It always sucks to have bad coworkers. These are the people during the week that a majority of time is spent with. Sometimes over 40 hours a week can be spent with these humans. Things really get annoying when they don't do their work or do something completely unforgivable and are given endless opportunities. In this piece, people share the worst thing a coworker did that they somehow weren't fired for. Keep in mind, content was edited for clarity.
Doing The Dirty On The Dirty
“I used to work for a full-body donation facility. Like, you donate your body to science, we would cut it up and send your different parts to researchers all over the world. In this facility, we had lots of gurneys to transport the 7-8 bodies we received a day. We would also cut up the bodies on the gurney’s… which meant these things were disgusting. We cleaned them… but still. My coworkers and I began noticing that some of the gurney’s weren’t always in their rightful place when we opened shop in the morning. Immediately you think, ‘ghosts.’ Nope. Turns out two employees were always staying late and doing the dirty on them. No joke. They didn’t get fired for it.
They did get fired though, when they forged letters to their welfare agent saying they got paid below X amount of dollars and still needed welfare, which was a lie. They signed the bottoms of the letters, each claiming to be the other’s boss.”
Car Dealer Totaled
“A good friend of mine works at a dealership where he drives cars on a daily basis. He was doing a bunch of pre-delivery inspections at the end of his shift about a month ago now. He was test-driving a brand new, fully loaded Jeep Wrangler. He looked down to set the cruise and make sure the heater works as it should. When he looked up, he had no time to react before slamming into the back of a Ford Escape and sending it flying. No one was hurt, luckily, but both vehicles were totaled.
The kicker of the story? He hasn’t had a license in over a year. He lied to all of his bosses about it and was persistent that he had a license.
I just had him change my oil today, actually. He’s still working full time, just not allowed to drive vehicles.”
Money Lost
“I had a job at a movie theater. They put me in box office alone on a Friday night, as usual, and I’m going about my business. On weekends, we rack up huge amounts of money, like absurd, and at the end of my 10hr shift I had nearly $10,000 cash in my drawer and three times that in credit. I had the manager close my drawer and pulled it to go to the money office and count it out.
Now, I’d been at this job less than a month and I’d had some instances where I’d been $12 or so dollars short on drawer because of the managers messing something up or throwing away checks accidentally, so I’d paid special attention to all my transactions. The drawer was also really bootleg and it was literally just a cabinet drawer that you opened and closed whenever you wanted, and when you went on break you were supposed to just leave the money there and trust that the manager who took over kept an eye on it.
Anyway, I get up to the office and start counting out my drawer and I come up short, way short. I’m thinking maybe I just miscounted because there’s $10,000 in small change, so I recount. Again, I come up short. I turn to the money manager and ask her to verify because I’m showing -$100 which is beyond write-up, it’s fireable. She counts, double counts, triple counts. I’m short $100. I’m sent down to check in the cabinet and see if anything fell back behind the ghetto drawer and we have to pull the next drawer and count it to see if their money somehow got transferred over. We find it; I’m safe, somehow it got stuck in the drawer.
I come in the next day and the money manager says there was a mistake, and they didn’t find the money after all. She tells me to just go to work and the general manager will review the video tapes and let me know. I’m down there working and the manager on duty comes into the box and says, ‘alright, so we are going to refresh how to do refunds.’ I ask her if that’s where the money went missing, incorrect refunds, and she says yes, obviously I was doing them wrong. So, I tell her, ‘ma’am, I don’t have the authority to do refunds. I have to call a manager every single time I refund or transfer tickets, so that’s impossible.’
Turns out the money had been lost on refunds and some manager had been messing up cash refunds all night. They never got a write-up.”
Taken Too Far
“The very first year I worked at a summer camp, early 2000s, myself and pretty much all of my co-workers were around the 16-18 year age brackets. It was a pretty seedy camp for low income, at risk kids, and about 95% of them were great.
About 4% of them were terrifying. We had kids that had stabbed their parents, kids who definitely knew how to hide illegal substances in their bum while getting sent to prison, and all sorts of other scary varieties of young offenders, but we had the ability to deal with them. Some of them were great kids also after they opened up a bit.
But then there was this one kid… this one horror who encompassed the 1%.
Everyone who has worked at a camp knows this kid. The one who is so scary that even the adults are afraid of him, whether it’s because he has powerful family, or is probably a serial killer. To even call this particular camper a kid was an understatement. He was probably the largest 15-year-old that had ever been birthed outside of Hercules, and since we were all pretty much kids ourselves, as a physical specimen alone, he was terrifying. He also had no issues harassing, terrorizing, and actually scaring the daylight out of everyone by just doing horrible things. I’m talking animal dismemberment, plugging your nose and mouth while you’re sleeping to wake up with him staring at you and suffocating you, making creepy kidnapping style collages in Arts and Crafts about how he was going to cut up people’s families, pooping in sauna just for fun. Everyone was afraid of him, including the camp director. You don’t truly know fear until you wake up to someone rubbing a fresh rabbit spine on your forehead.
The best part was, we couldn’t send him home, no matter what he did, as he was from a remote community up North, and his parents just decided not to answer the phone to come back to pick him up. Apparently you can’t just ‘send kids away,’ nor could the police do anything about it. This was just a different time I guess, and since he hadn’t technically done anything ‘illegal,’ we were, all of us, the entire camp, living in his world.
But luckily, on our side, we had… lets call him Rob. This dude was Paul Rudd’s character Andy from Wet Hot American Summer. One time he got a camper with downs syndrome high just to ‘see what would happen.’ Another time he took socks from the lost and found, dipped them in the generator and tied them to the ends of arrows to make well, flaming arrows to shoot into the woods. He would sit in a canoe and fish in the swimming area while there were kids swimming. Honestly. Probably all of these should have got him fired, but obviously top brass didn’t know about these ‘minor discretions.’ The only reasons he worked at camp was to pick up girls and sell substances. He had decided that this kid has ruined his chances of doing both. As a result he devised a plan where all the male counselors would grab this kid while he was sleeping, tape him to a chair, carry him to the dock, and then threaten to push him in to lake if he didn’t promise to change his ways.
Obviously, we thought the fear of death would break this kid. You know… like pretending we were gonna hurt him.
Plan goes great, up until the point we get to the dock and Satan Child tells Rob that he knows as counselors we can’t actually push him off the dock and that the second he gets untapped from the chair, he’s going to kill Rob in his sleep.
Rob just calmly smiles and gently places his foot on the kids chest, pressing lightly as the front legs raise a little. The kid’s curses get wilder and wilder, and those front legs get a little higher up. At this point, we just assume he’s going to stop at some point, until Rob just tips him and the chair he is duct taped to off the dock ever so gently. The rest of us just stand and stare dumbfounded at the fact that what was until moments ago supposed to be an act, has become a reality.
Rob calmly mentions that we should probably get him out of the water as, and I quote, ‘dead kids can’t learn a lesson.’ We dive in and grab the chair, hauling it out onto the dock.
I have never seen someone pull a180 that quick– sobbing, praising God, praising us for saving him from Rob. We untie him, the kid’s shuddering and puking up water, and Rob just walks over and says, ‘Just remember that the next time you act up, they won’t be there to get you out.’
The rest of session goes great, kid is a gem. Director asks what happened to make this kid so different so suddenly. We all nervously tug our collars and cough, looking for the quickest escape route. Rob just says, ‘I taped him to a chair and pushed him off the dock. Little prick needed a lesson.’
Camp director just sits there for a few seconds and says, ‘Well… I mean, he is better. I just hope he doesn’t tell his parents.'”
A Soon To Be Newspaper Headline
“This crazy conservative Christian guy I worked with about 7-8 years ago. We were account managers for a telecom company and we were part of a team that specialized in a specific type of product, so there were 7 of us crammed into a small room in the back.
This was back when Glenn Beck only had his stupid AM Talk Radio show and this guy listened to it all day. We asked him to wear headphones, but he refused. He would say weird, crude quotes from the bible frequently and wouldn’t let his wife work, even though she was in the pharmacy business and we only made about $12/hr at the time.
Up until this point, the craziest thing he had done was take off June 6th, 2006 (666) to hide in his bunker. Then one day, he was served a protective order against his wife and daughter and divorce papers all on the same day. This unlocked the true craziness. He then started spending all day talking on the phone to lawyers and family members, either quoting even darker bible verses and wishing his soon to be ex-wife was dead or complaining about not getting any action anymore. He then started saying that God ‘takes care’ of bimbos like his ex-wife, and when God does it, he wants pictures of his ex’s body to show his daughter what happens when women don’t obey their husbands.
It all came to a head over striped socks. It was a typical morning– he was on the phone yelling to someone and a girl came in wearing striped socks. We kinda laughed about it and were joking around with her when suddenly crazy Christian guy SLAMS his phone down and yells ‘OH GREAT, BECAUSE YOU ALL WERE LAUGHING IN THE BACKGROUND, THE JUDGE DENIED MY VISITATION WITH MY DAUGHTER!’
Another lady commented, ‘Jeez Jeff, don’t go postal.’
To which he replied, in the flattest, cold tone I’ve ever heard in real life ‘Oh I won’t go postal. God will kill you all and when he does, I’ll be there to take pictures of your bodies to show my daughter what happens to bimbos like you.’
Oh, and when we told the supervisor he said that, she laughed then said, ‘What did you guys say to him? You know he’s going through a hard time. You all need to be more sympathetic towards him.’
We threatened to put a restraining order on him, so they moved him out of the room…to the first desk outside the door. So, we had to walk past him and still heard the prick Glenn Beck show.
I quit shortly after that, but to this day, I keep a look out in the news for the headline ‘Man mows down office building with AK-47 in one hand and a Polaroid camera in the other.'”
How She Got Away With It
“I am a nurse. A new nurse (had probably been working about 6 months) had a patient that was diagnosed with Tuberculosis. Having a TB patient is a pain because you need to get all suited up and put a respirator mask on before going in their room. She avoided going in the room unless absolutely necessary (like many nurses in that situation do). This patient was on a telemetry monitor (to monitor heart rhythm, we could see it on the monitors at the nurses station). He also had a habit of taking off his oxygen and desatting (his oxygen saturation in his blood would get too low without supplemental oxygen), which would make him confused.
We could usually tell when this was happening because the telemetry would alarm that his heart rate was very high, then we would go into his room, put the oxygen on and all was well.
I guess she was busy and not paying attention, and he managed to take the oxygen off along with his telemetry leads. The monitor was alarming that his leads were off and she simply silenced it and went about her business. The leads were off for at least an hour before anyone checked on him. A nurses aide went in to check his vital signs and found him bare laying on the floor and very dead. She yelled for the nurse to come over and she just stood there staring at him not knowing what to do. She told the aide to handle it and walked around the unit looking for another nurse to ask what to do, instead of initiating CPR and calling a code. The aide tried CPR, but he was pretty dead by then (already felt cold).
The nurse for some reason got to go home early with sick pay because she was distraught. She did not get fired or even a written warning. It was as if she did nothing wrong. It boggled my mind…she literally killed someone with neglect and got away with it!”
Harassment At Its Finest
“There was this guy, a real high-up guy in the organization, sort of like a regional head position. He was in the middle of a harassment lawsuit that he was 1000% definitely going to lose– he had straight-up told a woman that she would have to do the dirty with him in order to keep her job and get a raise, and he had said so in email. There has never been a more clear-cut case of harassment in the history of harassment. The company was going to have to pay out the big bucks on this one.
Not only was this guy not fired until the ABSOLUTE BITTER END, but he was actually invited to be the friggin keynote speaker at the organization’s women’s conference right in the middle of all this.
I just…how does one even justify that?”
Contaminated Ice
“I worked at a Denny’s restaurant years ago. We had an HIV + employee. He once cut is thumb with a knife and stuck his entire hand directly into the commercial ice machine in the kitchen. I was absolutely horrified at what had just happened, and immediately told my manager. The ice machine had to be emptied and professionally sanitized. The ice contaminator never lost his job, never even really got talked to about what happened. HIV or not, what he did was awful. Never have I seen something so unsanitary at any job I’ve had to date.”
Creep Status
“I worked in a call center where a co-worker got caught, not once but twice, for touching himself at his desk when speaking with female customers. HR spoke with him about it, everyone knew what he had done, but they just kept him on regardless.”
Scared To Fire
“A dude I worked with at Sbarro back in the day informed me, a cashier/pizza-maker, on his second day of work, that he lied about his criminal history on his employment application and that he had served time in jail for accessory to murder and arson, and showed me a local news article on his phone about a local student who was murdered. The charred body was found with bullets.
I told my manager that night after he went home. He decided not to fire him because he was afraid he would murder him and his family. (Probably would have). Ultimately, he was fired about a week later by a regional manager for stealing spaghetti.”
A List Of Bad Coworkers
“Oh man, I worked with some awful people and have so many of these.
One girl threatened to shoot our new manager in the face. The new manager walked off and quit, the girl stayed. She also threatened another worker, and she showed me some bullet scars she had. I made sure to stay on her good side. She was actually quite pleasant when not angered.
Other employees took down the price boards and lied to customers about the prices of things and kept the difference. Only worked for a day because they were idiots and marked it up unbelievably high. They were warned to stop it and put the boards back up but never got reprimanded further.
One guy just closed down early because he was tired and wanted to go home.
One girl was notoriously rude to people. Telling them to shut up and eff off. One time she told a lady she hoped a bird would poop on her head. Which was hilarious for the rest of us but not normally something you can do.
Porters forgot to bring us supplies because they were shooting illegal substances in the supply room. Never fired.
When I asked a manager if she missed working at the register, she exclaimed ‘NO, I hate these effing people’ right as she handed back change to a customer.
The only thing they would fire you for was if they thought you were stealing money from the business. They actually threatened to fire me, the most honest employee of them all because my register didn’t balance at the end of the night and they had a ridiculous stipulation like 1% discrepancy= immediate termination. My manager was like ‘Nah, I got you’ and just changed the numbers around until I was in the clear.”
The Worst Guy In The Office
“Ken. He is the only person that I would not save if they were choking on a piece of food. And here is the reason why I say this:
1) He eats the most disgusting smelling food on earth. I do not even know where he finds this stuff.
2) He chews with his mouth wide open, cookie monster style only not cute or funny, but loud and annoyingly.
3) He is a gum chewer; not in the quietly every now and again blow a bubble, but to the point that I can hear it squish between his teeth every time. Just talking about it makes me want to punch him in the face right now.
4) The slurping he makes while eating a juicy fruit like a peach or a fruit cup or coffee or soup sounds like he is purposely trying to be as loud and disgusting as possible.
5) Then there are the teeth sucking and hard candies, constantly all day.
6) All the gag reflex inducing bathroom activities that you’re supposed to do at home in the bathroom? He does it right out in the open. Blowing nose, picking nose, hawkin’ up loogies, flossing teeth, cleaning ears, finger nail clipping, toe nail clipping, pooping his pants, etc. He even walks over to other people cubical to keep it out of his own. The flossing is the worse because it comes along with about a 10-min teeth sucking exercise that makes me want to cause him serious bodily harm.
We as a group have all but beat him up. We’ve left him anonymous notes, left web articles about annoying office habits at the printers, left the same articles outside his cube, and sent out mass emails about office etiquette among other things. He came into my cube one day last week smacking his gum while talking to me about some paper work I was finishing up. I told him as politely as I could to spit that gum out when he is talking to me or get out of my cube. Our manager asked me later why Ken told him that I was being rude to him and no one else. To which I replied no one else has gut curdling disgusting habits like Ken did. I hate…loath…that guy with a passion.”
One Job Failed
“I used to work at a large national finance company in collections. We were in San Diego, so we got the early morning shift on the dialer to help cover the east coast. Our shifts started at 6:00 am and 7:00 am, so we were always the first ones in the office (and the night shift was always the last to leave).
One day, we get in at 6am and our badges won’t unlock the doors. Eventually, an actual manager shows up and her key card also won’t open the door. By this time, there are close to 200 folks stuck outside the building at 7:30am. The facilities manager shows up and HER key card won’t work! A locksmith comes out and tries to drill the manual locks on the front door, but the locks are actually really high quality and the drill can’t cut into it. The security company can’t remotely open the locks, and it turns out the issue is actually with their system.
Now, here’s the messed up part. The facilities manager had a set of manual keys that would physically unlock any of the exterior doors to the building. Where were they? In her desk drawer, in her office, in the building. Because you know, she’d never need them to get IN the building!
The alarm company ended up having to restore a backup of the security system, which finally got us into the building at 9:30. Yes, that means about 20 of us had been stuck outside for 3.5 hours. Years later, after that facilities manager no longer worked at the company, my boss told me she almost got fired for that. She had ONE job to do!”
