45 Of The Most Unhinged Workplace Incidents To Get You Through Your Day

A coworker (in a cotton mill) had a heart attack and died right there on the floor.

The supervisor roped off the area around him and worked continued.

EMT, Coroner, Police were all doing their job as we worked around them.

I worked in a small office. There was a front lobby area with a conference room off to the side. It was separated by a door from the rest of the office. So I'm sitting at my desk, just working, and I hear screaming from the front lobby area, like straight up someone is being m******d screaming.

Everyone in the office area is freaking out, assuming there was a robbery or something horrible happening in the front. I hear someone shrieking for help, so I'm like okay this is clearly not a dangerous situation, it must be a medical emergency or something like that. I tell one of my coworkers to call 911. I proceed to open the door quietly and walk towards the lobby. I do not see anyone, even the receptionist, but the screaming is still going on from inside the conference room. I slowly open the door and find about 8 people on top of the table, including the owners of the company and a couple clients. I'm just staring at them, seriously confused about what I just walked into.

I look down and see a tiny little field mouse hopping around in circles around the table. I picked the little guy up and became the hero of the day. 911 dispatched a couple of police officers over a tiny mouse. My raise that year was substantially higher than usual.

Had an all department meeting, which should have been a Live (approx 110people). Department head thought it was a good idea to have a large meeting rather then a live, so people could speak up regarding questions.

Everyone’s camera is off, except the presenter. 5min in, another camera turns on, and its clearly mobile. Person has headphones on and rests phone on bench. They then proceed to drop their dacks to take a dump. Presenter then yelled their name and that their camera was on. Person looks up, terrified, and grabs phone and disappears.

The meeting was recorded, but was then deleted.

I get hired right out of college at this tech company. Building has 3 floors. 3rd floor has a channel on Teams for (mostly) men called “Gus Time”. I am not a man but a few of the guys who I am friendly with invite me to this channel because, and i quote, “you won’t believe it.” I’m like okay, weird, but who am I to deny fun.

All of the messages on this channel are basically some version of “Gus just went in,” or “Gus just left.” One day we’re at happy hour and I say wtf is the Gus channel about? So a few of the men burst out laughing and explain. Gus is on the support team and he uses the 3rd floor bathroom to publicly rub the pickle. I ask why no one has said anything. They say “how do you tell a guy to stop flogging the pope at the sink without it becoming a whole thing?”

Weeks later, we hire a new guy who somehow missed the memo and goes into the bathroom during Gus Time. He erupts from the door and goes straight to HR. A couple of days later, Gus gets a letter from a therapist saying he has a severe panic disorder and this is a coping mechanism, [legal legal legal]; Gus finds himself in a protected class and Gus is allowed to work from home.

Suddenly Gus’s performance slips. Gus is asked to come in to speak with management and HR. Gus is fired for performance reasons that preclude his protected class. Gus gets up, refuses to turn in his badge, runs away, embodiment of Paul Blart Mall Cop security guard has to chase Gus outdoors near the aesthetic retention pond. It’s goose egg season and during the foot chase they run past an active nest. A male goose begins hissing and warding them off with wing flapping. Gus slips in the grass. Paul Blart tries to grab him but unhappy goose is in hot pursuit and begins…beaking them? Paul Blart has to pepper spray the goose. We’re all at the windows at this point. HR called the police. The police take Gus away. Paul Blart quit.

TL;DR: a chronic m*sturbator leads security on a literal wild goose chase.

This lady brought her goat to HR party, it ate the salad bar then her boyfriend (came *with* the goat) passed out drunk in the cheesecake. Nobody said anything ever 🥱

A girl I worked with had her boyfriend come to our job to fight one of our guy coworkers after work.

They fought in the parking lot. Security had to run out and break it up. Her boyfriend lost lol.

I used to work in a 5 star hotel one and had this boss who used to enjoy pretending he was better than everyone else one time he wound up the chef so much the chef chased him with a knife around the restaurant shouting and swearing nothing came of it from what I know despite HR knowing.

I run a small festival and we get a lot of volunteers. Most are incredible and we appreciate them so much.

This one volunteer was bat s**t crazy. Showed up for her 4hr shift at the gate. Asked if anyone wanted anything from the bottle shop and left the site for 3 and a half hours. She comes back, nearly runs some of our festival attendees over in her car and then proceeds to tell people she is with first aid and starts treating them!

First aid, our safety officer and security had to "fire" her on the spot.

Months later, we are still getting emails from her saying she can't wait to volunteer for us again next year!

Yeah NO.

I worked at a convenience store where we had a setup for hot foods, there was a huge case for chicken and corndogs, and pork tenderloins (Indiana, duh).

This guy we usually had on the fryer was over it; he had enough one day, so he walked up to the case, took out a tenderloin, stuck it down his pants, and rubbed his c****h on it while flipping off the camera - then he tossed it back into the food case! He walked out of the building while flipping a double bird at the cameras and the manager.

That s**t had to be SO hot for one, I don't know how he could stand rubbing his d**k on a hot fried tenderloin, but he did it.

We had to empty the case, throw out ALL the food (that SOB had just dumped a load of fresh chicken in it too), and then we had to sterilize the chicken case before we could add food back into it.

The manager didn't do s**t, it was just the co-workers he left behind who got f****d over.

Saw a young guy launch a cardboard case containing appx. 50 crystal champagne flutes. It was a s****y job at a wedding/community center and the dude just snapped suddenly. Don't know what set him off, but I never saw the kid again. Every glass broke and the mess was crazy. (2 hrs before a fancy wedding reception) Well over 1k in damage.

Worked with a guy who carried a flask on him at all times, everyone knew he had a flask, everyone knew he drank from it all day, he absolutely reeked of liquor. Once he came in on his day off to grab something from his locker and left, about an hour later his girlfriend came in looking for him, he had driven there with her and she was sitting outside waiting for him. The dude literally flat out forgot his girlfriend had driven him there and he wandered home. He flat out stopped showing up eventually, I ran into him a couple years later, he still reeked of liquor and didn't even remember who I was.

The director of our department got fired. When they told her, she started crying and took off out of the room. She hid all over the building, mostly in the warehouse. It took them 2 hrs to find her and escort her out, bawling all the way. Yikes.

Once had a guy call 911, and the police responded, because we wouldn't give him anything but ice chips. I work in a hospital and he was having surgery the next morning.

Someone brought h*sh brownies to an office Christmas potluck and didn’t tell anyone.

I work in a kindergarden for kids with special needs. One kid kept going for a quiet place few times a day, and we figured he just needed some time alone. This was outside in the playground where there was a little treehouse in the back behind some trees. On the third day of this happening I went to see what's up and encourage him to talk about why he needed time alone. I found him sitting on the ground eating one big spoon full of sand after the other. We're not just talking baby eating sand here - more like a medium sized kid shoveling sand down his stomach like it was his favourite food. So yeah this little boy probably ate A LOT of sand during those three days and probably longer.

He's fine now - 2. Grader now - kicked me in the butt when I saw him in a grocery store a week ago.

So I used to work at a small grocery store and one day my boss says he wants to show me something on the camera and I’m like bet alright and follow him up to the office. There’s a couple other people there and we all gather round as my boss hits play on a tape from the day before. There’s an old man walking through the produce department and all of a sudden we see him stop, reach around, pat his a*s, and then shake his leg until BALL of S**T plops out onto the floor. He then panics and tries to kick it under a produce display but accidentally steps on it and smears it all in the rug we put in front of the displays. Then he decides thats good enough and just continues shopping and then leaves without telling anyone or buying adult diapers.

We also had a lady two days later who was a known alcoholic steal two small bottles of wine by drinking both of them in the store bathroom and then hiding the bottles very visibly behind the toilet where my manager could see them. This same woman was also known for buying copious amounts of vanilla extract like 9 bottles at a time so that she could drink them in her car to get a buzz. I swear grocery stores are one of the best places to find some wild people.

A guy got fired and he trapped himself in a cubicle with a knife threatening people if they walked past. I went in with management and “hid” (chatted with them while leaning on his desk) in one of their offices until the cops came. He usually carried a gun but didn’t have it that day. 

I used to work in fashion design and I had a coworker who kept a flat iron at her desk and would nervously iron her hair throughout the day. I’m amazed she never started a fire.

My nursing school rotation the 1st month a med student in the hospital I worked at was having some sort of romantic issues with someone in the hospital. They got into a big fight and he took a charge nurses chair and smashed 2 computers then threw his badges, pager and stuff down and shouted "bill me b**ches" along with some stuff I won't repeat about his (guessing ex by then) and walked out mid shift. Nothing even remotely that interesting happened the rest of my nursing rotations lol. 

I was on a work trip and my boss brought a woman to dinner, was cuddly/ couple-y, etc ok fine until we were back and his wife and kids came to the office and it was definitely not his dinner date.