To ask you for your WORST work stories (to cheer me up!!)

[CrossedToTheDarkSide]

I know I can’t be the only one who’s had my fair share of horrible bosses, nightmare colleagues and just miserable work situations.
In light of a recent nasty colleague i’ve been really struggling at work and feeling a bit sorry for myself so thought we could trade (lighthearted and hopefully funny) horror stories in the hopes of giving us all a few laughs.
So any tales of unreasonable bosses, unbearable colleagues, clever pay-back or just all round ridiculous work stories would really pick me up right now.

I job-shared a desk with a woman. She was very unhygeinic, left food and crumbs and all sorts all over the keyboard, phone, chair etc every fucking day. I had to come in armed with disinfectant wipes to clean the area every morning.
One morning I went in and there was a new thing - a trail of brown from the desk out the door and down the corridor. I assumed it was a coffee spillage. Boss later told me, it was not coffee - it was a poo explosion.

I started work in a private children's home. The first couple of weeks were horrendous. I was contracted for 30 hours plus occasional 'waking' nights. On the 'waking' nights I was permitted to sleep between midnight and 6am if all young people were in bed and all paperwork, housework and ironing was done

I had been unemployed before this so not used to working.

I had 2 consecutive days when I did a working night. 8pm until 8am (6 hours sleep on a blow up mattress) followed by 8 hour day shift - so home at 4pm and back to work for 9pm to repeat. The second day shift (this was in my first week of work) I fell asleep on the sofa about 2pm, all the young people were in school. I woke up when they came home. Not great but it wasn't deliberate - it just happened.

4 months after starting I had my 'appraisal', I wasn't worried as I got on well with everyone and once I got used to the hours I coped fine. I had never had any criticism at all.

I failed my appraisal and had my probation extended - for 2 reasons.
1 - I had fallen asleep on duty (4 months prior and no one had ever mentioned it).
and
2 - A staff member had complained that when I did a sleep in (3 months before) I had gone to bed without saying goodnight. Again this had never been mentioned to me.

As a student I had a holiday job in a hotel. The first day I was serving dinner to the manageress, who was entertaining 'important people' and I dropped a sprout down the neck of her blouse.
I wasn't sacked, but it was suggested I might like to work in the kitchens!

I fanny farted uncontrollably in a quiet open plan office. I was so embarrassed, I didn't know what to do other than pretend it never happened.

I was filming a drama in a studio where the wc was part of the set and was not practical, i.e. it was not plumbed in.

One day, one of the supporting artists took a massive dump in it and was unable to flush it away.

After much discussion in the production office, the runner was given rubber gloves and told to clear it up. He was being paid peanuts, and was been advised that it would further his career if he undertook the task.

The glory of show business.

In my twenties (and pretty naive) I worked at a university for over a year. A colleague very near me who had an IT role had 4 screens. He watched hard core porn every day.
We both had to work late during examination periods and we'd be alone in the office. The security guards must have also known what he was doing as they'd pop in very regularly to check I was OK.

I put in a complaint and had to see the principals and in the meeting were loads of other staff members just gawping, and I had describe what sort of porn (just fucking check his computer...). It was humiliating. Was it The Sun type girls, top shelf WH Smith or specialist stuff...

One day whilst he was looking at a site, a HR leader saw it. She"d been in the meeting. She went back to the principals to report it.

She later told me that they knew what he was doing but he was business critical. People in my team stopped talking to me as I was causing trouble. I became the problem.
I handed in my notice and left before my notice was up. The HR leader told me before I left that he was paid little for his vital role they'd never sack him. She left a month later.

In my 20s I worked in a bookshop that specialised in medical textbooks. When a new person started, there was a long-standing employee who would gleefully show them the book with the full page colour photographs of foetal abnormalities. She was one sick fuck.

Got a job at a local dentist, and occy health needed weight/height etc of staff for statistics. The info had to be accurate, so I had to be weighed in my underwear (just bra and knickers). The lad recording the info was my daughter's bf on work experience, so was pretty embarrassing

Mine .. I'm still living with the mortification and shame.. new job and last year's Xmas do... too much prosecco + no food = kissing two different colleagues. Worse 9ne of the encounters qas photographed and circled roubd the office.We are all in relationships. I have been for 11 years and have never done anything like that of the sort and can barely remember it happening. Still living with the office gossip now.

I worked with this horrid office manager who was absolutely shit at her job and she knew how much I knew it! Cornered me in a small office one day, we had words and I said I was going to see the big manager. She stood in the the doorway then shut the door and refused to let me out! After locating my phone and threatening to call the police the fuckwit moved out the way, found the manager and said I HAD DONE THAT TO HER! Actually starts crying the lot! I refused to take any calls from her on days off or while I was at the other branch from mobile to mobile because I told her I didn’t trust her. Unless she called me from the work landline which recorded calls I had great pleasure in ignoring her!

Many years ago at college i worked for a cleaning agency (as did my mum, we worked together at one shop). I was offered some late afternoon cleaning after a local department store closed. There were 2 other older ladies who cleaned there ready.

We were paid to clean from 5pm to 7.30pm Monday to Friday (thinking back im not sure what they did on Saturday's). First off they finished work about 7.10 every evening and left. First few days I just thought it was because the store wasn't as messy as normal then I realised the husband of one of the women came to collect her at 7 each night so it was something they did all the time. It made me uncomfortable.

In the second week they had been commenting on how they really need to clean the shelves in the staff room but can't as the floor must be done right away so it cam dry before the staff come up at 5.30 snd they can't do it after the floor as it wouldn't be safe to climb. Anyway, i used to arrive between 4/4.30pm as i came from college. Usually i sat a read in the staff room until they arrived at 5pm. This one day I thought I would just get on with the floors myself so they would be dry by 5 then the shelves could be safely cleaned. Nice right? Sensible? Oh no, those women moaned and had a go at me all night for messing with their system. I remember one of them saying 'I don't know why we do it that way but we just do and you can't change it'.

I was only 17 so didn't stand up for myself and just went home and cried. My mum we t back for me the following night and worked my notice period.

When I was about 19 and starting moving on in my career in design, I was on my second job when the national insurance office asked why I hadn’t paid any NI for over a year. My previous shady boss had kept it. Luckily I’d kept every paper copy of my wage slips that said I’d paid so I had proof, but it took ages to sort out pre internet. His company kept closing and opening again over the next few years. Such a crook!

Name changed! My boss, a university lecturer and top consultant, is supervising a PhD students research which involved analysing human semen. As well as many men, he also donated his own live sperm to her to analyse. He actually told his PA that he was "just off to do said student's sample" (in the toilet opposite his and female PA!'s offices).

Adding to the worst job thread. A friend of mine was summoned by her superior to do a menial job. My friend, (who has had long standing issues with her boss) said she was happy to do the job, but needed to go to the toilet first. At this boss stamps her foot, and shouts "No, you may not go to the bathroom" Friend turns away and goes to the loo anyway. Boss is left seething

Oh another one that's quite fun.

I was off sick with absolutely dreadful period problems - the doctor had changed the pill I was on and I was gushing blood for days after. When i went back to work my boss asked me why I'd been off so I just said "women's problems", bearing in mind that he was a somewhat stuffy middle aged man. He kept pushing & pushing, saying that wasn't a good enough excuse & I had to give more detail.

So I did, at length and in intimate detail including the size of the clots, the various sanitary products I'd had to use, how often I was having to change them and so on. He went greener & greener throughout this, and had a go at me for going into "inappropriate" detail - I responded "well you asked for it in so many words" and he shut up & left the room.

I should also point out that there were 2 other women in the office when he demanded the detail, so he couldn't pretend he hadn't .

I used to work in the acquisitions department of a local library service. One day my boss suddenly leapt up and ran out of the room shouting, "Oh my God, we've got an erotic spanking book!" It turned out she had thought The Paddle Book was about canoeing!

After all these stories of horrible bosses, this is a story about the nicest boss ever – and the nasty trick that malign fate played on him.

Our team produced user manuals for a high-tech product. This was before online help, so it was a set of thick printed books. The biggest was about 300 pages, with a complex diagram on every page.

At that time the team was just him and me, and we both worked insane hours getting all these manuals written in time for the product launch. At last we sent them off to the printers, who would print and send us one copy to check, before the print run could go ahead.

And so, Friday at 5 pm, he decided for the first time in weeks to go home on time. He went and put on his coat, came back for his briefcase - and there on his desk a package had appeared. It was obviously the 300-page manual, just delivered for him to check. He hovered over it, hesitating whether to sit down and check it now. At last he said, “They can't go ahead without my sign-off. I haven't seen my children for weeks. I'll check it on Monday,” and went home.

Monday morning, he opened it. The printers had used the wrong font. On every one of the 300 pages, where the diagram should be, there was just a random sprinkling of Greek letters.

Then he opened his email. The first one he read said they had printed 5000 copies over the weekend!

Later I heard him on a conference call with top management. He was being so apologetic. I just wished I could grab the phone and say, “This isn't his fault! He's worked like mad for weeks! They weren't supposed to do the print run without his sign-off!”

When I was young and working in a hotel restaurant we had a new supervisor who was really hard on all the younger members of staff constantly putting us down in front of customers.
Well at breakfast one morning the hotel was full as we had a large group of accountants staying for some conference.
As they all opened their free newspapers as they awaited their breakfasts,there was the supervisor,who was on duty in the restaurant,posing for a topless photo .cue lots of laughing,smirking and pointing before she realised what was going on.she walked out never to be seen again.such a shame😂

I used to work as a legal secretary, and the partner in our office did these massive shits that blocked the toilet. The plumbing was ancient and we had to call in a plumber a few times. He also whinged about the mess in the kitchen when most of the time, HE was responsible for it.

Never caught anyone shagging at work, but in one temp job, people were forwarding a sex questionnaire round the office and I filled it in and accidentally sent it to the boss. She wasn't happy and at first I didn't want to fess up, but eventually I came clean and got the boot. I've never done anything like that since!

Whenever I have had a female boss they have always been a bully towards me.. especially when I was younger.. maybe as they were all older women they were jealous of my youth.. but they were certainly nasty and some are still in charge but I no longer work in their department.

When I was younger I had a seasonal job, it was in a wooden shop, tourists would come in and think they could demand anything ... One day a man came in smoking a cigarette... My boss turned to me and said "do you want to tell him or shall I? " As we had many people thinking they could just walk in smoking... I told him he could do the honours...

The man wanted a packet of cigarettes... My boss said to him " sorry sir but you can't smoke in here"
The customer got quite aggressive, and argued that as we sold cigarettes it was ridiculous that we had a policy whereby you couldn't come in smoking... I got annoyed with his attitude and simply said .. " well sir, we also sell condoms but I wouldn't expect people to shag their way into the shop just to stock up with some more"

My boss disappeared out the back and after the customer left I thought.. shit I am done for now.. then I heard my boss laughing his head off... We looked back with fondness over that throughout my years working there...

I had an old boss who would sit on my desk and tap her fingernails very loudly on the desk whiles I was on the phone. She would also go through my desk when I was out. This lady also spread a rumour, after I left, that I had been pregnant and had an abortion and that I had an eating disorder, Lovely, she was.

Then, I had a supervisor, who had less experience than me, who would go through and criticise every single line if my notes at the end of the day.

And the one who stole my work and passed it off as her own when I was on mat leave...afterwards I was accused of professional jealousy when I mentioned it.

And the one who used to print reams and reams of stuff out from rightmove, using my computer.

And the one who weighed me on my first day.
And another who told me I should straighten my hair, get a new coat as mine was ugly etc etc.
And another who used to send very drunken emails at 3 am .

And of course all of the ones who are nice as pie and then badmouth you after you leave the job.

I don't miss the NHS one little bit.

Went to a sexual health clinic for a check up about 8 months ago. Student nurse (male) was present for the examination of my genitalia.
Roll on six months...I'm at work (healthcare environment) and see this man I recognise. Then it clicked! It was the student nurse who had an upclose view of my vagina six months earlier. He actually said to me 'I recognise you from somewhere...'
Haha. He sure did!
I'm sure he'd recognise my vagina better than my face though should he see it again!!

In one job, I had a fantastic boss who was incredibly clever, but had no common sense. He was like an absent-minded professor. He used to cycle the mile or two to work, and swap tracky bottoms for suit trousers when he got into the office.

One morning, he got a phone call first thing and got engrossed in whatever it was about, then called his secretary in to take dictation (this sounds almost Dickensian now, but it was only the early 90s). At some point, he paused in whatever he was dictating and got up to check something in a file.

He wasn't wearing any trousers! He'd got interrupted after removing his tracky bottoms and before putting his trousers on, and completely failed to realise he was sitting there in his pants.

An anotehr occasion, I was in the secretary's room when she sent an urgent fax to someone in another department, about a 20 minute walk away, for him. A few minutes later, he came in and said "Goodness, that was amazingly quick. X has just rung me, and he's got that document already". It transpired he thought faxing was some sort of superfast courier system, and it did his head in when we tried to explain it was all electronic.

Late one afternoon, the secretaries had gone home and I was finishing off some work when he wandered in looking all perturbed. He wanted some last minute revisions done to a huge document that he needed for a very early meeting the next day. I explained that I could do it for him if said document was in one of the common directories, but not if it was in his own, as I didn't have access to that. He couldn't grasp this at all.

Eventually I resorted to analogy, and said "It's as though all the work is in different cabinets. I have keys to some of the cabinets, but not to others".

"Ahhh", he said, as the light appeared to dawn. "You'll have to show me where the keys are kept".

He was a lovely man, and one of the best bosses I have ever had: easygoing, kind, very supportive and scrupulously fair. And despite being something of an innocent abroad, he was a brilliant lawyer whose written advice was always a model of clarity. I was gutted when he took early retirement.

My first job was a summer job in a kebab cafe.

Mr Greedy the proprietor, ripped off customers and his staff. One of the menu items said “egg, bacon,sausages and chips” but we were only allowed, to put 1 sausage on the plate. If diners asked for another sausage we had to add it to the bill. My first day a sausage rolled off the plate onto the floor in the kitchen and Greedy calmly put it back on the plate. He was tipped off that trading standards were going to visit so he crossed off all the “s”s on “sausages” on the menus and made us give the place a scrub-down.

One morning there was a stink of rotten meat as the meat fridge had finally given up the ghost. Greedy joked “extra spices in the kebabs”.

The worst moment for me was when Greedy ripped off a big group of tourists who couldn’t speak much English. Greedy insisted on writing their bill (I just knew he was embellishing it) and took it over on a dish. One of their group came up to pay holding a bunch of notes, and Greedy took the money, insisted that he sit back down and that I would be sent over with the change. Greedy put the change in my hand (not on a dish) to take it back. I had closely watched him taking change out of the till and knew he was shortchanging them. Of course if they had spotted it then I would have been blamed (luckily they didn’t).

Next day I gave 1 weeks notice and the others joked that Greedy would be really nasty to make me walk out so he wouldn’t have to pay me (2 weeks in arrears), but I ignored the jibes and stuck it out until finally on my last day he only paid me only 75% of what I was owed. I had to go back with Dad to get him to pay the rest (Dad insisted we go when it was busiest and he stood in the doorway and flexed his muscles to look as “ard” as he could bless him)

I don't think I've ever had a really bad boss, but I've had some looney colleagues.

There was the man who was on long-term sick leave because he had lost his voice - until he was spotted singing in a choir. He left the company the next day.

And the technical support guy who was really nice if you met him socially, but who (a) hated to be distracted from what he was doing, and (b) thought anyone who knew less than he did was an idiot. Not ideal characteristics in someone paid to be constantly asked for help and advice …

And the man with an infinite fund of bulls**t. He thought our department should be using different software. It would have been the manager's decision, not mine, but it would have been my job to implement any change, so somehow this man thought I was the one to work on. Every few days we'd have the following conversation:

“Hi Wendy, how are you getting on with the change-over to XYZ?”
“We're not changing over to XYZ.”
“I really thought you would be well on with it by now!”
“Anyway, why should we change over to XYZ?”
“Can't hang about, y'know, with these things!”
“OK, so what are the advantages of XYX?”
“It's so rewarding to feel you're achieving something!”

He could go on like that for hours, with a meaningless “motivational” reply to anything anyone said. We were so glad when he got made redundant.