Not everything is fair and just in the workforce. Some people fight REAL dirty to get to the top, and these workers just couldn't believe some of the things their bosses or coworkers did.
(Content has been edited for clarity).
Nobody Wanted This Discounted Candy And For Good Reason
“I used to work at a Toys R Us in a random Canadian city, we were located above a large grocery store in a mall. Every night, the candy at our store would be raided by the vast quantities of rats that lived in the grocery downstairs. Needless to say, we always had our candy priced low to get it out the door before the rodents got all of it.”
These Managers Were Literally Caught In The Act
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“The previous manager (male) and assistant manager (female) of where I work got fired for fooling around on the table in the staff room after the store was closed.
This was a little over a year ago, and we still haven’t replaced that table.
It wobbles now.”
You Can Get Away With Anything As Long As You Got The Dough
“My boss is the owner of a country club. Several months ago, he went to an adult entertainment club and apparently got a little wild. He was ‘removed’ and on his way back to his car, overheard someone comment on his level of inebriation. Like any reasonable person would, he returned to his car and retrieved his weapon. He was either going to shoot the bouncer that evicted him and missed in his stupor, hitting the commenter, or had intended to shoot the commenter. Either way, the commenter ended his evening at the MED on the wrong side of a lead mining operation. My boss, meanwhile, fled the scene and escaped.
Until three months later, when he returned to the club, got recognized and arrested. Several months after that, and much butt kissing to our membership, his charge was reduced from attempted murder to assault with a deadly weapon and then from four years in the clink to three years probation. The moral of the story, boys and girls, is if you have enough money you can do whatever you want without consequences.”
Turns Out Everybody Was Applying To The Next Best Thing After This Crazy Job
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“I was a contractor through a contracting company right out of college. The whole experience was incredibly shady. The company was started by a guy who was, I’m pretty sure, completely insane.
First, he got military contracts, then took the work on his unsecured laptop to the Philipines when visiting his wife’s family (we were all convinced it was a mail-order bride, honestly.).
He used to ‘borrow’ equipment from companies we contracted with. It was usually incredibly powerful, and expensive, equipment like oscilloscopes.
We had a collection of about 15 of them on a work-bench at one point when an office manager came in, face white as a sheet, saying, ‘I just got a call from XXXX, and they say if we don’t return their $50,000 scope this week, they’re going to sue us…and I have no idea which of these it was.’
The whole job became a game of trying to provide good customer service while keeping the owner away from the customer and trying to keep him from getting us all sued or arrested.
I started looking for work well before the company folded, which it finally did. One of my workmates did the same and had to apply for a security clearance, which is common in our line of work.
When the feds called me for a reference, I just told them Bob was amazing, trustworthy, and careful to follow rules and regulations. I don’t remember if they asked about the company, the owner, or if I just brought it up on my own, but I found myself telling the feds ALL ABOUT the scary stuff I’d seen happen with my employer. I told them I was 90% sure he had part of the F-22 plans on his laptop in the Philipines, that he was known to over-bill, steal equipment, lie to customers…everything.
The guy on the other end of the line just patiently listened, asked follow-up questions like, ‘Have you ever noticed him go to great lengths to save small sums of money,’ which I answered with a story about how unbelievably cheap he was.
Before long, I realized the entire call was about my former employer, and I finally said, ‘I’m sorry for just launching into all this, but I needed to get that weight off my shoulders.’
He replied, ‘It’s okay, every one of your coworkers has done the same thing when I called, and we’re taking the matter very seriously.’
I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m not sure I want to know.”
She Take His Money When He’s In Need, Cause Man She’s A Golddigger
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“The owner of the last company I worked for was married, had a wife, kids, and the company. The employee started becoming ‘Drinking buddies’ with the owner. She got pregnant and convinced the owner to leave the wife, kids and sign over half the company to her.
Now, these two co-owners run the place, while she’s trying to cut out the first wife and kids out of his will, out of the company… and one day he gets sick. She hires all of her family for super high paying ‘remote jobs’ where they do nothing for the actual business, so I presume it was her way of draining the accounts. She refuses him conventional medicine and goes all naturalist on him, which just made him sicker and sicker.
He dies, she continues the charade for a year while getting lawyers to try and make sure the original wife and kids get nothing if she sells the business he built up. I dunno how far she got into it, I assume she succeeded because she sold the company a year later.”
This Company Just Straight Up Didn’t Appreciate Their Workers
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“At my old job, one time the two owners fired a girl before me that had worked there I think for three years straight with no vacation. After three years she finally booked herself a two-week long vacation. She tried to argue for three weeks, considering we get two weeks a year legally. Here she was owed at least six weeks, but they argued her back to two. While she was on vacation, the owners e-mailed her and said ‘Don’t come in on Monday when you get back.’
One woman worked there (saw all of this and was told most of the stuff before I started working there) for I think 18 or 19 years, and I watched it all go down. She had a legitimate nervous breakdown after being overworked for so long, and the ‘new owner’ got all the lawyers she could to try and bully the woman into taking a much smaller package than she legally deserved: one-week severance for every three years, instead of every year I think.
Before the new owner fired me, she accused me in front of my coworkers of ‘not really needing the work.’ Because I’m an only child and my parents are well off, so once they die, I’ll get everything and therefore am not serious about my job because I’ll get all my parents riches anyway. I’m 20-something. My parents are 50-60ish right now, PLENTY of years left to live! Also, totally not true. Also, why is she discussing my family and home life with my coworkers?!
Then she fired me through a voice-mail after cutting my hours back from 40 hours/week to 28 hours/week. Even though I was supposed to be a full-time employee, she forced everyone on hourly instead of salary.
The worst was firing the last coworker I had there. This woman was already being underpaid for the work she was doing. Then she had to fly out for a funeral because a family member had died and was being buried in another country. The ‘new owner’ called her house to talk to her husband and told the husband, ‘Tell your wife she’s no longer needed at this company.’ While. At. A. Funeral.”
People Who Need Serious Help Could Just Be Taking A Placebo Pill
“This isn’t technically about my former employer – an ad agency – but about a client – a massive pharma company. This company manufactures a prescription designed to ‘treat’ a terminal disease. Marketing that prescription was one of our agency’s projects with them. One of the big pharma folks asked the agency to edit a very high-level, highly confidential internal presentation about the prescription for them. This fell to me.
Here’s the gist of the presentation: The prescription is not effective (i.e. basically doesn’t do anything, eked by in the trials/approval, the side-effects are often worse than the condition); the doctors know this so they don’t advise patients to use it; marketing to the doctors is therefore not effective use of marketing money.
So the prescription needs to be marketed directly to patients. This is best achieved by making up as much bull as possible about improving quality of life, and alluding to prolonging it, without actually saying it in a way that violates FDA/regulatory guidelines about false claims. The patent for the prescription was set to expire anyway, so generics will come out soon. Note: this prescription is outrageously expensive, and if I remember correctly not covered by insurance because it’s a ‘quality of life’ prescription. We are working to get the prescription FDA approval for treatment of another, unrelated, condition, which will give it another patent lifecycle. The condition? Depression.”
He Knows Everyone’s Dark Secrets Thanks To Their Phones
“I’m the IT manager for a mid-size company and have been for a few years now, I was originally brought on as a consultant to help setup a Blackberry enterprise server. During the initial configuration, I asked if they wanted to log SMS messages and was told yes. I thought nothing of it, set it up and forgot about it. Fast forward about four years, and I’m now full time with the company and a VP is complaining she can’t send international texts, the carriers can’t figure it out, so I start digging and discover that I had been logging SMS messages for four years. So I’m digging through the messages to see if there is anything there that would indicate a problem. There isn’t, but then I stumbled upon some crazy texts from the president and then I started reading the texts from everyone in the company…holy cow! I learned that our president was involved with several of my co-workers (all were married), and they all had been promoted to senior directors or VPs.
I learned the fates of several other employees who were fired out of spite. I learned that one of my friends whose employment was terminated for ‘poor performance’ was actually terminated because the employee they wanted to let go for actual poor performance had cancer and they thought they would look bad if they fired that person. Another person lost his job due to the fact that it was between her and another girl. The girl who lost her job was a better worker, but the other girl was pregnant and the president thought it would look bad to let go a pregnant lady…seriously some of the stuff I read was outright crazy, the casualness with which cheating, fudging numbers, and laying off employees was incredible. I spent a few weeks caught up in this before I had to make myself stop, it became very difficult at work just to look at everyone knowing what I knew.”
He Couldn’t Believe What He Found On His Computer
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“I spent a year working in a shady computer shop. My boss was a tall praying mantis-like man (think Sheldon) who took advantage of people every day. Once, credit card frauds came to buy computers. He realized they were suspicious but sold the computers anyway. Right after the transaction, he faked that the card didn’t go through and he had to call the bank. The thieves left without their computers, not knowing they had paid for it. He changed his inventory and placed back the stuff upstairs, destroyed the tapes and got paid by the insurance for ‘stolen goods.’
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been harassed by him to go on trial for a friend of his to assert that a security camera’s photo of the guy (gardener dropped his pants and played his instrument in front of the lady of the house) was fake, even though we all knew it wasn’t. $500 to lie in court? No thanks.
I thought it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.
One weekend (I worked alone on weekends), I was helping a customer. I went to my boss’ computer to check a price list (his computer is in front of the shop, so people see the screen) I minimize IE and bam. Limewire is running, and a small clip of a horse and a small woman doing some uhh…inappropriate things appears on the screen. I’m smooth enough to quickly minimize it and go back to the client, who hadn’t seen it. After he left, I went back on Limewire to see a big list of downloading and downloaded child smut and animal smut. I call up my boss to ask him what’s up. He panicked when I told him he’d left it open and a client might have seen it. He told me he was making compilation DVDs for a few of a lawyer’s friends who paid him well for that. Whether or not its true, it’s creepy as heck.
The following Monday, I realized one thing; his wallpaper is a picture of him on a horse. Grinning.”
These Tennis Club Owners Wanted More From Their Workers Than Just “Work”
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“It’s the late 90’s early 00’s and I’m working as a lifeguard for the local tennis club in Peoria, IL. This tennis club was one of the nicer places in town and was thought of as a rather swanky place. My boss was this guy I shall refer to as Dan to protect the innocent. Dan was a weird guy in general. His father owned the tennis club and Dan was the manager.
Well as it turns out, Dan was openly gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) for the early part of his adult life and his father being the redneck turd that he was, thought that Dan should not be gay. So his father told Dan that he needed to straighten up and get married or he would not give Dan the tennis club when he retired. Dan, being just as much of a turd, genetically speaking, thought this was a good idea because, otherwise, he would have to get a job where he actually has to work. Dan got married. Dan had a kid. Dan received the club. Dan made money. Lots of money.
Well during my tenure at this club, it was well known that Dan’s wife, not being satisfied in bed with a man who was not attracted to women, would regularly sleep with pretty much anyone she could, as often as she could, wherever she could. Likewise, Dan would meet guys at the pool and slam them in the maintenance room/pump house. The child was neglected and raised by the staff of the club. His father was happy as a clam to show off his model family. Everyone knew this was going on. No one really cared, except the male staff who had to fend off both a turned-on middle-aged housewife and a turned-on middle-aged gay boss, and everything went on like this was almost normal. Needless to say, holiday parties were quite the event.
My favorite quote from Dan: (while I was standing in the pool getting the vacuum pump running, when suddenly, Dan appeared) ‘You, ah, better be careful with that pump there. If you’re not careful, it’ll suck your balls right off. If you are careful, it’ll be the best morning of your life.'”
This Company’s Standards Are Too High For Any Normal Person
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“I work for a medium-sized company (about 100 employees) that is family owned. The CEO/President and CFO are husband and wife and the VP is their son.
They actively discriminate against all sorts of people and will refuse to hire them based on their personal preferences.
Just recently, they refused to hire some office workers (think secretaries, office managers, etc.) because the applicants were too fat. Direct quote from the CFO/wife: ‘Do people really expect us to hire fat people?’
They refused to hire a couple girls, one for a sales position and one for an accounting position because according to the CFO/wife: ‘They are way hotter than me and I can’t have that!’
Oh, and the reason the position was available was because the CFO/wife fired the previous accountant because she ‘didn’t agree with her enough.’
They fired a salesman because when he was within ear-shot of them, he said that they (the husband/wife) should stop making decisions based on their personal preferences for potential hires.
The VP/son siphons company funds into his son’s little league team for which he is a coach. He uses the funds to purchase baseball bats, gloves, balls, bags, etc., has them all delivered to the office. He then goes and randomly leaves for hours at a time to go bang his new girlfriend in the middle of the workday.
The CEO/husband regularly surfs smut sites in his office (for hours on end). His dream girl is Victoria Beckham and he wishes she would be a little more skinny.”
The Conditions Of This Food Place Would Make Anybody Throw Up
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“I used to work for Star Fish Company in Cortez, FL. This place is raved about and does so much business it’s unreal. Most of everything they sell is imported seafood (labeled as domestic), and there is no way it would pass a health inspection, but it hasn’t been inspected in a long time. There are decomposing rats regularly laying around in various corners of the building, and we blame the smell on the net boats docked outside. I have seen disgusting things happen in the kitchen, that I don’t care to get into.
We were explicitly told to tell customers that it is all local and caught fresh, I refused. Lots of the fish sold is landed without a Salt Water Products License and just tossed in the case. We would regularly forge landings with a random SPL for the fishermen who didn’t have their own.
The actual domestic seafood (which comes from AP Bell Fish Company next door to Star) is the stuff that was going bad out of Bell’s cooler, and they couldn’t sell to their other customers. Karen Bell of AP Bell owns Star.
Food is regularly mishandled, and prepared on some of the nastiest surfaces I have seen. The old manager (the only one with a food handler’s license) had HEP C, and working with knives in a place like that, we would regularly cut ourselves and bleed all over everything (including the cutting boards). He is only the ex-manager because he died.
The red grouper is regularly sold has scamp or yellow-edge for a larger profit margin. Employees are told to say many things that are untrue about the products, such as ‘not frozen,’ ‘fresh,’ ‘domestic,’ and get scolded when they refused.
There are no long-time employees left (except the cooks) because everyone had finally had enough and quit (I was fired). I have to say though, I hope Karen doesn’t read this because I still use her as a reference on job applications.
‘Friends don’t let friends eat farm-raised imports’ my behind. I could go on about the nasty conditions on the fishing boats, or the conditions of the processing plant (AP Bell) but just picture a wooden dock looking like it has been plastered white due to bird poop, then remember this is where your food is handled. Ugh.”
This Scandal Quickly Turned Into A Murder Investigation
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“At my last job, it was somewhat common knowledge around the office that the CEO was suspected of murder some 30 years ago.
The guy got his start in the company as a bodyguard for the founder, partly due to the fact that he used to be a cop (he was also let go from his department due to supposed corruption).
The founder himself was suspected of various anti-union activities, and for the most part his business model (this was a temp agency, of a sort) included hiring out scabs, hiring people with questionable citizenship and paying them low wages, and dealing with politicians in the way only Chicagoans can.
Anyway, at one point in 1980, the founder, a married man, was seeing this woman on the side. He was 60-something and she was in her 30s. It came to pass that she found out she was pregnant, and he would have none of that. After coercing her to go through with an abortion, she fell into a deep depression which resulted in her feeling rather bitter about the whole situation. She threatened to give an interview to the press detailing his shadier business practices.
She was last seen on the night of April 26, 1980 with the founder’s bodyguard. No one has heard from her since.”