Inspired by Kitty & Mary Ann: What Strange Things Have Gone on at Work

[Annie&Hallie'sMom]

We've had short jobs...we've had long jobs...but what are some of the strangest things that you've had to do at a job...or things that you've seen?

At one job I saw the president of the company (this was the durable medical equipment co if you've read my other post) MEASURE the margins of a letter and berate the secretary for the margins not being exactly x inches. (I don't remember if it was an inch or what). Gee, wonder why I didn't want that job.

Then when I was at the nutraceudical company that asked (translation: MADE) people to give book reports! (I kid you not! I never got around to my turn. I was going to make up a book and give a bogus report). The book was supposed to do with your job or philosophy or something. But I am completely serious.

It was also on this job where the Vice President of the seminar division tried to have me go to his church to be born again (because he was). Totally inappropriate in my book.

 

[CamColt]

When a girl I worked with got pregnant and announced it to the vice president, he asked her "Did you check with Don?"(her supervisor). She didnt know she had to ask permission before having kids.

Once a woman in another office put the girl who sat next to me on hold...then went to lunch.

One girl put "Happy Holidays" on all the statements...that went out in August.

 

[FOJMO]

At a company I worked for 30 years ago, I had such a mean woman boss. She told me that I couldn't go on my honeymoon unless my filing was cleaned up!

Well, about a week later, I was opening the department mail, which was at a mail table in the middle of the department floor. I could open everything that wasn't marked personal or confidential.

When I opened a piece of mail for her, it was all PORNOGRAPHIC literature with pictures! I immediately hid it for fear of someone seeing it over my shoulder.

Well, I already opened it so I had a choice of whether to throw it away or go ahead and deliver it to her. I decided to deliver it, and even stamped it "Received" so she would know I saw it first.

After I delivered it, she never bothered me again... AND I went on my honeymoon with no problem!

 

[CourtasanSatine]

a funny story:

The summer I was a theater usher was the same summer South Park came to the theater.The last show of opening the entire place was singing with every song(ok,it was funny and late enough that nobody minded).I still laugh at the idea of a entire theater singing Uncle **** and Blame Canada

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

When I was in college, I went on a job interview and it came up that I had my own apartment. The interviewer (a man) asked me if my parents ever dropped in to find me in bed with my boyfriend. I answered "my parents don't drop in." He proceeded to tell me about an experience HE had when HIS parents did. The same guy called and told me he liked my smile and offered me the job. Jerk. I turned it down. I later heard he got fired. Gee...I wonder why. (I should have reported him, but I was young and naive.)

 

[RUDisney]

A former boss of mine had a lot of quirks. He decided that no one was taking their assignments seriously enough because there were occasionally misspellings or grammatical errors. He decided that anything that wasn't confidential had to be proof read by someone else and he made up a schedule for what month each of his managers had to read the others' items. It never made it to my turn before the idea was scrapped.

He also didn't like it when someone would wind the string around the thingy on an interoffice envelope a million times. He conducted a seminar for all of his managers to let us know how to loop an interoffice correspondence. You were only allowed to loop it once.

When he was going on vacation or getting ready to travel for business, we weren't allowed to call or see him for 1.5 days before or after he was gone. We also had to hold any interoffice correspondence until after he arrived back so he wouldn't be burdened "doing our work" when he returned.

Oh, with the interoffice envelopes, we were only allowed to send him things 2X per day. We were to save information to put in one envelope so he wouldn't have to open so many of them.

 

[RUDisney]

I thought of something else. I had an employee who was scheduled to come into work at 5:30 every morning. He was only working for me for a month to 6 weeks when he came in one Monday and asked for Wednesday off. Since he was still in his probationary period, I asked him what he wanted the time for. He told me that he was getting married on Tuesday and didn't want to have to leave his new wife so early in the morning on the day after their wedding. I asked him why he hadn't told me before that he was getting married. He said that they decided over the weekend and since they'd be going out for a year on Tuesday, they wanted to get married on their dating anniversary.

Well, I let him have the time off that he wanted. I even encouraged him to take Tuesday off, too, so he could get ready for his wedding. He told me all he had to do that day was leave work, take a shower and get to the JP's office in time.

He worked for me for about 6 months before he got another job. I saw in the paper 2 years later that she had filed for divorce. The thing that stuck with me most was that he said she wanted to get married quickly because she wanted to move out of her mother's house. One of those things that makes you go, "hmm..."

 

[Jenn]

My first boss informed me during my interview that the women in his department couldn't wear pants - only skirts. Everyone else in the company could wear pantsuits, slacks, etc. except his dept. The worst part - upper mgmt knew about it and went along with it. I still work there but he is long gone - finally one girl blew the lid and threatened to get an attorney involved and he was fired soon after for many reasons (sexual harrassment included).

 

[Annie&Hallie'sMom]

Some more from the nutraceudical company...

It's my first day and the guy who I am supposed to be working for/with is out. So they stick me in this room to watch these videos. So I'm in there all by myself and this old looking guy comes in and introduces himself. I forget how it came up, but I guess he said something like someone had told him I had a doctorate in nutrition and he wanted to know if I had "bought my diploma." I was stunned. It was a non-traditional school where you did correspondence but I did the work. Someone later told me I should have asked if Harvard was giving away free diplomas that week...

Anyway as it turns out he was the CFO of the company and YOUNGER than my father. He just was so nasty he looked old. (and BTW he is the "doctor" quoted on in all the ads for their pills...I felt that was a little unethical).

 

[Eeyoresfriend]

I htink it's best I am left in the dark about some things where I work, but for some reason we can't keep a personell manager, they keep getting canned

 

[annemariec]

I've enjoyed reading this thread....

There were a lot of practical jokers where I worked. One lady was notorious for keeping a messy desk. One day her co-worker dumped her trash can on the top of her desk and he smoothed all of the papers across it. The next morning, he heard her say, "I've got to do something about my desk!"

One of the guys was a neat freak. Before he left everyday he would arrange his stapler just so and all of his desk items. One of the fellas changed his desk all around after he left. He freaked out the next morning.

The office had a huge 50th birthday party for a dept. manager. Had a video made called this is your life with clips of him and funny music and sayings. Put a diaper on him! He went along with it, red faced and laughing. The back of the diaper said if I'm too drunk to find home, my address is.... And everyone was shocked that a few people had hired a striper to do a lapdance! She did the lapdance. But, people were talking about this could be big trouble and one of the guys talked the striper into keeping her little lab coat on just in time.

Annemarie

 

[preshi]

These stories are mighty interesting.

The funniest thing that has happened here was a phone call I got... the guy said " If I tripped and fell to the ground would you walk around me?"

 

[Val]

I work at a large state university, in two departments (joint position). In one (very large- about 40 faculty members) department they have removed all the chairs and desks in the hallway and we have received a memo that we are not to have conversations with our colleagues in the hallways or front office because it interferes with people "doing work"- but to take them into our offices. Except that we are not to be alone with a member of the opposite sex or a student..... The next item was the call for committee members for a collegiality committee to determine why students don't hang out and faculty leave as soon as they can during the day!!!!! Needless to say- I spend most of my time in my "other" department!

 

[Annie&Hallie'sMom]

So people other than me have had wacky job experiences.

My first job after college was at a small publishing company. They did non-fiction for children, but really didn't have much respect for kids. Their words, "all kids care about are skateboards and Mtv" (this was in 1989). One day (for no apparent reason) we had "crazy hat" day where you had to wear a hat to work!

 

[Rajah]

This thread is great!! Some very interesting stories...

I don't have one nearly as good as those posted, but one time at my previous job, I did encounter something both funny and fun. It was raining REALLY hard that particular day, and for some reason, all of the managers in our area were gone for the day.

Well, I heard this noise outside of my office (I used to keep the door mostly closed because of how cold it was -- closing the door trapped the heat of my computers and made the room livable). I get up to go see what's going on, and there are three of the guys in the hall essentially bowling with these huge rolls of tape. I don't remember what they'd set up as pins at each end of the hall, but they were literally rolling these huge rolls of tape (about 6" - 8" in diameter) down the hall to see who could knock over the most "pins".

 

[GIGGLES266]

I came into the office one day and heard the distinct sound of a puppy. When I made it over to where the sound was coming from, there was a round playpen set up with a puppy in it! When I asked the employee what the dog was doing in the office, she told me that everyone knows that you never leave a puppy alone for 8 hours-they will never get potty trained. Needless to say, both puppy and owner had plenty of time to bond after that.

 

[Kermit]

This isn't as strange as most of the others, but I worked for a chain of daycare centers that had an (unwritten) dress code that only thin women could wear plain t-shirts. The owner, who was a heavier woman herself, said that plain t-shirts didn't really look like much of an outfit on women like her. In orientation, she actually used herself as an example of a woman who could not wear plain t-shirts and me (I was a size 2 at the time) as someone who could.

 

[CamColt]

I thought of some more...

One day a woman got "her" yoogurt out of the fridge and started eating it. She asked the office if anyone has ever tried this kind of yogurt because it was so good. She was so glad that her husband bought it, and went on and on raving about it. It was mine!

We worked in a bank so when we came in in the morning we had to use our key and couldnt let anyone in because the bank wasnt officially open. One day it was pouring out and the above mentioned woman was coming in to work. There was another girl standing outside the bank and the woman would not let her in, even though she said she had a meeting with the president. Come to find out she was a lottery winner, who had just won millions and wanted to deposit theminour bank. Oops!

 

[Cindy B]

I used to work at a very highbrow, well known insurance office in Downtown Cleveland.

I worked at an administrative assistant for the partners.. one of the partners (a brother of the person who started the company) would lay on his floor... and he said he was "meditating"..

The same company would only let woman wear skirts as well, no pants... what do you think he was mediatating on....