'He just took the printer and threw it out of the window': 15+ Employees share their craziest days at work

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 26, 2023 3:00 PM EDT

Most days in the workplace are ordinary and routine, so when something out of the ordinary happens, it can make for a memorable shift. These people know that all too well — they replied to u/Murkantilism's question, "What is the craziest thing you've seen somebody do at the workplace?" 

Whether you work at a restaurant or retail establishment or an office, your place of work has a routine that everyone follows. Things can get a little dull after a while of doing the same exact things day in and day out. So it's a tad bit entertaining to witness a customer freakout or a coworker having a meltdown over something trivial. 

I was surprised by the amount of shenanigans people managed to get into with forklifts. Forklifts do look extremely fun to drive around, so I get the temptation. For those without a license to operate such a machine, the temptation to drive it can lead to some major messes. It's not the same as a car, you really do need to have a license to drive it!

Check out all the hilarious crazy days people shared below. Then, have another laugh at these passengers who shared the wild things they overheard on airplanes, like one person who asked, "Are those snakes ok back there?"

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  • 01
    Product - Dagens What is the craziest thing you've seen somebody do at the workplace? 'Use a forklift to lift a person about 25 feet in the air to grab just one box of Cheez-its from a pallet on the top rack of storage... I was the one on the forklift.'
    via National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - What is the craziest thing you've seen somebody do at the workplace? A guy at work stood up at his cubicle, raised his keyboard over his head with both hands, and yelled "KIMBO SLICE MUTHA F_____AAA!!!" and smashed it on the cubicle divider 5 or 6 times until it broke in half, then yelled BYAH! (hand motion and everything) and went to the bathroom. Got fired later that day, turns out he wanted to quit but also wanted a nice severance package, so he pulled that stunt.
    via u/Murkantilism
  • 03
    Font - andrewse I work at a printing company. We often print on foil paper. That's aluminum foil laminated to regular paper. On the press the rolls spin pretty fast and are up to five feet in diameter. They are essentially massive, 1500 pound capacitors. One guy stands there holding his hand to the roll as it spins and waits for an unsuspecting passerby. When the victim walks by he reaches out to them and shoots a thick, crackling arc of static electricity at them, up to a foot away. He literall
    via u/andrewse
  • 04
    Font - custardthegopher A guy I used to work with at a Sonic Drive-In once hopped out the drive-thru window while wearing skates to chase down a woman who'd left her credit card. My co-worker didn't quite get to her before she got out of the lot, but he persevered and caught up with her at the light about a quarter mile down the road. I was thoroughly impressed.
    via u/custardthegopher
  • 05
    Font - the_berg I was Operation Duty Officer for an airline in Canada. Our office was on the second floor of a hangar with planes and stuff. I had to supervise flight dispatchers. In those days, printers were not really reliable and one of the dispatchers seemed to be very unlucky with them. He was trying to print a flight plan with the weather forecast but every time, the paper would jam. After a certain amount of time,
    via u/the_berg
  • 06
    Font - he had to redo the whole flight plan because it had "expired". After the third time of redoing his flight plan, when the paper jammed in the printer again, he just took the printer and threw it out of the window. It flew by the wing of an ATR42 and crashed landed next to the landing gear. Everyone in the office went livid. I had to leave because I couldn't hold my laughter in.
    via u/the_berg
  • 07
    Font - kremmy One of my first jobs was at an amusement park and if you were a "good employee" (showed up on time and sober) you would get advanced pretty quickly. Soon I was in charge of giving people breaks and training new employees, which was a pretty sweet job (you got to basically do what you wanted as long as everyone got their break on time) and paid slightly more. One day I go to give a break to a new guy, he smiles and takes his bag full of change (containing 1-2 grand in ones/fives/ten
    via u/kremmy
  • 08
    Font - The guy never came back. Security and management come by, they ask me a bunch of questions about him, and eventually they realize that he gave completely fake information and worked one day so he could steal a couple thousand dollars. They never found the guy.
    via u/kremmy
  • 09
    Font - radiomix A guy showed up for a job interview at my work (municipality). The job he applied for was an opening as a police officer. Now it clearly states on the application that you must go through a back ground check. This dumbas comes in for the interview, agrees to go have a background check and quickly gets arrested for his armed robbery charges he knew he had warrants for.
    via u/radiomix
  • 10
    Font - + [deleted] a long time employee at mcdonald's said you would not get burned if you stuck your hand in the fryer oil and pulled it out real quick. I said you would. he showed me. he got burned.
    via u/deleted
  • 11
    Font - bettorworse We used to play poker underneath a nuclear reactor. We all had top security clearance and nobody else could get into that room without us knowing about it.
    via u/bettorworse
  • 12
    Font - trezegol Worked as a tech support, front desk, with an ISP. A client told me that any email he sent was always returned to him. I asked him if he knew the mailer deamon error message, he said he didn't know what I was talking about, and proceeded to pull out 2 or 3 envelopes with an email address written on them, completed with a stamp.... facepalm
    via u/trezegol
  • 13
    Font - AwesomeExpress I was working in a large warehouse style supermarket and had the job of showing a teenager to the back office to fill out a job application. After 30 min he had finished and exited the office into our back storage warehouse. A forklift was in the middle of the floor. Seeing this shouted (not sure to who, no one was really that close) ** OH SWEET A FORKLIFT YOU NEVER SAID I GET ONE OF THESE!** I stood agast as he jumped right up into the seat, cranked the wheel, floored it,
    via u/AwesomeExpress
  • 14
    Font - maniacally laughing for a good 10 seconds, but was helpless to do anything lest i get forked. The spin ended abruptly when one of the fork tines caught the corner of a palate of pepsi cases knocking nearly a row of them out. We both watched as a tower maybe 30ft tall of cases of soda slooooooowly started tipping towards us seeing his life in danger he decided to quickly back out of there. although he had great spinning skills, he must of skipped the lesson on reverse. He floored the forkl
    via u/AwesomeExpress
  • 15
    Font - soda to collapse in a deafening, carbonated explosion. the fork had a cage on top so he emerged unharmed, looked at me (i was the only one there and said "YOU NEVER SAW ANYTHING" He ran out the front of the store leaving a trail of sticky brown footprints. Epilogue: Within minutes the entire staff rushed to the back room to find me standing alone, of to my knees in brown foam. No one said a word.
    via u/AwesomeExpress
  • 16
    Font - while we stood there silently, the doors burst open, the teenager sprinted to the back office, grabbed his paper application (our only means of IDing him) and blew past us on his way out. He was wearing those shoes with wheels on the bottom and apparently just slid all the way through the checkout and out the front door. TL;DR GODD TEENAGER ON FORKLIFT
    via u/AwesomeExpress
  • 17
    Font - [deleted] First week at my last internship, I saw one of my coworkers pick up his desk phone and powerbomb it to the ground. It shattered everywhere, as it was a big phone. He stormed off and didn't come back for a few hours. He later denied it, and kept saying that it fell off the desk. Also, a coworker in a seperate department witnessed a coworker army crawling out of her cubicle, through the hall way, and onto the elevator. Nobody ever saw her again. That place makes people crazy.
    via u/deleted
  • 18
    Font - theGreyjoy I work in a fairly large factory. This one guy, upon getting fired, rode his motorcycle all around the shop floor. The shop foremen chased him around for like 10 minutes before he finally left. Pretty epic goodbye, I'd say.
    via u/theGreyjoy
  • 19
    Font - [deleted] Someone took as in a wastebasket. The owner of the small dotcom found it and proceeded to angrily carry the bucket around and ask each employee, "DID YOU TAKE A SMASH IN THIS WASTEBUCKET?!" while holding it in front of our faces. Of course everyone denied it. I later heard that he very nearly fired every single employee and start over, but obviously thought better of it. Best day at work ever.
    via u/deleted
  • 20
    Font - ETL4nubs The craziest thing would be what I started and the result. I worked at a local grocery store chain (Stop And Shop) and would unload the trucks for the night crew before I left at 10:00pm. We had a 16 pallet load and every pallet was stacked well above what they should be and was half tipping over already. We put a pallet of 2 Liter bottles of soda in the front for storage so I had to take that off first. I get half way up the ramp and BOOM. Whole pallet falls over making bottles
    via u/ETL4nubs
  • 21
    Font - reaction and tipped over every pallet but the paper towel pallet WAYYY in the back. There was soda all over the floor of the trailer, the pallets that that fell were because whoever stacked them put heavy items on top. Pickles. Pickles pickles pickles. They were about to be on sale the following week so we had TONS. They tipped over and shattered (They all come in glass jars) and mixed with the soda for a horrific smell. I didn't leave that night until 3a.m. because i offered to help out.
    via u/ETL4nubs
  • 22
    Font - ✪ [deleted] caught an employee yelling at my toaster after hours on the security camera
    via u/deleted
  • 23
    Font - DMF171 Use a forklift to lift a person about 25 feet in the air to grab just one box of cheez-itz from a pallet on the top rack of storage.... I was the one on the forklift. F safety codes.
    via u/DMF171
  • 24
    Font - jaymonster138 My grandpa tiled a customers pool and requested payment. The customer told him "I'm a lawyer and I am not going to pay, go ahead and take me to court." My grandpa walked to his truck got a sledge hammer and walked into the pool (no water is in it). The lawyer begins to say "okay okay okay okay I'll pay." My grandpa replies "To late motherf ter" and smashes the pool up with the sledgehammer.
    via u/jaymonster138
  • 25
    Font - OU awwdip This happened before I started working, but an ex-employee at my retail job was working at the cash. A client put down her items and her drink on the counter. The employee then said that she hadnt tried that drink yet from Starbucks(or wherever it was from) and picked it up, put the straw in her mouth, and drank some. All the other employees were stunned as well as that poor client. My boss had to do a pay-out to give the girl some money to buy a new drink.
    via u/awwdip

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