25 Of The Weirdest Things People Have Witnessed In Their Workplace

‘The Office’ TV series may have heavily influenced a dramatic transformation of our perspective on things that happen in the workplace. Instead of getting personally affected by anything that occurs, we’d much prefer to watch events unfold avidly, like it’s our own personal sitcom.  People watching takes on new heights on the job, where you know everyone and their backstories, adding heightened elements of drama to the otherwise mundane occurrences. In some situations, one may even be privy to some tantalising little escapades involving colleagues, which emit peak levels of drama. Indeed, people who witnessed such incidents recently took to Reddit to reveal their observations that left staff buzzing with excitement. We’ve rounded up the top finds on the thread and shared them for your easy perusal in the gallery below.

#1

Image source: Jonaessa, pressfoto / freepik There was a woman at work who needed some time off because her daughter was k**led in a car accident. Everyone took up a collection for flowers and to help with expenses to get this woman out of state. Something felt off to a coworker and me, and we made a crack that she was probably lying. Our boss chewed us out up one side and down the other. Another employee saw the woman’s husband during the course of work and asked how everything was going. He had no idea what she was talking about. Said his daughter was fine; she was getting ready to welcome her second child. If she needed time off for that, we would have granted it. But to make up a story that your daughter was k****d? Who does that?! She never came back to work, and my coworker and I never got that apology.

#2

Image source: Ajoc27, The Yuri Arcurs Collection / freepik In a creche/daycare. One of the moms dropped off her baby & when handing him to one of the staff she kissed the staff member on the face and said "love you" and went off to work. Phoned a couple hours later to say "I've just realised what I did this morning. I'm so sorry, I was half asleep and I guess I'm so used to handing him to my husband" we had a good laugh.

#3

Image source: Jaydeeem89, romana klee / flickr I work in an office and thought it would be funny to put googly eyes on my coworkers desk one day. Everyone had a good laugh over it and a couple weeks I found googly eyes on all my stuff. It became a game of who could arrange googlys on peoples desk in the most creative/funny manner. It was hilarious.. Then one of the adjacent departments caught wind of the good times we were having and started doing the same. Cue a month later and there are f*****g googly eyes EVERYWHERE. It was absurd. On the drinking fountains, clocks, vending machines, garbage cans, toilets, you name it, there were googly eyes littered all over the g*****n place. The custodians started complaining that they couldnt keep up with the mess. Visiting customers would look around at the googly spectacle in disbelief of the unprofessionalism. The head managers had to hold team meetings to talk to all the teams about removing all googly eyes.. and of course since I started it, any time a rogue googly eye popped up months later, I got a stern look from my boss. The day that I quit there (or get fired, more likely), there will be an unleashing of googly eyes that will be unrivalled. People will be f*****g *swimming* through piles of googly eyes just to get to their completely googly eye covered desks. The vents will be spitting out plastic eyeballs of all shapes and sizes. People will open their lunches they brought from home and gasp in shock as they find nothing but little beady shaky eyes looking up from their tupperware. There. Will. Be. GOOGLY EYES.

#4

Image source: Comcernedthrowaway, EyeEm / freepik A deer ran into the office through a fire door that had been left open. Didn’t understand why it couldn’t get back outside through any of the industrial strength glass walls. It was distracted from butting the glass by the MD obliviously strolling in to see what the noise was about, and promptly decided that the MD was its arch enemy and needed to be defeated. Utter chaos ensued. I didn’t know the man had it in him to move so fast. He eventually ran into the server room to escape it and phoned over to beg some of the warehouse guys for help, they managed to herd the deer back outside. It’s since became our office legend.

#5

Image source: DeadSheepLane, The Yuri Arcurs Collection / freepik I watched the neighbor get caught by her husband mid-cheat. This was the last home hospice job I did. The clients bedroom was at the back of the house and had a large window that faced the front of the neighbors across a dirt road. We were sitting mid morning drinking a cups and watching the birds in the low hedge when we saw a naked man suddenly sprint across the side yard into the old garage followed by the just as naked wife and a few seconds later the husband. Lot of screaming follows then the naked man took off across the field and disappeared into the orchard. Several minutes pass before we see the wife dash over to her car, still naked, get in and drive off. My client, who was quite a spitfire of a lady her entire life, turned to me very deadpan and said “I’m glad I lived long enough to see *that*”. We didn’t stop laughing the rest of the day.

#6

Image source: obscureferences, Wavebreak Media / freepik I was visiting our warehouse which looked pretty standard as all things go. Tall shelves loaded with pallets, conveyor belts and forklifts going to and fro, burly men and women in high vis attire pottering about. When all of a sudden a song broke out over the PA system and every single person started dancing. Their expressions didn't change, they didn't stop what they were doing or where they were going, they all just danced as they went about their business. A few seconds later the music stopped and they resumed normal existence. It was so bizaare. Like they had been brainwashed to respond to the music and didn't recognise their own conditioning. Turns out that's all part of their ergonomics program. Every so often the music starts up and they're meant to move about as a form of stretching.

#7

Beginning of covid when everyone was still learning mute/blurred backgrounds. Whole of department call and someone blurts out "oh, f*** off!" just as our director starts speaking. As a result she mutes participants. Director's naked husband (who also works at the same company) then appears in the background and proceeds to make himself lunch. Someone had to call her mobile to tell her. Image source: Wednesdays_Agenda

#8

Image source: nursecarmen, Wavebreak Media / freepik Not my coworker, but someone that worked in my downtown office building. Me and a work friend were on the sidewalk having a smoke when a big crt computer monitor came crashing onto the sidewalk, followed by glass, a computer, a keyboard, and finally a chair. Apparently a guy on the twelfth floor was left alone in the HR office after they notified him that he was getting fired.

#9

Image source: Particular-Cow-3353, EyeEm / freepik Teams. I was giving a presentation about my findings to a large group (30+ people) when my cat came in with a pigeon and released it in the room. I excused myself and turned off the camera but forgot to turn off the microphone. Everyone stayed deathly quiet for the ordeal... Now I don't swear at work, I'll drop "gosh darn it" "ruddy". That's it. But trying to catch that bird while keeping my cat away from it and then releasing it on the balcony had me swearing like a right sailor. When I turned the camera back on everyone burst out laughing. It will forever be "the bird fiasco".

#10

Image source: hazydaz, Miriam Alonso / pexels This was when I was in high school working at round table pizza. We had some cool assistant managers that once the closing duties were finished they'd let us hit the beer taps. One of the morning guys that made dough was kinda creepy and let it be known that there was a hole over the toilet in the women's rest room. This was pretty far back from the platform in the attic that supplies were stored so you would have to be on the rafters only. One night one of the cute asst managers went to the restroom and like 3 or 4 guys hauled a*s up to the attic to try to get a peep (gross, I never did). Well one of the idiots fell thru the ceiling and Into the stall with the asst manager. Idiot who fell and 2 other guys that were up there got fired on the spot.

#11

While working at a supermarket, I was walking through the dairy department and saw a fellow employee over by the eggs. As I got closer I could see him with a carton open and he seemed to be turning each egg. After doing the whole pack, I asked him what he was doing and he responded, “the manager asked me to rotate the eggs.” I facepalmed and explained what they actually meant, to which he replied, “that makes a lot more sense.” For context, in the grocery world, to rotate means to make sure the earliest dates of expiration are towards the front of the shelf. Image source: Greystreet21

#12

I was delivering pizzas I got shot 6 times in the chest by some punk kid wanting to steal my car. The guy I was delivering to just happened to be a PJ (pararescue, think 911 for elite military units) and headed stabilitized me until an ambulance came. I did manage to call my best friend and speak to him. Asked him to go take care of my dogs, he did. He and his dad came to the hospital as I was going into surgery. Work kept calling my phone and finally Parker's dad answered. It was my manager absolutely b******g about how I was fired for taking so long on the route. After my boss was told what happened, his response was, and I'm quoting from what I was told, "Well that's just f*****g great, now I need to find coverage for the rest of the weekend." Parker's father is the most polite and well spoken man I have ever known, I've known him for 15 years at the time and have never once heard him raise his voice or curse. He absolutely laid into my boss, called him every profane thing in the book, and told him that he was on speaker and an entire waiting room of my family and friends had heard him. Luckily I made a full recovery, but he didn't loose his job dispite basically everyone I know calling the corporate office. Last I checked he was still there, his own personal hell I guess haha. Image source: Unyielding_Cactus

#13

I worked in a small office. There was a front lobby area with a conference room off to the side. It was separated by a door from the rest of the office. So I'm sitting at my desk, just working, and I hear screaming from the front lobby area, like straight up someone is being m******d screaming. Everyone in the office area is freaking out, assuming there was a robbery or something horrible happening in the front. I hear someone shrieking for help, so I'm like okay this is clearly not a dangerous situation, it must be a medical emergency or something like that. I tell one of my coworkers to call 911. I proceed to open the door quietly and walk towards the lobby. I do not see anyone, even the receptionist, but the screaming is still going on from inside the conference room. I slowly open the door and find about 8 people on top of the table, including the owners of the company and a couple clients. I'm just staring at them, seriously confused about what I just walked into. I look down and see a tiny little field mouse hopping around in circles around the table. I picked the little guy up and became the hero of the day. 911 dispatched a couple of police officers over a tiny mouse. My raise that year was substantially higher than usual. Image source: raven_darkseid

#14

This was in the '80s at a bad software company run entirely by men. Wonder of wonders, an extremely competent and popular woman programmer was appointed to a management position in Development. The younger developers decided to have a parade. She was of Scandinavian descent, so they made for her a horned helmet and sword out of aluminum foil, and made for her a sedan chair out of a wooden chair with a couple of pieces of lumber under the arms for support. Then they carried her outside on the chair while she waved her "sword," and paraded her around the parking lot at the head of a long column of programmers wearing fish hats and throwing firecrackers. I never understood the fish hats. Edit: And kazoo music. I forgot that. Those were the days... Image source: Tall_Mickey

#15

Image source: Spreaderoflies, reewungjunerr / freepik Had a guy that was with our shop for a couple weeks, seemed cool. Well one fine Wednesday the state boys come to visit and they have friends from the FBI with them. Homie drops everything like it was a billion degrees sprints it for the emergency exit jumps the security fence gets cut all to hell on the concertina wire. And hauls a*s to never be seen again. Weird right. Then we see our shop supervisor getting led out in cuffs pale as a ghost head slung down to the floor. He and his wife were running a pdf file ring on the dark web. F**k you Carl

#16

Image source: youwhatmaate, EyeEm / freepik Had an all department meeting, which should have been a Live (approx 110people). Department head thought it was a good idea to have a large meeting rather then a live, so people could speak up regarding questions. Everyone’s camera is off, except the presenter. 5min in, another camera turns on, and its clearly mobile. Person has headphones on and rests phone on bench. They then proceed to drop their dacks to take a dump. Presenter then yelled their name and that their camera was on. Person looks up, terrified, and grabs phone and disappears. The meeting was recorded, but was then deleted.

#17

On a Zoom meeting/town hall with approx 100 people, someone forgot to mute and ripped a huge fart while the VP was giving a company update. The noise triggered their screen to pop up, which outed them. To make things worse, the meeting was recorded and sent to everyone afterwards. Image source: DynastyIntro

#18

Image source: TranslatorCritical11, kuprevich / freepik A former colleague of mine pretended to have skin cancer. He left work for treatments and wore dressings for his wounds. He was found to be lying after six months and escorted off site by security. We worked in a hospital known for its oncology department, so he was not popular.

#19

Image source: Wrong_Answer_Willie, standret / freepik A coworker (in a cotton mill) had a heart attack and died right there on the floor. The supervisor roped off the area around him and worked continued. EMT, Coroner, Police were all doing their job as we worked around them.

#20

Image source: Zalpyy-fly788, anatoliy_gleb / freepik I had a coworker that we will call Bob. You see Bob was a relatively peaceful guy but you knew that there was some s**t wrong with him. They’d regularly fire people from this job and, well, Bob always told everyone “if I’m ever fired it better be when I’m at home. I’d rather be called and told I’m fired rather than come to work and find out in person. I don’t want to come to work happy and prepared my lunch just to be sent home.” Well…he was fired. All hell broke loose. He was in charge of cutting up drywall at the job, and well, he grabbed that drywall and smashed it to pieces. Smashed the saw too. Threw an empty propane tank at the wall and just destroyed so much s**t. Eventually the Cops were involved and Bob was escorted away. Honestly, the job was horrible and he was a legend for it in my eyes.

#21

A dozen full-grown men all singing Taylor Swift's "shake it off" in the shower together. Squad showers have scarred me for life. Image source: YisigothTheUndying

#22

Image source: TazzzTM, YuriArcursPeopleimages / envatoelements A girl I worked with had her boyfriend come to our job to fight one of our guy coworkers after work. They fought in the parking lot. Security had to run out and break it up. Her boyfriend lost lol.

#23

Image source: Fluid-Air-3151, freepik This is in the late 80's. I worked in a hospital pharmacy that was like the united nations. Indian, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hatian and American employees. The hatian woman was very Catholic, so religious, and in love with a gay Mexican man who was mostly in the closet except for a few of us who were good friends. He was in a relationship with an American pharmacist and they lived together, but most everyone thought it was as roommates. So she would cook for him, buy him gifts and have "dates" that were platonic, but in her mind he was her boyfriend. The American pharmacist hated it because he was jealous, and she was also jealous of their relationship, so they pretty much hated each other. The hospital was pretty big and in the back was where all the overstock was kept. I was way in the front (probably about 500 feet from the back) taking care of a nurse when I heard this blood curdling scream that didn't stop. The Haitian woman came running through the pharmacy literally screaming at the top of her lungs and ran out of the hospital screaming. Turned out they got into a fight about her " boyfriend" and the real boyfriend told her that they were gay and she would never have him. The men broke up because he was pissed off that he was outed ( only a few of us knew what really happened) and he never forgave his boyfriend. She never came back, sent someone to pick up her stuff and we were told she went back to Haiti and entered a convent.

#24

We had a m***head living in our attic for weeks without us knowing. One day he fell through the ceiling in the dry storage, locked eyes with the head chef sitting at his desk, and then just booked it out of there. On his way down the dude knocked down a shelf, f****d up our can rack, broke our A/C, and then kicked a hole in the drywall for good measure. We'd been coming in at 8AM to find dishes in the sink, fryers and grills left on, food missing, etc. We figured it was just the night crew coming in for a snack, it's terrifying to think of how long he was up there without us knowing. Some guys had even gone up to get stuff, walked right past him without noticing. Image source: ASK_ME_FOR_TRIVIA

#25

Image source: josk03, Stockbusters / freepik I get hired right out of college at this tech company. Building has 3 floors. 3rd floor has a channel on Teams for (mostly) men called “Gus Time”. I am not a man but a few of the guys who I am friendly with invite me to this channel because, and i quote, “you won’t believe it.” I’m like okay, weird, but who am I to deny fun. All of the messages on this channel are basically some version of “Gus just went in,” or “Gus just left.” One day we’re at happy hour and I say wtf is the Gus channel about? So a few of the men burst out laughing and explain. Gus is on the support team and he uses the 3rd floor bathroom to publicly rub the pickle. I ask why no one has said anything. They say “how do you tell a guy to stop flogging the pope at the sink without it becoming a whole thing?” Weeks later, we hire a new guy who somehow missed the memo and goes into the bathroom during Gus Time. He erupts from the door and goes straight to HR. A couple of days later, Gus gets a letter from a therapist saying he has a severe panic disorder and this is a coping mechanism, [legal legal legal]; Gus finds himself in a protected class and Gus is allowed to work from home. Suddenly Gus’s performance slips. Gus is asked to come in to speak with management and HR. Gus is fired for performance reasons that preclude his protected class. Gus gets up, refuses to turn in his badge, runs away, embodiment of Paul Blart Mall Cop security guard has to chase Gus outdoors near the aesthetic retention pond. It’s goose egg season and during the foot chase they run past an active nest. A male goose begins hissing and warding them off with wing flapping. Gus slips in the grass. Paul Blart tries to grab him but unhappy goose is in hot pursuit and begins…beaking them? Paul Blart has to pepper spray the goose. We’re all at the windows at this point. HR called the police. The police take Gus away. Paul Blart quit. TL;DR: a chronic m*sturbator leads security on a literal wild goose chase.