A guy in our data center couldn't figure out who owned a particular machine that he needed to work on. So his solution to figure it out was to let them come to him. He went and pulled out the network cable and waited. He was escorted out a little while later. The moral of the story is don't go disabling production machines on purpose.
Honestly we do that when we ask and no one speaks up. Lovingly called the “scream test” as we wait to see who screams.
I guess it depends on where you work. This was a large datacenter for a very large health insurance company. They made it a point later that day to remind people that it was a fireable offense to mess with production machines like that on purpose. And evidently the service he disabled was critical enough that it didn't take long for the hammer to come down. There were plenty of ways to find out who owned the machine, he just chose the easiest and got fired on the spot for it.
So it wasn’t accurate when you said he “couldn’t” figure it out.
Well I am not him, so I can't tell you whether or not he actually "could" have figured it out. The options to figure it out did exist, but he chose not to use them giving it the appearance that he "couldn't". Are you this much fun at parties?
He couldn't figure it out, a competent person could have without unplugging it.
Scream tests are a last resort though.
Sounds like it was a last resort if he “couldn’t figure out” whose machine it was.
I don't understand how that is even possible.
Are there no logs? No documentation? Does everyone share an admin user with full rights?
I mean, there has to be a way to find out who accessed the machine last time.
You’d be surprised with inheriting tech debt. Quite often there’s no documentation, the last person to log in to the system is an admin that quit 3 years ago, but it doesn’t much matter because that’s only for a direct console login which normal users don’t do when accessing the application. With tribal knowledge gone and no documentation, only when you pull the network for a bit do you discover that there was this one random script running on it that was responsible for loading up all the needed data in the current system, when 9 of the other 10 times those scripts were no longer needed.
In a perfect world you’d have documentation, architecture and data flow diagrams for everything, but “ain’t nobody got time for that” and it doesn’t happen.
Had that the other way around recently. A docker container failed to come back up after I had updated the host OS.
Was about ready to restore the snapshot, when I looked further back in the logs on a hunch.
Turns out that container hadn't worked before the update either. The software's developer is long gone, and no one could tell me what it was supposedly doing.
company a gets bought by company b. company b fires 50% of company a.
even a scream test won't get you answers because nobody is around that could complain nor know where the docs are.
You'd be surprised. I had some security devices that I was actively using get shut down simply because some paperwork didn't get filled out properly and the data center team claimed they had no documentation on them.
I read that as “lazy to the point of unprofessionalism”. I’m super lazy too, but it just means I try to automate the absolute shit out of everything I do to the greatest degree possible.
Where I worked we had a very important time sensitive project. The server had to do a lot of calculations on a terrain dataset that covered the entire planet.
The server had a huge amount of RAM and each calculation block took about a week. It could not be saved until the end of the calculation and only that server had the RAM to do the work. So if it went down we could lose almost a weeks work.
Project was due in 6 months and calculation time was estimated to be about 5 1/2 months. So we couldn't afford any interruptions.
We had bought a huge UPS meant for a whole server rack. For this one server. It could keep the server up for three days. That way even if wet lost power over the weekend it would keep going and we would have time to buy a generator.
One Friday afternoon the building losses power and I go check on the server room. Sure enough the big UPS with a sign saying only for project xyz has a bunch of other servers plugged into it.
I quickly unplug all but ours. I tell my boss and we go home at 5. Latter that day the power comes back on.
On Monday there are a ton of departments bitching that they came in an their servers were unplugged. Lots of people wanted me fired. My boss backed me and nothing happened but it was stressful.
I'd be super gluing those plastic toddler plug covers all over that thing.
fuck those other departments.
At a startup a long time ago, I was working on the weekend and brought my 3 year old with me. We had a customer coming in next week and this one machine was 5 days into a 7 day model build.
We had to go into that office to help someone with something unrelated. The little shit saw the blinking light and headed straight for the button.
On this computer (HP 710), it didn't shut off until you released the button. He actually was just pressing it but got spooked when I tried to get to it.
The next day our CEO told the guys that built that app that it had to be made so it could recover from crashes and restart from where it left off.
Yeah, I've done that before – after asking literally everyone in IT, plus our external consultants, and getting the go-ahead from my team lead and the head of IT.
If you fear reprisal for a scream test then you need to make it look like an accident.
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.
We had a guy that would email the CEO with audio or video of him singing or something. Good dude. Sold people eggs every week from his hens. Got fired for actual bullshit his lead should've been canned for.
What eventually happened to the boss?
Nothing. As far as I know he's still there. That company was a raging dumpster fire.
This sounds a lot like a company I've worked at honestly.
Hmmmmm. Been thinking about starting a youtube channel. Maybe ballads to the CEO could be the theme. I wonder how long before I get called in by hr.
This guy in the warehouse made a deal with another guy to sell his porn collection. So he brings it in one day in a big cardboard box and leaves it sitting in the coat room with the top open, you could see X-rated stuff just walking by. Someone says something to management and the box gets confiscated, but they don't know who it belongs to so that's pretty much the end of it. Until our hero goes and files a complaint about the theft of his property.
Did both parties involved in the transaction get fired?
I think the other guy got a warning but I'm pretty sure he wasn't fired
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.
Hopeful ship was at shore still at the time? Would suck to be fired while out at sea. Awkward ride back.
We were in Puerto Rico for our winter maintenance period, just starting to bring on crew for the sailing season. I’ve never worked on a boat where people drink underway and I don’t think I’d want to.
On boats you usually don’t get told you’re fired until you reach port.
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.
How did that take more than 3 months? Surely he should have been noticed within a week...
My company is small enough that it doesn't legally need HR.
Nobody to report him to except the company owners who didn't care for a while
This doesn't sound like the dream to me at all
Guy was having fun being a menace, and making 6-figures.
He would also record/take pictures of girls he'd meet online, and show off their nudes to people at work. And complain about paying child support. Gross ass dude.
He was hired on the recommendation of an already existing (seemingly normal) employee. Once mike got fired, his recommender immediately ""quit"" before they could also get fired
WFH with video games, and watching Office Space and Fight Club a little too literally.
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.
There is so much stupid shit that you can get away with in the military, I have never understood why anyone would even get close to breaking the fraternization rules. They literally give you a copy of the rulebook in boot camp! Did no one read the damn thing?
I was a Nuke though, so up to my neck in daily fires to put out. No time for a social life.
Unhinged entry level employee screaming and swearing and threatening the CFO and spit in her coffee mug.
An email went out to the whole company telling us not to let him in the building before he even got back to his desk to be fired. This is a software company, not exactly the type of place that has armed guards, but the (ex-military) information security dude set up in the area packing for a few weeks after that.
Hope the info sec guy got some hazard bonus. Doubt he/she would ask for it though.
A guy on my team was absolutely convinced the external monitors he had were 1080p and not 1680*1050 resolution, and that everyone else using 1680*1050 were just wrong. He got into an argument with IT service desk over HDMI cables, which he wanted to prove himself correct (since everyone else were supposedly chumps for accepting the tyranny of having to use DVI cables for their monitors, thus forcing them to use the lower resolution). The argument escalated and well, he kind of just disappeared after that and never came back.
The IT service desk folks were already touchy about their HDMI cables since people were apparently stealing them for use in the meeting rooms.
Pity, I liked him but that was kind of unhinged. Besides, the monitors’ native res was definitely 1680*1050 lol.
We had a new group in from another regional site come for training.
It turned out the one was actively also a prostitute. She was freely distributing her social media, showing people videos of herself, and asking us where the secluded parts of the campus were so she could do her thing with some of the scientists.
She didn't do very much actual work, or at least not what she was supposed to be doing there. I give her credit for seeming to be very proud of her side gig. She seemed to really enjoy it. I think she just eventually stopped coming in after they went back to their own site, so maybe she did find herself a scientist.
Definitely the wildest person I've ever worked with.
there should be a study on workplace efficiency that includes sexual gratification vs not.
Good heavens, I'd hate to see which co-worker I'd get paired with! That's some type of Russian Roulette! 🤣🤢
meet Delores, she's here to ensure you're satisfied with your job.
Lol she might possibly be an upgrade!
It's no nutley, but it'll do
There was a guy who was in tech support who talked to a customer about who was hot or not in the company. It was actually the customer who started the conversation, but the rep ran with it and used all kinds of unprofessional and disparaging language when describing his female co-workers.
That call happened to have a supervisor listening in, so he was fired immediately after he got off the call. The thing is found out who called in, and the women on the team had to assist him when he called for support.
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.
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
I had a dishwasher throw a chef’s knife at my head once
Ooo shit.
We fortunately new had anyone overtly violent.
Meth in the bathroom after we started using an agency to fill shifts shifts.
At the time I didn’t even think anything of it. It just clattered against the wall next to my head and I was a teenager and I just went back to work. In my 40s now and that guy and I would have serious words. Can’t believe how trivially I treated my own safety back then
Classic kitchen employee right there.
Dude brought a sex worker into his fiber splicing trailer and the boat was a-rockin’ when the supervisor came knockin’.
We had an A/P manager who chewed her way through 3 entire staffs before management decided the problem was actually her. Two of them collectively quit in a group on one day! That was the most outrageous I think. How did it take FIFTEEN people quitting because of her management before they fired her?
Also one manager who came in shitface drunk and swinging when she got fired. That was the most dramatic.
Figured this out some time back. Firing a manager is an admission of failure by someone even higher.
Not always. Some people change once they get power, I've seen 2 supervisors go that way. Awesome co-workers, cunts to work under.
Also, not everyone that is good at a job has the personality to be in management. I've found myself in several management roles before I realized I absolutely hate being responsible for other peoples' work and am just not cut out for it.
I use those people that I used to work with as a "what not to do" guide.
Sometimes I want to say to staff "You keep up shit like this and you wont have a job much longer" but I remember how fast people turned on that guy, so instead I have a sit down with them and say "I cant keep not reporting this stuff, its going to risk MY job. So I need you to lift your game because we're friends and all but I'm not going to get fired to protect you and once I start reporting it up the chain, I cant fo anything to protect you"
I like your approach much better.
This is true and I've seen it. However, I still think that it's possible someone above didn't want to acknowledge that they were a bad read of character. That's how it felt in the situation I saw firsthand anyway.
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 guess he needed a helping hand since he was coming on the help desk so much.
I used to work tech support for a company that made a product which involved sharing live or recorded videos. We would use the same instance for testing and troubleshooting, which occasionally involved broadcasting live videos.
One morning, I signed on to look for something or other, and I saw that one of my co-workers (who was working from home) had a live feed. His camera was pointed straight at his crotch and he was going at it quite vigorously. I deleted the feed and I don't know if he ever even knew what happened.
Honestly I’d probably do the same. He’s at home, and I don’t need that drama in my work life.
Didn't need a perfectly good coworker fired because he didn't realize his camera was on.
Stories like that are why my webcam shutter is closed AND it's unplugged until I need it.
Ain't nobody seeing me unless I go through the effort to hook it up.
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.
What a bizarre mind that must be. Fucking creep.
I wish I could tell you he looked creepy or we had some bad vibes but he was just a guy in the office. That part bugs me the most
What pictures are illegal?
If you don't know, you're better off
Uh kiddie porn for example
Correct on first guess, unfortunately
we need to be calling it child rape
No that's just confusing for no reason
how is it confusing? The reason is, that's exactly what it is, zero confusion. Images of children being raped...no sugar coating.
Child rape and csam are different one is a subsection of the other
how do you get csam without raping the child? They can not consent.
Good point
Someone got really drunk and was in the bathroom willing to take all comers at a work function.
It was a shame, I liked working with them.
was in the bathroom willing to take all comers
Can't tell if they wanted to participate in sex acts or have a brawl
It was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
Por que no los dos?
I've worked with a lot of good and a lot of bad surgeons, but even the bad ones aren't usually dangerous bad, but like slow af, sub-optimal but passable outcomes, shit like that.
I've worked with ONE who was just absolute shit at his job... and his incompetence got at least one patient killed.
He got axed pretty quick... hopefully his license was revoked and he got charged with murder, but I never got any details of post-firing.
omg it wasn't "Dr Death" aka Christopher Duntsch was it?
No, he never got any media attention that I'm aware of. My concern is that he's just hopping from hospital to hospital - hiring on, fucking up, killing someone, getting fired, hiring on, fucking up, killing someone, etc.
Hospitals are pretty protective of their reputation and their doctors; and death is a thing that can happen in surgery so it be swept off as a "Oh well, patient signed off on the risks; and oh hey, this Dr said some mean things to our staff, so let's fire him for that and hope we don't make national headlines..."
That's exactly what happened with Dr Death and why he wasn't caught for such a long time.
Oh, well shit. Dr Death was before this shit, but it sounds like basically Dr Death 2.0.
...kinda makes me wonder how common this is.
Not that I've had a ton of surgeries, but I've had a couple, and anytime I go under, I'm desperately hoping that my surgeon wasn't a C student and has the calmest of hands.
Most docs have some kind of internet presence nowadays, so definitely look them up. Also in the later preop stages when you talk to your OR nurse, look your nurse in the eye and just straight up ask "Would you be comfortable with this doctor operating on you?" They won't be actually allowed to talk shit on their surgeon, but the second of panicked silence as they try to come up with some kind of non-answer without blatantly lying will tell you everything you need to know.
This might be like 30 mins before your surgery - you have the right to refuse up until you go unconscious. It'll feel dirty, but those standards exist for a reason.
That's a good suggestion about talking to the nurse, thank you.
Curious how common the truly bad ones are. I’d assume quite uncommon between licensing, hospital hiring, chart data analysis at scale, etc., but…
Counting down the days to a relatively minor surgery I need. No real concerns, I’ve met the lead surgeon a few times, but plenty of unknown humans are part of the process too.
It's health care so obviously we were told that we'd have to be vaccinated against COVID or be fired, like many. Most people went along with it, but the CEO sent out a final warning email to the whole network, and this antivax dingdong somehow managed to reply all to the CEO giving him a patronizing lecture about how COVID wasn't real, how nobody had died of it, and how he had read several patient charts that proved this, and how the CEO was making a very big mistake, and how he, this clerk, knew science better than the CEO did. He was fired for reading patient charts he didn't belong in, of course. The email was super patronizing and he claimed to have an M.Sc and that meant he knew better, despite the fact he was working as a clerk, and gave all sorts of false "evidence".
Anyway he was fired and reply all to the CEO is disabled.
On a virtual meeting a guy unknowingly had his mic on and shouted to his kid "N....r sit your ass down!"
Company has low-key software trainers - a ton of information to convey, but they mostly embrace and gently corral the inevitable side convos you get in a Teams room of thirty very confused people.
Some of us were more vocal than others and a handful were less pleasant. During a brief silence, as a woman is about to ask a valid question, we ALL hear,
“Oh, there’s Jennifer, running her fat fucking mouth again! (Pause) (gasp from speaker)”
Guy wasn’t getting it anyway, but he didn’t last the rest of the morning.
There were 29 of us in that room, two years ago. Now there are six of us remaining. Mouthy guy above is the only one I know left involuntarily.
And got fired for that??
Why shouldn't he
Why should he?
To keep a clean work culture. To keep racists away from the work environment.
If the guy was talking to his kid like that, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume it was a black guy yelling at his kid, and not being a racist. Maybe it was a white guy, but that doesn’t sound like something a white guy would yell at their kid, even a racist.
Not all black people think that using the n-word is ok and many will tell you that no matter who is using it, the word has a racist undertone.
When you work for an employer that makes it a point to embrace multiculturalism it's not the kind of language you can use while you're working.
While what you say is true, it doesn't really refute the comment you're replying to. It could have been a black, non-racist employee, but that doesn't mean it's okay to use offensive language in the workplace.
I don’t know a single black person who uses a hard R
"clean work culture" = "It's not enough when a worker does their job, they also have to adjust their behavior to their employer's wishes, both at work and in their free time."
During a virtual meeting isn't an employee's free time...even if their mic is supposed to be off. Lol
Yell the N word at a work meeting, see how comfortable your coworkers get
This wasn't on their free time. Are you ignorant on purpose or just completely clueless?
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.
That's a very bad decision as a manager, if I was another employee in that store I would take that to mean never control kids in the store, let the manager deal with that.
And if I was the friend I would have asked during that exchange with the manager present "So, I assume that means she's paying for everything the kid broke before I asked him to stop, right?" Just to see the reactions.
She was a very bad manager and always quick to make the customer happy. I ended up leaving shortly after that incident.
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.
Surprisingly this one actually didn't lead to someone being fired because the person was never found, but when I was a teenager I worked at a local retailer in Canada called Canadian Tire. The manager called everyone into the employee washrooms to show us that someone had scrawled "CT sucks" in human feces -- presumably their own -- on the inside of a toilet stall.
I could never earn enough CT money to actually get anything good, so I'm sympathetic to the feelings of the artist in this story.
I always used to just put mine in the bin to support kids sports lol
your feces?
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.
A... slab? Of wine?
Is that a whole pallet or something?
Ikr? How is wine measured in slabs...
I'm guessing this wine's vintage is some time last week?
In Australia the call a case (24 bottles) of beer a slab.
Maybe this is some kind of canned wine?
24 bottles but yeah.
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
Okay, this is fascinating ... And makes me wonder how often this--what I will call "academic honorable discharge"--really occurs across institutions, well-known or not.
I haven't delved into your sources yet, so this is my somewhat educated guess ... Environmentally, this type of social breakdown makes sense with the lack of proper oversight, seasoned leadership, and organization appropriate to the study population. But did the low sodium diet itself serve any factor in the violence that occured in this botched study? Like, did kids being dietarily withheld a critical electrolyte affect the speed and intensity with which cracks in the camp structure split open?
Not trying to be too lighthearted here, but my guess in short: The kids went extra bonkers because of altered body and brain chemistry, with a lack of sodium (assuming the diet was initiated on Day 1) being a key aggressor in... making teen aggression more aggressive?
“academic honorable discharge”
I am aware of this happening in multiple cases involving scientific fraud... no idea how exactly this is being done though.
But did the low sodium diet itself serve any factor in the violence that occured in this botched study?
Not sure... but even without dietary interventions, there are a lot of simple explanations to how this could have gone wrong. This was a much larger study than the Camp Calcium series this PI did, a lot of the recruited kids are low income/from problematic households, with very little to no adult oversight, and there were very few activities for entertainment/enrichment... Also the dorm they lived in was technically separated by gender, but let's just say that it is not difficult to get to the other gender dorm... So yeah.
Was it sponsored by the Dash low sodium seasoning?
Edit: the study obviously isn't sponsored by the seasoning company, but I'm not sure if the DASH diet itself is.
Not my workplace exactly, but I used to hang out with this Kiwi who worked as a foreign English teacher in Korea in the same small Korean city as me. The foreigner community was fairly close-knit because there was only 50ish of us.
We all knew him. Everyone liked him. Fun guy. A little weird sometimes. He never told anyone his last name. The end of his pinkie finger was missing and if you asked him about it, he always said a shark bit it off.
One vacation about two years into his tenure, he decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. He never came back. I'm not 100% on the details past this point, but what I heard was they stopped him from entering the US because he was wanted in New Zealand on 37 counts of distributing child pornography. He was basically extradited back there and as far as I know went to prison. His trail disappears there.
Not exactly crazy but just mysterious...this was at a software company I worked at many years ago. It was one of the developers in the team adjacent to ours who I worked with occasionally - nice enough person, really friendly and helpful, everyone seemed to get on with them really well and generally seemed like a pretty competent developer. Nothing to suggest any kind of gross misconduct was happening.
Anyway, we all went off to get lunch one day and came back to an email that this person no longer worked at the company, effective immediately. Never saw them again.
No idea what went down - but the culture at that place actually became pretty toxic after a while, which led to a few people (including me) quitting - so maybe they dodged a bullet.
2% yearly reductions most likely. Some shitty companies fire a small percent of their staff and hire new people - especially when someone has been there long and isn't irreplaceable.
A manager got fired for sleeping with an underage waitress.
A GM got fired after stealing ~$13k from deposits
A guy got fired for telling the GM to go fuck herself completely unprompted.
Food service is wild
Someone got fired making an “inspirational” Andrew Tate inspired speech on slack about how depression doesn’t actually exist. This was on a company wide channel about promoting/raising awareness for mental health issues. Two comments prior someone had described in heartbreaking detail how their stepchild had committed suicide last year.
Manager (34) impregnated a delivery driver (16/17) and ran away to Tennessee because he couldn't be prosecuted for it there.
You are prosecuted where you committed the crime.
He wasn't that smart.
I love it. You can't see me because I can't see you!
The girl doing meth in her car.
Also the guy being arrested for having CP on his personal device and never coming back technically counts too, right?
I went to a temp agency one time and went through the enrollment/placement tests. I told them up front I was just looking for competitive offers to bring to my 5 year review to ask current employer to match. They were cool with it after i told them I would be back if employer doesnt match.
So I'm taking the test and was blown away at the test questions. I'm reading them outloud to the agents at their desks asking them which ones people actually respond honestly to. They start telling me hilarious stories of people theyve had fail the test.
They eventually told me they have had at least one person at some time answer every question with the very honest but very damning wrong answer. They said none of the people they told me about were even the assholes intentionally failing the test just to show proof they applied. They were people being waaaay too fuckin honest about their liberal drug use.
Some of the more memorable questions:
In the last 8hrs how many times have you smoked meth?
A. 0 times
B. 1-4 times
C. 5-10 times
D. 10 or more
Have you ever smoked crack cocaine while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don't know
D. Maybe
Would you ever smoke crack while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don't know
D. Maybe
How many alcohol beverages do you have on your lunch break?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
How many alcohol beverages did you have today before this interview?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
Describe your performance at work while high on alcohol or narcotics compared to your performance at work while not high on alcohol or narcotics.
A. Have never worked high on alcohol or narcotics.
B. I perform worse while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
C. I perform the same while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
D. I perform better while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
Edit for formatting and grammar.
Holy shit that's amazing. honestly what surprised me most is that you were upfront about the competitive offer thing and tney were cool with it
Right?! Especially if it was an off-the-cuff agreement. But if I had a few minutes to think it over, I would buy that anyone serious enough to get verifiable competitive offers using a third party would be serious enough to come back for those better offers if the current employer doesn't bite. (This is assuming you can't arrange new employment without the temp agency's involvement for whatever contractual reason. Not sure how they typically work.)
It's rural town USA. The company I was pressing to match the competitive offer was actually my own family's manufacturing corporation. The temp agency knew exactly who I was when they saw my last name. They had good fun joking about how they knew my family doesn't pay their employees enough but having the owner's son threatening to quit for better pay really solidified it as a good ole hardyharhar to them. I knew it. They knew it. Plus we have done a ton of business with them over the years filling entry level temp to perm positions, so the whole thing was really super laid back.
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.
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.
Coworker found him on the sex offender registry for messages with some woman trying to arrange a sexual meetup with her daughter. Not even a statutory teenager situation, an actual child. Apparently he had some connections with law enforcement which kept him out of jail.
Everyone already hated him for general creepiness and being terrible at his job, so there was a degree of vindication in confirming how horrible of a person he was. Still super fucked up.
Sex in the stock room. Caught by manager.
18, sex in the stock room, didn’t get caught.
Even had a handful of more standard dates afterwards, always with sex.
No negative outcome, fortunately. Except for the really damn cold stockroom floor, but that was her problem not mine…
Think we just lost interest, I moved onto another job, that was that.
From my current workplace:
Someone was putting mail in a cabinet under their desk instead of the outbox, we're talking hundreds of letters/cheques/invoices and some life-changing documents from a few months. The mail outbox was on their desk, and easier to reach than the cabinet.
From previous workplaces:
Breaking down a door and raping someone that had barricaded themselves behind said door.
Sexual interference.
not having a licence, and getting a DUI with a work truck that they stole.
And outrageous in a different way:
for only beating last year's sales by 3% instead of by 4%.
Have you heard any specific reasons for the mail hoarder's actions at your current workplace, or is it still a fresh case? I'm guessing it was nefarious, since the mail outbox was closer and seemingly more obvious than the secret stashing cabinet. Just wanted to be a dingus to intended mail recipients? I'd also be curious if it was all mail they handled or just select pieces. So many burning questions!!
I am a contractor so I don't work in a standard office setting right now. I miss the heck out of juicy office gossip, at least about those who deserve such sordid stories! (Karen in accounting is actually really nice, Carl.)
The reason why some people think they did it was because it was their job to take the mail to the mail room. But they were also the person who needed to go to the mail room to get our mail every day, which they did, every day. If they were already taking the elevator down to the mail room to get the mail, why not take the outgoing mail?!?
We also found out that they were just marking tasks as complete about 20% of the time, so we had to double-check every task assigned to them for the previous 6 months.
I earned my living with a hammer or a forklift for most of my life, and I never thought I would like the office gossip. But, It's kinda great.
It's generally a different level than it was with the construction guys.
"Joanne's boyfriend might be emotionally abusive, and she won't break up with him. Be kind to her."
vs
"John got drunk last night after losing custody, and put his new girlfriend into a coma. We'll need you to help with the gable overhangs."
Different times and companies, but I've seen people fired for
being in his 30s and sleeping with the 14-15 year-old worker (I forget exactly how old she was). This was working in a movie theater and he was the GM.
found CSAM on their computer
many for sexual harassment (a few different jobs in IT)
I think that's it for the NSFW stuff.
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.
Jerking it in the bathroom
It wasn’t even the unisex one
How did you get caught?
RIP in pepperonis OP
Oh, I never got caught
I just thought it was unfair because that’s what they’re there for
He got caught because upper management was visiting that day
An IT company I worked for many years ago went through a massive growing phase. One of the things that lead to this growth was the hiring of much more competent management, particularly in security and the data center.
Security actually started doing their jobs and started routinely doing network scans. They discovered two servers that were not located in the data center, which was a huge no no. The servers were running two porn websites off the company's internet connection. The guy had been doing it for years and apparently was making many times his company salary from them.
A guy in our data center couldn't figure out who owned a particular machine that he needed to work on. So his solution to figure it out was to let them come to him. He went and pulled out the network cable and waited. He was escorted out a little while later. The moral of the story is don't go disabling production machines on purpose.
Honestly we do that when we ask and no one speaks up. Lovingly called the “scream test” as we wait to see who screams.
I guess it depends on where you work. This was a large datacenter for a very large health insurance company. They made it a point later that day to remind people that it was a fireable offense to mess with production machines like that on purpose. And evidently the service he disabled was critical enough that it didn't take long for the hammer to come down. There were plenty of ways to find out who owned the machine, he just chose the easiest and got fired on the spot for it.
So it wasn’t accurate when you said he “couldn’t” figure it out.
Well I am not him, so I can't tell you whether or not he actually "could" have figured it out. The options to figure it out did exist, but he chose not to use them giving it the appearance that he "couldn't". Are you this much fun at parties?
He couldn't figure it out, a competent person could have without unplugging it.
Scream tests are a last resort though.
Sounds like it was a last resort if he “couldn’t figure out” whose machine it was.
I don't understand how that is even possible.
Are there no logs? No documentation? Does everyone share an admin user with full rights?
I mean, there has to be a way to find out who accessed the machine last time.
You’d be surprised with inheriting tech debt. Quite often there’s no documentation, the last person to log in to the system is an admin that quit 3 years ago, but it doesn’t much matter because that’s only for a direct console login which normal users don’t do when accessing the application. With tribal knowledge gone and no documentation, only when you pull the network for a bit do you discover that there was this one random script running on it that was responsible for loading up all the needed data in the current system, when 9 of the other 10 times those scripts were no longer needed.
In a perfect world you’d have documentation, architecture and data flow diagrams for everything, but “ain’t nobody got time for that” and it doesn’t happen.
Had that the other way around recently. A docker container failed to come back up after I had updated the host OS.
Was about ready to restore the snapshot, when I looked further back in the logs on a hunch.
Turns out that container hadn't worked before the update either. The software's developer is long gone, and no one could tell me what it was supposedly doing.
company a gets bought by company b. company b fires 50% of company a.
even a scream test won't get you answers because nobody is around that could complain nor know where the docs are.
You'd be surprised. I had some security devices that I was actively using get shut down simply because some paperwork didn't get filled out properly and the data center team claimed they had no documentation on them.
I read that as “lazy to the point of unprofessionalism”. I’m super lazy too, but it just means I try to automate the absolute shit out of everything I do to the greatest degree possible.
Where I worked we had a very important time sensitive project. The server had to do a lot of calculations on a terrain dataset that covered the entire planet.
The server had a huge amount of RAM and each calculation block took about a week. It could not be saved until the end of the calculation and only that server had the RAM to do the work. So if it went down we could lose almost a weeks work.
Project was due in 6 months and calculation time was estimated to be about 5 1/2 months. So we couldn't afford any interruptions.
We had bought a huge UPS meant for a whole server rack. For this one server. It could keep the server up for three days. That way even if wet lost power over the weekend it would keep going and we would have time to buy a generator.
One Friday afternoon the building losses power and I go check on the server room. Sure enough the big UPS with a sign saying only for project xyz has a bunch of other servers plugged into it.
I quickly unplug all but ours. I tell my boss and we go home at 5. Latter that day the power comes back on.
On Monday there are a ton of departments bitching that they came in an their servers were unplugged. Lots of people wanted me fired. My boss backed me and nothing happened but it was stressful.
I'd be super gluing those plastic toddler plug covers all over that thing.
fuck those other departments.
At a startup a long time ago, I was working on the weekend and brought my 3 year old with me. We had a customer coming in next week and this one machine was 5 days into a 7 day model build.
We had to go into that office to help someone with something unrelated. The little shit saw the blinking light and headed straight for the button.
On this computer (HP 710), it didn't shut off until you released the button. He actually was just pressing it but got spooked when I tried to get to it.
The next day our CEO told the guys that built that app that it had to be made so it could recover from crashes and restart from where it left off.
Yeah, I've done that before – after asking literally everyone in IT, plus our external consultants, and getting the go-ahead from my team lead and the head of IT.
If you fear reprisal for a scream test then you need to make it look like an accident.
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.
We had a guy that would email the CEO with audio or video of him singing or something. Good dude. Sold people eggs every week from his hens. Got fired for actual bullshit his lead should've been canned for.
What eventually happened to the boss?
Nothing. As far as I know he's still there. That company was a raging dumpster fire.
This sounds a lot like a company I've worked at honestly.
Hmmmmm. Been thinking about starting a youtube channel. Maybe ballads to the CEO could be the theme. I wonder how long before I get called in by hr.
This guy in the warehouse made a deal with another guy to sell his porn collection. So he brings it in one day in a big cardboard box and leaves it sitting in the coat room with the top open, you could see X-rated stuff just walking by. Someone says something to management and the box gets confiscated, but they don't know who it belongs to so that's pretty much the end of it. Until our hero goes and files a complaint about the theft of his property.
Did both parties involved in the transaction get fired?
I think the other guy got a warning but I'm pretty sure he wasn't fired
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.
Hopeful ship was at shore still at the time? Would suck to be fired while out at sea. Awkward ride back.
We were in Puerto Rico for our winter maintenance period, just starting to bring on crew for the sailing season. I’ve never worked on a boat where people drink underway and I don’t think I’d want to.
On boats you usually don’t get told you’re fired until you reach port.
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.
How did that take more than 3 months? Surely he should have been noticed within a week...
My company is small enough that it doesn't legally need HR.
Nobody to report him to except the company owners who didn't care for a while
This doesn't sound like the dream to me at all
Guy was having fun being a menace, and making 6-figures.
He would also record/take pictures of girls he'd meet online, and show off their nudes to people at work. And complain about paying child support. Gross ass dude.
He was hired on the recommendation of an already existing (seemingly normal) employee. Once mike got fired, his recommender immediately ""quit"" before they could also get fired
WFH with video games, and watching Office Space and Fight Club a little too literally.
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.
There is so much stupid shit that you can get away with in the military, I have never understood why anyone would even get close to breaking the fraternization rules. They literally give you a copy of the rulebook in boot camp! Did no one read the damn thing?
I was a Nuke though, so up to my neck in daily fires to put out. No time for a social life.
Unhinged entry level employee screaming and swearing and threatening the CFO and spit in her coffee mug.
An email went out to the whole company telling us not to let him in the building before he even got back to his desk to be fired. This is a software company, not exactly the type of place that has armed guards, but the (ex-military) information security dude set up in the area packing for a few weeks after that.
Hope the info sec guy got some hazard bonus. Doubt he/she would ask for it though.
A guy on my team was absolutely convinced the external monitors he had were 1080p and not 1680*1050 resolution, and that everyone else using 1680*1050 were just wrong. He got into an argument with IT service desk over HDMI cables, which he wanted to prove himself correct (since everyone else were supposedly chumps for accepting the tyranny of having to use DVI cables for their monitors, thus forcing them to use the lower resolution). The argument escalated and well, he kind of just disappeared after that and never came back.
The IT service desk folks were already touchy about their HDMI cables since people were apparently stealing them for use in the meeting rooms.
Pity, I liked him but that was kind of unhinged. Besides, the monitors’ native res was definitely 1680*1050 lol.
We had a new group in from another regional site come for training.
It turned out the one was actively also a prostitute. She was freely distributing her social media, showing people videos of herself, and asking us where the secluded parts of the campus were so she could do her thing with some of the scientists.
She didn't do very much actual work, or at least not what she was supposed to be doing there. I give her credit for seeming to be very proud of her side gig. She seemed to really enjoy it. I think she just eventually stopped coming in after they went back to their own site, so maybe she did find herself a scientist.
Definitely the wildest person I've ever worked with.
there should be a study on workplace efficiency that includes sexual gratification vs not.
Good heavens, I'd hate to see which co-worker I'd get paired with! That's some type of Russian Roulette! 🤣🤢
meet Delores, she's here to ensure you're satisfied with your job.
Lol she might possibly be an upgrade!
It's no nutley, but it'll do
There was a guy who was in tech support who talked to a customer about who was hot or not in the company. It was actually the customer who started the conversation, but the rep ran with it and used all kinds of unprofessional and disparaging language when describing his female co-workers.
That call happened to have a supervisor listening in, so he was fired immediately after he got off the call. The thing is found out who called in, and the women on the team had to assist him when he called for support.
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.
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
I had a dishwasher throw a chef’s knife at my head once
Ooo shit.
We fortunately new had anyone overtly violent.
Meth in the bathroom after we started using an agency to fill shifts shifts.
At the time I didn’t even think anything of it. It just clattered against the wall next to my head and I was a teenager and I just went back to work. In my 40s now and that guy and I would have serious words. Can’t believe how trivially I treated my own safety back then
Classic kitchen employee right there.
Dude brought a sex worker into his fiber splicing trailer and the boat was a-rockin’ when the supervisor came knockin’.
We had an A/P manager who chewed her way through 3 entire staffs before management decided the problem was actually her. Two of them collectively quit in a group on one day! That was the most outrageous I think. How did it take FIFTEEN people quitting because of her management before they fired her?
Also one manager who came in shitface drunk and swinging when she got fired. That was the most dramatic.
Figured this out some time back. Firing a manager is an admission of failure by someone even higher.
Not always. Some people change once they get power, I've seen 2 supervisors go that way. Awesome co-workers, cunts to work under.
Also, not everyone that is good at a job has the personality to be in management. I've found myself in several management roles before I realized I absolutely hate being responsible for other peoples' work and am just not cut out for it.
I use those people that I used to work with as a "what not to do" guide.
Sometimes I want to say to staff "You keep up shit like this and you wont have a job much longer" but I remember how fast people turned on that guy, so instead I have a sit down with them and say "I cant keep not reporting this stuff, its going to risk MY job. So I need you to lift your game because we're friends and all but I'm not going to get fired to protect you and once I start reporting it up the chain, I cant fo anything to protect you"
I like your approach much better.
This is true and I've seen it. However, I still think that it's possible someone above didn't want to acknowledge that they were a bad read of character. That's how it felt in the situation I saw firsthand anyway.
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 guess he needed a helping hand since he was coming on the help desk so much.
I used to work tech support for a company that made a product which involved sharing live or recorded videos. We would use the same instance for testing and troubleshooting, which occasionally involved broadcasting live videos.
One morning, I signed on to look for something or other, and I saw that one of my co-workers (who was working from home) had a live feed. His camera was pointed straight at his crotch and he was going at it quite vigorously. I deleted the feed and I don't know if he ever even knew what happened.
Honestly I’d probably do the same. He’s at home, and I don’t need that drama in my work life.
Didn't need a perfectly good coworker fired because he didn't realize his camera was on.
Stories like that are why my webcam shutter is closed AND it's unplugged until I need it.
Ain't nobody seeing me unless I go through the effort to hook it up.
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.
What a bizarre mind that must be. Fucking creep.
I wish I could tell you he looked creepy or we had some bad vibes but he was just a guy in the office. That part bugs me the most
What pictures are illegal?
If you don't know, you're better off
Uh kiddie porn for example
Correct on first guess, unfortunately
we need to be calling it child rape
No that's just confusing for no reason
how is it confusing? The reason is, that's exactly what it is, zero confusion. Images of children being raped...no sugar coating.
Child rape and csam are different one is a subsection of the other
how do you get csam without raping the child? They can not consent.
Good point
Someone got really drunk and was in the bathroom willing to take all comers at a work function.
It was a shame, I liked working with them.
Can't tell if they wanted to participate in sex acts or have a brawl
It was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
Por que no los dos?
I've worked with a lot of good and a lot of bad surgeons, but even the bad ones aren't usually dangerous bad, but like slow af, sub-optimal but passable outcomes, shit like that.
I've worked with ONE who was just absolute shit at his job... and his incompetence got at least one patient killed.
He got axed pretty quick... hopefully his license was revoked and he got charged with murder, but I never got any details of post-firing.
omg it wasn't "Dr Death" aka Christopher Duntsch was it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch
No, he never got any media attention that I'm aware of. My concern is that he's just hopping from hospital to hospital - hiring on, fucking up, killing someone, getting fired, hiring on, fucking up, killing someone, etc.
Hospitals are pretty protective of their reputation and their doctors; and death is a thing that can happen in surgery so it be swept off as a "Oh well, patient signed off on the risks; and oh hey, this Dr said some mean things to our staff, so let's fire him for that and hope we don't make national headlines..."
That's exactly what happened with Dr Death and why he wasn't caught for such a long time.
Oh, well shit. Dr Death was before this shit, but it sounds like basically Dr Death 2.0.
...kinda makes me wonder how common this is.
Not that I've had a ton of surgeries, but I've had a couple, and anytime I go under, I'm desperately hoping that my surgeon wasn't a C student and has the calmest of hands.
Most docs have some kind of internet presence nowadays, so definitely look them up. Also in the later preop stages when you talk to your OR nurse, look your nurse in the eye and just straight up ask "Would you be comfortable with this doctor operating on you?" They won't be actually allowed to talk shit on their surgeon, but the second of panicked silence as they try to come up with some kind of non-answer without blatantly lying will tell you everything you need to know.
This might be like 30 mins before your surgery - you have the right to refuse up until you go unconscious. It'll feel dirty, but those standards exist for a reason.
That's a good suggestion about talking to the nurse, thank you.
Curious how common the truly bad ones are. I’d assume quite uncommon between licensing, hospital hiring, chart data analysis at scale, etc., but…
Counting down the days to a relatively minor surgery I need. No real concerns, I’ve met the lead surgeon a few times, but plenty of unknown humans are part of the process too.
It's health care so obviously we were told that we'd have to be vaccinated against COVID or be fired, like many. Most people went along with it, but the CEO sent out a final warning email to the whole network, and this antivax dingdong somehow managed to reply all to the CEO giving him a patronizing lecture about how COVID wasn't real, how nobody had died of it, and how he had read several patient charts that proved this, and how the CEO was making a very big mistake, and how he, this clerk, knew science better than the CEO did. He was fired for reading patient charts he didn't belong in, of course. The email was super patronizing and he claimed to have an M.Sc and that meant he knew better, despite the fact he was working as a clerk, and gave all sorts of false "evidence".
Anyway he was fired and reply all to the CEO is disabled.
On a virtual meeting a guy unknowingly had his mic on and shouted to his kid "N....r sit your ass down!"
Company has low-key software trainers - a ton of information to convey, but they mostly embrace and gently corral the inevitable side convos you get in a Teams room of thirty very confused people.
Some of us were more vocal than others and a handful were less pleasant. During a brief silence, as a woman is about to ask a valid question, we ALL hear,
“Oh, there’s Jennifer, running her fat fucking mouth again! (Pause) (gasp from speaker)”
Guy wasn’t getting it anyway, but he didn’t last the rest of the morning.
There were 29 of us in that room, two years ago. Now there are six of us remaining. Mouthy guy above is the only one I know left involuntarily.
And got fired for that??
Why shouldn't he
Why should he?
To keep a clean work culture. To keep racists away from the work environment.
If the guy was talking to his kid like that, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume it was a black guy yelling at his kid, and not being a racist. Maybe it was a white guy, but that doesn’t sound like something a white guy would yell at their kid, even a racist.
Not all black people think that using the n-word is ok and many will tell you that no matter who is using it, the word has a racist undertone.
When you work for an employer that makes it a point to embrace multiculturalism it's not the kind of language you can use while you're working.
While what you say is true, it doesn't really refute the comment you're replying to. It could have been a black, non-racist employee, but that doesn't mean it's okay to use offensive language in the workplace.
I don’t know a single black person who uses a hard R
"clean work culture" = "It's not enough when a worker does their job, they also have to adjust their behavior to their employer's wishes, both at work and in their free time."
During a virtual meeting isn't an employee's free time...even if their mic is supposed to be off. Lol
Yell the N word at a work meeting, see how comfortable your coworkers get
This wasn't on their free time. Are you ignorant on purpose or just completely clueless?
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.
That's a very bad decision as a manager, if I was another employee in that store I would take that to mean never control kids in the store, let the manager deal with that.
And if I was the friend I would have asked during that exchange with the manager present "So, I assume that means she's paying for everything the kid broke before I asked him to stop, right?" Just to see the reactions.
She was a very bad manager and always quick to make the customer happy. I ended up leaving shortly after that incident.
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.
Surprisingly this one actually didn't lead to someone being fired because the person was never found, but when I was a teenager I worked at a local retailer in Canada called Canadian Tire. The manager called everyone into the employee washrooms to show us that someone had scrawled "CT sucks" in human feces -- presumably their own -- on the inside of a toilet stall.
I could never earn enough CT money to actually get anything good, so I'm sympathetic to the feelings of the artist in this story.
I always used to just put mine in the bin to support kids sports lol
your feces?
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.
A... slab? Of wine?
Is that a whole pallet or something?
Ikr? How is wine measured in slabs...
I'm guessing this wine's vintage is some time last week?
In Australia the call a case (24 bottles) of beer a slab.
Maybe this is some kind of canned wine?
24 bottles but yeah.
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
Okay, this is fascinating ... And makes me wonder how often this--what I will call "academic honorable discharge"--really occurs across institutions, well-known or not.
I haven't delved into your sources yet, so this is my somewhat educated guess ... Environmentally, this type of social breakdown makes sense with the lack of proper oversight, seasoned leadership, and organization appropriate to the study population. But did the low sodium diet itself serve any factor in the violence that occured in this botched study? Like, did kids being dietarily withheld a critical electrolyte affect the speed and intensity with which cracks in the camp structure split open?
Not trying to be too lighthearted here, but my guess in short: The kids went extra bonkers because of altered body and brain chemistry, with a lack of sodium (assuming the diet was initiated on Day 1) being a key aggressor in... making teen aggression more aggressive?
I am aware of this happening in multiple cases involving scientific fraud... no idea how exactly this is being done though.
Not sure... but even without dietary interventions, there are a lot of simple explanations to how this could have gone wrong. This was a much larger study than the Camp Calcium series this PI did, a lot of the recruited kids are low income/from problematic households, with very little to no adult oversight, and there were very few activities for entertainment/enrichment... Also the dorm they lived in was technically separated by gender, but let's just say that it is not difficult to get to the other gender dorm... So yeah.
Was it sponsored by the Dash low sodium seasoning?
No idea lol... But DASH is a real NIH-supported diet (https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/education/dash-eating-plan).
Edit: the study obviously isn't sponsored by the seasoning company, but I'm not sure if the DASH diet itself is.
Not my workplace exactly, but I used to hang out with this Kiwi who worked as a foreign English teacher in Korea in the same small Korean city as me. The foreigner community was fairly close-knit because there was only 50ish of us.
We all knew him. Everyone liked him. Fun guy. A little weird sometimes. He never told anyone his last name. The end of his pinkie finger was missing and if you asked him about it, he always said a shark bit it off.
One vacation about two years into his tenure, he decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. He never came back. I'm not 100% on the details past this point, but what I heard was they stopped him from entering the US because he was wanted in New Zealand on 37 counts of distributing child pornography. He was basically extradited back there and as far as I know went to prison. His trail disappears there.
Not exactly crazy but just mysterious...this was at a software company I worked at many years ago. It was one of the developers in the team adjacent to ours who I worked with occasionally - nice enough person, really friendly and helpful, everyone seemed to get on with them really well and generally seemed like a pretty competent developer. Nothing to suggest any kind of gross misconduct was happening.
Anyway, we all went off to get lunch one day and came back to an email that this person no longer worked at the company, effective immediately. Never saw them again.
No idea what went down - but the culture at that place actually became pretty toxic after a while, which led to a few people (including me) quitting - so maybe they dodged a bullet.
2% yearly reductions most likely. Some shitty companies fire a small percent of their staff and hire new people - especially when someone has been there long and isn't irreplaceable.
A manager got fired for sleeping with an underage waitress.
A GM got fired after stealing ~$13k from deposits
A guy got fired for telling the GM to go fuck herself completely unprompted.
Food service is wild
Someone got fired making an “inspirational” Andrew Tate inspired speech on slack about how depression doesn’t actually exist. This was on a company wide channel about promoting/raising awareness for mental health issues. Two comments prior someone had described in heartbreaking detail how their stepchild had committed suicide last year.
Manager (34) impregnated a delivery driver (16/17) and ran away to Tennessee because he couldn't be prosecuted for it there.
You are prosecuted where you committed the crime.
He wasn't that smart.
I love it. You can't see me because I can't see you!
The girl doing meth in her car.
Also the guy being arrested for having CP on his personal device and never coming back technically counts too, right?
I went to a temp agency one time and went through the enrollment/placement tests. I told them up front I was just looking for competitive offers to bring to my 5 year review to ask current employer to match. They were cool with it after i told them I would be back if employer doesnt match.
So I'm taking the test and was blown away at the test questions. I'm reading them outloud to the agents at their desks asking them which ones people actually respond honestly to. They start telling me hilarious stories of people theyve had fail the test.
They eventually told me they have had at least one person at some time answer every question with the very honest but very damning wrong answer. They said none of the people they told me about were even the assholes intentionally failing the test just to show proof they applied. They were people being waaaay too fuckin honest about their liberal drug use.
Some of the more memorable questions:
In the last 8hrs how many times have you smoked meth?
A. 0 times
B. 1-4 times
C. 5-10 times
D. 10 or more
Have you ever smoked crack cocaine while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don't know
D. Maybe
Would you ever smoke crack while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don't know
D. Maybe
How many alcohol beverages do you have on your lunch break?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
How many alcohol beverages did you have today before this interview?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
Describe your performance at work while high on alcohol or narcotics compared to your performance at work while not high on alcohol or narcotics.
A. Have never worked high on alcohol or narcotics.
B. I perform worse while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
C. I perform the same while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
D. I perform better while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
Edit for formatting and grammar.
Holy shit that's amazing. honestly what surprised me most is that you were upfront about the competitive offer thing and tney were cool with it
Right?! Especially if it was an off-the-cuff agreement. But if I had a few minutes to think it over, I would buy that anyone serious enough to get verifiable competitive offers using a third party would be serious enough to come back for those better offers if the current employer doesn't bite. (This is assuming you can't arrange new employment without the temp agency's involvement for whatever contractual reason. Not sure how they typically work.)
It's rural town USA. The company I was pressing to match the competitive offer was actually my own family's manufacturing corporation. The temp agency knew exactly who I was when they saw my last name. They had good fun joking about how they knew my family doesn't pay their employees enough but having the owner's son threatening to quit for better pay really solidified it as a good ole hardyharhar to them. I knew it. They knew it. Plus we have done a ton of business with them over the years filling entry level temp to perm positions, so the whole thing was really super laid back.
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.
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.
Coworker found him on the sex offender registry for messages with some woman trying to arrange a sexual meetup with her daughter. Not even a statutory teenager situation, an actual child. Apparently he had some connections with law enforcement which kept him out of jail.
Everyone already hated him for general creepiness and being terrible at his job, so there was a degree of vindication in confirming how horrible of a person he was. Still super fucked up.
Sex in the stock room. Caught by manager.
18, sex in the stock room, didn’t get caught.
Even had a handful of more standard dates afterwards, always with sex.
No negative outcome, fortunately. Except for the really damn cold stockroom floor, but that was her problem not mine…
Think we just lost interest, I moved onto another job, that was that.
From my current workplace:
Someone was putting mail in a cabinet under their desk instead of the outbox, we're talking hundreds of letters/cheques/invoices and some life-changing documents from a few months.
The mail outbox was on their desk, and easier to reach than the cabinet.
From previous workplaces:
And outrageous in a different way:
for only beating last year's sales by 3% instead of by 4%.
Have you heard any specific reasons for the mail hoarder's actions at your current workplace, or is it still a fresh case? I'm guessing it was nefarious, since the mail outbox was closer and seemingly more obvious than the secret stashing cabinet. Just wanted to be a dingus to intended mail recipients? I'd also be curious if it was all mail they handled or just select pieces. So many burning questions!!
I am a contractor so I don't work in a standard office setting right now. I miss the heck out of juicy office gossip, at least about those who deserve such sordid stories! (Karen in accounting is actually really nice, Carl.)
The reason why some people think they did it was because it was their job to take the mail to the mail room. But they were also the person who needed to go to the mail room to get our mail every day, which they did, every day. If they were already taking the elevator down to the mail room to get the mail, why not take the outgoing mail?!?
We also found out that they were just marking tasks as complete about 20% of the time, so we had to double-check every task assigned to them for the previous 6 months.
I earned my living with a hammer or a forklift for most of my life, and I never thought I would like the office gossip. But, It's kinda great.
It's generally a different level than it was with the construction guys.
"Joanne's boyfriend might be emotionally abusive, and she won't break up with him. Be kind to her."
vs
"John got drunk last night after losing custody, and put his new girlfriend into a coma. We'll need you to help with the gable overhangs."
Different times and companies, but I've seen people fired for
I think that's it for the NSFW stuff.
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.
Jerking it in the bathroom
It wasn’t even the unisex one
How did you get caught?
RIP in pepperonis OP
Oh, I never got caught
I just thought it was unfair because that’s what they’re there for
He got caught because upper management was visiting that day
An IT company I worked for many years ago went through a massive growing phase. One of the things that lead to this growth was the hiring of much more competent management, particularly in security and the data center.
Security actually started doing their jobs and started routinely doing network scans. They discovered two servers that were not located in the data center, which was a huge no no. The servers were running two porn websites off the company's internet connection. The guy had been doing it for years and apparently was making many times his company salary from them.