What's the most batshit...

[LittleRedRidingHoody]

On the back of the thread about executives not washing their mugs...

What is the craziest thing a superior has asked you to do at work? And did you do it?

I'll go first:

First retail job as a teen, got pulled aside by Store Manager and told HR were on-site to investigate bullying claims against him, and coached with what to say when they interviewed me 😂 He was definitely a bully, but I went along with it and hyped him up because I didn't want to lose my job!

Recently (last job, senior role) CFO - my boss - called en route to the office with the CEO, who was flying home that evening. CEO had asked CFO specifically to get him some Heinz ketchup to bring back with him, and he'd forgotten. Didn't trust the new EA to get it right 😂 Ended up ordering on Just Eat and expensing, most overpriced and insane purchase of my life. Tbh I didn't challenge because we had a good relationship, but it still seemed WILD.

The CEO of a design firm gave everyone a dressing down about the smell of baked beans coming from the kitchen and made everyone around the room agree with him one by one that it was disgusting. There must have been 20 people in the room. Stupid twat wish i'd told him to do one.

PR company. It was like AbFab but without the comedy. Too many stories, too awful. Organising the boss's offspring's wedding was just one in a long list. All put through the business and then we all got a bollocking about how we all needed to work harder as the business never turned profit.

Then there was the surprise VAT inspection, that was fun, especially having to retrieve items from boss's house and bring them into the office under the nose of the VAT inspector. Said items were not usually found in offices. We put one of the cut silk Chinese rugs in the design department. There may have been a spray glue incident.

I was at the departmental Xmas lunch with most of my colleagues. Professor Twat had not deigned to attend. I had stupidly given him my mobile number, and he phoned mid lunch to demand I FedEx the dissertations he was supposed to be marking to his house. Stupidly, as I was young, I told the HoD, who didn't really say anything, went back to the office, got it sorted, and returned to the restaurant. The HoD did buy me a brandy.

The previous incumbent of my job had been told to get his trousers dry cleaned as the BBC were coming to interview him and a car had splashed his trousers driving through a puddle so I got off relatively lightly

I did laugh when he was caught posting fake reviews of other people's books on Amazon though, while praising his own, and got into massive trouble, so karma did happen.

Not a request but the most batshit thing that’s happened to me at work was having a manager throw dead animals at me accidentally on two separate occasions.

Oddest requests I’ve had are helping another manager feed their lambs, being asked as an 18yo trainee to supervise another manager (not my own) because she couldn’t be left alone in the office and being asked to go through a pile of cv’s and look them up on facebook which would be unethical at the best if times imo but I didn’t even have anything to do with the recruitment process.

The serial shitter!

In the days of franking machines every Friday it was my job to take the franked post in a massive red bag to the post office a 19 min walk away. I then had to walk round the corner and wait for a car to come and exchange the cash my boss had given me for an envelope full of drugs. Never questioned it, never realised till a few years later what I was doing was a drug deal
Left with a good reference though haha

Never had to do anything really batshit. I did have a manager who asked me to buy him a Cadbury creme egg when I went out for coffee break. This was in the days when they tasted nice and were a decent size. I'm sure they are smaller now.

In a very professional workplace where I was a contractor I got hauled into meetings to discuss if my agency manager was married as she was having an affair with him. I was thinking well I dunno. You're looking at paperwork not ring fingers. He wasn't charismatic in the slightest.

Turns out he was married and his wife was pregnant first child. Then I had to listen to this cow going on about how she hoped the wife would lose the baby. I walked.

I had a Saturday job when I was at uni and the store manager asked me to buy a giant packet of condoms for him. I was young and shy and didn't say no

Sergeant told us to present our 'dirty' underwear (so he knew we had changed them following a PT session), punishment for those who didn't. Of course that day I forgot to pack a second pair and so had to sit through a presentation on the Geneva convention comando with my underwear in my trouser pocket ready for inspection. It was hard to concentrate on that presentation. Praying he didn't ask us to drop our trousers too !! 😭

Working at McDonald's - to do a trash walk without a high viz coat, at 11pm in winter, while it was absolutely chucking down and freezing outside.

Not only was it totally against policy, it was an utterly ridiculous thing to ask anyone to do. There was no reason why it couldn't have been left until morning.

When I worked at McDs they asked me to take orders outside at the drive through on Christmas eve in the snow, no coat allowed. After my shift I quit and never went back.

My story started unacceptably - but there was redemption!

I worked as a casual for a hard arse bank manager who scared the living poo out of me. (I was very young and had no interest in a career in finance.) She insisted that I drive her to a meeting and take rudimentary notes so that she could “get pissed with the boys” who predictably turned out to be sexist grubs. They were demeaning, humiliating and repulsive. My boss said nothing and her eyes glittered like those of a snake. I simply felt observed, and every cell in my being rebelled. I did as instructed, taking notes of the meeting - and every sexist thing said that day to have up my sleeve just in case, and before the meeting closed, I emailed a copy to myself. On the way back to the branch, she said “Right, park the car - we’re having lunch.” (She had worked on mine sites and must have had a teflon liver - that or she had been tipping her drinks out under the table. She wasn’t remotely pissed at all!!!.) She told me that she WAS onto me and my notes. She congratulated me on my smarts. She apologized for their behaviour and told me that I wasn’t going to have to deal with this myself. Requested a copy of the notes and told me to email a copy to keep for myself for safe keeping/peace of mind. Assured her that I had already done that and she laughed. She went NUCLEAR. She wrote her email at the table, letting every single man know that they seemed to have forgotten that their treatment of me that day was not only unacceptable, but illegal - and that they seem to have forgotten along the way that she too, was a woman, and that business partnerships were a two-way relationship. She sent copies of the notes I had taken with a promise to send copies to the CEOs and the media if formal apologies were not received within 24 hours. She asked for my permission to share this and allowed me to hit send myself. She and I had never had so many bunches of flowers or bottles of wine - and groveling cards (undoubtedly written by secretaries). This was about 1991 and we are still mates.

It's not that batshit, but I had a superior at work who was super-serious and quite aloof - one of those people who always has their shit together, never makes personal chit chat in the office, has all their pens perfectly lined up, performs scarily well at work, etc.

One time, he called me on a Friday evening to ask if I could chuck out the yogurt he'd accidentally left in his drawer, as he was leaving for a two-week holiday that weekend. I don't know why, but I found it so funny that this perfect, robotic man who never showed any weakness suddenly needed me to dispose of his yogurt.

Mine is quits a fond memory. I used to work I retail at weekends alongside supply teaching. If supply was good it meant I worked 7 days a week. On a Sunday if the boss was on, he would often come in and say "let's rearrange the store" and everyone would roll their eyes but I'd be so tired and needing something to keep me going so I'd enthusiastically agree. We'd spend most of the shift moving heavy furniture, then the last part realising it was shit and moving it all back again. It happened every few weeks. He was absolutely bonkers but he was so nice that no one could be mad with him.