Not crazy, just sad.

Middle of the day, sitting at our desks working. This middle aged guy who was usually happy as Larry gets up and leaves the office leaving his stuff behind. Not a word said. I just assumed he was getting a coffee or something.

End of the day rolls around, stuff still there. Same thing the next day. Still there the next week.

People start asking what happened to him, but the agency he was working through kept telling us he’s coming back soon.

Over a month later, someone packs up his stuff and puts it in the bin. The guy was never coming back, turns out he went left and ended his own life the day he walked out. Never made it home.

The agency apparently only found out he was dead a few weeks after the incident, then strung us along so they could find a replacement. We terminated their contract and offered the handful of other employees jobs.

———

Another job, we had a new guy start. Very conventionally attractive and he seemed normal enough.

A few weeks later one of the women complained to HR that someone was stalking her. She was getting ‘flattering’ letters, emails, notes etc and they often contained information and photos in/about/around her work. Flattering, but not something she was comfortable with

Few weeks later, we’re told new guy won’t be coming back due to inappropriate behaviour.

Woman had to get a restraining order against the guy. In a twist of irony, she said that if the guy had just talked to her, she would have gone on a date with him in a heartbeat.

Guy in my department strolls into my office and says, “Welp, this is probably my last day working here.” I asked him why he would say that. He sits down and shoves his phone across the desk toward me. I start reading and it’s an email from him to the CEO complaining that our boss is, in so many words, a complete fucking moron.

I finished reading and was just like, “Yeah, you shouldn’t have done that.” I mean, he wasn’t wrong. I agreed with basically everything in his email. He was also right about it being his last day working there because he was fired that afternoon.

When I worked in data entry fresh our of college, there was a mass firing. Turns out people were signing in and leaving. Like, to go to the movies, to the store, to just hang out, for their entire shift, and would then log out at the end of the day. Damn near every person under 30 was gone. Some quit before they could get fired. It took all day, and there were plenty of performances. Now, it was data entry, which meant our activity was tracked, from the inactivity to how much we got through in a day. I have no idea how they didn’t think anyone would notice.

Dishwasher was a legit creep. Proved management inaction took almost a year to get rid of them.

Jacked 5 ft 5 black guy.

Would talk extremely close to female servers. One time parked someone in and kept asking them questions like where you live etc. Talked about his jail time openly. Would get angry and just yell in the dish pit. One time said “hey what’s that other car in your driveway” to a woman.

The ex gang member who taught me to cook said he was the kind of guy who enjoyed the gay in jail. Institutionalized to a degree. Was a dish washing machine.

Hit on my boyfriend and would look down his shirt, be like look good in them jeans etc. In same month would emotionally abuse him to tears.

One time recall going up to him and saying someone was obviously not interested because she was new, visibly scared with him next to her when she was just trying to prep. People could hear him yell at me from the dining area, but after that he was different in a good way with me. Typical abuser workplace shit that thrived on inaction. Could have killed me if he wanted of course.

Bizarre man. Forget why he was finally let go but everyone breathed a little easier…

Until the woman with BPD started lol

This is one of my favorite stories. I only observed the events or was told firsthand by those involved. This is a true story.

Working in a crappy thrift store chain. Coworkers are cool as shit though. Befriend all the ones remotely close to my age. Customers are still terrible though. Especially the ones with the shitty kids that just terrorize the store while they absent-mindedly browse and shop.

One day this little shit is just running around the store and just making extra work for everybody for no good reason. Opening sealed bags of random toys. Etc.

After finally having enough of his bullshit, a coworker friend goes over to the kid and tells him, very sternly, he needs to go back to his mom. Little shit runs back and complains to his mom whom happens to be a total bitch; like when I hear the term “Karen” being used, she’s a textbook example of one.

Karen escalates, fast forward to outside the managers office, there stands Karen, my Friend, Manager and Little Shit.

While Karen is bitching to the Manager about how “Friend can’t talk to her kid like that” & “he’s not his father,” etc. The Little Shit looks at Friend and with a taunting edge stated: "You’re gonna get fired!" Without missing a beat Friend looks Little Shit in the eye and replies with a simple Fuck You. A 34 year old man saying that to some 10 year old brat? Hilarious. Everybody just fell silent with their jaw on the ground. Karen, Manager and Little Shit all silent for a moment. The rage building in Karen was written all across her face though. When she could finally utter words Manager started with "Friend, go home." “Okay!” He left with a great big smile on his face… he did get fired because of that though. He said it was worth it.

Help desk guy caught jerking off at his desk by a female employee, which he had apparently been doing for a while without a whole lot of cleanup, further investigation uncovered.

His keyboard, mouse, desk, floor mat, and chair were disposed of as hazmat. Monitor and PC were e-cycled.

I’ve had 2 coworkers lose their jobs for being diddlers, but nothing other than that really. Only other one 8 have, I didn’t get to witness since I was living out of town at the time, but a shithead ex-boss got walked out by some feds and wasn’t seen again. Gossip was it was INS, and it would serve him right to get deported.

Some fuckwad printed out several hundred illegal pictures in the middle of the day in a place accessible to everyone and with high foot traffic.

Needless to say he was walked out by the cops.

Working on a boat. We got a new shipmate who had worked there on previous seasons, most of us didn’t know him but he was good friends with another member of the crew. The day he got in the two of them spent the night catching up and getting absolutely trashed. Night ended with new guy stumbling in to the cook’s cabin and pissing right on the cook while he was sleeping. New guy was fired that morning without having worked a single day.

I used to unload trucks in an absolute madhouse.

The heat in the back of the transparent roofed trailers in summer was a nightmare so some of the lads would strip down to their boxers then pop their boots and high vis back on. We eventually got cameras installed pointing down the trailers and we’re suddenly required to be fully clothed at all times. Our shift lead took particular offense to this and flashed his cock at the camera whilst shouting obscenities. He didn’t come back to work the next day.

We had 4 guys sacked for not only opening customers parcels but for taking fireworks out of said parcel and taping them to Frisbees which they then threw to each other. One inevitably went off in one fella’s hand. He eventually managed to sue for unfair dismissal somehow.

Another guy was caught trying to sneak a slab of wine out to his car.

Worked at sheetmetal manufacturing plant. Had aisles of welding booths. Old dude welder would smoke in the building in his booth letting the smoke get sucked through the table vents. Well sure as ahit one day a little more than just smoke gets sucked up and next thing you know thr whole ventilation system goes up in flames. Never saw the dude again.

Same plant but one of the robot welders, the worker would mount an unrelated electrical box on the robot welder rig. Then hit the foot petal and it would clamp 3 of the 4 sides down with a fuckton of pressure. Months after opening back up after ventilation fire this new chick was running the robot welders and steps on the fucking clamp petal while still holding everything in place. She clamped her whole hand smashing all the bones in her hand I think. Never saw her again either. It was a freak accident not even anything you can point a finger at. I guess she lost balance a little to make her step and didn’t have her hands in way so the e-stop light bar that senses if you are in the way wasn’t tripped but she slamed her hand onto the box as it was closing trying to catch herself.

They had tons of people I never saw before come in and assess the robots and turret presses and they installed the petals that have covering flaps you need to lift to get your foot in the petal. All in all the place was super safe and the dude that smoked was super fucking belligerent and was going to be fired the next infraction before burning the ventilation system down.

This got me into a way bigger rabbit hole than I remembered… The person is not officially “fired” since you cannot fire a tenured, distinguished professor and a former department head, but I suspect she was persuaded to leave. The incident is quite wild, I was just a random undergrad hired to do lab tests so I only knew some details.

This is about Dr. Connie Weaver, professor emeritus and former department head at Purdue’s Department of Nutrition Sciences (her ORCiD). She was known for nutrition research where the institution recruits adolescents summer-camp style (similar to a clinical trial), and in 2017 she started to lead a multi-year (lasted one month before it was shut down) study on low-sodium diets in adolescents, Camp DASH. Supposed to be a gold-standard diet study… close to 10 million dollars of NIH money on the line too.

And then things went off the rail. The operation tried to cut a lot of corners: pretty much all of the employees were undergraduates who couldn’t find other things to do for the summer, training was minimal or nonexistent, and the employees-to-camper ratio was very, very low… oddly similar to the recent MrBeast incident where participation oversight seems to be very bad.

This then led to sexual harassment, abuse, etc… one poor girl’s nude was shared online, probably more cases of sexual assault, several adolescents got into serious fights with each other, and from what I’ve heard some of the undergrads who were on supervisory roles were also injured. Several lawsuits were filed, the university stepped in and stopped the study (I just remembered them stop scheduling me to work in July and was wondering what went wrong lol), the issue got elevated to the university president, and more lawsuits…

Obviously tenure means someone should be protected from being terminated at-will like most employment contracts. So the reason I have my suspicion is… Dr. Weaver became a professor emeritus not long after the incident, but is now somehow still publishing work while working from… San Diego State University? Doesn’t seem like someone who retired on their own will to me.

If you are interested in the full detail… here are some news articles on this incident. Exponent is Purdue’s student-run newspaper

• Undark’s report on Camp DASH
• Exponent, 2017-07-24, Camp DASH was shut down
• Exponent, 2017-11-28, president’s statement
• Exponent, 2019-09-20, drama between Dr. Weaver and the school on data retention
• Exponent, 2024-02-11, outcome of a lawsuit

The bosses favorite guy at my work who got 2 promotions got arrested by the FBI for sextortion of teenagers. It was only shocking to him.

Mike would walk into random meetings that he didn’t belong in, lay his head on the table, and knock out. Snored loud as fuck. He did this in my meetings alone at least three times a week.

He’d be found sleeping in the driver seat of his car about once a day too, clocking hours.

I saw the dude sneak up on a lot of people and assault them. Smack mens asses, rub women’s shoulders, he put this catholic nerd in a chokehold and whispered “security can’t help you here, n****” and then let him go.

He’d talk about how sick work from home was, how he’d just play NBA2K and Tekken all day, work on his car, sleep, and get paid.

Homie worked with us for like 3 or 4 months before he got fired. When he left, I got assigned his work. He had one ticket. It was three months old, and it was to update some software on our platform from vX to vX+1. It took me three minutes.

Dude was reading comic books at his desk the entire time he was there. He was really living the dream for a minute, I heard after he got fired that he moved from computers to car mechanic.

When I was in the military, two officers got caught fucking in a stairwell. They were caught by a security camera while attending training. They were both married and not to each other.