
I was a tour guide in Central America for a few years. Here is a short list:
– bribed border officials several times. I could actually claim those on my expense reports.
– Passenger took drugs from a stranger in El Salvador and apparently didn’t pay for them. Drug dealer came to the hotel late at night looking for money. I paid him to go away.
– had to get a passenger out of jail in Belize.
– had to evacuate our tour out of Honduras due to a coup and subsequent lockdown/curfew in 2009.
– had to evacuate a group out of Belize for a hurricane that never came.
– had to kick a guy off the tour in Guatemala for being an a*****e.
– whole tour group (including myself) got food poisoning in Ometepe Island, Nicaragua. Fun times.
– got food poisoning myself a separate time in Guatemala and had to explosively s**t on the side of the road in front of my tour group.
– got a panicked knock on my door to procure plan B (morning-after pill) for girls a few times. Not a result of my actions.
– had a couple decide they wanted a divorce halfway through the tour, but wanted to finish the tour. They had horrible fights in front of the tour group daily.
– passengers complained about seeing one of the other passengers with prostitutes that looked uncomfortably young.
– had a passenger that was mentally ill and started to self-harm during the trip
– I got deported from Canada
– a passenger went to a seedy strip club alone one night and woke up the next morning with pink eye.
– passenger was so scared of eating local food that she brought a small duffel bag of protein bars and only ate those. By day 4 she was complaining of stomach cramps and her farts were so bad that I thought they would strip the paint off the interior of the bus. I had to help her find a McDonalds or something so that she would eat actual food.
– I’ve been to countless world wonders and UNESCO world heritage sites hungover or still drunk from the night before.
– Passengers hooked up with other passengers. Passengers hooked up with other passenger’s friends. Passengers hooked up with locals. Passengers hooked up with way too many locals. Passengers hooked up with other random travelers and invited them to follow our tour group for a week. Passengers hooked up with tour guides. Tour guides hooked up with other tour guides. Passengers hooked up with the local white water rafting guides. Tour guides hooked up with locals… You get the picture.
– much much more. If you have questions or want more stories, fire away!
Edit: Wow. People seem most interested in my diarrhea and getting deported. I’ve expanded on those stories in comments below.
Image source: El_mochilero, Bernie Almanzar
#29
My boss invited us to her bachelorette party. Work is kind of her whole life so she doesn’t have friends outside our company. The invitation asked us to bring a pair of “sexy panties” for her as well as a “naughty toy” for her and her soon-to-be husband to use on the honeymoon. Btw I am 22 and my boss is 50. She’s older than my own mother.
Image source: TEMNEET, Emily May
#30
A lady getting mad because the breading on our CHICKEN nuggets wasn’t vegan
Image source: Z3ROGR4V1TY, Andrea Piacquadio
#31
I work in influencer marketing and we hired an Instagram influencer to work on a yogurt brand campaign. As part of the activation we also sent a tie-dye kit and branded swag for them to make tie-dye shirts, hats, etc, with their friends or family. One of the influencers pulled the tie-dye ink out of the t-shirt kit and used it to tie-dye her yogurt bowl, took a video of herself eating it, then shared the video with her followers who ultimately alerted her that you can’t eat tie-dye ink. This was, of course, our fault (the agency) for not being more clear that the tie-dye kit was not edible.
TL;DR hired someone who ate paint
Image source: nanrosenthal, Ivan Samkov
#32
Worked at a grocery store. Customers dog takes a s**t at the front of the store by the registers. He stands there while I’m cleaning it, and the dog takes a second s**t as I’m cleaning the first. As I’m cleaning the second s**t, the dog then pukes. As I’m cleaning that, the owner pats the dog on the head saying “good boy.” He was trespassed after so at least there’s that
Image source: KiteTenjo, Gene Chan
#33
I tattooed a cartoon character (the image my client picked out) and then they complained because it was “too cartoony”
Image source: AnyoneButMee, Collins Lesulie
#34
I worked in returns at IKEA and had a customer complain that they accidentally ripped the instruction manual in half for the furniture piece they were assembling when they were cutting open the box and couldn’t finish assembling it.
I politely informed them that all our instruction manuals were available online in pdf form, but this just made her mad and she wanted to speak to the manager. Manager gave her a few $5 gift cards just to get her off my back but I will always find it so funny that this lady thinks accidentally cutting in half an instruction manual (she had both halves too so she could have just easily put them together to read the instructions) inhibited her from assembling furniture.
Image source: carissadraws, Rod Herrea
#35
A group of four grown men sneaking into the fitting room to smoke a joint. This would already be really, really dumb except the store they did it at was…Justice. For non-Americans and those outside the demographic, Justice was a clothing store for teen (or 8-12 year old) girls. They didn’t sell anything for men at all and it was literally impossible for them to blend in. Moreover, the tops of their heads were visible over the child-sized stall curtains. We called security, they got escorted out, and we had to close to air out the windowless store. I have no idea how they thought this was going to play out.
Image source: undeadgorgeous, Nikola Đuza
#36
I had to fix my boss’s company issued laptop and found a ton of farm animal and granny p*rn links stored on it. My boss was a Mormon woman in her 50s.
Image source: Goldensunshine7, Andrea Piacquadio
#37
I was serving at Cracker Barrel and a woman came up to me saying her son thought I was Shaggy from Scooby Doo and practically begged me to come to their table to talk to him. I gave them the laziest attempt at a Shaggy impression.
Image source: andyduphresne92, Lubbafrommariogalaxy
#38
One time my boss saved a hurt goose and put it in a box and made me take it to an animal hospital. Driving down the highway the goose started flapping and got out of the box. I didn’t know what to do and I was scared to grab the goose so I drove the whole way there with a goose riding passenger
Image source: k923f, Andrea Rodriguez
#39
I worked at Uncle Buck’s in a Bass Pro. For those of you that don’t know, it’s a bowling alley/restaurant. One night a group of people come in to celebrate their friends 27th birthday. After another host and I set them up at a lane, the manager comes over to tell us that they are getting a warning because she caught a few of them on camera pissing on the side of the building before they came in. And that’s not even the worst of it.
Some time later I receive a call at the front desk from the police saying that they were outside would like to speak to the manager. Turns out the manager caught the party doing coke in the bathroom. A few people in the party were detained and 1 guy tried to fight a cop. The rest that were left alone started raging. They started screaming slurs, smashed glasses and plates, stuck ketchup in the bowling balls and even tried to grab me over the counter. It’s the only time I ever felt unsafe at work.
Image source: Nocte-Nils, Ella Christenson
#40
As a concierge in a luxury hotel in Europe, I have seen all kinds of ridiculousness.
The most harmless was a woman who had a tantrum because we couldn’t spontaneously organise a Maybach transfer and she had no idea how taxis or Uber worked, which really boggled my mind.
One guest called her assistant in Austria, who then called us at the concierge only to ask how far away a store was from her current location. It was 7 mins and she could have just googled it.
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