Ever been accused of something ludicrous at work?

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Inspired by a current thread.
I was once accused , by another regional admin, of leaving to do the school run every Friday. She emailed the GM and cc'd me in. All because I wasnt avaliable on to take her call on 2 occasions.
I didn't get into trouble because -
I was office based in sight of our GM.
My DC were both in Uni at the time.
The reason I wasnt at my desk was because this was the era of manual tape computer backups and 3pm on a friday was when the secure storage came to collect them.
...and as it turned out SHE was the one sneaking out early !

I once worked as a factory packer and was accused of looking at the stuff i was packing to see my reflection in the stainless steel . Apparently I could pack without looking at what I was packing .

I was accused of smiling at a manger to get favourable treatment and I was nothing special to look at so stop doing it .

I was told that I had lied about a ruptured ectopic and the surgery I had was minimal and I had faked the severity to get sickness pay .

Oh, just remembered. I was once accused of not returning to work after a medical appointment too.

I messaged my line manager, telling her that I would be off work sick that day, before I had even phoned my Dr surgery for an appointment that day.

For the sake of completion, I showed the director the message to my line manager and my phone log .

It turns out HR incorrectly logged my sick day as a medical appointment. He never apologised to me, but his face was a picture when I handed over the evidence. 😊

I was accused of having multiple affairs with customers. Completely unfounded and not true of course.
There was another woman who worked with me, she always thought of herself as senior and had been there longer.
She was very pleasant to my face in fact she called us friends but she kept going to our boss telling lies. Turned out she hated that I had a lot more time to do more hours than her because she had another job and was studying at the time.
Basically she sabotaged me. I left in the end. The stress nearly broke me.

Ooh, a friend was once accused of stealing toilet rolls because someone saw a pack in the back of her car. - luckily she still had the tesco receipt. She was the Director of Marketing for a multi national company, so I dont think she wotld risk her job for a 4 pack of Andrex !

I got told I was rude a lot. I wasn't, I just was in a job where I unfortunately had to say "no" a lot. Luckily my boss often witnessed the "rudeness" so he did know I wasn't rude when the complaint landed on his desk but it did get a bit wearisome...

Oh and I was once accused of being involved with the manager. I was though, to be fair. Been together 10 years now, married for 5 with two dc.

So I guess that wasn't unfounded...

And this is how women got burned as witches! Malicious lies. Thank god for scientific evidence.

Two from same manager, first one I'm in work on Monday and she's telling me off for something minor, I forget what now as it was 2005 ish. I'm bored because its minor, I just dont care, she then mentions this was last Wednesday, I let her carry on, still bored, still minor, she can tell I dont care and asks me if I have anything to say for myself about this minor infraction last Wednesday, I say, I'm po faced, I wasnt here last week, I was on holiday, maybe take it up with whoever covered me. She blustered on for a bit, then told me to not do that (infraction) again. I laughed in her face and said I never did it in the first place. Dont think anyone else got bollocked for it and to this day she probably believes i did it.

Another colleague dropped me in minor shit for something and nothing, I took the bollocking because I did the crime, but barely spoke to colleague again, I was polite but no longer friendly. About 3 weeks later, same manager as above hauled me in to demand that I be sociable with colleague. I refused, I said I'd be perfectly polite and civil as I had been since incident but I would never be sociable with her. Thank God I was only there for some extra cash and could leave soon after.
Same manager tried to get a different colleague to take snitch colleague in for Christmas day. Went down like a bowl of sick.

Some recording eqpt had gone missing and I was summoned in. Where is it? In the cupboard where it usually is I replied (and it was). i had also been on holiday for 2 weeks in the US. Accuser wouldnt apologise. I left soon after.
Same job, earlier. I had been on Jury duty for 3 weeks but where had I been? I was on Jury duty. Ask HR. HR was asked and they confirmed it. No one tried to contact me or indeed asked the admin people or HR

People are crackers, aren't they. How do you even get from "Sheila's got a pack of bog rolls in her car" to "She must have stolen them from work"?? If there's any logic at all to it, it would suggest the accuser never buys household items but always steals them, so that's where their mind went.

Once got accused of being a plant from HMRC, because my start date was coincidentally the same time as an audit.

Thats exactly what people were saying.
We DID have a problem with consumables going missing for a time.

Oh yes I was once, when my DC were very little, ‘reported’ to the department head by my line manager for not attending a meeting because I ‘didn’t have any childcare’. I was given a stern talking to about how childcare was not the companies problem blah blah blah, and he was right of course he was, 100% only problem was that the meeting I couldn’t attend was on my non working day, for which I wasn’t paid and for which I didn’t have childcare because it was a day specifically to spend with my children, a little fact that my line manager had neglected to tell the department head, his face when I pointed this out was priceless and to give him his due he apologised profusely.

If I'd have seen that search term on your computer I would have assumed you were looking at cooking Sunday dinner!

It says something about that directors mind that she immediately jumped to pornography!

I worked at Head Office and since I was head of finance (second only to the FD and we worked very closely together), I was party to highly confidential information and knew that some branch closures were coming up. One of the branch managers found out about it, and I was blamed for the leak. It hadn't been me, but my boss didn't believe me, and thought I'd blabbed to my friend who worked there.

The good working relationship we'd had was totally ruined, and I was immediately cut off from any work of a confidential nature.

Months later, someone uncovered who had really let it slip, but by then it was too late, because my boss no longer trusted me, and that was that.

There are so many education and NHS stories on this thread! Can’t say I’m surprised

I was told off by my manager for having a new puppy as it meant I couldn't do extra work in the evening at home as I'd be playing with the pup. I wasn't contracted to do work in the evenings anyway

Told off for smiling inappropriately

Accused of bullying because I was asked if I was annoyed. I was honest and said yes.

That reminds me of the time I was accused of being abrasive (the typical accusation towards women with an opinion). The boss concerned couldn't give an example when I asked for one, so I told him I wasn't accepting the criticism.

I’ve had this as well. I was actually very interested and very engaged, but because I didn’t ’look’ like I was interested, I clearly wasn’t. I have some ASD traits, but I don’t know if I’m Autistic.

That I purposefully put a customer who was complaining and wanted to speak to my manager, through to said manager at the exact time the food trolley arrived so that she would miss it. Like I had control over the time the customer phoned.

That I had authorised something, he didn't want me to authorise as he wanted to authorise them all by himself. Authorising said document was well within my remit and rank, but I never authorised any EXCEPT for the specific one we had a meeting about and he asked me to authorise. I emailed back a very sweet message reminding him about the meeting we had the day prior and actually I was quite content NOT doing the authorising but he asked me to do this one.

Never got a reply

A couple of colleagues who are no longer employed here had medical issues. One had a brain bleed and spent time in hospital, saw a neurosurgeon etc and was accused of faking it. The other person has a back issue and saw an Orthopaedic surgeon. both sent to a private doctor use by our company and in both cases the Doctor just looked at the notes from the relevant Surgeons and asked the patients what they wanted him to write back to work as he wasnt going against the notes from Consultant Surgeons

Was accused by an 18yr old apprentice that I treated him differently to other staff members, and that it was because he was gay.

The other senior staff members he was comparing himself against had decades of work experience between them and approx 30% of them were also gay.

Apparently, by asking the apprentice to turn up on time and do the jobs allocated to him as laid out during training and in the instruction manuals, we were patronising him, because other staff members (who'd done their jobs for years, both with our company and others) didn't have to follow training/a manual to do their tasks.

We had to jump through a whole load of hoops with both the college he was studying with and solicitors to ensure his baseless claims were thoroughly put to bed. Including providing copies of his work emails that he'd sent to friends (on company time) where he'd said he was worried we'd realised how little he'd done and that he was going to use the "gay card" to get out of any potential consequences.

Still angry that he made the accusation, and that people like him who "cry wolf" potentially make true victims less believable.

When I left Uni I got a summer job working with a Coach holiday company. One of the drivers was an absolute bully but one of the advantages of having a total looney for a Father meant that I am not afraid of anyone.
I was sitting with a few other colleagues having a break and he came over and started shouting at me for reporting him for diverting to the Hypermarket (not allowed). I wasn't on his coach and had no idea he had even been to the Hypermarket. I basically told him to Fuck off
Unfotunately for him what he had actually done was announce to everyone that her had diverted to the Hypermarket and someone then DID report him
Might have been me

I spent a while as a cleaner. I was cleaning for a lady who started accusing me of stealing - couching it in the 'my daughter has noticed something (I think it was a child's lip salve or something) is missing, have you noticed them anywhere about the place?' I was absolutely rigid about picking up any loose change I found and putting it on the table, any jewellery or anything else I would carefully put somewhere noticeable as I feared it going up the hoover.

It was happening more and more with small amounts of money and I was feeling watched and suspected. In the end I left to get another job, but I wonder what the hell was happening around the place and strongly suspect that her young tween daughter might be responsible for any missing money. i have NEVER stolen anything in my life and it still aggrieves me now that I might have been suspected of theft!