Just like in the TV show The Office, daily workplace drama can either be petty or absolutely insane. These Redditors spilled the tea on their latest office drama, which ranged from mysterious hallway poopers to complex office politics. Do any of these stories sound like they could happen in your workplace?
1. The Firing Squad
My company just paid off 800 of its workers and replaced them with agency staff. They were told over a Zoom meeting that as of that moment they were no longer employed, were being given "generous payouts" and had less than two hours to pack their belongings (they lived where they worked) and get out. Security staff with handcuffs were on hand to help.
2. Cringey Uncle
I work in a cafe with other high schoolers my age. One of the managers there is almost 40 years old but kind of tries to fit in the “cool uncle” vibe. Hence, he takes shifts with the younger workers to spark up conversations. I’m a guy and when he talks to me he seems like a caring guy and very laid back, but when he talks to the girls my age—it makes my skin crawl.
It’s almost like he flirts. At first, I couldn’t tell if I was thinking wrong or not until I worked with another manager and found out there had been several complaints from the high school girls working there that they felt like they were being groomed. He was being touchy or made them uncomfortable etc.
Other managers decided not to schedule him in with any high school girls but it’s completely unavoidable. He stays after his morning shift to work with the high school students during the closing shift because it’s “understaffed," but the girls are indeed capable of closing by themselves at this point.
I've even seen a screenshot from a girl of him saying “you don’t need to see me in a professional way if you get me” and it made me curl into a ball from the cringe. Talk about drama!
3. The Note Writer
Someone at my office is a note writer. You know, the kind that loves leaving laminated notes around the office saying things like "Please finish milk before opening a new bottle". They're everywhere and a new one pops up every week. The kitchen is almost entirely made out of notes now. But the note writer underestimated just how sassy this office can be.
To everyone's delight, someone has started leaving reply notes on their notes with pictures of Doctor Evil from Austin Powers saying "NO". I don't know who's doing either of them!
4. Not Protocol
I saved a guy with CPR this morning. He had a 98% blockage and coded on top of a rebar mat while pouring concrete. Once we got him going, we were four stories up and needed to get him to the ground for EMS to transport. Our project safety plan relies on the fire department/first responders to provide a backboard with picking points on it for crane usage.
We couldn't wait any longer, seeing as we had already lost the guy twice. We placed him in a skid pan (not proper procedure, but we had him secured) and sent him down as soon as the ambulance came into view. The fire department admitted that if we would've waited on them, we would've lost him. The guy got to the hospital just fine and is doing okay now.
He had a stint put in and is being monitored. The doctors said that CPR saved his life and thanked us for the quick response. All seemed to be right in the world. Except for one thing…
Some guy took a video of the guy being transported by crane to the ground and sent it to our corporate legal, corporate safety department, and OSHA. An investigation was launched and I have been fighting for my job ever since. The interviews continue tomorrow. I am dreading even going in.
5. Naughty Nurse
Okay, so recently I've started my own company, but previously, I worked for a staffing agency with a lot of branches in multiple states, and one of my contacts for the agency told me that a place they staff in Iowa had a nurse that went rogue.
They noticed that there was a pretty large amount of morphine missing one day, and in a place with people suffering, that's a big deal. So there's a scramble to figure out what is going on. Meanwhile, a nurse pulls in the lot, back from her lunch break, only something is amiss.
The entire front bumper of her car is dragging on the ground as she pulls in. It looks like a complete wreck and it definitely happened over her lunch. The neighbors call the authorities after hearing the thing being driven. The officers show up to find this person working like nothing had even happened.
Turns out, they were looking for someone that hit somebody and drove off. Classic hit-and-run. The damage is so bad though that it's quite hilarious to me that she showed back up and continued to work her shift as if nothing happened. Anyway, when questioned by the officers this nurse claims that the car was stolen and abandoned.
She claims to have gone to retrieve it on her lunch break. The officers can't detain her just yet so they leave to gather some more evidence. Meanwhile, management puts together the fact that this nurse was the one with the highest likelihood of knowing something about the missing morphine I talked about earlier. At this point, her shift has ended. But here's the best part.
This lady FLEES THE STATE and abandons her absolutely trashed car in the parking lot. She literally just got on a plane immediately after leaving and noped right out of the situation. The balls on the woman, man. My God. Wild day at work in Iowa apparently.
6. The Stench
There was a director sitting in an office by himself behind my desk. He walks out of the office and runs out for lunch. I get a phone call and it was a company I was interviewing with. So I run into his office since it was empty and his lunch usually takes time.
So anyways, I’m in there taking this call and talking with their HR about the interview process and stuff—and all of a sudden, the Tinga Tostada I had for lunch starts putting in the work on my gut.
I just get the urge to pass wind. So I squatted and ripped one out, finished the call, and walked out to my desk like nothing happened, and closed the door behind me to his office. He comes back from lunch, and has his Chop’t bag in his hand, and asks how we’re doing, blah blah.
He’s walking into his office when he gets a call from his wife, and all of a sudden I just hear him going, “What in the world, who let one rip at my desk”?! He coughs a lot and pukes out his kale salad, and the corn, dried tomatoes, and pieces of chicken just go everywhere.
The drama is trying to find who did it, so for the past three months I’ve been going into his office and asking, “Did you ever find out who passed gas in your office that one time”? It has been so funny to watch.
7. Two-Person Team
Been working on a marketing campaign with a good client of ours, and our creative director has essentially done nothing for about six months (let's call him David). Our "creative director" works part-time, so he's only available half the week. This week was crunch week.
I've been busting my balls producing the suite of video edits (16 in total) to meet the deadline, which was meant to be today. I've developed the script and storyboard, filmed the whole thing, edited, and mastered everything with help from the rest of the team.
Our creative director had one job: to write up copy (which for those who don't know is essentially everything text/description related you see in YouTube ads, Instagram feed ads, etc). He did it yesterday...the deadline was today.
We've been in production for months. Surprise surprise, his first draft wasn't that great and we didn't like it. But instead of collaborating on some suggestions me and the other person involved have (let's call her Bec, she's a good friend), he completely loses it.
He throws an adult tantrum at the critique and ghosts us for the day. Now we're in the dark as to how to proceed. We've got the social media guy waiting patiently for everything to start rolling it all out. The client is wondering why the captions/descriptions for social media are so bad. I'm sitting here wrapping up 16 edits.
Bec decides, “screw them all, I'm doing this myself”. We both hop on a call and smash the thing out in a few hours. This process involved writing captions and descriptions for all the videos, deciding which goes to which paid service, curating a list of photos for the Facebook carousels, double-checking each edit for quality, etc.
Our creative director did nothing for the whole project and threw a tantrum on the day of the deadline because his writing was bad. Me and Bec, two people, decided upon the rollout of the entire campaign and sent it to the client for approval because no one else could be bothered.
I busted my butt because this was a passion project for me, which I filmed and edited, and I didn't want to see it wasted. I'm angry, slightly inebriated, and really considering taking my skills elsewhere. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
8. Bossing
No one gets along with our boss, so the company hired another “boss” to be our point of contact. He’s her deputy. The original boss has started gate-crashing Zoom calls, she’s calling people on their days off and writing emails saying they’re unprofessional for not picking up (on their day off!)—but that's not the worst of it.
She also told a pregnant lady about to go on maternity leave that she’s not happy about the pregnancy. A WhatsApp group has been made up where everyone is voicing their concerns to the deputy boss and things are getting out of hand quite quickly.
9. Lip Flapper
At my last job, this one girl overshared every single detail about her life, constantly talking about her parents, her pets, her romantic life, her menstrual cycle, her hate for the job, her high school years, and her frenemies. I sit and work because I’m swamped. One day, we had some breathing space and were waiting on a delivery so we were all chatting.
I had a mini-meeting with the manager a few days later—and the reason why was infuriating. It was because it was brought to her attention that I need to stop talking about myself because the girls need to get work done.
When was this…when we were talking about possible vacation ideas the other day? Did you know this other girl told us all about her favorite maxi pad size this morning? With detail? Because this wasn’t whispered in corners, this stuff is announced to the whole office while we are sitting at our desks. Are you confusing me with her?
You have cameras. Check to see whose lips are always flapping. That was when I knew I had to get out of there.
10. He Who Smelt It Dealt It
I used to work in a warehouse that got shipments of used books from second-hand stores. One day someone pooped inside of a napkin, folded it up, and put it inside a book.
My coworker was the unlucky one to discover it and notified management. All day they were trying to find out who the secret pooper was. Later on, I was talking to another coworker and expressed how bad I felt for our poop-discovering coworker.
He said, "All I'm saying is, [name] has an incident like this every few months and it doesn't happen to anyone else here". Even just a few weeks before this, he had discovered poop on the men's room floor. I still don't know whether he is just extremely unlucky in poop or if he has been the secret pooper all along. I guess we’ll never know for sure…
11. I Warned You…
I quit my job. I highly respect the company, and they treated me well for the most part, so I gave them about six weeks notice. I knew I would be hard to replace (I'm the sole manager of my department with nobody in the wings to step up) and we are in the middle of a busy business period. I sat down with management after I put in my notice to iron out details around my leaving.
I offered to help train my replacement if they were hired before I left. Management informed me that they were going to wait for the next year's business plan to be finalized before advertising for my position. The business plan is usually finalized around the end of March. I leave at the beginning of April.
The job market is insane right now, everybody is short-staffed, and the last management role we needed to fill took over a year to hire the right person. I've worked for this company for almost a decade in my position and can count on one hand how many times I've had to call in sick. It doesn't happen. I'm one of the most reliable staff they have.
This is one of the reasons why I'm the sole manager for my department because management never saw a need for a second person (despite me asking for one!). However, I ended up having to take some time off the past few weeks due to injury (not work related) and sickness (it only took me two years to finally come down with Covid). Cue panic from management.
My job is physical and in person, so I can't do any of my work from home. They have no one to cover me. They scramble together people from other departments to help manage my department. Somehow my department survives with only a few blips. But now management is really scared.
They started hiring for my position after only my second sick day. They advertised internally for two weeks. No takers. They advertised externally. Nothing so far. My last day keeps creeping closer and closer and I can see the fear in my direct manager's eyes every time it's mentioned.
There is a part of me that feels bad but there is a larger part of me that thinks it's hilarious they thought they could get away with not hiring anyone until I left. I've pretty much removed myself emotionally from the situation now and am in full popcorn-eating mode for my last few weeks while I watch management all crumble as they realize I'm actually leaving and they have no one to replace me. It's dementedly glorious.
Unsplash, LinkedIn Sales Solutions
12. Dramatic Drinkers
Coffee. Moving people into a remodeled building. We went from business-style Keurig to a 20-cup carafe of coffee that takes ten minutes to brew. Quiet anarchy is happening.
People are being late to meetings because "they had to make a cup of coffee". They'll pump out the carafe and make a new one if it isn't "fresh". There are two types of grounds. People will empty the carafe if it isn't the brew that they want.
And the heavy coffee drinkers haven't made it back into the building yet. I have a feeling personal Keurigs at the desks are going to show up. French presses are already on the rise. The soda drinkers are also still angry there isn't free soda like there is coffee. Water fountains with bottle fillers were added (yay!) but it's warm water out of the spout.
With a building of around 120 people, and me being a fan of people watching, all this unfolding is glorious.
13. Army Attitude
I just got out of the Navy. I started working at a very nice workplace that genuinely cares about its employees and is all around a great place to work. I was hired a week before another person who just got out of the Army. We both got along well on the first day. But then it all turned sour.
I quickly realized he wouldn’t stop talking about the Army and always found a way to compare everything he learned in training to things he experienced in the Army. After a while it got old.
Being in the service as well, I quickly realized he didn’t shake off his old personal habits that certain people (the brown nosers) seem to have in the service i.e. being pushy, excessive, arrogant, taking ideas, complete know-it-all (I mean cutting off the instructor before they even finish showing them what to do), and of course, they’re never wrong.
Like I said earlier, this workplace is a very nice one, lots of healthy-minded people not very used to the dark-humored and grungy mentality that some, if not most, veterans tend to have. His way of interacting raised a few eyebrows and I think he noticed.
He turned it down a notch or two once he noticed nobody was out to cut each other’s throats and nobody was hostile in the workplace. Everyone has each other's backs here. After a few times of putting him in his place by calling him out or making comments like “it’s okay to ask for help” or “it’s okay to be wrong”.
I always did it in front of the instructors that he was trying to interrupt, and he’d turn red and I knew he hated it. He noticed I was getting along with some of the instructors pretty well just because I was being genuine, and he must’ve overheard me talking about a book I read about the company because the next day he had the same book and was walking around with it.
This was drama I thought I had escaped from in the service but I guess it followed me here of all places.
14. Pregnant Panic
My workplace is trying to get workers back in the office three days per week. Nobody is coming in. They forced a pregnant lady to come in. Her midwife found out and noted that the pregnant woman was high risk and is demanding the company’s procedures and evidence for why this woman was told to come back. It's glorious to watch them scramble and panic.
Turns out, the company failed to follow its own procedure. They didn't share a previously submitted letter from the doctor and the midwife advising that the woman should not commute due to her high-risk pregnancy. This was never sent on by the manager and HR to the company's nurse despite being provided by the pregnant lady weeks ago.
Also, HR told her she was not a high-risk pregnancy on a recorded line but had no basis for this. The nurse is now saying she would never have made her come in with these letters, the letters supersede policy. The manager is “reviewing the situation”. Legal is saying this is “bad news” and advising to resolve it. The mostly female board is now aware and asking questions.
Also, the woman requested an office chair which was never provided. Turns out someone canceled the request. This is glorious to watch.
15. Not So Private
There's an employee who keeps looking into clients’ past information. This is a huge problem.
You're not really supposed to do that at our job unless you are authorized to do so. She has a long run of looking at things she's not supposed to look at and doing other really really dumb stuff. She's claiming that she has found a level of issues within paperwork for the clients and is trying to report them.
She's basically trying to be a cowboy in a world where we NEED to go through a chain of command or else it's useless in court. It doesn't matter, you're supposed to do your job and that's honestly it. If you have an issue you can always report it to your manager or team lead and they will give the final say. But that's not all she's doing.
She has also been emailing PI info without having to censor the big information points so she's committing a huge federal offense. She will act confused and then have an “on-the-job instructor” do her work all the time. She won't take no for an answer or accept that she makes mistakes.
She gives off major narcissistic vibes and she doesn't realize that she just causes more problems than she should. Honestly, my boss has had enough of her nonsense and I cannot wait until she destroys this moron. The amount of stupid stuff that she does is just mind-numbing.
16. A Page Turner
My boss owns two bookstores. I work in the one where he doesn't. Over the last few years, my boss’s incompetence became clearer every day. A former colleague started with 40 hours a week and was cut down to 20 hours because of "financial reasons"...he just wanted him to go and instead of firing him he wanted my colleague to quit. It worked.
Then he hired someone new. She's competent, knows what she's doing, and had a very high position in her former job. Instead of working with her to accomplish new things, he uses her as a help for both stores. Sometimes she works in bookstore A, sometimes she works in B. He quickly shut her down by just not giving a care about what she has to say.
Then there's the money. The people in bookstore A (that's where my boss works too) get more money AND vacation and a Christmas bonus. We don't. In bookstore B we don't have a manager or anything like that. We are on our own. When we need something like toilet paper we have to call him and ask for it. In November our heating system broke.
LAST WEEK it finally got repaired. I have one colleague who is using all of that for her advantage. She wants to be the boss and acts like it. My boss knows about that. I once called him to warn him that I am currently her target and that he shouldn't believe everything she says. His response was "Ah yeah, that again. Well, what should I do"?
She's unfriendly to our customers, she takes private phone calls when she's at work, and sometimes gets so angry (on the phone) to the point where customers come to me to voice their concerns about that. She doesn't do anything. She takes the smallest issues and makes the biggest problem out of them and acts like she just solved climate change.
She’s terrible. Everyone is annoyed by her. We talked about how we all don't want to go to work when she's there. I collect as much work as I can find to do at the basement (where my office is) over the week so I can be down there when she's here. It's really exhausting and she's one of the many reasons I quit. And why another colleague is going to quit too.
17. House Drama
I work in a support agency for people with mental disabilities. We provide 24-hour care and each client has certain restrictions and a personalized care plan. This coworker was in his late 50s and has been with the company for almost 10 years. He was terrible at his job and constantly either didn't know about any restrictions or chose to ignore them.
My main team leader, the person responsible for actually running the house, went on vacation so this coworker decided he was going to take over and take me off the schedule because "me constantly correcting him made him look bad". So I did the logical thing and transferred to another house. Needless to say, my actual supervisor was extremely mad about everything that went down.
He said he was quitting if he ever had to work another day with the power-hungry coworker. In the three weeks since this all happened, I'm in a new house with a new client, the jerk coworker got fired, I got three phone calls begging me to come back to my old house, and I was just promoted to team leader at my new house.
18. The Case Of The Missing Sandwich
I didn’t eat my lunch at work one day and left it for the next day. I didn't pack a lunch because I figured I had something there, but I was so wrong.
When I returned, I realized someone had eaten it. I was so mad. It didn’t take long for one of my coworkers to rat out who did it though. The irony is the dude who ate my lunch went ballistic when he thought someone took his sandwich even though it was in the fridge, someone had just put their lunch box in front of it and he couldn’t see it.
19. Mess Maker
Coworker A put an iced coffee carton in the work fridge. It sprung a leak after her shift ended and made a mess in the fridge. Coworker B recently cleaned the fridge and refused to clean up the new mess. (Fair enough). It sat for several days and she interrogated multiple people about whose coffee it was.
She did not find the culprit. Coworker A, meanwhile, had a loss in the family and hasn't been in the office to even hear that this occurred. Someone else cleaned up the mess and Coworker B has placed passive-aggressive signs on the fridge now.
20. Unclean
I work at a hotel as a housekeeper. Part of our responsibilities is taking dirty cups from the rooms back to the kitchens at the end of our shifts, washing them, and putting them away for the next person the following morning.
Well, apparently no one else but me is doing this which means there are no clean cups on any floors and you have to spend 10-20 minutes cleaning these cups because there’s so much piling up. I’ve complained to my manager, my supervisor, and my manager's boss and it’s still happening.
It’s laziness and it really annoys me because it takes two minutes when they’re fresh out of the room but after 24 hours they’re really hard to clean. My coworkers use the excuse of “I have a school run” for everything. They’re late? School run. I’m late because the bus was late? Told off. They’re not taking the cups to be washed? They’ve got kids and need to be home.
If I don’t wash them? Who will? It’s so unfair.
21. IT Antics
I once did some consulting for a local subsidiary of a large international company. Their technical IT guy was up to some shady stuff. He had copies of all his boss’s and his boss’s emails forwarded to himself. He was caught one day when his email client sent out a read receipt on an email that wasn’t addressed to him.
They called him into a meeting to address the issue and instead he got up, went to his office, removed his hard drive from his computer, and left with it. I never found out what happened after that, because I’m sure it went to HR/legal to deal with. But I helped them out on occasion for about nine months after that until they replaced the guy.
22. The Driver
My coworker broke his ankle recently, let’s call him L. He takes the bus to and from work every day. Due to his shift ending late at night, the only bus he can catch towards his home is between a 20-25 minute walk normally. His bus shows up 30 minutes after his shift ends. The guy that takes over when L's shift ends, let’s call him N, offered to drive him to his bus stop, which to drive there and back takes five minutes.
He did that for a week before management realized. The problem is that technically N is leaving work during his shift to drive L (shift change is at eight pm, and he gets back to work by 8:05). This leaves the other guy, let’s call him M, working alone in the building watching over multiple machines, which is a big safety violation.
The whole department is up in arms at the moment. Half wants to let N drive L to the bus stop, the other half wants N to stay and help M. There have been threats of fights and firings going on.
23. Printer Problems
So last October our printer ran out of ink. More had already been ordered but with Covid running rampant at the time the shipment was super delayed. One of my coworkers got really annoyed over the fact that she couldn’t print the reports in the department and instead had to go upstairs to print them.
She claimed that since I was the supervisor (I’m not), I should’ve been the one to go up and print them despite the fact that it was 4 am and my shift didn't start until 7 am. She still isn’t talking to me.
24. Director Dilemma
Sixteen or more people (out of a workspace of approx 35) have come forward to our Union about harassment, a disregard for safety policies, and a whole host of other complaints against the Director of my workplace. In an interview with my union rep the other week, we went over the "particulars of accusation" document. It was 55 pages long.
But this is not the first Union complaint about him. Previously, he sat an employee down at the breakroom table and tried to figure out who made the complaints about him. He is protected by the CEO of the company, and this has been complained about directly this time. We are hoping for change and to be able to work in a safe and non-hostile environment.
25. It’s A Puzzle
We have a jigsaw puzzle on one of the spare desks to give people the opportunity to sit down for five minutes and de-stress. However, there's a piece of this puzzle missing and everyone is pointing fingers at each other and trying to work out who has stolen or hidden the piece. My two cents is that it's just a missing piece, but it's fun to sit and watch the madness unfold.
26. Office Shake-up
Over a year ago coworker one (CW1) quit to take a better job somewhere else. CW1 had their own office, meanwhile, I am sharing an office with three other people. Time goes on, I get promoted and move to another office that I share with only two other people (progress!).
We can’t find a replacement for CW1 who also decides the grass wasn’t greener and applies for and is hired back to their original job. The higher-ups decide that I need my own office due to the nature of my job. The week before CW1 restarts they tell me to move into CW1’s old office. The office faces an open area with six workstations.
On CW1’s first day back the boss tells CW1 to pick any open desk and CW1 picks the one closest to my door (our jobs have absolutely nothing to do with each other). Also, CW1 was a team lead, Coworker two (CW2) applied for CW1’s job twice while CW1 was gone and was passed over both times.
The third person in their section also got a job elsewhere during that time. CW2 has been keeping the section afloat and doing the work of three people for over a year. CW2 quit the Friday before CW1 returned.
27. Secretary Secrets
I drive a truck, so I'm rarely at the office. And, with truckers, there's usually always some kind of drama going on with someone, so I try to stay out of it. That being said...I've heard some juicy gossip.
Apparently, our 20-something-year-old secretary has been using one of the supervisors (a married guy in his mid-60s) as a sugar daddy. I don’t have details yet, but I’m keeping an eye open for clues!
28. Testy Teachers
I teach. Our team (teachers of the same grade level) is going to send home colored paper note sheets for parents to write encouraging comments to their students for state testing coming up. We want it to be a surprise for the students. We decided to try to see if the office could give us half-size manilla envelopes to use.
We found out they could! (It’s very exciting as a teacher to get office supplies)! The secretary went into the locked closet to get us some envelopes. Another grade-level team found out that we got envelopes from the office. Now THEY want envelopes because it’s not “fair” that we got envelopes and they didn’t. That’s the drama.
29. In View
My boss rearranged all the tables so that he can see what we are doing on our computers from his office (excluding two). It's an open office workspace and it's very loud so we had barriers, which also blocked his vision so he said we don't need them anymore. It's 12 people in one big office room on the telephone talking at any time, and I can barely understand my own words. Everyone is angry.
30. Book Exchange
Many people on our team are so averse to learning new ways to do things or rethinking if the way they do something is at all efficient. I'm still fairly new to this role, and most of my coworkers have been there for ten or more years. So I'm trying to figure out if it's because they're just jaded, apathetic, burnt out, or something like that.
I can understand there have been some very big, upsetting, and controversial restructuring and job cuts over the past 15 years (through Covid especially), so some people are just going through the motions now. I get it, and I don't hold that against them. But a few are just...baffling, in that they don't even think of the simplest things.
It's the fact that they don't even stop to think, "Why don't I do it this way?", or, "What if I tried this instead"? This is my first role in the field I'm studying for (librarianship), so it's depressing to feel boxed in by such old-fashioned ideas. I know this is common, but it's the first workplace I've been in where it's so obviously detrimental.
Example: I provide support for researchers and staff by sourcing or buying journal articles and books. If they need the whole book, we choose whether to buy it for our collection or borrow it from another library, but if they just need one chapter/one article, we can ask a library to scan and email it to us. This is 90% of my role.
The staff member who I took over this role for was showing me how to do her new role so we could cover each other while on holiday. She's previously been in my role for something like 14 years. While showing me her role (which is similar), she was going to borrow an entire physical book to be shipped to us so that our library could then scan the one chapter the professor needed, and then the book would be sent straight back.
I simply asked, "Is there a reason why we can't just ask the lending library to scan and email the one chapter we need instead of having the whole book sent?" This is obviously cheaper, nearly instant, and there is way less work involved. And she just blinked at me like a deer in headlights and said, "Well... I've never done it that way. I guess that could work".
Let me remind you, this was literally her job for the last 14 years, and we request electronic copies all the time. Somehow that just never occurred to her!? I honestly was questioning what I had gotten myself into by accepting this job. Thankfully my direct supervisor is really cool and much more open-minded, so she loves that she finally has someone who isn't afraid of change and can give me more difficult tasks (that I want to do!).
31. What’s That Smell?
At the school my wife works at (Montana, go figure), one of the teachers is trying to ban the use of buck-ragging for child discipline in school. They've used it there for 15+ years now when paddling became less acceptable. Instead of a paddle, their vice principal buys a buck rag from a goat farmer (apparently easy to do online).
You just open the jar's lid and hold it under a kid's nose for two to three minutes. It stinks. Apparently, it's been super effective, but now a couple of teachers are concerned it's too harsh and unethical, or complaining that it disrupts the class when the kid comes back stinking. But most parents don't seem to want to get rid of it.
32. WFH Woes
I am in HR and I get a lot of office drama in my lap. This week I have a WFH spat between a manager and an employee. She doesn’t perform when she’s at home so he wants her to be in the office more. She keeps just changing her schedule last second to assert her position as a “white collar professional” (her words).
He doesn’t care about where she does her work, he just wants her to communicate in advance (one week out). He says she has a family situation and does WFH to watch her grandkids, which makes her obviously less productive. It’s been going on for a while.
33. Raving Raven
Everyone is quitting and it's Raven's fault. I work in an office. We sell vehicles so obviously we need people to pull titles. This is typically a two-person job. For a long time, we had two ladies, Sam and Raven working together. It was fine, everyone got their titles and there were no delays. Sam and Raven had problems but Sam didn't let them get to her.
Well, Sam retired in December 2020. And ever since then, Raven's attitude has kept the department from keeping that position filled. Raven likes to make comments and make people uncomfortable. On one occasion Raven told me that I hang out with "a lot of men" inferring that I am flirtatious or promiscuous, which caught me by surprise.
Our most recent hire was amazing. She was funny and learned the job quickly. But, very soon the new hire was running out of the office in tears on more than one occasion and eventually quit. Then we got someone new to pull titles. They had a diabetic episode and the ambulance and police were called to get him some insulin.
Raven took an early lunch and on her way out said, "I don't know what's wrong with him. He's crazy". It was the most insensitive thing I have ever heard. HR was notified but has done nothing because technically Raven’s not doing anything large enough to warrant firing her. It's just petty annoyances to them, I guess. What should we, as a department, do?
34. To Vaccinate Or Not To Vaccinate
I work in a hospital in acute mental health. When the vaccine mandate was implemented, a lot of people with seniority didn’t take the jab. Overnight, I suddenly had the most seniority out of everyone in my unit. That meant I had a chance of getting the coveted day shift my friend used to have. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, seven am to seven pm every week.
It’s awesome. I get every weekend off. This caused a whirlwind of drama and I love it.
35. Maternity Matters
I'm currently on maternity leave for approximately 14 months. I work full time and the big boss decided to not hire a full-time temp and instead to just get someone in two days a week to cover me. I said it wouldn’t work, my colleagues said it wouldn’t work, and the people I work for directly said it wouldn’t work. But did they listen? No.
Five months in and they are hiring a full-time person to cover the rest of my leave. They had to hire in emergency temps due to sickness (duh Covid is still about plus other standard illnesses) and holiday which has cost them more than just hiring a FTC for the time I’m off. They should have listened to me from the start.
36. No Boss
Our old amazing boss quit for a better and less stressful job, and the two supervisors quit two weeks later so we were left with no management. Everyone else didn’t know what to do, so me and my partner decided to fill in the gaps, pulling 20 hours of overtime to cover shifts and be the liaison with head office.
One month later, we’re both promoted to supervisors and trained on how to do the basics of running the shop until we get the new manager in. Another month goes by and the new proposed manager is dropping out, and our current manager walks in and tries to give everyone hope of getting back to normal (it doesn’t).
After a month, there’s no stock on the shelves, important things aren’t getting done, and my partner and I are picking up all the slack while he’s putting 30 hours in a week (10 hours actually working).
Head office now agrees that something needs to be done after six months of pleading for help, so me and my partner are going on holiday for two weeks while we watch the fireworks go off from afar. I’m hoping for another promotion when I get back.
37. Manager Mishap
I'm leaving for another job in a week's time. I've had a ton of coworkers ask me what's the new job and whether it's paid better. I've been answering truthfully (it's a completely different role and pays a third more). A coworker just told me yesterday that my manager has been running around trying to convince people that I'm lying about my new job and that I'll only be getting 50€ more per month.
I personally find it hilarious. People have been unhappy with the company's handling of Covid (mandatory work from office since June last year even though we can easily work from home) and the miserable wages, and I'm not even close to being the first to leave. I guess the management got desperate and they had to resort to just straight up making things up.
38. The Trial
I’m a paramedic and we are currently trialing a medication for a common condition seen in the field. Half of us are prescribing the real deal while the other half have placebos. The “drama” here is that we can tell which is placebo and which is not (the medication turns a slightly different color when diluted).
I can’t say what medication it is or what it is for but us paramedics can clearly tell that the actual medication works wonders compared to the placebo. Without proper medication, the medical issue can result in lifelong health problems and this trial has three more months before the data can be used worldwide. The workplace is more dramatic than ever right now.
39. Not My Job
I work at a small investment firm. The boss is oblivious and a micromanager. A marketing associate just left and they want me to cover for him and I am not in marketing. Additionally, our business admin is leaving on maternity soon. I am also expected to pick up her workload as well.
It is not my role and I already have too much on my plate. However, I’m leaving in the summer before going back to school. They have no clue about this which is going to be fun as I’m creating the drama by leaving.
40. Re-Heated
In pre-Covid times, there was a microwave per floor at my old workplace. There’s about 100 people per floor and lunch is 30 minutes, and has to be taken between noon and two pm. Some idiot kept bringing in frozen meals and putting them in the microwave for 20 minutes. He’d always put it on and go back to his desk, and I did have a go at him for it one day.
Well, everyone’s equally annoyed so guess who kept getting their lunch taken out of the microwave halfway through and left on the counter for when he comes back, half cooked? It was a group effort by everyone using the microwave on the top floor.
41. August Versus February
The woman that started in August 2021 has decided she can no longer work in the same office as the woman that started in February 2022. It might be that the newer woman is already way more competent and knowledgeable than the one that's been with us since August.
Apparently “August” got jealous and felt left out when “February” got some training...August has had that training like two or three times and still doesn't do things properly.
42. Off To School
I work in the transportation department (school buses) of my town's public school district. A lot of the drivers are currently very annoyed because the higher-ups in the district have suddenly decided that elementary school students cannot be let off of the buses in the morning until the school bell rings, when prior to this decision the drivers would just let their students off of the bus as soon as they pulled up to the school, and it wasn't an issue till now, for some strange reason...
As a result of this, some of the drivers are now choosing to start their morning run a little bit later than they normally would just to avoid having to sit in front of the elementary school for more than 10 minutes with a bunch of anxious grade schoolers. A few parents drove their kids by themselves because they thought they had missed the bus, due to not being aware of the change in policy.
While our boss agrees with the drivers who are upset about the sudden change, his hands are kind of tied. Oh, and there's also the whole thing with the school wanting extra buses for sports trips despite our boss constantly reminding them that we only have just so many drivers who are able/willing to do said trips…Who knew that bus drivers would have so much drama?!
43. Strange Encounter
When my office manager B started working with me, I told her that when she was at the office, if she ever felt uncomfortable with anyone in the office to send me an “emergency” text and I would drop everything and get there. Fast forward four years.
B had left and then returned to work with me again. I had just clocked out, and as part of my routine, I went to the gas station down the street to get coffee for the ride home. My work phone dings. "Are you close by"? I told her I was at the gas station getting coffee. "Can you come back after"?
I said yes, thinking a tenant had a last-minute problem that wouldn't wait until tomorrow. "I don't feel safe". "Just act normal". I paid as quickly as I could and acted out the chase scene from Smokey and the Bandit, casually pulling into a parking space two minutes later.
She had a guy in the office, wearing just sweats and shoes, pacing around and talking just a little crazy. She had gotten an application ready while I sat down and pretended to order parts. While he was looking out the window, I took my taser out of the drawer and prepped it, keeping it in my lap.
She texted that he kept looking out the window like he was looking for someone, and that she thought he was high. I took my phone out and said I needed to text my friend that I'd be running late, but instead I used the official emergency text service. This allows people who are in situations where they can't speak to contact authorities and get help without talking.
We closed the office and told this guy he had to leave since we were closing. He went to his car, I took B to hers and carefully took pictures of his plates as he backed out. B then left and I took my taser back to my desk. The phone rings. "Did he leave"? I thought he'd pulled out in front of her. "He parked by the front building".
I left to go look, acting like I was getting something from my car, when he backed up, turned, and drove over to park in front of me. At this time the cavalry arrives. Turns out, yes he was high, and had a warrant out. So six patrol cars, one transport van, and a tow truck showed up, and I got to go home. That's the drama for the week.
44. Is She Coming Back?
The assistant director has been out fully since January, and off and on since about October. She has shown no signs of returning, and one of my coworkers saw her asking about new employment on Facebook, and when confronted about it she denies it. My boss is still holding out hope that she’ll return, but she’s been all set to “return” five times now and miraculously has an excuse at the last minute.
It stinks of favoritism since one of my coworkers was out sick for two weeks with an ear infection and was told she needs a doctor's note to excuse being out for that long, and the AD apparently doesn’t need any of that.
45. Casual Friday
The main office has been going back and forth for MONTHS on whether or not they should allow a "casual Friday" and allow admins to wear jeans.
It has caused a lot of contention between those who believe that non-holey jeans should be classified as business attire, and those who don't like any sort of change. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here in one of the satellite offices in jeans and flip-flops on a non-Friday, as I always wear.
46. It’s A Big Ask
I am being asked to relocate from a low-cost-of-living city to the highest-costing metro area in the USA to be in the office only three days per week. No in-person interactions are necessary to do this role. I've been successfully doing this same job remotely for over two years now.
My housing costs would go from less than 20% take-home pay to over 80%, and that's for a 300 sq ft studio in not-so-safe areas. This includes a 60-minute commute each way to and from the office. Public transit to get to the office does NOT have a monthly plan and would cost an additional $16 to $17 per office visit (or nearly $1k per month between gas, tolls, and parking if I drove instead).
The company is not providing any cost of living adjustment whatsoever to cover these disparities. Lastly, I'd be moving from a no-income-tax state to one of the highest-income tax states in the USA, so take-home pay would also decrease about 14%. The choice is obvious here.
47. Mystery Illness
There's a woman that keeps either not showing at all or leaving in the middle of the day because her kid is "sick" (conveniently, this kid's only sick on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays of practically every week. This woman was granted Wednesdays off because her cat’s on a diet and she has to make sure it's eating right. No I'm not lying).
There's a debate between the other workers. Some of them believe the kid’s actually sick basically every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. And the rest of us aren't buying her nonsense and feel that instead of going home, she should be taking that kid to a scientist.
I feel like they'd be interested in having a study opened up on children that are only sick on certain days of the week. It also doesn't help that she never provides proof of her kid being sick since my work isn't allowed to ask for it. All she has to do is leave her workstation, go into the bathroom, come out again and say, "My son's sick! I gotta go"!
48. Lights Off
My boss decided it would be funny to turn the light out while I was relieving myself in the bathroom. After he left for the day, I got my revenge. I snuck into his office, pulled the light switch panel off the wall, disconnected the wires from the light switch, and placed everything back normally so that when he would go to turn the lights on nothing would happen.
It has now been three days with no light in his office and it has completely destabilized our corporate division. He still hasn't figured out what the problem is. The electrician is scheduled to be here tomorrow morning, so when he leaves today I'm going to sneak into his office again and reconnect the wires. He’ll be none the wiser.
49. Wrong Number
Our bookkeeper has been losing checks, two in the last two weeks. She blames everyone but herself even though her office is constantly covered in piles of paper and we have paper trails to prove she received them.
We got a replacement check today and she took a video of the check in the envelope to be deposited with all of our banking papers in the background as “proof” she didn’t lose it again. She then sent the video to my coworker and myself…but she messed up bad.
She didn't send it to my number—just a random number in her contact that now has all of our company's banking info.
50. Family Matters
I was working at a sales job where we spent a lot of time in the office. I noticed two employees, one male and one female, were getting kind of close and it was interfering with their work. The girl was engaged to another girl so I thought they were just friends or whatever. Some time went by until she told my friend in the office her big secret.
Turns out, she slept with that guy. I started to get confused by what was going to happen next. About another month went by of them having an affair and she announced to the office that she was pregnant. I was shocked. It was like some drama movie. A few more weeks went by until she must have told her fiancé.
They all decided to move in together and start a family. Two moms and one dad. To this day they are still living together and honestly, it is a little weird to me but it must be easier to take care of the baby. Every family is different I guess.
51. Hallway Surprise
We have been noticing small mysterious changes over the last month in our office. A square of brand new carpet being torn up and replaced in a hallway, the runner in front of the cafeteria disappeared, and a few weeks later we got a brand new one, and parts of the hallways have been strangely roped off.
We also just had security cameras installed in all of the walkways. The situation was finally brought up and discussed in a private meeting. Turns out an employee has been pooping randomly throughout the building during business hours. These have been rather large piles of poop that people have narrowly missed stepping in.
This is a very professional workplace which makes this entire situation all the more perplexing. This person is still on the loose and it could be anyone.
Sources: Reddit
