Strange things that happen at work

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
A couple things I've experienced stand out.

One afternoon a few years ago I'm sitting in my office when a man walks in. This is unusual because we have security at the entrance and if a visitor comes, we have to go to the security desk and escort the visitor from there.

Man: "Excuse me, sir, may I have a minute of your time?"
Me: <thinks who the heck is this guy> Who are you looking for?
The guy sits down and pulls a brochure out of a briefcase.
Man: "I want to give you an opportunity to own the finest set of pots and pans available today."
Me: I think you're in the wrong place. Let's go back to the front desk.

That was the last day at work for that security guard. I don't blame the salesguy, he probably realized it would be a lot more efficient going cubicle-to-cubicle than going door-to-door out in the suburbs.
---------------------

Another incident happened at a previous job. I was walking out the door for lunch and a man passed me on the way in. I hadn't taken 5 steps when I heard screaming from the receptionist. The guy who passed me was her ex-husband, who was now lunging at her with a 10" knife. Turned out he was very drunk and she easily avoided him, ran out of her office and pulled the door shut, trapping him inside. I called the cops, and some employees held the door shut until the cops arrived. The guy was sitting calmly in her chair when the cops opened the door and took him away.

----------------------------

One more: An employee's wife wrote a letter to the head of our Los Angeles office pleading for them to fire the receptionist there because the receptionist was fooling around with her husband. The letter actually had a long, logical explanation of why the affair was affecting productivity in the office. It was as if the wife had done a business analysis of the situation and had no emotional involvement at all.
 

pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,804
46
91
i think i just overheard an employee on a phone call discussing how well our company is doing this year and he used the term "wet dream" to describe it...
 

txrandom

Diamond Member
Aug 15, 2004
3,773
0
71
My new hire just sent me this email:
Hi Frank,

I hope this finds you well. Having only started at [Company] this week, I wanted to reach out to you before I left for National Training this Sunday. Over past three days, waves of information have been surging out from projectors and screens, but your presentation this morning piqued my interests and has been akin to a surfboard. Instead of swimming through the information, I am riding on top it.

Your talk on the current credit crunch was reassuring and inspiring. That is why I asked that critical question ? to learn from a partner. On the first day, Freddy Simon commented on this starting class, saying ?you are entering the profession during exciting times.? While recent events are unfortunate, I am interested to the steps the profession, regulators, and industry will take over the past few months; and ultimately, I aim to better serve my clients and [Company], armed with that first-hand knowledge. To me this is ?exciting.?

When I first interviewed with [Company]. One of my interviewers asked if I had some future goals in sight. My reply was simple and straightforward, and more than likely, it is a common desire. ?I am here to become a partner. To spend the next 20 years of my life here.? I am only 3 days into my career, but I hold true to that statement.

Your candor, honesty, and knowledge impressed me. If you ever have need of an enthusiastic Audit Assistant, I am more than willing to suit up, jump in, and catch a wave. And if you are interested to know, I actually do surf.

Thank you once again and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

-Douchebag

 

ggnl

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2004
5,095
1
0
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.
 

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,205
165
106
Originally posted by: ggnl
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.

would love to see that letter
 

bonkers325

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
13,076
1
0
Originally posted by: ggnl
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.

:camera:?
 

Kev

Lifer
Dec 17, 2001
16,367
4
81
Originally posted by: ggnl
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.

TTIWWGE
 

DomS

Banned
Jul 15, 2008
1,678
0
0
I worked at a farm supply place once during a summer break during college. I worked with what was probably the most disgusting coworker I ever had. I don?t mean she was a bad person, I mean her oral hygiene was awful. The first day I met her, I thought she was playing a prank on me since I was the new guy. She starts talking to me, and there are these GIGANTIC chunks of dark brown stuff between her teeth, sometimes almost completely covering her teeth. I thought it was chewing tobacco, maybe it was, but I will say this. When the first wave of her breath hit me for the first time I literally gagged. I gagged, no lie. I tried my best to cover it with a cough, but my goodness, it smelt like feces. Raw, unfiltered feces. Over the next couple weeks I would be able to tell if she was in my cubicle while I ate lunch (she had to get at files I had in there sometimes). I could tell because the stench of her breath actually hung in the air.
 

DomS

Banned
Jul 15, 2008
1,678
0
0
This one place I consulted at, the customer service manager was so askew I actually kept an incident log in case he came in and shot the place up. Here's an excerpt:


Paul: Customer service manager.
Nancy: Billing woman that Paul drove out
Rick: Accountant


July 18th, 2006 Tuesday ? The first tears
Paul can't get the billing program to run, and asks me to have a look at it. I ask if Nancy wrote instructions down before she left. Paul hands me this little scrap with 4 vague sentences written on it. He didn't ask her to write her directions down till AFTER she quit. So anyway, he gets the same error code over and over again, and over the next hour we attempt to remedy the problem to no avail. An hour later we're still getting the same error message. Paul starts getting frustrated, and calls back the help line, only to get trapped in a loop. When he finally gets a person he starts ranting and raving and hangs up on the person, slamming the phone down. He buries his head in his hands and says "Biggest mistake of my career letting her go". He honestly might've been crying, I couldn't tell because his hands were over his face.

Rick the accountant comes out of his office at this time, as he's been interviewing a replacement for Nancy. He sees Paul and asks if he'd like to interview her now. Paul says 'no, I don't want to talk to anyone at all.', and continues to have a mini-tantrum. Rick says he can try and reschedule the lady, but eventually Paul stops his tantrum long enough to do the interview. About a half hour later Paul comes back out and says, ?Ok we're going to get this working if it fucking kills both of us!? The computer hardware tech Dave comes by also. About a half hour later Paul gives up, and I go about doing other tasks at another computer. Around 2 o'clock Paul comes into the office where I'm working and starts screaming at me, 'you screwed up the computer by uninstalling that program. Why'd you uninstall it??' I look at him and ask what the heck he's talking about, seeing as I hadn't touched the program in about an hour, and had not uninstalled an iota of the program. As I leave at 3, Paul comments that 'you shouldn't have done that....shouldn't have touched that computer. Never?never again...' as he stares intently at the floor, down-trodden, and mumbling under his breath. I tell him I have no idea what he's talking about.
 

imported_Imp

Diamond Member
Dec 20, 2005
9,148
0
0
Two jobs ago, that place was a mad house. You couldn't find a place with more gossip, back-alley politics and snobbery.

Not in the mood for storytelling, so to sum up. There was the time one of the supervisors yelled at a temperamental admin assistant, causing her to have a panic attack and curl up on the floor.

One time I wasn't trained in proper procedure for corpse removal at the nursing home. This resulted in a corpse being rolled past the dining room (full of people) and through the front door. Luckily, they appeared too senile to notice.

Ah, I hated that place so much, but there were some great times.
 

James Bond

Diamond Member
Jan 21, 2005
6,023
0
0
Originally posted by: Imp
One time I wasn't trained in proper procedure for corpse removal at the nursing home. This resulted in a corpse being rolled past the dining room (full of people) and through the front door. Luckily, they appeared too senile to notice.

Ah, I hated that place so much, but there were some great times.

I almost spit out my oatmeal while reading this. Hahaha...
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,294
12,817
136
last night at work, this guy from 2 stores down walks in and places 2 vases with fake flowers on 2 of our tables. He says nothing, just puts them on the tables.

A customer was asking me a question when this happened. We just stopped talking in mid sentence and stared at the guy putting the vases down.

The customer then says to me, "does this happen often?". I reply, "strange things happen at night downtown all the time. I am getting used to it now.".

:confused:
 

Danman

Lifer
Nov 9, 1999
13,134
0
0
- When I worked at the Helpdesk many moons ago, there was a full-time tech there who was a recent hire. Total douchebag. Well, even though our managers were total douchebags, it was time to can the full-time new hire. After the management broke the news to him that he's terminated, the guy went ballistic. Basically yelling and screaming at both of our managers until the security came and escorted him off. It was so loud our director heard him on the other side of the floor. The managers were so embarrassed they didn't speak to us for a few days. After that, they actually became quite pleasant to work for.
 

AkumaX

Lifer
Apr 20, 2000
12,647
4
81
Originally posted by: Aharami
Originally posted by: ggnl
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.

would love to see that letter

x 2
 

AstroManLuca

Lifer
Jun 24, 2004
15,628
5
81
Originally posted by: Kev
Originally posted by: ggnl
A female employee at my company was allegedly being sexually harrassed by one of her female superiors. She was unhappy with the way the company was handling her complaints, so she wrote a long graphic email detailing the whole situation and sent it to the entire company along with her resignation letter.

I'm guessing the entire HR/legal department collectively shit a brick when they saw that come through.

TTIWWGE

titty wedgie?
 

thepd7

Diamond Member
Jan 2, 2005
9,423
0
0
Originally posted by: txrandom
My new hire just sent me this email:
Hi Frank,

I hope this finds you well. Having only started at [Company] this week, I wanted to reach out to you before I left for National Training this Sunday. Over past three days, waves of information have been surging out from projectors and screens, but your presentation this morning piqued my interests and has been akin to a surfboard. Instead of swimming through the information, I am riding on top it.

Your talk on the current credit crunch was reassuring and inspiring. That is why I asked that critical question ? to learn from a partner. On the first day, Freddy Simon commented on this starting class, saying ?you are entering the profession during exciting times.? While recent events are unfortunate, I am interested to the steps the profession, regulators, and industry will take over the past few months; and ultimately, I aim to better serve my clients and [Company], armed with that first-hand knowledge. To me this is ?exciting.?

When I first interviewed with [Company]. One of my interviewers asked if I had some future goals in sight. My reply was simple and straightforward, and more than likely, it is a common desire. ?I am here to become a partner. To spend the next 20 years of my life here.? I am only 3 days into my career, but I hold true to that statement.

Your candor, honesty, and knowledge impressed me. If you ever have need of an enthusiastic Audit Assistant, I am more than willing to suit up, jump in, and catch a wave. And if you are interested to know, I actually do surf.

Thank you once again and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

-Douchebag

You think that guy is a douche?

This could go one of two ways:

1. He is as motivated and driven as he says, in which case he will kick ass for you in everything you ask of him and eventually make it to partner.

2. He is just kissing your ass in which case you can get him to do your shit work.

Seems to me like a win-win.

 

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
Another one that comes to mind. Was doing an internship at a small company and came to find out that the VP of Sales liked to take a long liquid lunch just about every workday. He would come back to the office about 2:30 very drunk. He'd go in his office and close the door and we wouldn't see him again until he left for home about 5:00.

I don't know how long that had been going on, but one day the President was hanging around in the lobby and the VP of Sales came in from lunch visibly wobbly. The President accosted the VP and loudly (everyone could hear) asked if he had been drinking. The VP just looked down and shrugged his shoulders.

That's when the President punched the VP right in the face. The VP slumped to the floor and the President went back to his office without another word. A couple people helped the VP to his feet, he went to his office, and that's the last time I ever saw him. He never came back after that day.
 

hiromizu

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2007
3,405
1
0
I work in consulting and sometimes when I'm at a client site, I get hit on by slightly older women. Happened today. Cute Russian girl with a crazy accent and an incredible body (and very nice smell) endlessly talks to me. I lose interest in what she's saying and just space out like a golden retriever. Right then she walks behind me to get coffee but rubs her boobs on the back of my head and apologizes with a smile. Unfortunately for me, it would be misinappropriated for me to ask her out. Gahhh it's so frustrating *(*#(*#
 

AstroManLuca

Lifer
Jun 24, 2004
15,628
5
81
I used to work at a library and for a while there was a group of fat nerds who would show up 10 minutes early every Sunday morning and wait for me to unlock the door and let them in, at which point they would set up a big D&D board and play until the security guard kicked them out when we closed.

To be fair, we were only open for six hours on Sundays, but it was pretty funny. One time I even had to kick the guys out early because some people wanted to use one of our two group study rooms to actually study.

P.S. this was on a college campus but the guys were all definitely older than your typical college students.