25 Of The Wildest Workplace Stories, According To People

One of the oddest things I ever witnessed in the workplace was when a colleague chose to trim their nose hairs on a common worktable in the office. That wasn’t even the weird part. The crazy thing is that when he was reprimanded by HR, our immediate superior decided to remove his pants in front of CCTV cameras as a form of protest against the admonishment. To this day, it doesn't make sense to me, and I just categorise the whole event as one of those crazy, wild incidents that I happened to witness in the workplace.  To be fair, we all have those experiences where we may have seen something totally unhinged take place while we were just peacefully trying to do our jobs. To be frank, its kind of entertaining to see such dramatics while going through the otherwise boring grind of the normal workday. So when one Redditor asked netizens to share their own similar experiences, the answers poured in. We’ve combed through them to find the most unexpected or inappropriate things people have seen while on the clock and shared them in the gallery below. 

#1

Image source: RespectMyAuthority74, DC_Studio I am director of security at a college with over 400 cameras....pretty sure I have seen it all but my favorite is a guy scratching his junk furiously, pulling his waistband out to look and then screaming. I don't even want to know what was going on down there.

#2

Image source: ForeverIdiosyncratic, Getty Images Every Wednesday there was a tamale lady that would walk local businesses, selling her tamales. My boss, had a bit of an addiction with them because he would buy a dozen or more weekly. One day, she tells him that she is moving, and thanks him for his business. Well, he offered her $500 to teach him how to make them. Next day, she comes in with her husband, we have a tamale making class, and it was one of the weirdest (but fun) moments I’ve had.

#3

Image source: IamDes215, charlesdeluvio At my old job, a coworker got fired but refused to leave the building. Instead of making a scene, he calmly walked into the breakroom, popped a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and sat down at his desk like nothing happened. Security was called, and while they were trying to escort him out, the microwave caught fire because he set the timer for 20 minutes instead of 2. So now, the office smelled like burnt popcorn, the fire alarm was blaring, and this guy just grabbed his half-burnt bag and walked out like it was all part of the plan. Still not sure if it was a meltdown or the most legendary exit ever.

#4

Image source: staticzapper, Tiger Lily I used to work at a bank and every morning the businesses would file in to drop off their morning deposit bags, and it was always the same 9-10 businesses so I’d see the same employees day after day and make small talk while I counted the deposit for them. One of these places was a tile shop. Just a massive retail warehouse of tons of different tiles for your kitchen, bathroom, etc. one day the normal guy I joke around with is gone. The backup guy looks somber and nervous. The next day he’s also gone and it’s a totally new person. So I start making small talk and me and this new guy start becoming friendly. After about a month of this I finally ask what happened to the other guys. Turns out that their manager, and a bunch of his underlings were opening up the warehouse after closing hours and renting the space out to a porn studio. It was discovered when one of their customers recognized the tiled kitchen set in the background of the porn, and took screenshots to send to corporate. Corporate came in and rained holy hell down on them and fired like half the staff and brought in management from elsewhere to cover.

#5

Image source: trey3rd, Pressmaster My work let me take two hours out of my day once a week for weeks to play D&D with coworkers. Probably about 40 people participated across all the groups. Most people I tell about it can't believe they let us do that.

#6

Image source: rojeli, osbmxhouse I got my first manager job (IT). I was really excited. I was going to mentor and mold the youngins. I had taken business management classes. Conflict resolution classes. Mentoring workshops. I had binders. I was ready to go. First day. First task: "Jimmy is one of your direct reports. You need to get him to stop cutting his toenails at his desk.".

#7

Image source: joesighugh, anonymous Engineer was always saying he had low bandwidth and was overwhelmed with tickets whenever any of us asked him for anything. Turned out he was playing World of Warcraft 10 hours per day on his company laptop. HR fired him right away.

#8

Image source: punkwalrus, YuriArcursPeopleimages I worked at a job where this woman a few cubicles over had a tragic weekend. Her husband died while napping on the couch, and she had to deal with that circus and now on Monday, she was on the phone, making calls and sobbing hysterically: funeral homes, family members, insurance companies, the hospital, the morgue, and so on. All the s**t you have to manage when a spouse dies unexpectedly. A few of us reported to management, but her manager said, "she only gets of three days bereavement as per policy, and she already took those when her mother died at the beginning of the year. She is also out of sick days, which she took because her kids were sick. Nothing I can do, it's an HR mandate. if she didn't come in this morning, I would have been forced to write her up." God damn.

#9

Image source: langecrew, YuriArcursPeopleimages Sort of indirect, but I once worked in an office that had a very relaxed dress code, and one of the only things specifically prohibited was Speedos. We were told that, yes, there was a story behind this. We were not told the story. I didn't inquire further.

#10

Image source: NeutralTarget, YuriArcursPeopleimages Layed off almost everyone over 50, then HR rewrote all of their job descriptions and hired younger people to do the same job for less pay. During the exit interviews you signed a paper saying you wouldn't sue and if you didn't sign you received no severance pay. This happened in a US state that has almost no employee rights.

#11

Image source: brownbutterfinger, GaudiLab Just today, my 80+ year old coworker was just watching a video on how to keep an erection out loud in the office. You could literally hear it down the hall.

#12

Image source: steffie-flies, nd3000 Happened in a different city, but two people who were having an affair at work went into the cash room to have a quickie. The cash room with ten cameras so they were caught in every possible angle. Somebody leaked the video the all the offices around the country, so we all saw it.

#13

Image source: Omniball3000, DC_Studio I worked in a call center around 2005. One of the employees and a manager built a sex toy website on company computers during work hours. Both fired.

#14

Image source: Xtina1680, wichayada69 Grown a*s man slept in a corporate office. at his desk. on the toilet. in the lunch room. in his car. in 8 person mtngs around a conference table. in town halls as the PRODUCER of such events, front row, head back, mouth open, as president of company spoke. he snored. he was startled awake. it was truly something.

#15

Image source: MermaiddSapph, Handy Wicaksono I worked a few years as a freight delivery driver, everything from flatscreens from Amazon to human cadavers on the same truck. One day I’m at a regular stop which happened to be a medical school’s ears, nose, and throat department. We frequently delivered smaller boxes there and even though every box containing a cadaver just says “human tissue” it was clear there were heads in these boxes. The typical woman I delivered to wasn’t there, and her understudy was out sick.. so they had a student worker guide me. We mistakenly end up going to the wrong room, instead of the storage room with freezers my paperwork for some reason had a classroom written on it. We enter, the lights are out so she goes to the opposite end to flick on the light. Once it’s on I look around to see maybe a dozen small desks each with a human head sitting on it with one of those blue paper towels similar to what you’d wear at the dentist resting on top, partially covering them. This poor girl freaks out, it turns out her field of study pertained simply on dealing with medical instruments, and had never seen such a thing (nor have I). She is clearly having a panic attack and excuses herself to go get some PPE as Im standing there nervously laughing like a maniac at the insanity of the situation. I go back outside of the room and after a while am met by somebody who works there who apologized profusely asking if I was alright. In hindsight saying no could have been a good financial choice.

#16

Nurse here…A postpartum nurse at a large hospital in Minneapolis was in charge of making sure mothers after giving birth (not normal births, high risk and c-sections) were treated with pain medications. She was drawing the liquid med into syringes, filling other syringes with tap water and filling the med bottles back up with water Then she would go into the bathroom and inject herself and then go see her patients. Thank you to cameras and the Pyxis machine she was caught TL:DR - Hospital nurse was an opioid junky stealing meds from sick patients and hurting them with tap water “pain” meds. Image source: mn-icecold

#17

Image source: voivoivoi183, leszekglasner Toys R Us was one of my first jobs when I was a teenager. Used to work with this metal head guy who was probably about 5 years older than me. He used to regularly show up drunk/stoned/hungover to supervise the warehouse, operate the forklift and compactor etc. They didn’t want to sack him because he was one of the only people there who knew what they were doing. Also used to have sex with his (co-worker) girlfriend in the customer toilets. He was funny as f**k, cool guy. Fell out of touch with him after a while as you do. Last I heard he worked as a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator. ?‍♂️.

#18

Image source: SlipperyPickle6969, DC_Studio A new coworker started on day 1 and fell asleep in our morning meeting with our boss.

#19

Image source: cucumberholster, Rawpixel Local to me a drywaller was retiring, they threw a party in a unfinished townhouse complete with stripper, blow, booze etc. young guy pulled out his phone and posted a video. They all lost their job. Retiree lost his union and pension. Died of a heart attack a year later.

#20

Image source: Just-Brilliant-7815, davidpereiras Receptionist picked up her sick kids from school and brought them to work. Laid out a blanket IN THE FRONT LOBBY and gave each of her 3 kids a tablet to watch movies on.

#21

Image source: MalevolentMaddy, Evonne Yuwen Teoh A woman working in a supermarket I ran was stealing bottles of cola from the shelf and then stealing bottles of vodka, mixing it under the checkout and necking it. I caught her and went through months of CCTV as evidence and called in HR. Before she got sacked she did a final shift where she came running off the checkout and shat herself in the back office ? It also came out that on her lunch break she would go out to her car and drink in there. She must have been absolutely wasted by the time she drove home, it's a wonder she didn't end up killing anyone!

#22

I used to work at a place that was a fever dream. A few stories from there because I don’t have the time. We started every Friday with a full company “huddle”. Around 30 people. Occasionally bossman wanted to prove how cool and hip he was and would come in a costume. One day CEO and his right hand man came down in full over the shoulder mankinis with a speaker on their shoulder and ran around humping all the dudes there. The left the women alone while dressed like that at least. Then continued on for the full 30 minutes dressed like that. Different day same whole company meeting bossman learned one of the ladies had never shotgunned a beer and he was like oh you have to do it now! Anyone else wanna join she can’t do it alone so like 6 people shotgunned beer at 8:15 in the morning. There were some perks but it was largely hell. One time he took the whole company to drive on a race track. That is still one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. Image source: Tthelaundryman

#23

Image source: Kiwikeeper, renatahamuda I have a colleague who just goes around with some paper in his hands and just... kinda stops all the time to chat with people, smoke cigarettes, take coffees. Never seen him do any work really. A legend.

#24

Image source: ButterscotchFog, anastasya_1995 Guy brought his kid to work yesterday. The boss had a big meeting with some people in his office and this dude just busts in, interrupts during the meeting, and hoists his kid up on his shoulders like it’s no big deal.

#25

Image source: discostud1515, FoToArtist_1 I work 9-5 but in a building that has plenty of 24 hour workers. Outside my office there is a small first aid room with a bit of medical supplies, a sink and small bed. Shortly after starting here I went into the room and there was a post-it note on the bed that said : "Please don't have sex on this bed".