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Handhold needed - embarrassing workplace stories

127 replies

Weston14 · 14/07/2020 15:41

So I slept in for work.

Not just by a bit. By about 4 hours. I have absolutely no idea what happened I just completely slept through my alarm. Colleagues thought I'd died. Woke up to a load of missed calls. I. Am. Mortified. Boss is (understandably) livid.

Regale me please with your embarrassing workplace stories to make me feel better Blush

OP posts:
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Grapewrath · 15/07/2020 11:31

I once worked at a hotel and had live in accommodation. One night I went out and got shitfaced and overslept for work. My manager came and knocked the door when I didn’t turn up and were greeted with a still pissed me in my underwear and behind me a half eaten kebab and unknown man in my bed

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itwilldropoff · 15/07/2020 12:01

@Cadent I think the poster meant that the boss made them go in insinuating they had a hangover when they were actually genuinely ill so it was the bosses fault

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Cadent · 15/07/2020 12:04

Oh I see thanks @itwilldropoff

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Crunchymum · 15/07/2020 14:34

@OverTheRainbow88

That really made me chuckle!

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Tunnocks34 · 15/07/2020 14:44

Once when working in a bar at uni, on my hour break (half way through my shift) I decided to have a quick nap in the store cupboard (this was a room about the size of a small double bedroom) I was doing a 14 hours shift 2pm-6am. I woke up 15 minutes before the end of my shift. Everyone was fuming as they thought I’d just decided to go home. I got called sleeping beauty for the next four years

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Mangofandangoo · 15/07/2020 14:53

Worked In a shoe shop many years ago, I was wearing stilettos and an a line skirt- got up from helping the customer and my keep got caught in the hem of my skirt, as I stood up down came the skirt. Horrifying Blush

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BillyAndTheSillies · 15/07/2020 14:54

Very early pregnant and was absolutely exhausted. Everyone else on my floor was on lunch break, but I decided to have my lunch at my desk. Which then turned in to crawling under said desk to take a nap.

Half way through, my MD bursts in to show potential new buyers for the business around. With me, sleeping under a desk.

He remembered it, and when it became common knowledge that I was pregnant actually came up to me and said that had explained the napping, but maybe I could use the break rooms in future.

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Lalaok · 15/07/2020 14:56

One of my colleagues got so drunk at the Christmas do she had to be taken home in the directors car. She threw up in his car.
And she also gave herself two black eyes by falling over.

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summersolstice43 · 15/07/2020 15:00

I was on a Christmas night out with colleagues many years ago, had far too much to drink, fell down the stairs in the hotel we were in, fell asleep on the shoulder of the boss then puked in their lap. Got taken home by some of my colleagues and never looked my boss in the eye again.

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honeyytoast · 15/07/2020 15:07

Why did they think you had died? Shock

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RunningAwaywiththeCircus · 15/07/2020 15:09

This reply has been withdrawn

Message from MNHQ: This post has been withdrawn

ttigerlilly · 15/07/2020 15:11

I've done this exact thing OP, I overslept and then my commute made me even more late.

I just made up the hours and all was forgotten Thanks

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User55783330102837 · 15/07/2020 15:29

Started a new job and a few months later went to our Christmas do. Wore heels and a stretchy body-con type dress. Fell down all of the stairs on the way into the restaurant, and as I frantically tried to stand up the dress of my skirt worked it's way up to being around my waist, ecposonf my knickers to everyone!

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Bargebill19 · 15/07/2020 15:36

blown up all the electrics in a factory.

I was an electrician.

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GrumpyHoonMain · 15/07/2020 15:39

@Weston14

So I slept in for work.

Not just by a bit. By about 4 hours. I have absolutely no idea what happened I just completely slept through my alarm. Colleagues thought I'd died. Woke up to a load of missed calls. I. Am. Mortified. Boss is (understandably) livid.

Regale me please with your embarrassing workplace stories to make me feel better Blush

This happened to be twice while I was pregnant (very high risk pregnancy - to me mostly) and the second time my manager was actually at the train station to get on the train to my hospital as he was convinced something bad had happened.
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JMG1234 · 15/07/2020 16:11

Went to a black tie benefit dinner for an England cricketer at the Hilton in Park Lane with our biggest client and my manager and director. The client insisted on taking us for some pre-event cocktails. Frankly, an hour later, there was no way back for me (being a total lightweight) and the event hadn't even started but I tried to muddle through my alcoholic haze.

  • I spent ages bending everyone's ear about being very upset at losing my handbag until someone became sufficiently fed up to ask where I'd been sitting and found it sat very obviously on my chair all along (I couldn't remember even vaguely where my table was)


  • I was given a signed mini cricket bat which I used to demonstrate a very wild cricket shot and cut my director's (full) wine glass in half between the bowl and the stem


  • Eventually the client's wife offered to drive me home and I couldn't recognise any of the streets where I lived so insisted on getting out in my nice dress in torrential rain to wander around and find my way home, despite the client begging me to stay in the car until they found my flat


I still feel mortified 20 years later although, thankfully, most of those present had also drunk too much.
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LakieLady · 15/07/2020 16:32

I think I spent that Christmas torturing myself with flashbacks from the work party

Oh god. At another council, our Christmas lunch was awash with wine and I'd had 2 large G&Ts before, and stickies after. I was pissed as a pole parrot, and over mince pies and port, a colleague started a limerick competition, where we had to make up limericks about each other. Someone made up a very rude one about me and I felt the need to retaliate. He had a double-barrelled surname, and the second part was Hunt.

My limerick was very rude indeed, everyone fell about laughing and from thereon it was absolute filth. I'm good at rhyming things and very sweary, and mine were apparently the filthiest things that some of them had ever heard, including a colleague who'd grown up in a pub near Plymouth docks. He later said I could outswear any sailor.

As we walked back to the office (fuck knows why, no-one was going to do any work), the traffic lights that control a narrow stretch of high street were broken. Apparently, I stood in the road for quite some time, wearing a gold pirate's hat, while helpfully directing the traffic, until a nice policeman politely suggested I stop and he'd take it from there.

Back at the office, someone produced a bottle of Southern Comfort. At one point, the men ganged up on the aforementioned Mr Something-Hunt and removed his trousers, which they then threw into the street. He went out into the street in his shirt and pants, and encountered a shocked looking woman, uttered the immortal words "It's ok madam, I'm a solicitor and these are my trousers" picked up his trousers and disappeared again.

The following day, I had to go to an all-day meeting of the police authority and sit next to the chief constable and the chairman at lunch. Gossip had clearly spread like wildfire and people kept making comments along the lines of "I hear you had a very good lunch yesterday". I had the worst hangover ever and wanted to die, not least from embarrassment.

I have never worked anywhere that was worse for bad behaviour and heavy drinking than the legal department of that council.

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LakieLady · 15/07/2020 16:59

Also have 2 pairs of shoes in same style, bit different colours. Wore a shoe from each different pair to the same office a couple of months later

I've done that too, @Dawny65. One pair was navy, one pair black, and I discovered that I have trouble telling black from navy under artificial light.

Good excuse to pop out and buy a new pair of shoes though. Grin

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Wingingitsince2018 · 15/07/2020 17:31

I was an hour and a half late on my second day, because I autopiloted on the tube in the direction of my previous job and didn't realise until I was outside the station on the completely wrong side of London!

Luckily everyone thought it was funny and understood!

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SparkyTheCat · 15/07/2020 17:56

I opened a bottle of coke straight from the freezer. The contents exploded all over me, my desk, my colleagues' desks, the floor, wall, ceiling... the marks are still there Blush

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Sailfin · 16/07/2020 03:21

At my firm's annual piss up dinner dance, the head of HR got shit faced, took her top off and ran around the room with her tits out.

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DameHannahRelf · 16/07/2020 03:38

I did this once too, I was exhausted, hadn't been sleeping. Took ds to school, sat down on the sofa, shut my eyes just for a minute. I woke up hours later, to missed calls from work, and my phone ringing, it was my driving instructor wondering where I was, he was outside my work to pick me up. I had to pretend I was ill, and had forgotten to let him know Blush. Thankfully my boss at the time was really laid back, and was okay about it (I explained what happened, arranged for mil to pick up ds, and did my 4 hour shift that evening instead).

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timeisnotaline · 16/07/2020 04:04

I’ve done this. I don’t recall it being that embarrassing, I must have a thick skin Grin

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Pinktornado · 16/07/2020 06:36

Dawny 65
I have the same shoes too, in black and blue. Put on one of each without noticing this morning and only saw when I arrived at work. I had half an hour before an important presentation so called DH in a panic. He was fortunately still at home. Just before the presentation he marched into my office carrying one black shoe in his hand, didn’t put it in a bag or anything 🤦‍♀️

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RaisinGhost · 16/07/2020 07:22

Oh god I've got a million of these.

Once I slept in for my shift.... which started at 4pm. Not sure if they believed my story but it was the truth.

Once at work I was sitting on an office chair, a group of us were sitting in a circle. I tucked my legs under and accidentally hit the "chair lowering" lever, it went right down trapping my feet. I tried to get up in suprise and fell over with my feet still tangled in the chair.

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