A time you’ve got in trouble at work which was incredibly justified

[PinkMoscatoLover]

I was just thinking about the time when I started a new job in 2020. It was office based and we’d always have the radio playing in the background whilst working.

We’d listen to Heart, KISS or Capital FM and these stations would ALWAYS have some sort of competition going on. ‘Text us if you hear X song to win 30 grand,’ those sorts of competitions. Whenever I’d hear the specific song, I’d pick up my work phone and text the number in hope to win.

I was doing this daily for about 3/4 weeks when I received an email from someone relatively high up in the company. They’d sent me a spreadsheet of everytime I texted this number and how much each text cost. I racked up £98.56 or some nonsense like that😅

Luckily I only received a warning and was told not to do this again. They also highlighted that my work phone was to be used for WORK purposes only. Unofficially, my manager told me that the only reason I had kept my job is because I was ‘bloody good at it’ and reminded me to not be so stupid again.

Have you ever got in trouble for something at work and you totally deserved the bollocking?

Not me but someone I know sent an email with the subject Annual Proof, only she mistyped it to say Anal Poof. Lucky she is self employed...

Used to go into work regularly very very hungover, do maybe an hour of work then go home sick. My boss was my friends mum who just laughed and rolled her eyes.

My best mate moved away and I gave him my extension number; we'd spend my whole shift phoning each other back every time we got cuff off (after 90 minutes I think).

Pretended not to be able to hear a customer when the call connected, so I got put to the back of the queue and keep chatting with my mates.

This is legendary!!

Started a new job and took my lunch hour every day, until someone asked me if I was part time. Turn out it’s 30 mins lunch and not an hour so I was getting 2.5 hours extra a week 🙃

ooops!

What relevance is that? Weird

I didn't like my boss so as a mini act of defiance I used to save emails from her in a folder I called "poo". I didn't realise that she could see this if she logged in to the system as me and she was not amused.

I was sending 60000 HKD to an account. (Approximately £6k)Turns out I had it in GBP, so I sent £60000 instead. Now I was so ready for the justification of my beheading. However, my checker got fired. I felt awful and even asked to be fired instead.

I can only aspire to levels of pettiness where I name an email folder “poo”. 😂😂😂 you are my hero @garlictwist

It was before the days of GDPR, but I got a lot of very hard stares from all directions.

This thread is really fantastic!! Personal highlights for me;
Brother squashed into tiny girls coat, looks like perv
Shoe stretching machine a faff, shove own bigger feet in their shoes instead
YOU TAKE THE FUCKING CALL
’Don’t go checking on hamsters’ being universally understood in an anonymous office

This is genius in its simplicity 😂

This was a close run thing rather than actually getting in trouble. As a student in the summer I worked in a cafe by the beach belonging to a holiday park. Early 00s. Think burgers, chips, some very basic sandwiches, pre-packaged ice creams, nothing very fancy. We were part of the wider holiday park catering team but the level of supervision was minimal, and the supervisors we did have were around the same age as us - late teenage or early twenties. All on minimum wage and minimum effort. At one point a scheme was concocted where the kitchen assistant brought in big trays of eggs from a local market, and we started offering "off-menu" egg and bacon rolls, using the bacon we were meant to put in burgers. Once the egg costs were paid off the money was put in a pot and went towards our end of summer party.

I don't think I appreciated at the time that we were undercutting our employer and they'd have been well within their rights to sack the lot of us.

I absolutely love this thread😂 anymore for anymore?

Not me, as I've never had a proper job, and the two improper jobs I have had, what I was doing was far less awful than what the employer was doing...

My housemate working in a call centre... lost his rag with a customer who was saying some vile things, absolutely vile. Eventually in response to the expletive laden verbal abuse he says...

'Oooh keep going you're really turning me on I fucking love it'...

They hung up and called back, spoke to a manager. He was back home within the hour, suspended pending investigation.

The lucky LUCKY bastard ... after a month off, on full pay, they lost the recording of the call and he went back to work (And later did receive a promotion!).

I suspect that’s very industry specific. I’ve only worked at one place where I had to fill in a form (military - there’s a form for everything) and even there HR wasn’t involved. Outside of that I’ve never worked anywhere where leave requests were managed as formally as you’re suggesting. In general I’ve always been able to just say I won’t be in and make sure my leave days add up correctly if there’s a tracking system for that.

Ooh I see my home town has been mentioned! Hello former Tesco customer service employees!
I didn't work there but at one of the local papers.
We had a tyrannical boss whose ambition seemed to be to make the local paper a mini version of the Sun. Everyone hated him as he was a bully.
When social media first got big, he got quite obsessed with it and would scour Twitter and Facebook for information about incidents in the city.
Any sign of police/fire/ambulance being in a location, he'd make the reporters phone the emergency services control room to ask about it and then send them out to scour the scene. Literally ambulance chasing.
Every morning he'd have a long list of these potential "incidents", with really vague details like "there were 2 police cars spotted in (name of large neighbourhood).
Then he'd make us phone the control room and go through every single one of them, while the sergeant on the other end of the phone got more and more irate for wasting his time.
Then we'd have to drive around some estate on a wild goose chase for an "incident" that may or may not have happened.
This wasted hours of our morning, then we'd get bollocked when we didn't have time to finish our other work.
Nothing would persuade bully boss to change his tactics, we were just told we needed to "manage our time better".
So, in an act of rebellion we started making fake social media accounts and posting juicy snippets about "incidents" in the city (all made up). Then we'd flag them up to bully boss, who'd get all excited. Of course the control rooms would have no information, so boss would send us to check it out.
We'd drive to McDonalds or Starbucks and chill for a bit before heading back and giving boss some tantalising details we'd "found out", but never enough to be able to publish a story. Of course the press offices had no information either. Bully boss would get more and more worked up, then he'd have a bust up with the press office and accuse them of "withholding information in the public interest". The press officers were dicks too, so we didn't feel too bad for them.
We never got found out as we were careful not to do it too often, but it was satisfying while it lasted.

After a drunken night out we also prank called a high profile politician who'd been involved in a scandal. We left a voicemail message that consisted of a "song" we'd made up about said scandal. We had the real fear the next morning but amazingly he didn't complain and it was never mentioned again.

Haha that's brilliant!

Dundee is clearly a hotbed of vengeful fucked over employees.

I also worked at the local paper for a while. It was awful cliquey bollocks. When I handed my notice in the boss said 'I'll make sure you never work in this town again' 😆 to which I said....well I've already got another job so...see ya!

Manager came in early and caught me and boyfriend in a compromising position 😂got a stern telling off and forwarded the company policy on relationships at work! This was before the working day started but don't think that made it better

@BadBadDecisions Sounds like we worked for the same company. I didn't stay long and when I told the boss I was leaving he just went "right..." and turned puce but didn't say anything further. He'd had a warning from HR as he bullied people so much that there was a crazy high turnover. Wonder if it's the same same person!

I worked for architects when I was younger. One of my colleagues offered to make a curry from scratch during our lunch hour. She was older than me. Anyway we ate our curry and it was great. Later in the afternoon one of the architects went ballistic because the office smelt like a curry house and he had a meeting with clients!

I think it was maybe Craig @NameChangeAsItsOuting

Took my work phone abroad and let the kids watch YouTube. Bill was about £1000 😬 boss just said ‘remember to turn off roaming when you go abroad’ company went bust shortly afterward…

@BadBadDecisions Ah not the same person then. Maybe before or after my time.

Yep, when I threw up over my boss's desk after I was plied with drinks by colleagues at lunchtime on my 21st birthday. (That was after I'd thrown up in a waste bin and all over the stairs!).

I spent my last day at one particular job recreating paper models of bridges. The level of detail and skill shown was not only impressive but astounding. Quite a few people commented that If only I had made that much effort in the job itself….
I wasn’t allowed to burn my bridges in the pub later as it was the basement and a fire hazard.