Insane Co-Worker Stories

Grocery store. The day of our Halloween parade for kids was the first day for a new hire, Pip. Being Halloween deviation from standard uniform was permitted. He wore jeans instead instead of black pants, along with suspenders. End of our shift, I jokingly asked is he was dressed as a lumberjack, or a skinhead. His response, "Yes, I actually am a skinhead." Okay then...

For the first month all he wore was a white uniform polo, red suspenders, jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and Doc Martens with red ladder laces. One month in, the day of the corporate holiday visit, he had yet to buy black pants. Our area manager came down, personally gave him $20 and told him to walk over to walmart and buy a pair of black pants before they arrived. Further uniform issues with him consisted of never washing his shirts, but rather just trading them in for new ones every 2 weeks.

There is more, but another time...

My coworkers all seem so normal after reading this thread.

These stories are hilarious, please keep them coming!

Years ago in college I worked nights at a commercial photo lab. The color printers (actual people then, not just 1-hour style Noritsu machines) worked in dim corner of one room. Probably five people all in a line against the wall. Imagine dark curtains drawn around the area to prevent light leaks.

I was the master B&W printer- I processed all the B&W film by hand and did all the archival printing. There was only one true darkroom in this end of the building, and I used it for loading the exposed film into the reels for developing. The darkroom in question was only used for this purpose and a little storage, and the door to it was right next to the last color printer in the line. Her name was Lisa, which was assuredly a westernized name in lieu of her proper Thai name. She was between 250 and 300 pounds, and very jovial despite speaking less than 20 words in english. No big deal, that- as a white boy I was definitely the minority at this lab.

Lisa rarely had pants on when she was printing. Another co-worker of mine was a drag queen, so naturally he wasn't too shy and was interested in finding out why Lisa didn't wear pants. Through use of hand gestures and lots of pantomime, we determined that it was two things: she got hot, and she also found the lack of pants made it easier to access her lady parts for stimulation. In the weeks after explaining this, Lisa would occasionally cornered me in the darkroom and generally scare the crap out of me by attempting to "entice me". She frightened me, but it was all in good fun.

I have a lot of good stories from working at this lab, but most of them are similar to others that have been told about general mental illness and OCD tendencies.

I got another one. Features a man names.Gregory oats. Minister Gregory oats. Him and his friends Anthony and Bob. Collectively known as the god squad. (Where the hell do they find these people?) They all inhabited a corner of the office that I was unfortunately stuck in for some reason. They regularly shirked their duties to get together and discuss sermons and lessons and stuff. Anthony got canned For not showing up to work.... Ever. Bob quit under the auspices that Jesus would provide. Greg soldiered on, doing gods work (and very little real work) for quite some time. Eventually, work started getting hard and they started cracking down on us. Greg was eventually let go for a combination of attendance, quality of work, and MY favorite, putting people on hold to drag out his calls, and doing his sermons while on hold. Now, this would be a mildly amusing story in and of itself BUT- http://m.startribune.com/local/east/169851546.html That's right! Pastor oats is convicted of stealing a whole bunch a money from a little old man!

What if you're the crazy one at work?

I've got stories,

As a self employed plumber, I don't get to work with nut jobs, I get to go into their houses. How about the time I was moving ceiling tiles to get at pipes in one of those houses for the catholic preists. All the preist in the house worked as teachers in a catholic high school. Move a tile and get hit on the head by a bottle of Jack. Move another tile and some really nasty porn mags come down. Move another tile and a gold statue of Jesus comes down. The hoarders are scary, but the pet hoarders are just filthy. Once I cleaned a kitchen sink drain that I had installed a month before. Couldn't figure out how it had clogged. I was told the tenants were evicted, but turns out the house had been raided by the cops. Kitchen sink drain was clogged with heroin, and the toilet had a bent spoon stuck in it. How much heroin do you have to dump down a 2" PVC kitchen sink drain to clog it??? Just wish I had known ahead of time about the raid. When I stuck my drain snake in the cleanout, brown powder wafted out of it.

We interviewed this little old lady who had enjoyed herself a LOT in the 1960's. She seemed nice enough, so we hired her. We would send her out to do menial tasks that should take 10 minutes, and she would be gone for 2 hours. No one could find her, she wouldn't answer her phone, etc, etc. Invariably, she would return with random crap that had absolutely no relation to her job, or the task we sent her to do. Random license plates, a handful of dead butterflies, and a baby seat were among some of her more interesting "finds."

When we pressed her, she would always say that she was on work grounds the entire time, and that she had just "found" these things. In hindsight it was pretty amusing, aside from the whole not-actually-doing-any-work aspect of it. It took us two years to performance manage her out.

I got hired on at this animation studio as a marketing intern over the Summer during college. For the first two days, my "boss" was a no-call no-show. When I asked my co-workers, apparently this was common. He finally shows up at noon on the third day, proceeds to loudly have sex with his secretary in his office, and then comes over to my cubicle.

"Calteg, I need you to develop a sales tracking software."

"Uhhhh, you hired me on for a marketing position. I'm an intern."

"Blah blah blah, really need you to be a team player blah blah"

"Okay, well which software are you currently using?"

"None. I need you to design it from scratch."

I started laughing, told him he needed to up his budget by a few hundred thousand dollars and quit on the spot.

When I worked in IT at a radio station, I hired a Pilipino assistant. She showed up for work the first day at the same time I did. I got to watch her snatch a bird out of the friggin air with her bare hands in our parking garage. I never would've believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. She kept it in her hand the entire day, and then never showed up for another day of work.

At one of my jobs we got a new department head. We'll call him Mondo. Mondo's uncle was a big name in our industry and Mondo was always regaling us with stories about him and his uncle. Over time the stories piled up but the facts didn't line up. What also didn't line up was Mondo's work history and his supposed qualifications. In short Mondo has lied on his resume and used his uncle's name to get jobs. My coworkers and I fixed error after error that Mondo made. At one point Mondo decided he needed to cement his place of authority so he handed down a list of pointless changes to be made.

The department revolted.

Previous to Mondo's hiring the department had been running well without a leader. We simply aligned ourselves to the calendar of the department dependent on our work and sent progress reports to our VP. We never missed a deadline and the work was spot-on.

All Mondo had to do was sit in one meeting a week to represent us. Everything else we handled. He could have just sat back and collected a check while we made him look good. But no, he needed everyone to know he was in charge. So here we sat with his list of pointless changes (many of which were WRONG in our field).

The entire department marched into our VP's office and gave an ultimatum: fire Mondo or we all quit.

It wasn't that easy though. Mondo had several wrongful termination lawsuits going against previous employers. They couldn't fire him, he had to quit on his own. So they demoted Mondo down, down, down the pecking order until he was our department assistant. Unfortunately for Mondo we already had a department assistant: a stoner high school dropout who had been there for two years. We made Mondo report to the stoner kid.

There was much joy was the department went about erasing everything that Mondo had touched and putting things back right. Mondo finally quit a few months later, but seeing him ask the stoner kid for his next assignment was absolutely fantastic.

fritzsch wrote: They probably tell stories about me. Like when I when to the store, bought a rotisserie chicken and just ate it at my desk.

One of my co-workers still gets weirded out by the fact that one time I packed a peach and some raw baby bell peppers in my lunch.

There was one story that was not mine but was too funny not to post in this thread. At one public school, there was a teacher who had a bad habit of helping himself to other teachers' donuts. The other teachers eventually got him to stop by getting a bakery to make some mustard filled decoy donuts.

My best nutcase story was a guy who was a salesman, and a damn good one; he constantly either topped the sales charts or was very close. He was WEIRD, though. The customer restrooms at our dealership were on one side of a hallway that ran from the sales floor to a combination cashiers office/waiting room/parts counter/service advisors desk. So one day this woman comes down the hall and discovers the ladies' room is occupied and locked. Okay, not unusual. She hunkers down to wait and after a few minutes out comes the weirdo. The woman flips out of course and goes straight to the sales manager who questions the weirdo. Weirdo says he used the women's room because the men's was filthy. (It wasn't; both got a nightly going over by the cleanup crew.) He wasn't fired because his numbers were so good but about 50% of the time he'd sneak into the ladies' room to do his thing. That was weird enough, but then he decided to play a joke on the receptionist. He found one of those refill bottles for a ink stamper pad, popped the ball out of it and poured the red ink all over the seat cushion of her chair. Of course this ruined both her skirt and the chair. He was fired immediately afterwards but continued to hang around the parking lot for a few days until the sales manager called the cops to have him escorted off the premises.

I also had a co worker at the same place who was diabetic. Nice guy but he would ignore the signs of his blood sugar going off until it made him do really weird things. The last time, he was sitting at a picnic table when he went into sugar shock; he sat there in a pose like he was riding a motorcycle, jerking and twitching. A co worker and I had to get an orange soda then pull his head back and dribble it between his teeth. He came around after about three minutes of this. His boss had no choice but to let him go; if he hurt himself on company property and on company time the company was on the hook.

Scary part is all these people vote.

slefain wrote: At one of my jobs we got a new department head. We'll call him Mondo. Mondo's uncle was a big name in our industry and Mondo was always regaling us with stories about him and his uncle. Over time the stories piled up but the facts didn't line up. What also didn't line up was Mondo's work history and his supposed qualifications. In short Mondo has lied on his resume and used his uncle's name to get jobs. My coworkers and I fixed error after error that Mondo made. At one point Mondo decided he needed to cement his place of authority so he handed down a list of pointless changes to be made. The department revolted. Previous to Mondo's hiring the department had been running well without a leader. We simply aligned ourselves to the calendar of the department dependent on our work and sent progress reports to our VP. We never missed a deadline and the work was spot-on. All Mondo had to do was sit in one meeting a week to represent us. Everything else we handled. He could have just sat back and collected a check while we made him look good. But no, he needed everyone to know he was in charge. So here we sat with his list of pointless changes (many of which were WRONG in our field). The entire department marched into our VP's office and gave an ultimatum: fire Mondo or we all quit. It wasn't that easy though. Mondo had several wrongful termination lawsuits going against previous employers. They couldn't fire him, he had to quit on his own. So they demoted Mondo down, down, down the pecking order until he was our department assistant. Unfortunately for Mondo we already had a department assistant: a stoner high school dropout who had been there for two years. We made Mondo report to the stoner kid. There was much joy was the department went about erasing everything that Mondo had touched and putting things back right. Mondo finally quit a few months later, but seeing him ask the stoner kid for his next assignment was absolutely fantastic.

Thanks for the laugh this morning, I had almost forgotten about Mondo.

calteg wrote: When I worked in IT at a radio station, I hired a Pilipino assistant. She showed up for work the first day at the same time I did. I got to watch her snatch a bird out of the friggin air with her bare hands in our parking garage. I never would've believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. She kept it in her hand the entire day, and then never showed up for another day of work.

Holy.$hit. You win.

Enyar wrote: Scary part is all these people vote.

and procreate

MadScientistMatt wrote:

fritzsch wrote: They probably tell stories about me. Like when I when to the store, bought a rotisserie chicken and just ate it at my desk.

One of my co-workers still gets weirded out by the fact that one time I packed a peach and some raw baby bell peppers in my lunch. There was one story that was not mine but was too funny not to post in this thread. At one public school, there was a teacher who had a bad habit of helping himself to other teachers' donuts. The other teachers eventually got him to stop by getting a bakery to make some mustard filled decoy donuts.

My whole office seems to be very amused by the fact that I essentially cook my breakfast from scratch at work each morning. An omelette (microwaved in a tupperware bowl) and bacon aren't THAT difficult to cook, but many people when they first see me do it (usually new hires who don't know who I am) ask if I'm a part-time chef.

"Hey Bobby, go get me an Edison extension cord."

Now, y'all might not know the term, but in my industry, "Edison" is a colloquial term for a standard, NEMA 5-15 connector, two flat blades and a round ground pin, that everybody uses every day.

Bobby could have ignored the term "Edison", and just gotten what everyone in North America calls an "extension cord" and been fine.

Or he could have asked "What do you mean by 'Edison'?"

Either would have been fine. I'm okay with people admitting ignorance and asking questions.

Nope, not Bobby. He returns with an extension cord, all right. One featuring NEMA L6-20 connectors. 220V, single-phase, twist-lock connectors. About the furthest possible thing we have from what I need.

GameboyRMH wrote: My dad has a guy in his office right now who has serious OCD. This guy puts berkeleying labels on EVERYTHING. You know how some people have almost-too-nicely organized tool-walls? Everything is like that, ON CRACK.

Is your dad Robin or Alfred?

^Who says Batman didn't put those there?

But actually it's much worse than that. I see lots of stuff in the background with no labels on it, and no instructions anywhere.

Bigger is better right? (referring to the extension cord a couple posts up)

So once there was this guy. Came to work, like his ass was lit on fire. Just absolutely destroyed the status quo. Bit of a trouble maker and a mouth like a sailor, but goddamn he was fast. He ended up on pilot projects for several different implementations in the office. Many moons ago, ubh used to offer small bits of PTO as awards for exceptional work. And this dude, apparently he had a plan. He went about demolishing any and all work stat he could, picking up extra projects, ot, you name it. Never called in sick or nothing. Started getting a few of these little PTO awards. Half hour here and there. Supposed to be used for a long lunch, etc. What he did next was hilarious. Over the course of 6-8 months he quietly stacked up these little awards. Then one day, he walked into the bosses office, set a stack of those awards on the bosses desk, and took two weeks off, on the companies dime, without burning standard PTO. He saved that to take December off.

Yeah..... They had to change a lot of policies because of me.

I worked with a guy that spoke Klingon.

81cpcamaro wrote:

slefain wrote: At one of my jobs we got a new department head. We'll call him Mondo.....

Thanks for the laugh this morning, I had almost forgotten about Mondo.

Ahahaha. I ran into Mondo at an event four years ago. My buddy asked if I knew who the guy was that was sitting to our left that was apparently GLARING at me the whole time. I glanced over and just started laughing. He never said anything to me but I chuckled the rest of the night.

16vCorey wrote:

calteg wrote: When I worked in IT at a radio station, I hired a Pilipino assistant. She showed up for work the first day at the same time I did. I got to watch her snatch a bird out of the friggin air with her bare hands in our parking garage. I never would've believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. She kept it in her hand the entire day, and then never showed up for another day of work.

Holy.$hit. You win.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

I feel like I've shared these before?

A girl who worked with us always had dark bags under her eyes, had a daughter that she didn't have custody of and had to pay child support or something? Was a permanent employee (non-temp) so she made about the same as everyone else. Always asked for rides, once she wore out her welcome with the department she went and introduced herself to other people in the bathroom or hallways and asked them for rides to work. Had a Yukon iirc. Would go around crying at people's desk about how she wanted to see her daughter but needs $50 for the court fee for supervised visits. Then would talk about the beach house she was able to talk the owner into letting her rent for $3000 a month, even though she made less than $20 an hour. Moved a frequently and always had drama or issues. She scammed a nurse into giving her use of her car and "borrowed" several thousand dollars. She had to have been on something. Fired and heard she then sued the company.

Another girl, permanent, tall- 6ft or so? heavy set even after having a gastric bypass, was really into dressing up like a fake doll that some of the cosplay girls do, like spending thousands of dollars on dresses and stuff. Imagine a 6 foot tall disproportionate version of Raggedy Ann. Blew her nose everyday the entire time she worked there. It sounded like a very loud goose, the nurses there tried telling her that wasn't healthy. Talked about the cosplay stuff and her wedding all the time but did not mention or have any pictures of her husband up. Kept hounding female Asian coworker to come over and dress up like a doll. Always had something to say, even when she wasn't part of the conversation and just made everyone uncomfortable. You could tell she was unstable and was confirmed when she told us that she had been a resident of the psych ward. Got mad at me for something I said to her and went into another person's cube while it was occupied, took a picture of me and posted it on facebook under the title "the enemy." She just didn't fit in, and it wasn't because we froze her out, quite the opposite, she even managed to get on the bad side of the sweetest old lady that works with us. She later quit saying she wanted to give her position to one of the temp employees.

Temp we had many moons ago, early 30s? rich parents, dressed oddly (and wore no socks) we called him Carlton after the character on Fresh Prince. Didn't believe in deodorant, didnt use scented lotion or cologne to preserve his "natural scent" which meant he stank. Kept trying to invite himself over to female coworkers house for dinner, saw him at the gym one time on the treadmill laughing loudly to himself, coworker's boyfriend was a bouncer at a club and had to kick him out for bothering females. He went on vacation to the Dominican Republic with his parents and shared his vacation with us. Consisted of videos taken in his hotel room interviewing the hotel cleaning staff, who were on camera talking about how he's a nice guy and all that. Got canned for harrassment.

slefain wrote:

81cpcamaro wrote:

slefain wrote: At one of my jobs we got a new department head. We'll call him Mondo.....

Thanks for the laugh this morning, I had almost forgotten about Mondo.

Ahahaha. I ran into Mondo at an event four years ago. My buddy asked if I knew who the guy was that was sitting to our left that was apparently GLARING at me the whole time. I glanced over and just started laughing. He never said anything to me but I chuckled the rest of the night.

My memory doesn't serve me well enough to remember Mondo. Either of you care to drop a hint so I can reminisce?

oldsaw wrote:

slefain wrote:

81cpcamaro wrote:

slefain wrote: At one of my jobs we got a new department head. We'll call him Mondo.....

Thanks for the laugh this morning, I had almost forgotten about Mondo.

Ahahaha. I ran into Mondo at an event four years ago. My buddy asked if I knew who the guy was that was sitting to our left that was apparently GLARING at me the whole time. I glanced over and just started laughing. He never said anything to me but I chuckled the rest of the night.

My memory doesn't serve me well enough to remember Mondo. Either of you care to drop a hint so I can reminisce?

He drove a burgundy/dark red Eclipse with a personalized tag along the lines of it being a "baby Ferrari". Don't recall his name though.