The year has just begun and workers are shifting into new positions, roles, and jobs. And, as they leave their old companies behind, they’ve become a bit more comfortable with sharing the wild stories from their previous jobs. So, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share their biggest workplace scandals.
Here’s what they said:
1.”My BOSS peed in the water cooler. Which numerous employees then drank from. It was so shocking.”
“She got fired, but on her last day at the company, she mixed her period blood AND diarrhea in with the water. This time it was obvious enough that no one drank from it, but we had to get a different water cooler.”
–Anonymous
2.”I worked as a cosmetology instructor at the school where I got my training. The owner asked me to start keeping track of the inventory and report directly to him. I began to notice small equipment disappearing and cases of supplies dwindling faster than they should have been. After several weeks of me turning in these odd reports, the owner appeared to leave early one day, but snuck back in long after the school was closed.”
“He caught a senior instructor loading cases of school supplies into her car. She had been stealing from the school to stock her own salon. I don’t know what transpired between the them but she was not fired; her hours were cut back and I think that she may have had to turn in some of her keys. Her daughter was also an instructor at the school and was absolutely mortified by her mother’s behavior.”
–mkasenbauer
3.”An employee put superglue in our boss’s shampoo. She got fired. It later emerged that this was because our boss slept with her sister, boyfriend, AND grandpa!”
–Anonymous
4.”When my school changed accrediting agencies, the new agency required all faculty to provide proof of graduate degrees. One professor was discovered to have been employed for years based on a PhD that they did not actually possess.”
“When confronted, they claimed to be in witness protection, and said the PhD was part of their cover. However, one of our administrators was married to an FBI agent, who clarified ‘that’s not how witness protection works.’ The next day there was a job opening in the department.”
–unclesimian
5.”A coworker arrived, uninvited, at the funeral of our HR head’s grandmother.”
–Anonymous
6.”I used to work at a hospital. There was this one doctor who was known for having a tendency to sleep with nurses (it was all very Grey’s Anatomy). Anyway, there was a new nurse on our unit, let’s call her Jay. Well one day, maybe a year into her being there, this huge story comes out that Dr. X was mauled by a bear while out on a rafting trip over the weekend.”
“He survived and everyone is dying to know the details of what went down. This is where it comes out that he was saved by none other than nurse Jay who ALSO happened to be on the trip with him. So this is how our entire unit found out that Jay was sleeping with Dr. X. This is also how Jay found out she and Dr. X were not exclusive like she thought and that she was one of his many nurse girlfriends. Things got pretty icy between them on the unit after that! I guess she didn’t know his reputation like the rest of us.”
–Anonymous
7.”I worked at a newspaper when I was fresh out of college and there were rumors going around about a manager in advertising and the head of the shipping department having an affair (they were both married to other people). The big bosses called the entire company together to discuss how spreading ‘harmful rumors’ about co-workers was awful for morale and that the ‘current rumors’ were false and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for spreading gossip.”
“A week later, the advertising manager and shipping head were arrested for having sex in his car in the middle of the afternoon while parked on a residential street, in full view of several houses. And because they were arrested, the story was considered news and ran in our newspaper. Needless to say, they were fired and big bosses never weighed in on ‘office gossip’ again.”
–winterwednesday9
8.”I worked at a clinic where the business manager, clinic manager, and a customer service rep were in a love triangle. Management was forbidden from having relationships with the hourly staff, but the CS rep got preferential treatment from the business manager, and dirty looks from the clinic manager.”
“One day an expensive watch showed up on the clinic manager’s desk, and then it appeared on the business manager’s wrist. That same day, the CS rep went home crying. Then the triangle broke up, and the clinic manager started dating a doctor’s assistant.”
–Anonymous
9.”In the ’90s, before the internet came along to destroy it, I worked for a very profitable magazine. We had a large roster of staff writers and an even larger roster of freelancers. One of those freelancers requested a pay raise and was denied, so he decided to try and form a union.”
“Because he wasn’t familiar with most of the magazine’s staff, he looked up their names in the phone book and started cold-calling. He called one woman and got her voice mail, left a message. When she called him back, he launched into his spiel about how the magazine’s owner was such a cheapskate bastard, it was time to get his comeuppance, he needed to learn about the power of the working class, etc. etc. After an awkward silence, the woman said, ‘You don’t know that I’m his wife, do you?’ That was the end of the union drive, though that freelancer did continue to write for us!”
–Anonymous
10.”We were at Disney for a company wide sales meeting. While all of us were at the bar, we noticed that there were TVs in there showing off the beauty of the resort. All was okay until one of the pictures on the monitor was a manager and rep having some serious sex in the pool.”
“The manager was fired and the rep left the company out of embarrassment. That was quite a show and a shock.”
–Anonymous
11.”Between early 2018 until early 2019 I was working at this shoe store in the mall. This girl, who was a few months pregnant ended up getting hired. Her boyfriend would stop by sometimes just to say hi and socialize with everyone. They were both pretty nice. Well, maybe a couple months into her employment she was let go. I didn’t say anything at first or ask any questions but, me being super nosy, I asked one of the other managers what happened.”
“Turns out this girl, I think after hours or something, would meet her boyfriend out back, with his car, and smuggle shoes from the store and put them in his car. The manager position she had held became available again and I took it lol.”
–midwestgirl97
12.”At a school I taught at, A and B were best friends. B found out A was hooking up with people from Craigslist (long time ago). A is married. B told A’s husband. A and husband got a divorce. A and B are no longer friends. A moved to a different school.”
–vizslaowner2
13.”A member of staff who worked night shift decided to take *extremely* explicit pictures of himself in the office. How do we know? Well, he used the work camera, then downloaded them to a shared work computer, and used his work email address to email them out to a whole bunch of lucky (?) ladies.”
“He was butt ass naked on his boss’s desk for most of them. I’m still baffled to this day. We work in IT. He must have known he would be caught. Having to slide those printed pictures over to him during the HR meeting and ask, ‘Is this you?’ was not a highlight of my career.
–Anonymous
14.”I work for a company with about 60 employees. Small enough to know everyone by name, but big enough to have multiple departments. Seven months ago a new colleague joined my team, and he’s been saving the day. Swoops in with the right tips and knowledge, and he’s promoted to team lead after just a few months (not uncommon) and soon discovers another coworker (fellow team lead) has been stealing!”
“Well, it turns out that’s a LIE and he was framing her, because she dumped his cousin last year. They had been planning this together and managed to somehow fake him being good at his job so he’d be promoted to the same team as her, so he could ‘unmask’ her crimes.The rest of us were all quite surprised when this unfolded.”
–Anonymous
15.”Worked in a small design center. One of the team members brought their daughter into work. No big deal, it’s a small center. We’re all kind of family. Next day, one of the people comes into work and says, ‘You can’t bring your daughter to work here anymore. I’m not allowed to be around children.’ Said person never worked there again.”
–Anonymous
16.”I once worked at a well known online furniture retailer most of you would be familiar with in their call center. One day, an employee went into the bathroom and…”
“…did their business but instead of flushing it, they decided to smear it all over the walls. We spend the rest of the day trying to figure who the perpetrator could be.”
–Anonymous
17.”I worked the front desk at a small, local motel. We gave good rates to people traveling for business and the manager was always down for a good haggle, so we had a lot of regular clients. One night the manager drunkenly confessed to me that he was having an affair with one of our regular male clients, who was married to a woman and had three grown children together.”
“It carried on for quite some time and eventually became an open secret among the staff who all had varied opinions, basically ranging from ‘who cares, two consenting adults, etc’ to ‘staff, especially managers, shouldn’t sleep with clients and he should be fired.’ They eventually decided to come clean with the wife because the relationship became serious. Rather than divorcing or separating, the wife turned out to be ok with it, and the three of them became a throuple. It was NOT the outcome we were all expecting and caused far more gossip than if there had been some for of break up. This was several years ago now, and as far as I know, the three of them are still very happy together.”
–Anonymous
18.”Worked at a major theater. The nicest woman ran it for many years. She was always so friendly and jolly. One day, the cops raided the place. Turns out, when adults were paying cash, the nice lady was ringing up children tickets and pocketing the overage adult payment.”
“She had been doing it for years, enough time to rake in six figures. The thievery was discovered by chance – a random computer glitch that caused someone to investigate. No wonder she was so jolly all the time, this modest job was making her (momentarily) rich!”
–Anonymous
19.”School bus driver + getting blowjobs from sex workers while driving regularly = big lawsuits.”
–Anonymous
20.”This story is from my husband. He worked for a big landscape company, and all of the trucks had a two-way radio. One of the crew chiefs was having an affair with the owner’s wife, and he was talking naughty to her on the phone. She was on speaker. Unfortunately for him, he was sitting on the transmitter/receiver button of the two-way radio and their entire conversation was being broadcast.”
“My husband couldn’t call to him over the radio (the other guy had his radio button pushed in), and he wouldn’t answer my husband’s phone calls — too busy I guess. So the entire company couldn’t use the radio, and they had to listen until the crew chief and owner’s wife got done.”
–Anonymous
21.And finally, “My coworker worked as a male escort to make money on the side, and he often went to client’s houses for it.”
“You can imagine our bosses surprise when he walked into his home to see his adult daughter with said coworker – who was in a sexy santa fit which consisted of nothing but a santa hat. My poor coworker had no idea. 😭”
Now I’m curious – what’s the biggest scandal that has ever taken place at your job? Let us know in the comments. Or, if you’d like to remain anonymous, use this Google form. Your response may be used in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.