What’s the worst thing you’ve seen in the workplace?

[chbahjng]

Mine won’t be half as bad as some peoples or even a quarter but -

I worked in about a team of 20 and it became very obvious that higher management wanted this team dissolved. At least 12 of us left within the space of a 3 months (no backfilling) because they made it so horrendous and then management shit themselves because all they had left were the lazy ones who did no work.

Another place I worked one manager (who was clearly miserable in life) would get people fired like it was a sport.

Can't share details as wpuld be too outing of the orgsnisation but someone who was clearly a sociopath engaged in vicious bullying, abuse of power, terrible judgement, and creating a culture of fear amongst hundreds of people in a senior leadership role. Consistently lied, faked positive feedback, in the space of a few monrhs totally corrupted the organisation she led which i and my boss had to fix when my boss removed her from her role. However disciplinary panel decided she 'still had something to offer the orhsnisation' and just put her on a warning. Disgusting and I lost all faith in that organisation after that.

Housekeeping
Ugh
Used condoms under/by the bed
Bathtub full of vomit, or vomit all over the floor (no call to reception to let them know, just left rooms like this when they left)
Being accused of stealing a guests camera as they were sure they left in on their bed and couldn't find it.
They later called to say they found it in a hat box. Of course by this time it's round the whole hotel.

Male guests still walking in and using urinals when you are cleaning - sign on door and they see you and wink before unzipping and proceeding to urinate.

Checking guests rooms in the evening (to close curtains, put in lamps etc) knocking and being told to come in to find guests 'at it' over the coffee table. Clearly they liked an audience!

In another job
Going to pick up colleague for work to find them in their uniform (nurse), dat on the pavement drunk, anf having to get their teen son help me get them back in the house.

In a local authority children's services...a social worker bullying and abusing his girlfriend who was also a Social Worker. Spreading rumours about her, turning everyone against her, shouting at her and threatening her in the car park and following her round the office calling her names. He told everyone sexual details of their relationship and would make really sexual comments about her and the things she would do for him sexually. He would also access her computer and read her emails and teams messages, delete her emails, delete her meetings from her calendar, and he hated her having any friends and one man who tried to be supportive of her, her partner followed him into the street and threatened him with violence. He also bullied her into doing his written work as well as her own.
The LA senior management knew and watched it happen and didn't care or do anything until he was arrested for something he did to her outside work but even then he was just suspended on full pay for 18 months.

This is devastating 😢 those poor people.

!!!!!

A human pooh concealed in a Tupperware box left in a cupboard.

Different workplace - a sausage with a condom on it thrown down a staircase.

Is this not just teaching in general? I didn’t work for a MAT but that’s what it was like.

I worked in the NHS and seen crazy stuff.

Very open racisim from Managers.

Jobs being created by Managers for their "work wife".
Racist Managers being protected by HR, one Manager for Ancillary used to make the interviewed do Jumping jacks if they cant do 10 they won't get hired, if you are not White, if you have aspirations (they ask where do you see yourself in 5-10years) and if you slant respond workong as a band 3 ancil working then nope. Asking women if they have kids or plan on having a family. He knew, everyone knew she was protected.

Hiring people from abroad without first seeing all proper documentation. Ended up with a very concerning person working in a very very dangerous position and coworkers noticed, when they had X amount of complaints and they called him in for a discussion formally he did a runner.

Different trratement for members of staff if you came from a wealthy background and you golf/horse ride or go to the same pub you were liked.

Staff never washing their hands.

I bet this post gets taken down 😂

In a mainstream secondary school setting, definitely the ego of the adults who should know better, getting in the way of interacting meaningfully with the young people. And in turn the adults expected mature emotional regulation from the teenagers, when they themselves couldn't model that. Not even close. Disgraceful and embarrassing.

I was on a residential training course and over lunch time we found the cleaner asleep in the linen cupboard alongside a pop bottle full of alcohol, and with a selection of drinks stolen from our fridge tucked in amongst the blankets. There had been lots of ongoing bitching and speculation over who was drinking all the beers, and at least the mystery was now solved.

She was suspended instantly and taken home, but was so pissed that she didn't remember any of it, so they had to suspend her again the next morning when she turned up for work as usual.

In an old job I was so cold, I had to wear a hat, coat, gloves, blanket over my knees and have a hot water bottle. I could still see my breath coming out of my mouth. It was absolutely miserable for about 4 months of the year and I dreaded work. Management literally didn’t give a shiny shit. Anyway, the third year rolled round and it started getting colder. I immediately phoned someone in the Union. A portable radiator turned up two hours later.

It was still cold and I’d sometimes hug it for warmth but it helped I guess. It didn’t end there. About three years after that, the heating went off and they were going to have to cancel all the operations in theatre. The performance and operations manager came down and insisted on removing it. I wasn’t impressed but had to let them take it as it didn’t belong to me. I absolutely insisted on a replacement heater and was brought something inferior and made to feel like I was being ‘demanding’. I left shortly afterwards.

Moving onto summer, the same office got boiling for about 3-4 months but the hospital wouldn’t buy fans. There was two of us in there and we were practically fainting and sweating really badly. In the end, we clubbed together and bought our own fan. A few months later, one of the cleaners tried to take it for the waiting area as the patients were hot. I said absolutely not as it’s personal property and it’s not my fault that the hospital are too tight to buy fans.

Awful place.

My Aunt worked in care and the staff all of them did this. They never ever checked on the elderly. She was the only one and she did both floors she never took a break. While every one else hid in the break room or out smoking.
She would finish the duties needed them sot and talk with each person and made them laugh or lostened to them. She would often make foods on friday and bring to them all. She spent time with the families and really cared. When she left the patients all cried. They knew they would be neglected.

I would never ever put my parents into care hearing all these stories. They looked after me and wiped my butt and cleaned up my sick for years the least I can do is look after them if they need it in old age. I woupd never live with myself if I sent them to these torture homes.

I would say people giving special treatment to others because they were in personal relationships.
I'm saying no more but it was obvious why some staff members were thought so highly of and got special treatment.
Edited to say. And the time I was sexually assaulted at work. By the manager.

My first few years in the workplace (from the age of 16) it was rife with sexual harassment (it was the 1990s), I was harassed by 3 members of staff, one used to say extremely explicit things on an almost daily basis. One of the managers slept his way around the female junior staff (not me) even though he was married. I was stalked by a male member of staff who accessed my personnel file to find out my address…
Sadly, this was mostly accepted behaviour back then, just “men being men”. But I did raise a complaint about the stalking.
All he got was a finger wag type of telling off and a “don’t do that again”. No investigation, no disciplinary-absolutely nothing in writing at all, I was just expected to move on and continue working with him. Which I did

So many I can hardly bear to remember some of them for how humiliating they were. Once had my colleagues (as a group, so not some individual wierdo) break into my hotel room to steal my dirty washing bag and rifle through my knickers. About 1989. The shit we had to put up with back then.

I used to work at a zoo. Worst workplace environment I've ever experienced, I was told by the head of department whilst he was drunk at a staff party that he thoroughly disliked me and thought I was pointless. I was also told on my first day that I had been targeted by several members of staff, male and female, who were going to try and ask me out. I felt quite vulnerable and like everyone was watching to see who I would go with (it was assumed that this was a given as staff hook ups were common). After I left one of them told everyone we slept together when we hadn't.

I really do hope so. Sadly another feature of the system is that those who could lift the lid on the scandal are invariably gagged by non disclosure agreements.

The place I used to work in had toilets that were also open to the public. It was pretty much a weekly occurrence that the toilets were absolutely smeared in faeces or blood. I felt so bad for the cleaners who had to constantly deal with it. I also saw a guy talk to the receptionist at the front desk and shake a turd out of his trouser leg. Weird stuff.

@Daisymaybe60 I don't understand why a journalist doesn't investigate this. I'd happily provide some inside dirt on what goes on at mine!

When I was 19, a man cradling his dick in his hand saying "have a look at this baby".
Only female in a male dominated workplace, late 80's, said 'eh?, what am I meant to be looking at, can't see anything". That soon whipped the wind from his sails.
Was utterly respectful from that day forward.

Currently in a secondary school. The amount of tittle tattling to HR is absolutely unreal. You look at someone, usually a TA, and off they trot putting in a grievance and no one is immune 🤭
Dreadful place to work, the head is losing it, the kids are ruling the asylum and I and out of there without another job lined up it is that bad 😅

I remembered the male manager in my first job in a call center, who was interviewing for new staff. Very young woman (18 or so?) came in for an interview who had large breasts- the manager went around to the men in the team asking them to rate her out of 10, and said that she was stupid but she would get the job because she had the best boobs out of all the applicants.

He worked there for years until he had an affair with someone, they were caught shagging in the office and he was forced to leave because it was termed as gross misconduct. But he jumped before he was pushed so he's in a very cushy job at another company now.

School just had horrendous inspection.
First thing on the agenda with governors - let’s appoint an assistant headteacher who we can ‘assign’ all the failings to ready for the re inspection - approved ✅
Second agenda item - let’s increase the headteachers salary range and backdate it to preinspection - also approved ✅

You couldn’t make it up 😂

Yep. The case is ongoing!

Name change.

I used to do chambermaiding in a hotel. One of the women there told me her trick for cleaning the rooms more quickly.

She said that instead of actually hoovering the carpets in the rooms, she would get the toilet brush and run in up and down the carpet in straight lines to raise the pile and make it look like it had been hoovered.

I still think about her and it was over 20 years ago. What sort of mind would you have to have to even think of that as an idea, let alone do it?