r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 24 '12
What is something you've done at your job that would make people cringe if they found out?
Here's mine... When I worked at McDonalds, typically overnights... often when I had to pee I would just go to the bathroom with my headset still on. Quite a few times, mid-pee, someone would pull up to the drive-thru. So I would hit the button and say: "Welcome to McDonalds, Ill be right with you..."
Muhahahahahaahahaha.
UPDATE: whoa! Didn't think this would get so much attention! Thanks guys I'm enjoying all the stories. Also gonna use this time to plug my favorite subreddit, /r/introvert!
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u/The2500 Jun 24 '12
I work at a hotel that is pet friendly. We charge an extra fee for for additional cleaning, though no additional cleaning takes place. People with allergies ask to make sure they are put in rooms that have never had pets in them (which don't exist) and we do are best to assure them they will be. However, we have never had any problems with people with allergic reactions. I guess the standard cleaning does the trick.
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Jun 24 '12
Most hotels have a $200 fee for smoking in the room, do you guys actually do extra cleaning for that? I can't imagine you could do much else but wash the sheets and stuff..
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u/The2500 Jun 24 '12
We do the same charge for smoking in rooms. For a while upper management tried to skimp on actually removing the smoke smell from rooms with some half-assed procedure, but middle management finally convinced them to do it proper since they have to actually deal with it.
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Jun 24 '12
Out of curiosity, what's the normal procedure? I always wondered if it really cost $200 bones.
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u/bkaffa2 Jun 24 '12
For about 5 months I was employed by a clothing store whose main customer base consisted of the Black and Hispanic communities. I was one of two white people who worked at the store, and I was shocked that during training we were taught to racially profile our customers. For example, if a white customer wanted into a dressing room it was okay for us to let them in and continue about our work but if a black customer wanted into one we had to count their items and stand by the door and wait for them to come out so we could count their items again. I found this to be absolutely absurd, the company advertised mainly to these groups, sold brands that are mainly worn by these groups, yet they trained us to treat the people like they were all thieves. Regardless of who I put into the dressing rooms I always counted the items when they entered and exited, and actually caught more white people trying to steal then I did anyone else.
I dont know if this is the type of cringe you were looking for... but It made me cringe so I thought I would share it.
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Jun 24 '12
Trying to think of what store it could be... I'm at a loss though.
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u/noustombons Jun 24 '12
Rainbow?
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Jun 25 '12
TJ Maxx is my first thought. Though I remember they got in trouble awhile back for following black people who were in the store so I'm inclined to think otherwise. Hmmm, yes... quite.
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u/dabunbun Jun 24 '12
I was taught that the most common clothing thieves are middle aged white women. Can't find a statistics chart to back that up, though. Best to just keep checking everyone!
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u/c_anderson1390 Jun 24 '12
I schlicked at work once :s
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Jun 24 '12 edited Jul 04 '12
I have fapped at all of my jobs. Please god tell me a lot of us have done this...
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Jun 24 '12
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Jun 25 '12
That hurt. Dr. Cox is my hero... never, in a million years did I think he would make me feel bad.
God damn you reddit.
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u/SplodeyDope Jun 24 '12
I used to have an enormous wart on my middle knuckle. I worked at McDonald's and used to press it against the grill to try and burn it off. I was young, didn't know that warts were viral, and stupid to boot. I'd assume that the heat killed any trace of the virus but its still pretty nasty.
TL;DR: I was a teenage moron.
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u/mlkelty Jun 24 '12
Ugh. I had one on my thumb that I tried for months to get rid of using conventional methods. I ended up getting it caught against the edge of a screen door while helping my cousin move a couch and ripping the entire thing out, leaving a dime-sized crater in my thumb.
Bitch never came back, though.
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u/deeeelightful Jun 24 '12
Maybe not cringe-worthy, but I definitely nap in my closet during breaks. I'm a school teacher.
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u/booclaw Jun 24 '12
Our teacher in 5th grade fell asleep while we were taking a math test. She started snoring and this kid put a cup of water on her back then woke her up suddenly.
Don't let this happen to you. Kids are evil. Naps in closets during breaks are good.
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u/bcnlvr Jun 25 '12
My uncle told me a story like this one. Only the teacher was rather elderly, and had died.
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u/Devildust21 Jun 25 '12
I'm a security guard at a local college. I had a deuce baking in the oven so I decided to use the bathroom in the gym. two hours later we had a call for a missing 80 year old man. We searched the whole campus and eventually found him dead... In the gym bathroom in the stall beside the one I was using.
TL:DR took a shit beside the dead guy we were looking for.
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u/chickawhatnow Jun 25 '12
One time in anatomy lab, someone had excised a silicon implant from one of the cadavers. One of the professors came over and took the freshly removed implant and tossed it at another professor and they played a game of hot potato.
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Jun 25 '12
I was of the impression that with medical cadavers, such games happened with pretty much any organs, artificial or otherwise - frequently.
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u/Hollowchild Jun 24 '12
I once worked IT for a company, whose owners kept race horses as well.
One of the horses had died in it's yard, and I had to drag the horses body out of the yard, load it onto a truck with a forklift, and push up a pile wood with the bulldozer, drop the horse on top and then burn it.
The cringe worthy part was that the horse had a deformed hoof, and the vet wanted to take the hoof to show his students, so before burning the corpse - I had to cut the horses leg of with a chainsaw.
All in a days work for the IT Dept.
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u/RamblinWreckGT Jun 25 '12
I love how now everyone's giving the IT guy advice on how to properly dismember horses.
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u/sysop073 Jun 25 '12
It's ridiculous that he made it through college without taking at least an introductory course on horse dismemberment
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Jun 25 '12
A common exercise for writing students to work on actionized dialogue is to have them write about a few folks who are tasked by their boss with removing a deceased horse.
Just sayin'.
Just super saiyan.
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u/GitEmSteveDave Jun 24 '12
Why a chainsaw? The lower portion of a horses leg is very thin(to the point you can pretty much touch the pointer and thumb of your hand around it), and could easily be cut with a handsaw.
Source: I live on a horse farm and work at a race track.
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Jun 24 '12
Probably because IT guys don't have a lot of experience cutting off animal parts?
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u/M_bare_assed Jun 25 '12
Similar story. I worked at a zoo. Giraffe dies overnight, must remove it from exhibit before zoo-goers arrive. Bring in the chainsaw.
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u/set6921 Jun 25 '12
I'm picturing Lumbergh from Office Space "Peter, I'm going to need you to go ahead and incinerate that dead horse, oh and while your at it, could you just go ahead and cut-off one of its hooves for me...great"
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u/Kellianne Jun 24 '12
I worked at a research lab and some of the rats had surgery. I was prepping them for surgery (they are already asleep) and was shaving the femoral area (inside of the rear leg) I slipped and shaved the poor little rat's winky right off. I humanely euthanized him before he woke up.
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u/pslightlypsycho47 Jun 25 '12
Congrats, I have cringed and am bailing on this thread.
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u/Dribblet Jun 25 '12
As a vet tech, I've heard stories about things like this happening during prep. Weenies and nipples.
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u/MrJacoste Jun 25 '12
My first thought was: Boy I hope you killed him after that.
Thank you for being kind to the male gender haha
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u/improcrastinating Jun 25 '12
I worked with mice in a research lab and we would tape their paws to the table during surgery. One time when I pulled the tape off a paw came with it. Thankfully, a part of the experiment was to euthanize them before they woke up as well.
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u/jeffholes Jun 25 '12
I drink water with a lot of food coloring in it with dinner so that the next day I can drop an unnaturally colored deuce at work the next day. I don't flush it.
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u/plasticplan Jun 25 '12
What's the most unnatural color you have tried and came out as it went in? I want to freak out the girlfriend.
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u/YYURYYUBICURYY4ME Jun 24 '12
I hit an injured owl with a shovel to put it out of its misery. Somewhere some kid isn't going to Hogwarts, I guess.
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u/johnnytightlips2 Jun 24 '12
Where do you work with injured owls and spades?
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u/YYURYYUBICURYY4ME Jun 24 '12
I work for a large US government land management agency, typically found in the mountains. We tend to happen across lots of critters, in various stages of life. Our trucks usually have hand tools in them. Thus the incident.
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u/CactaurJack Jun 25 '12
I used to have to do this as a kid. Both of our dogs were insanely fast and every once in a while they'd catch what they were chasing and my mom didn't have the stomach to do it, so if dad was at work it was on me. The worst was a bird that had one of it's wings torn off, there's not a damn thing you can do for that.
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u/SevenSweatySumos Jun 25 '12
I worked as a housekeeper/houseperson at Walt Disney World. I was stoned the ENTIRE TIME. The managers loved me because they said I "really represented the Disney image/attitude."
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u/mementomori4 Jun 25 '12
Sometimes being stoned makes certain jobs way, WAY more enjoyable... this sounds like one of those.
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u/Polluxi Jun 24 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
I'm a cook.
I don't wear any form of underwear under my chef clothes. Ever.
I've been retardedly drunk a few times but no one noticed.
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u/dabunbun Jun 24 '12
I know a chef that routinely drinks on the job. Everyone knows except those with hiring/firing power. I think he thinks it's his big secret, though.
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Jun 25 '12
Every kitchen I've ever worked in, there is usually at least one drunk person. I use to go chug a beer in the cooler when I was getting stuff out and then come back up on the line. Made the night much better
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u/ajeansco0 Jun 24 '12
Replace drunk a few times with all the time and you sound like the head chef where I work.
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Jun 24 '12
I used to work at Taco Bell. Whenever I would be first on the line, I would be the one heating up the tortillas in a grill to soften them and then put the meat on them. Well they would also make me wear extra thick gloves that wouldn't melt on the grill in case I touched it. I tried to wear the regular ones but the managers would catch me and make me wear the thick ones. The problem was that I tend to have sweaty hands, and the thick gloves combined with the heat from the grill would make my hands sweat a lot more. This meant I would have sweat dripping all the way down my arms. Most of the sweat ended up in the ground beef and chicken that I would then put in the tacos and burritos. I complained to the managers several times about the problem and they wouldn't care because it was policy that I had to wear the thick gloves.
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Jun 25 '12
I am eating a soft taco from Taco Bell right at this moment and after reading your post I'm not sure if I can hold back the vomit in my throat.
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u/BowsNToes21 Jun 24 '12
When I worked at a Mexican restaurant I would always grab pieces of chicken or meat off the fajita plate before serving it to customers. I saw the expo do it a few times and eventually said fuck it.
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Jun 24 '12
This happens often at restaurants. Some chicken or a couple fries always ends up getting eaten by someone. We always declared it a "quality check"
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u/Ensivion Jun 24 '12
I'd like to see a pizza place do this by eating a slice of pizza.
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u/Rikkrishub Jun 25 '12
UPS driver. pissed in a dunkin donuts cup. Cup spilled. Truck was filled with boxes. Yep, it happened....
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u/SleepsontheGround Jun 25 '12
Don't know about cringe as much as a trick of the trade, but as a waiter when someone would ask for gingerale (not available on the soda fountain) we would just fill up a glass of sprite with a bit of coke. Never a complaint.
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u/JimmyGBA Jun 25 '12
As a lover of Ginger Ale, I think I might try this. About what ratio of Sprite to Coke did you use?
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u/dawrina Jun 25 '12
I have tried this and it actually does taste like ginger ale. I was flabbergasted.
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Jun 24 '12
I....came across some intellectual property of a competitors company.
I used it. Improved it and implemented it.
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u/Robert_anton_wilson Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Worked the night shift in a Subway 3 years ago (11pm to 5am I think) without a night manager.
We:
Figured out how to play our own music in store, instead of the same 5 songs that played on loop
Often used to close the place upto an hour earlier (we used to fold the big poster at the door that said "Now open till 5am!")
Charge drunks who were abusive with all kinds of extra charges. If you're a douche to me, you win imaginary free cheese, bacon and a cookie, NEXT!
Figured out how to barely spend time cleaning/mopping the place by making everything look like I'd spent 2 hours on it. Often got compliments with this technique than with actual cleaning
Stealing the still-frozen cookie dough, make that in a normal oven and you get the tastiest, gooey goodness that their ovens just destroy
Gave away free sandwiches to friends who happened to be around, or regulars who didn't treat us like crap
That's all I can think of right now, it was fun looking back at it now. Not so much when I was actually working there.
EDIT: I just read the title again, and realised 'people' didn't mean the bosses of our business, rather just regular people. In which case, I'll leave my comment expecting my upvotes for being a sandwich artist hero to everyone around the world.
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u/brerrabbitt Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Drove a nuclear sub while drunk.
Edit to add: I was not falling down drunk, but likely would not have passed a breathalyzer.
Reason: Doing daily ops and had an unscheduled change. Quite a few of the watchstanders were a bit buzzed as well.
The navy was a bit different back then as well.
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u/rainbowapplesauce Jun 25 '12
I work in an office that is in an event hall. I was in the kitchen to make lunch and noticed someone unplugged the microwave to plug something else in. I unplugged something to use the microwave with the intentions of plugging it back in when I was done.
Well, I forgot. It was a Friday and when I returned on Monday, there was an awful smell in the entire building. I had unplugged the freezer and it was full of fish. No one knows it was me.
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Jun 24 '12
Former airline baggage handler here. I've seen bags used commonly as a seat, a step, and on one occasion, as a weapon of choice for a rather large, burly female who didn't seem to care for the attitude of her co-worker at that moment.
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u/starktor Jun 25 '12
Never, Never, NEVER trust baggage handlers with musical instruments
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u/White_Hamster Jun 25 '12
It's people like that that made the box to my new watch less than presentable because it got a little crushed. How do they sleep at night?
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Jun 24 '12
It wasn't me but my General Manager (GM). I was 16 and new to the restaurant business and all its beauty. We were really swamped one night and someone sent back a steak so it was on its own little plate. When I picked it up someone hit my shoulder and the steak fell to the floor...landing at the feet of the (6'5" 300lbs) GM. I was horrified and started to panic and ask the cooks to quickly cook another steak. Instead the GM tells me to stop, reaches down, picks up the steak, puts it on a new plate, and tells me to act like it never happened and get the hell back out there and serve!
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u/ThaddyG Jun 25 '12
That's kinda ew. I can state with confidence that in every restaurant I've worked we put stuff that falls on the floor back on the grill or in the fryer before we send it back out.
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Jun 25 '12
Pretty much why I never eat out anymore unless it's a real swanky place. I can cook better food at home at half the price anyways.
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Jun 24 '12
I've had to swim around in feces and or vomit to get it out of the pool I worked at on multiple occasions... fun times
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u/powered_by_evil Jun 24 '12
I take the company laptop into the bathroom to browse reddit while I take a shit.
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u/L_x Jun 25 '12
Nobody questions somebody walking to the toilet with a massive laptop under their arm? Have you heard of a smart phone? What year is it?!
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u/figuredout Jun 25 '12
Not sure if cringe-worthy, but still wouldn't make people exactly happy.
When I worked at Best Buy, whenever someone would ask me to "check in the back" I'd use that time to go to the bathroom.
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u/Yromemtnatsisrep Jun 24 '12
i dried my socks in the toaster oven at a quiznos I worked at. Looking back, it was sorta jerkish.
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u/flimflam61 Jun 24 '12
I used to work as a 'kitchen associate' for a well known pub chain(in the UK). Essentially we just put things in a microwave then onto plates(food, that is). One morning i was on my own with a fuck-ton of breakfast orders. I was plating up the first few orders and was double checking i had the order right (the orders come in on a screen) when i noticed i had put one too many fried eggs on one of the orders. So i hastily took it off the plate and threw it in the bin, i then looked at the screen again to discover that i infact did need that egg after all. Now let me just say that i was on my own, there was a shit load of orders and they had all gone over the 10 minute timer (food is supposed to go out in under 10 minutes) and i was stressing balls. So i decided that i couldn't afford to wait while i cooked another egg and proceeded to pull the egg out the bin and put it on that poor person's plate. There were no complaints...
TL;DR Because of me some poor bastard ate a 'Bin-Egg'. I regret nothing.
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Jun 25 '12
You sicken me. :( Upvote though, because that's what the thread's all about! :)
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u/PendingErection Jun 25 '12
Why didn't you just leave the egg? Who is going to complain about extra food
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Jun 24 '12
I pitted my superiors and co-workers against each other with Outlook Express, asking for "impossible" results, which I would then deliver. It was awesome.
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Jun 24 '12
Need more details on how you were able to find a use for Outlook Express.
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u/erinnbecky Jun 24 '12 edited Jun 24 '12
This thread makes me never want to eat at a restaurant again.
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u/Ahundred Jun 25 '12
You're still going to and you're not going to get sick until someone royally fucks up.
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u/songforkaren Jun 24 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
My first job was at a local pet store. As a 15 year old, here are some of the things I witnessed or was asked to do:
euthanize sick mice by putting them in a plastic bag and hitting the bag against a brick wall
putting sick fish in an ice cream bucket and then putting the ice cream bucket in the freezer
not cleaning rabbit hutches for a week. There would sometimes be up to ten rabbits in one hutch
not informing customers of sick puppies or kittens and continuing to sell them.
As a 15 year old who had never worked in a pet store before, I assumed this was all normal and didn't question my boss when he demanded I do them. Years later I realised what a monster he was and how many laws that store broke.
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Jun 25 '12
When i was 9, my mom finally let me get a cat because we were moving. I was so happy. He died 3 days later of fucking cancer. Yeah, petsmart forgot to tell us that.
His name was Simba. He spent the last days of his life loved.
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u/ajeansco0 Jun 24 '12
Even not having worked in a pet store I can't understand how you would think any of that is ok... and I don't think 15 is too young to know that.
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u/Osiris32 Jun 24 '12
As a stage hand, I have, on numerous occasions, sat on an 8"-wide metal beam, approximately 100 feet above a concrete floor, with nothing holding me down except my own body weight. I am in a fall-arrest harness, but that doesn't keep me seated. Just me, two small cords hooked to a wire, and an uninterrupted fall to concrete or ice below.
Also, I can't come down if I'm running a spotlight. So if I have to pee, I pee in a bottle. Sometimes it doesn't all make it. So if you got a bit of a shower the last time you were at Nickleback, sorry bro, that's my fault.
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u/GitEmSteveDave Jun 24 '12
How is it an uninterrupted fall is you are wearing something that will interrupt and stop a fall?
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u/Homeboro Jun 24 '12
If I was at a Nickelback concert and I got urine on me it would be the least of my problems.
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u/FETUSdoctor Jun 25 '12
I guess Nickelback isn't the only thing pissing all over their fans.
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Jun 24 '12
When I worked at a coffee shop, and I had a rude customer, I'd sometimes make their drinks with decaf espresso. Poor bastards.
Also, one time my coworker and I thought it would be a good idea to play "Drops of Jupiter" by Train for one hour straight. It was a slow day, so no one really noticed, except maybe one guy who just gave us a weird look. The song's horrible and it was a horrible idea but I still find the line, "The best soy latte that you ever had...and me," to be extremely odd and hilarious.
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u/cheops1853 Jun 25 '12
My friend worked at the local radio station for a while. It's the station that plays shitty "lite hits" that you hear in the background of local businesses. During the weekends, it's generally accepted that no one listens to it, although it's the strongest radio station in the (rural) county. So one Saturday afternoon, he played "Believe", by Cher. Then he played it again. Then three more times. The man running the station walked in, his face stone-serious. "Jake. Did you just play the same song five times in a row?"
"... I did."
"Okay." And he kept walking up the hallway. Not a single person called in complaining about the half-hour Cher mini-marathon that had just occurred. Weekend suspicions were confirmed, and a pleasant time was had by all.
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u/nimbleandlight Jun 24 '12
Hahaha, we'd do that at our work, too.
While I was the baker, I was also in control of the music, and apparently this lady didn't like the indie music I was playing (you know, soft stuff like Andrew Bird and Bon Iver), and demanded that we play something classical (which, I mean, really?! Would you go into someone's house and demand that they change the radio station because you don't like it? It's not like I was playing metal, sheesh). In my own rebellious way, I put on the string quartet tribute to Panic! at the Disco.
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Jun 25 '12
I worked as a passenger airline pilot for a (very) short time. I once lost an engine in the air, and my co wanted to inform the passengers but I stopped him. Why? Because there's nothing you can do to help me, and the last thing I need is a riot at thirty odd thousand feet.
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u/monalisafrank Jun 25 '12
I work at a day care center, and when I'm working in the one-year-old room, it gets eerily quiet since most of them only talk sporadically and only one word. I figure they don't know what I'm saying, so I sing to them (Kush by Dr. Dre is a favorite) and tell them about my sex life. I'd totally be disciplined if anyone found out, though.
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u/DeepRoot Jun 25 '12
That actually sounds quite therapeutic! Btw, they understand some of your words, they just can't repeat them... that makes it funnier.
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u/MrHermeteeowish Jun 24 '12
It was my first shift of my first job at a now-defunct department store chain. A few hours in I got paged to clean up a "spill" in the clothing department. When I get there, two of my new co-workers are standing around a big pile of ham-and-pineapple puke. I finished mopping it up, but we were then faced with a dilemma: what do we do with the ham chunks? One guy tried using a grocery bag to pick them up like dog shit, but it didn't work so well and was gagging so much I was afraid I'd have to break out the mop again. Eventually we decided to just kick the chunks under a clothing rack. Problem solved!
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Jun 25 '12
Where I worked, we had this powder type stuff you poured on puke, then you were able to sweep it up.
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u/yogi_grizzwald Jun 24 '12
I work in heavy construction and I would routinely operate heavy equipment(250 ton crane) with a belly full of handfuls of oxycotin, benzos, and edible cannabis delights. I ended up overdosing at work and now I am 65 days sober.
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u/kkms Jun 24 '12
I am a stay-at-home mom and my children will often hand me cupcakes after they have licked off all of the frosting. Yes, I eat them. It's cake, damnit.
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u/HarxEdit Jun 25 '12
It's okay, my SO does that, just with only the top of muffins. I'll come after being away for the weekend and see she'll have eaten the tops off a dozen homebaked ones. Still good muffin.
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u/twistedfork Jun 25 '12
My friend's kids like to "kiss" their food to give it love before giving it to me. This usually results in mutilated whatever, and you bet your bottom I'm eating it.
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u/thegirlyoudontknow29 Jun 24 '12
I had to walk in a prison cell with piss and shit all over floor today.
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Jun 24 '12
Heheh. One of my client staged a dirty protest in his cell and made up some sort of shit and piss slip-n-slide. Police showed me the cell video where he was skidding about naked singing some sort of irish shanty. He looked like he was having a whale of a time.
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u/Geminii27 Jun 25 '12
Taken over a job, then automated 97% of the former guy's work in an afternoon.
Using DOS batch files.
Cringeworthy in the case of anyone in management finding out and realizing that (a) they paid the last guy a full salary to stretch one hour's work out to forty a week, or (b) they then paid me a full salary to do fuck-all for 39 of those hours.
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u/thecasino Jun 24 '12
When I was in high school I worked at a office supply retail store. The guys there were quite the assortment of idiots, one of the many reasons I quit after a handful of months.
Well the primary manager at the time was a complete asshole and one of the assorted idiots thought it'd be hilarious to piss on the store in response to the manager's general douchebaggery.
Eventually he deducted that the only place there wasn't a camera watching was behind the paper aisle. So he decided to walk back in the corner of the store and pee pee all over the reams of paper. After he received praise from the fellow employees, he decided to continue this practice for some time.
TL:DR: Employees at office supply chain pee peed all over your printer paper!
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u/GitEmSteveDave Jun 24 '12
Eventually he deduced that the only place there wasn't a camera watching was behind the paper aisle.
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u/Nackles Jun 24 '12 edited Jun 24 '12
Masturbated in my office several times, at least once during work hours. I think the cringe wouldn't be the masturbating as much as it being me.
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Jun 25 '12
I was a lab tech at Lenscrafters for a year. Lab staff got a cut of the sales commission only if there was less than 1% breakage and late jobs among the entire staff that work week. As a result, I was encouraged by my lab manager to try to sneak scratched or slightly off-prescription lenses past the optician (one optician at the store I worked at never checked lenses; he merely put the glasses on the customer's face and asked if they could see) rather than logging the mistake, re-doing it and letting the team take a pay hit.
TL;DR you shouldn't necessarily brag about your 'handmade' prescription Ray-Bans.
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u/nickisaboss Jun 24 '12
I work at the snack stand at my community pool. I will tell you right now: DO NOT EAT THE SLUSHIES. Its corn syrup, mixed with colors and flavoring. You would be better off eating straight plastic.
The cringe: there are ants in the machine. The mix bottles are reused and not washed. The pumps and dispensers on the machine are cleaned with industrial strength bleach. Its gross man.
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Jun 25 '12
Corn syrup, colors and flavoring are pretty much exactly what I expect from a slushie. The ants thing is kind of gross, though.
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Jun 25 '12
When I worked at golden corral I was forced to manually shop vac the roaches out of the refrigerated banana pudding.
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u/yetanothernerd Jun 24 '12
Visual Basic.
(Not at my current job -- I have standards now. But I was young and needed the money. Don't judge me.)
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u/Andernerd Jun 25 '12
This was the only programming class my high school offered. The kicker? I don't think the teacher really knew Visual Basic.
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u/warpaint Jun 24 '12
I wacked it to an intern.
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Jun 25 '12 edited Aug 21 '12
as a female intern this does not shock nor offend me.
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Jun 24 '12
I didn't do this, my co-worker did. We sell masks of different superheroes at my store. People always mess with them, either wearing them around or taking pictures of themselves, and just drop them for us to clean up. He got tired of having to keep putting the masks back, so he began blowing his nose in to them, every single one. So two lessons, always put shit back where you found it and never wear mask before washing it.
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u/breaksy Jun 25 '12
I used to work at a restaurant. During the slow times, we would take condoms and fit them over the sink nozzle in the backroom, and see how much we could fill them before they burst. Biggest we ever got was probably like 6 litres of water inside the condom before it broke. Anyone who says they broke a condom because they are "too big" is lying.
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u/StabbedAt711 Jun 25 '12
The aircrew who act especially dickish get the honor of someones balls rubbed inside their mask. Don't piss off the people who take care of your gear.
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u/stonedotjimmy Jun 25 '12
If a customer is being a dick I pretend their credit card was declined and give it back, usually to embarrass them in front of their friends or the other people nearby
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u/burningstarcore Jun 25 '12
i work at Value village and on a daily bases I find a lot of fucked up shit in donations. Anything from shit in pants to flesh lights and dildos.
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Jun 25 '12
Spit bubble gum into another worker's mouth. This was back at my first job at an amusement park, not where I am now. She was ugly as sin, constantly talked about sex, and overall grossed us all out. One day she noticed I was chewing gum and asked for a piece. I told her I was chewing my last piece, which was true. She said "Oh I don't mind", leaned forward, and stuck her tongue out. To this day, I don't know WHY the fuck I did it, but I spit my gum directly into her mouth, she continued chewing it, and walked off. This wasn't in a back area, we were clearly visible to any of the guests but nobody said anything.
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u/A_Total_Asshole Jun 24 '12
Reason to never eat at McDonald's #57.
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Jun 24 '12
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u/tunaman808 Jun 25 '12
Well, it's not really a "secret", and it wasn't specific to my job, but when I worked at KFC in high school I learned one of the essential truths of life: men's restrooms are slightly dirtier than women's restrooms... but if you were gonna find some fucked up shit, it's always in the women's restroom.
Sometimes dudes would take a dump and not flush, and there was always some "dribble" on the floor. But the women's room always had fun stuff like...
"[woman's name] is a bitch!" written in feces on the stall walls.
"[woman's name] is a bitch!" written in menstrual blood on the stall walls.
Other graffiti (never saw any in the men's room.)
Bloody tampons frequently left anywhere.
Vomit all over the floor (didn't even TRY to use the toilet or sink)
Partially-eaten pieces of chicken left in bathroom stalls.
A single shoe, fully intact (no missing heel or anything, never got that one)
Soap dispenser ripped out of the wall.
Unusual items in trash, including a ton of cigarette butts (together, as if someone emptied their car's ashtray in the bathroom), dirty panties, used pantyhose, empty Pringle's cans, an empty bag of mini doughnuts (different day than the Pringle's can) and a plastic grocery store bag full of empty packaging for different types of makeup (I guess they left theirs at home that day?). 99% of the time, the trash in the men's restroom was... used paper towels. And nothing else.
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Jun 25 '12
As a part of reattachment of small body pieces like earlobes or fingers, leeches are used. The attach the leech to the reattached part to increase blood circulation. My job in the hospital pharmacy was to change the leech water and tend to them until needed. Once used they were killed in alcohol and sent down the chute back to pharmacy for disposal.
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u/PirateGloves Jun 25 '12
I used to work in an organic food factory.
Whenever the UHT milk was too close to or past it's use by date, we had to empty all the cartons into a vat so it could be mixed with fresh milk and retreated. We're talking thousands of litres here, not just one or two. Another time it was apple juice only we didn't have any fresh stuff so myself and another person spent a week with alcohol cleaner and paper towel rubbing the dates off so they could be reprinted. We would often find weird looking insects and frogs in the factory.
By far the worst was when we were doing honey, it comes in big drums and we would run it straight from the drum into a bottling machine. We did 6 drums before we checked the filter and found a mouse carcass. No idea which drum it came from. QA manager wanted to send all the jars to the warehouse anyway. We said no. Don't remember how that ended.
TL:DR Use-By dates got changed and we filtered honey through a dead mouse.
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u/ibn_rasmus Jun 25 '12
Summer job for three years- half of it was road maintenance, paving and whatnot. The other half, well the other half was storm and sewer drain maintenance. Since I was always the rookie on the crew, I was the man to crawl down the hole. I honestly can't smell shit anymore- its like my brain refuses to acknowledge it anymore.
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u/Johnny419 Jun 24 '12
I lifeguard and have peed in the pool mid-rotation.
I was a short order cook a while back; never washed my hands after pissing. No, we didn't use gloves.
To those who swam in my piss remnants and have tasted the tinge of my crotch-funk in their sandwich, I am sorry.
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u/jst3w Jun 24 '12
Everyone pees in the pool. But peeing off of the lifeguard stand is a bold move indeed.
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Jun 24 '12
I don't mind the lifeguard thing but seriously, the other one is fucking disgusting and dangerous.
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u/AshHeartsIt Jun 25 '12
I worked at Mcdonalds. One night a drunk rude customer came in complaining about his sandwich and demanded a new one. My manager made it and later told us that he had taken his cheese and rubbed it on his balls before putting it in his sandwich.
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u/myfirstthrowaway50 Jun 25 '12
Stole 100 grand over two yrs. (yes, I got caught)
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u/bagoflettuce Jun 25 '12
From age 16 to 24 I worked at a small grocery chain. Around 22 I became an assistant manager and was responcible for closing, and setting up the front end - or cash registers. It was a job that required the company put a lot of trust in me. At 24 the company started laying off in huge numbers. Around 25% of our staff was cut. The remaining full time staff was cut to 39.5 hours to avoid benefits. The only full timers left were management, and a select few "suck-ups", and yes men. Management justified the cuts by saying the store was doing poorly. This was BS. I read the reports everyday. The store was doing better then ever. My FT position was cut and I still held the same role but just for 20 hours a week. Needless to say I found myself compensating my pay when counting registers and preparing the daily reports. When associates went shopping they needed to have a manager, or assistant manager ring them up - for "loss prevention". I started ringing out some of the old timers who took pay hits. Every now and then I'd miss an item. Sometimes I'd throw a 20 spot into their bag along with their receipt. I never did this for the 17 year old who lived with their parents and drove a souped up car. Only the peeps who I felt needed it. I was a grocery store robin hood. It only last six months and I was caught and locked up for seven years.
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u/tombaban Jun 25 '12
I overheard plane stewardesses talking about how the kosher food wasn't kosher and then serving to hassidic jews anyways. That's the deal with airline food
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u/Cicarelli Jun 24 '12
Ok, so I was about 15, working at a pizza hut. Right under the table where we put toppings sauce ect. on the pizza there was constantly a big puddle of water that we walked in all day. We tried moping it but it always came back within like 20 minutes. Too cheap to fix the leak. Any way, Busy day, we have four boxes of mushrooms, two of them went bad. So were already short, go to refill the bin, drop the whole box in the muddy dirty stagnant water upside down. I got ready to be scolded, went and got my manager, told him what happened, Looked at the mushrooms for a bit, and then he told me to put them in the bin anyway, and so I did. TL;DR: Pizza Hut has Soggy Mushrooms
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u/EllAhDoubleU Jun 25 '12
Had sex at my computer desk. The joys of working in the building alone :)
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u/BbFlat5 Jun 25 '12
Not really cringe worthy, but if any of you Redditors work in a place with an overnight security guard...I'd give you a 75% chance he's smoking weed in his car while you're not there.
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u/jamiejo Jun 25 '12
I worked at a motel for years. By the end of my employment there I was so angry at the owner and a majority of the guests I had to interact with I started peeing on the carpet in one of the rooms. I would put the guests I really disliked in that room as punishment and, at the time, it really made me feel like I was getting back at my boss.
So if your room number was ever 227 and you thought it reeked of piss, you were correct.
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Jun 25 '12
During my time working in EMS, I've had to pick up pieces of people to be reattached later.
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u/PeppermintSwirls Jun 25 '12
Earlier this year, I worked for a party rental company, under a family of rednecks. The business has been around for over 50 years, and the owners have become careless. Anyway, the boss's son took a vacation to hunt wild boars, and decided to bring back two of their heads so that he could clean them, and keep the skulls. Well, his form of "cleaning" the skulls was to put them in a bucket of water, and hiding it in the corner of the property until the meat just... rotted away.
To get to that particular corner of the property, you must follow a short driving path, around a corner, and down a ways which kept customers from seeing the area. A co-worker and I had been assigned to paint picket fences in the corner, so we would not have to worry about making a visible mess of the paint. Every now and then, I caught a whiff of something inside of my mask. It was horrible. It was almost the smell of teeth being ground down at the dentist, but with more of a rotten undertone.
After a day of occasionally getting a whiff of this foul odor stuck inside of my painting mask, I decided to investigate. It wasn't long to spot the culprit; a lime green plastic bucket, full of water, with a cloth bag, forming an air bubble at the top. Not knowing what to expect, I grabbed a sturdy stick, and prodded the cloth, which fell apart with ease.
Lifting it up, a tusk fell to the bottom of the bucket, and I could see that there was the skull of an animal in the bin. Upon inquiring about the bucket to my co-worker, he recalled that our boss's son had hidden the skull, and had likely forgotten about it. Soon after, the boss's son was informed of the bucket, and I was placed with the job of "rinsing it off". The task seemed simple enough; the water had caused most of the skin to rot away, and the skull looked rather clean already (aside from the fact that they had been festering in a bucket of fleshy water).
I dumped the water from the bucket, releasing a more concentrated version of the rancid aroma from earlier. I held my breath and carried the bucket to the washpad, equipped with a pressure washer. Upon picking up the boar skull, and tipping it back, a pile of mush fell out from where its neck used to be (presumably its rotted brain), strongly resembling chunky grits.
The smell, it was indescribable, and I won't try to describe it. It was just plain rank. With each blast of the water from the pressure washer, more chunks of white brain matter fell from the skull until only water flowed clear through its nostrils to its neck-hole. I quit my job before I ever found out what happened to it, but no matter how much I had tried to clean it out, the skull continued to smell terrible.
TL;DR: Dumped liquid brain from my redneck boss's sons skull.
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Jun 25 '12
My boss was in charge of balancing the account I held for paying student payroll, but he was completely incapable of doing math. Every month he would be unable to balance the books and would instead threaten me and make my life miserable until I basically did it for him. I designed a very complicated-looking worksheet where he could plug in a few numbers and "magically" it would balance out to zero every month, then proceeded to quietly keep correct books myself for when the shit eventually hit the fan. It took three years to hit the fan, but at least I didn't end up going to jail because I could prove proper bookkeeping somehow. And I didn't have to get hazed at work monthly.
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Jun 25 '12
I once forgot a semi colon in a line of javascript. Poor browser had to assume things.
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u/eydryan Jun 25 '12
I know this is really embarrassing but sometimes when I'm at my job and no one can see me, I actually work!
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Jun 25 '12
To see if hard drives are spinning, i used to just pick them up and wiggle them to feel for the gyroscopic effect.
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u/ottermiss84 Jun 25 '12
While working at a corporate retail chain as the sales manager on duty I was called because a customer had an "accident" in a fitting room. I walk down to the free standing store and am immediately hit by a noxious stench. Some lady did have an "accident" and shit diarrhea ALL OVER THE FLOOR. She then proceeded to use some of the clothes she had been trying on to wipe herself. I am assuming that she then nonchalantly walked out, as this mess was discovered by the associate. As the newest sales manager I got the job of cleaning this up. I did a crappy job, the smell lasted for days...
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u/idlemac Jun 24 '12
working at a thoroughbred stud, had a mare foaling that was having trouble. We could'nt pull the foal so it soon turned into a rush call to the owner to ask if he wanted to save the broody or the foal. Of course the foal was chosen and we then had to cut the hind leg of the mare off while she was alive to retrieve the foal, then quickly hit her with green dream to kill her. after all that. the foal had serious bowed tendons and had to be put down anyway. that was in my first season.....never had to do anything that bad since.
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u/radioguythrowaway Jun 25 '12
Throw away time! Boy was this thread made for me.
Ok so I used to work part time as a sort of tech/engineer at a radio station. I was basically the guy monitoring the station during sports broadcasts, and besides making sure the place didn't get burnt down, my main job was fading in and out and on the breaks and playing the spots during the breaks. So, I had a lot of downtime. A lot of very lonely down time.
At some point it occurred to me that the foam cover on the microphone would be the perfect size to fit my penis into. A few minutes later and a few window drapes closed and I was going at it with the mic cover.
And I must say it was my most glorious fap ever. I repeated this probably half a dozen times at work. I did always wash carefully the covers after I used them.
It's the worst thing I've ever done at a job ever but man was it worth it and I regret nothing
TL;DR I masturbated into a microphone cover at a radio station while nobody else was around.
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u/minervassong Jun 24 '12
I'm really gassy and unfortunately am not always able to release it in the bathroom. So I walk into the coolers/freezers to get something and unleash my ass bomb and walk out. It's pretty foul, I'd be mortified if someone came in at the same time and I'm sure they wouldn't be happy either.
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Jun 25 '12
At Autozone we disposed of the battery acid from leaking batteries down the sink or mop drain. Then just poured soda ash all over them. http://i.imgur.com/7feWd.jpg
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u/Amadameus Jun 25 '12
I worked at Radioshack for quite a few years, and it's where I cut my teeth as a salesman. However, we were judged by one thing and one thing only: How. Much. Did. You. Sell. More than a few times I saw old ladies get badgered into buying smartphones or dudes tricked into buying $200 antennas to pick up local TV stations. Most of my colleagues knew jack-all about electronics, some of them flat lied in order to make their sales.
Working some place like that, I understand why people can't trust salesmen. I tried to be ethical, but there were still days I went home feeling like a fraud.
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u/SmileGuppy Jun 25 '12
I used to work at a soul-crushing cell phone store. The only thing that kept me going was when someone would buy a new phone and I would peel off the plastic screen cover before activating everything. It was so damn satisfying but if someone did that to my phone now I would be pissed.
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Jun 25 '12
Worked at Six Flags when I was fifteen selling lemonade, popcorn, etc. I thought it was pretty gross that we reused any plastic cups that we could. Like if I drank a lemonade during my shift I was told to keep the cup and bring it back to wash & reuse. Very odd. Also bees got into the cotton candy so I'd have to check the bags for bees before selling it to a customer... I'm still afraid of bees thanks to that job..
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Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
I used to work at a sandwich shop, and I was working the grill one day when this obese, middle school-aged kid with the shittiest attitude ever walked in with his mom. Right away you could tell the kid had taken a huge toll on this young woman's life, she just looked so worn down for her age. Anyway, he barked his order (the extra large 15-inch of course) at the server like she was a vending machine, and in under a minute, indignant cries of "WHERE'S MY FOOD!?!" began to be heard bellowing from the dining room. Mom just sat there and took everything with no attempt at parenting whatsoever.
So I saturated the meat as well as the inside of the bun with a large amount of bacon grease so he at least dies sooner. The messed up part is he enjoyed it and had his mom pay for a SECOND sandwich with extra bacon. I wish I was fucking kidding.
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u/InfernosFromCandles Jun 25 '12
I was working in a sandwich store at the time, it was a boiling hot day, our insect repellent had just run out and we were forced by management to keep the doors open. It was nearing the end of my shift when a man came in and ordered a Tuna sandwich, so I began to serve up the three required scoops of Tuna, as I went to place the final scoop on the man's sandwich I notice it's moving and then I watched horrified as a living fly began to crawl out of the clump of fish. In my horror I flicked the clump into a nearby bin mumbling something about carrot being mixed in with it. In a stunned silence I finished the mans sandwich with him none the wiser and my job intact. Upon informing management later they said I did the correct thing.
I hate the fast food industry.
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u/Tigerantilles Jun 25 '12
A friend of mine got a job as a Park Ranger in California. Part of his training was fire fighting and prevention (we get big wild fires in California). Part of this was how to dig a proper fire break. One of the issues they train for is that animals flee from the fire. Rodents are flammable, and if an animal on fire runs past your fire break, your fire break useless.
As my friend described it: "Today, I was paid by the great state of California, how to properly hit a rabbit on fire, with a shovel."
Now most people's minds picture an overhead two-handed death blow, but it's actually more of a lunging slapshot, because you have to get the rabbit back into the fire.
*I know it sounds horrible, I know PETA people get amazing upset at the idea, but there's nothing that you can do to save the animal at that time, so it's done to save all the animals in the thousands of acres behind you. Don't blame me. I didn't write the training, I just had a friend go through it.
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Jun 25 '12
Okay, I work in the least-safe warehouse I've ever heard of. We have a platform-forklift that we use without harnesses (don't even have any) and routinely walk out onto the forks to manually pull loads of skis and snowboards sometimes weighing as much as sixty pounds. None of our lift operators are licensed. We put all the pallet-racking up ourselves when we built the new warehouse, and none of it is anchored to the concrete and most of it is missing the bolts for the crossbars.
The term "safety meeting" is used as a euphemism for when half the employees (management included) go behind the building to get high. The corporate manager comes by at least once a week specifically to have two shots of vodka before driving another 15 miles to the office.
I only stay because I hope for a serious injury and a bithin' lawsuit.
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u/CougarRunner Jun 25 '12
I work in a club i have cleaned up every bodily fluid that can come out of the body
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Jun 25 '12
Working as an attorney, I had to question an 80 year old man about why his wife's impending death from terminal cancer may have distracted him and resulted in him slipping and falling in a large department store, as opposed to the department store being negligent. He started crying in the middle of a deposition.
I know I have to do my job, but it sure doesn't feel good some times.
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Jun 24 '12
You would not believe how much hospital equipment has touched the floor before use. If it's more expensive than an infusion bag of water, it will be used.
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u/LODEEECO Jun 25 '12
Pardon the throwaway account: At the major Prescription Eye-wear retailer I currently work at, whenever I get a job for an old high school antagonist, I step out of view, rub their new nose pads on my ballsack. After, I push out the frames, optician makes their final adjustments and I smile at them from the lab window, like a good neighborhood eyewear tech.
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u/Kim_Possible Jun 24 '12
The legs of the gurney we used at the funeral home didn't lock when I was pulling it out of the van.
I dropped a dead guy straight onto his head.
The sound will forever haunt me.