What's the worst thing you've ever witnessed in the workplace?

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > What's the worst thing you've ever witnessed in the workplace?

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

For my most recent job one of my co-workers let an escaped mental patient into our building who had just stabbed someone. Thankfully our security stopped and detained him until the police could get there. When I worked retail though I had these homeless guys that I would always make coffee for in the winter and let them use our bathroom in exchange for them cleaning it up when they were done and would like give them our left overs from parties or pizza days or whatever. Well, one day in the winter one of them came in and told me that his friend was dead outside and to please call an ambulance. I went outside and saw one of them laying in the alley with a layer of undisturbed snow on him. I had one of my employees call 911 and went over to check on him. He didn't respond to me at all but once the paramedics got there they were like, "Come on Randy, get up, you got him." and he got up and thought it was just the funniest thing that I thought he was dead.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 14:59

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 07:45

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Ha, probated for being funny in GBS. The old times have truly come again.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 18:37

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

SquadronROE posted:

I once saw this piece of code in a code review where someone tried to use double quotes to express a string in SQL. It has been the funniest most tragic thing I've ever seen aside from some weirdo not explicitly declaring a variable's type.

revmoo posted:

One of my old coworkers was told to add a clock with hours, minutes, seconds on a page.

He wrote an AJAX function that queried the remote server every second to get the current time.

mods?

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 19:45

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

criscodisco posted:

That's not how HIPAA laws work. You can speak as in depth as you wish about any patient you've had, so long as you don't give any identifying factors as to the patient's identity.

HIPAA laws are much more strict for GBS though. In fact, they cover absolutely everyone even if you are not in the medical field from ever speaking about any disease anyone has. Like the OP of the Charlie Sheen HIV thread just broke HIPAA.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 19:52

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Oh! I forgot about a really really bad one! But it wasn't necessarily "at work", but work lead to it happening. So this cashier brought her 4 kids into work one day and had them just sitting in the break room for like 2 hours. She worked a 10 hour shift that day so I asked her what the hell was going on. She told me nothing was wrong so I told her to get her kids somewhere else since they were really loud and making messes and fighting with each other since a retail break room with nothing but vending machines and a TV with nothing but instructional videos to watch isn't fun for ages 5-9. Well, she asked if she could have a little longer lunch and I said that was fine. Well, she never came back to work that day. Or the next day. Or the day after. Never called in to us or anything. We got pretty worried and one of her friends finally told me and the other manager that when she went to bring the kids to her sister's place her ex-boyfriend (who she had been trying to avoid the entire day but never loving told me about) caught up to her and beat the ever loving poo poo out of her in front of their children and she was in the hospital with a really badly broken face. I felt absolutely horrible for months afterward, and if she had just told me what was going on I would have brought her kids to my place or something to have my roommate watch them until work was over. Then she could have totally left or whatever knowing that they were safe the rest of the day. Or she could have just told me what was going on and I would have let her leave for the day to do whatever she needed to be done.

Solice Kirsk fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Nov 17, 2015

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 22:18

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

feedmegin posted:

My previous job, the first day at work the CTO loudly berated some poor Turkish guy in front of the whole company, shouting he'd lied about, I dunno, checking some code into source control.

Mild compared to many people in here, I'm sure, but I wish I'd taken it as the warning side it was regarding that company's senior management. I 'd out of there into a new job 6 months later when they tried to screw me into accepting a $10k pay cut under threat of not passing my probation for bullshit reasons and being instafired.

Did you at least still company information and what not on your way out?

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 22:56

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Metanaut posted:

A 2-3 year old baby in a crib being wheeled from the cancer ward he was staying in to surgery. I don't know how people cope with working there. At least with adults you can imagine they some how deserve the lovely thing they're dealing with.

Maybe he was one of those annoying kids that wouldn't finish their vegetables at dinner?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 14:49

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Applewhite posted:

For a brief time I worked at a factory that made bottom moored mines. You know, the round ones with the spikes on them? I was in quality assurance, so the completed mines were all laid out in rows on the warehouse floor. Resting on the ground, the mines' spikes were just below eye level. Stumble at the wrong time and "splat" you lose an eye at best, or get a spike driven into your brain and possibly explode if the mine's safety malfunctions.
Me and the other quality assurance guys walked up and down the rows, checking the mines and then affixing our stamps to them before moving on. We got paid based on how many we inspected in one day, so to increase our efficiency, we started wearing roller skates to move up and down the rows quicker.

Well you can guess what happened...

Some rear end in a top hat took a poo poo in our break room

Those are actually triggers, not spikes. You were a poor mine quality assurance inspector.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 15:09

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Applewhite posted:

I used to work as the day manager for a videogame arcade back when video arcades were a thing.
There are a lot of stories from that time but the one that stands out to me was the day of the thunderstorm when one of the cabinets got struck by lightning and the kid who was playing it at the time got sucked into the game!
As is standard procedure for when this kind of thing happens, I rushed over to the cabinet to play the game and help the kid stuck inside to finish (the only way to free someone stuck inside a game is to beat the game).
Unfortunately, the game was Mortal Kombat and even playing my best, I still wasn't able to save him. Scorpion got him with a Fatality about twenty seconds in and I had to watch the kid get eviscerated before my very eyes

People are gonna say this never happened or that Applewhite is just making things up again, but I knew a kid that this happened to back in like 1989 only it happened at home while he was playing Nintendo instead of in the arcade. I remember because he was missing for like 3 years and the family actually started to give up hope.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 16:48

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Applewhite posted:

When I was working at Bed, Bath & Beyond we had what we thought was a guy running around and knocking things over while wearing a bedsheet, but it turned out to be the ghost of a customer who'd died there years ago

Thats loving terrifying. Like when someone grabbed the sheet was there just no one under it or something?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 20:31

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Orkin Mang posted:

mother of god

The weirdest part is that exact same thing happened to me only the guy was obsessed with Herman's Head.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2015 02:19

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Roro posted:

It's a sad job, but I'd rather do this than spend my life in retail having autists rub their faces on my titties again.

Wait, what? Having spent my first 12 years of employment in retail of some sort I need to hear this story.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 22:40

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Roro posted:

It's not an amazing story really. I used to work in a card shop, and we had a couple of autistic regulars. One was really nice while the other was a oval office. I don't know why, but both of them seemed to adore me. The oval office one would deliberately wait in the queue until I was free then demand I serve her according to her specifications (no receipt, hand the bag and the cards to her so she could pack her stuff away, that sort of thing).
The nice one had no concept of personal space, and I was not told this when I first started. She was chatting away happily to my boss, then suddenly grabbed me in a bear hug and rubbed her head against my chest. I quietly flipped out and sort of snapped my arms up to break the hug. It was too late, however, and I was forever marked as her cuddle toy. She once tackled me on my day off when I went into the shop and nearly sent me flying. As I said, she was pretty nice and I grew to kind of like her, especially since I felt bad that my coworkers would mock her relentlessly. But it was a hell of an introduction.

That was a lot better than I thought it would be. Still, people who don't respect personal space are up there on my annoyance meter. Regulars that were annoying were always the worst. We used to have this one guy that would come in all the time to try and pay us in random world currency and proclaim loudly when we said we couldn't take it that "WE LIVE IN A WORLD ECONOMY!!! IS THIS HOW YOU THINK PROGRESS WORKS?!?!" Each purchase was for like $5 or less so I finally snapped at him and told him if he ever came back I would call the cops. He came back a couple days later and I filed trespassing charges on him. It was hilarious. The whole shebang. My LP officer had to go to court over it and everything. I love that I wasted that dude's time and annoyed him just as much as he did to us.....then I took over another store and I found that he started going there...pain in the rear end. gently caress retail management.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2015 02:24

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

NigelsPoppet posted:

Used to work in an Italian restaurant fully staffed by Mexicans

One Mexican we used to call Oscar (made delicious margherita pizzas) locked himself into this huge walk in freezer we had in the basement. Something was wrong with the door hinge and the owner had previously gotten stuck in there while re-stocking some months ago.

I came in to open the morning after Oscar had been cleaning up the previous night, go to the walk in freezer and inside is a very nearly dead Hispanic. Musta been in there at least six or seven hours, don't know fancy science measurements like Celsius or farenheit but it was cold as gently caress not sure how he survived

His fiery Latino blood and the warmth all Mexicans carry in their hearts probably helped.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 06:23

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

praxis posted:

My married boss handing out promotions to the coworker he's currently loving.

OR

When I worked at Baskin Robbins and a coworker gave a guy a blowjob then spit everything into the Cookies and Cream.

Cookies and cream ice cream is something you give to a disobedient child as a punishment. poo poo sucks, so a mouth full of cum and spit being spewed onto it probably didn't affect much.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2015 17:27

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

grack posted:

I'm a financial advisor by trade. I'm an independent advisor now but about 5 years ago I was working for a medium sized firm when this incident happened.

I was sitting at my desk doing paperwork when one of my colleagues comes in with a really somber look on his face, asks if I could talk some sense in to one of his clients. I ask him why, he says "He wants to do something really, really stupid and I can't talk him out of it, I was hoping you could try." He tells me that I wouldn't believe it if he told me the sorry so I figured why not.

So I sit down with this client and he tells me straight away, "I want to withdraw all my savings and start raising emus".

No poo poo.

I asked him why, he just said he'd read something on the internet and decided it was a good idea.

Some important points:
1. He was 55, an accountant by trade and as far as I could tell had zero experience with raising animals.
2. He was asking for nearly $700,000. That was the entirety of his life savings.

He got the money out, and to this day I still wonder how he's doing (probably very badly).

I had a client withdrawal all his money and buy bars of silver which he then buried in his property somewhere. People are idiots.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2015 01:36

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

This may be the biggest dick head thing I've ever seen done by any father to his son short of literally loving him. A father takes out a life insurance policy on his son when he was a child and he pumps the thing full of cash value (basically means that the life insurance is worth something even if the insured doesn't die). He keeps this policy in place and building cash value for about 30 something years. He then takes out all the loans he can against the policy leaving just barely enough cash value to keep the thing in place for a couple more years before it will eventually lapse and and cause a taxable event for all the gain that was taken out of the contract. He then "gifts" the policy to his son (making him the owner of it) as a birthday gift showing him old statements with all the cash value and no loans on the policy. Years go by and this guy thinks his dad just basically gave him several hundred thousands of dollars.....until he gets the letter from the insurance company telling him he needs to pay $10,000 to keep the policy in place for another year or its going to lapse. This is when I enter the picture and find out that there was almost $350,000 in taxable gains in the loans that the son is going to have to pay since he is now owner of the contract and he sure as hell can't afford it.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2015 18:19

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

revmoo posted:

That's lovely, but I'm having a hard time understanding how the son is liable for the fraud committed by the father. Shouldn't he be able to file a police report and give that to the IRS to cancel the tax liability?

There was no fraud involved at all. What the father did with the policy while he owned it was 100% legal and the ownership change assigns all tax obligations as well as the current cash value, loans, etc. to the new owner. I suggested he talk to a tax attorney and sent him on his way. I'm not getting involved in that situation at all. Too big of a mess.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 21:05

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Frozen Horse posted:

Either the son was defrauded by having the condition of the policy that he was accepting ownership of misrepresented, or is so as to be unable to enter into contracts.

Eh, I'm not a lawyer which is why I wouldn't touch the thing, but I'd think he would have to prove to a court that he was defrauded by his father with more evidence than just his word against his father's. I know the tax rules for life insurance and just following the contract as is, dude is hosed. Still, its a dick move that was worthy of being posted in this thread. What an absolute poo poo bag of a father.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 21:39

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

I lived in a small town of about 1200 people and if there was so much as a traffic stop all three officers would show up and everyone in the houses around would be at their windows watching.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 15:26

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 07:45

Solice Kirsk: Jun 1, 2004; .

Szymanski posted:

Work experience student on the shitter, door open, pants around his ankles eating his lunch

so bizarre

Thats just a confident man there. Hire him!

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 18:54

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > What's the worst thing you've ever witnessed in the workplace?