What is the worst work place scandal you have seen in your career?

[Spinneret]

A few affairs

 

[barkley]

2 separate cases of civil service employee theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars each in cash and food stamps that was entirely easily preventable had the supervisors not played favorites among their staff and let the 2 employees skip one level of case review and oversight and the supervisor actually done their own essential (and legally mandated) secondary level review work of the cases required to authorize the payments rather than 'rubber stamping' their favorite workers cases. the 2 employees were eventually found out-both did get incarcerated but the supervisors??? they were promoted UP into higher paying positions.

 

[leahgoogle]

Not me, but my mom when she was a middle school teacher. The gym teacher was having an affair and got caught in the school pool in a compromising position with his mistress!

 

[tvguy]

Payroll person was skimming overtime money from employees. First we learned of it was when the Police came and took her out in handcuffs.
She wasn't greedy. She's divert a quarter hour or half hour of OT only from those with huge overtime. During wildfire season or other breaking news it wasn't unusual for Photographers and Reporters to have 40 hours a week overtime.
She apparently made off with over $100,000 before being caught.
Affairs are so common I'm not sure they even rise to the level of scandal.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Embezzlement

 

[Liz]

Embezzlement. I had quit by the time this happened, but was still in contact with friends at my old job. The person who did the embezzlement was about my closest work friend. Had no idea and was absolutely shocked.

 

[RangerPooh]

Embezzlement.

 

[superme80]

My manager "allegedly" staged a break in. They could not 100% prove it was her, so she was just fired and not arrested.

 

[EACarlson]

Had a couple that were both store managers for the pizza company I worked for. She caught him having an affair with an employee, so she recorded herself having an affair with every guy that worked at her store.

 

[Mokat76]

A senior military officer had an affair with an enlisted woman. When a higher level launched an investigation, he threatened to kill her. It was super messy

 

[bcla]

It wasn't so much of a scandal, but just the way it went down. I had a summer job in college and I remember the day, where it filtered down to everyone other than the fired employee to leave early (and don't worry since we were all getting paid).

The boss had a corner office with a sofa. He came back on a Monday and found stains on that sofa, and also went into the men's room and found a discarded prophylactic in the trash. He then went to security to see if anyone signed in after hours. During business hours security only watched people but didn't require anyone sign in. The boss found out one person who had signed in (with a "guest") and the rest was pretty obvious what had happened. It did seem a little bit odd though since security didn't stop him and the woman he met at a club.

He did come back once for a social visit, but only when he was told that the boss would be traveling. If the boss was there, I think he would have had security forcibly eject him.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

I work in Accounting - more embezzlement than I care to mention - I mean a LOT ! Boggles my mind the number of people who think they will get away with it - I’ve seen some very interesting things too !
Affairs - again - unbelievable at times places I have worked it would make you wonder if anyone was faithful !
I remember way back when I was young and single a coworker asked me out - WELL come to find out luckily for me the older ladies I worked with on the floor heard him and informed me he was JUST back to work this week from his honeymoon ! yeah we DID NOT speak ever again after that ! Unbelievable !
I was much happier when I changed jobs many years later to a family business that had a whole lot less of that kind of stuff going on !! Sadly that business got sold many years later back into Corp America and I was back into dealing with fraud and more fraud again !

 

[mumto3girls]

When I was in high school an unmarried female gym teacher got pregnant by a married male health teacher. His wife was also pregnant (she didn’t work at the school) and the babies were delivered only weeks apart. By the start of the next school year the male teacher had divorced his wife and was married to the female teacher.

The male teacher was a creep. He also taught driver’s Ed and said some very inappropriate things to me while we were alone in a car together driving out on some back country roads. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

 

[maryhouse]

A co-worker was having an affair with an older woman in the office. Everybody knew it.

 

[BrianL]

A while back I worked in a small department. We had just gotten a new department head, and he then brought in someone else from a different team to join ours. She was married to someone else at the company, but was having an affari with my new boss. Anyway, the real issue was that he brought her in as a subordinate which is not allowed. They were keeping it a secret, but my team pretty much knew. They would try ti bribe us to keep us wuiet, like planning business trips and including even the low-level employees - they were more like excuses to party with business pretense. I do know some hanky-panky went on in a storage room. Well, at one of our big company conferences, this guy got a bit too drunk (also a problem), and started to be none too subtle with his lady, so it was all out in the open. This caused issues, what with her husband working there too, etc. Ugly stuff. My boss "resigned" very shortly after and the new boss had to clean up the mess that had been made of the team and it's reputation.

 

[teller80]

I didn't think it was a scandal but the local paper tried to make it seem so. I worked at a bank in the 80's (hence my username) and the bank presidents father shot & killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself. He lived a few days longer. The couple were both older and in ill health, and I assume they felt this was preferable to dying slowly.

 

[Jml813]

Just a few from over the years.

Store manager fired for hosting poker games after hours using petty cash.

Another manager fired for quid pro quo payments involving reoccurring account credits on the account of the person providing the favors.

Employee fired for watching inappropriate websites in a mall kiosk in middle of the mall.

 

[tvguy]

Employee took his company car and company map books to help his brother try and figure out how to carry out a hit. Yes, as in a homicide. He didn't get fired because the investigation found he used the maps to demonstrate to his brother why he shouldn't do it. Not because it was illegal or wrong, but because there was only one way in and out of the area where the potential victim lived!! He did get suspended for two weeks for poor judgement and putting the company in a bad light. TV news departments don't like it when THEY make the news. Oh, and the hit never happened because the Police got wind of it and arrest the brother for plotting a murder.

 

[Deb]

Not work related or on company property but we had an employee who a few years after she left us killed her 6 year old. Those of us that had worked with her remembered her bringing him to work with her a few times as a baby/toddler when she had no child care.

 

[Adelle Dazeem]

I had a coworker get fired because she said she had to be in LA to visit some clients…and another coworker caught her at Disneyland instead. It was the middle of the day - no excuses for why she was DL and that was the end of her.

I was in the corporate office of HP when CEO Mark Hurd was fired because of alleged sexual harassment which was a huge deal at the time. I was friends with his assistant and would see him in the exec wing from time to time.