'They came in with a potbelly pig as their emotional support animal': 15+ crazy coworker stories

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Sep 7, 2023 4:00 PM EDT

It doesn't matter what your line of work is. It doesn't matter if you work in an office, in a restaurant, in a warehouse, or remotely. Chances are you have dealt with an unruly and/or bizarre coworker. Perhaps in the moment, your experience with this person was a cringeworthy one. Perhaps it did not end well for you or for them. However, provided that you came out unscathed, you probably are grateful to have the story.

 

Some of these coworkers range from the unethical to the strange. For instance, we've got an office pig masquerading as an emotional support animal, we've got an employee who tried to charge an extended stay at a hole on the company credit card, and we even have a coworker who straight up never showed up to work. 

 

Keep scrolling below for this collection of crazy coworker stories and feel free to share your story in the comments. For more content like this, here are some stories of folks who burned bridges on the last day of work!

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  • 01
    Clothing - 111 "That one coworker, what happened?"
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    Font - r/AskReddit. Posted by u/takin-chase 22 hours ago That one coworker, what happened?
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    Font - OkBasil1125 23 hr. ago One of the supervisors finally confronted him about the ever present smell of rum on his breath and his ever present, yet lighter in shade, bottle of soda. After being told he'd be given a breathalyzer at work he claimed he "had never been so insulted" by an accusation in his life and immediately quit...never letting go of his soda bottle. 4.0k Reply Share
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  • 04
    Font - BananaSplitun - 23 hr. ago Oh, they came in with a potbelly pig as their emotional support animal. Office meetings just got a lot squeakier. 3.4k Reply Share
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  • 05
    Font - PilotDry4016 21 hr. ago He started making f noises every time my other coworker bent over. To get something out of a case, pick something up, whatever it was, he was flarping it up and laughing it off. We fired him when he tried to fist fight a customer. 3.2k Reply Share
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  • 06
    Rectangle - brunchislife87 20 hr. ago Turns out her cancer was faked and she scammed us all out of $100K. Now she's in prison.
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  • 07
    Font - tah4349 20 hr. ago Management finally took notice and "reorganized" so that he no longer had any staff under him, but gave him a higher title and almost no work in the process. A short time later, they used layoffs as a reason to get rid of him entirely, but he parlayed his higher title into a more powerful, better paying job elsewhere, where they're now trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Basically, he failed up. That's what you get when you have hiring managers who get star- str
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    Font - la 55 EH hyteck9 21 hr. ago He missed work unexpectedly. The next morning the FBI showed up and went thru his desk. They only found a post-it that read, "Too slow FBI". It also had a smiley face on it. 2.2k Reply Share
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  • 09
    Font - SandwormCowboy. 23 hr. ago He started getting a thousand-yard-stare while in the office. He sat at his computer and stared at the monitor, which is what we all did, except his monitor was off. One day he didn't come in at all, and a few days later we learned that he had been arrested in another state for stealing a car and attacking the police that arrested him. 1.6k Reply Share
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  • 10
    Font - Maximum__Engineering. 17 hr. ago A small company. The dude who absolutely STANK, and I mean you could tell he had been in a room 10 minutes later it was so bad. After about a year at a staff part I think, someone had the (liquid) courage to ask him what was up with the odor.
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  • 11
    Font - Turns out he showered regularly but he was eating medicinal garlic oil which caused the terrible smell. Oddly, he had NO idea. He switched to a different type of garlic oil and the smell went away almost instantly. Great guy, was at the company several years afterwards. 802 Reply Share
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  • 12
    Font - Jumpy-Author-4985. 22 hr. ago Guy who worked in my office for about 6 months. Older guy, nice but kinda weird, disappeared after taking a giant soin the stairwell leading down to the cafe. I saw him suddenly get up and walk as fast as possible to the stairwell. There were bathrooms downstairs across from the cafe. But also ones a closer walk upstairs. Didn't think anythjnf of it till I heard a scream about 10 minutes later. Giant pile at the top of the stairs and a trail leading down ↑ 77
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  • 13
    Font - max-peck 22 hr. ago I had this one coworker who was a couple days out of training and made some memes poking fun at our customer (lighthearted) dumb as base in what was supposed to be a fun Slack channel (it was literally called Watercooler). Come to find out the CEO is actually in this supposed "fun" group and wasn't fond of us making fun of our customers.
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  • 14
    Font - Kid immediately gets fired and anyone who liked or replied to the post were reprimanded and we all had to attend an all hands meeting to basically get chewed out over what happened. This was at a time they made a lot of changes, so needless to say I updated my resume pretty soon after. 372 ↓ Reply Share
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    Font - noburgersforyou - 22 hr. ago He's a great guy, he's very excited to work... except that he's terrible at it. Nobody wants him, but nobody wants to fire him, so he keeps moving from one area to another. I like the guy, I really do, but this isn't a charity. He needs to be fired, and the longer management delays that, the harder it will be. 355 Reply Share
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    Font - KrasnyRed5 19 hr. ago . Company put us all up in a hotel for one due to snow closing the roads and public transportation down. One of my co-workers decided living in the hotel was way better than at home and extended his stay for a week. He got fired when the company got the bill for his hotel stay. No idea why he thought they would pay for it. 312 Reply Share
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  • 17
    Font - Tobutch 20 hr. ago Called in sick the first day on the job. Later that day his wife called, asking to speak with him. We told her he was home sick, She told us he was definitivly not. He never came back in. Maybe "coworker" isn't really the right word. 291 Reply Share
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    Font - blah_shelby 17 hr. ago She accepted a fake $100 bill that literally said "FOR MOVIE USE ONLY" on it and had Benjamin Franklin on both sides. We worked at a bank. 279 Reply Share
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    Font - CANON Mwe xballikeswooshx. 19 hr. ago SOhis pants intentionally 30-40 times over the year to be able go home early to play video games before his wife and kid got home. Age @incident 37 250 Reply Share
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    Font - OJU Xeo8177 19 hr. ago I received an invitation to a free catered lunch on company property from a coworker. My suspicions weren't raised because members of HR, IT, Accounting, etc. were all on the invitation list. I figured it was extremely generous of my coworker and perhaps she would be announcing her departure and future plans with lunch served as a celebration. Instead, we all walked into a pyramid scheme presentation. ↑ 203 Reply Share
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    Font - LaximumEffort · 23 hr. ago. edited 18 hr. ago She was a superstar on the surface, she was an excellent presenter and kept her commitments. But she took credit for a lot of people's work and expensed personal items repeatedly. She's not around anymore. 180 Reply Share
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  • 22
    Font - redletterday94 - 22 hr. ago We're actually not sure, one day she left in a frenzy, saying that she had a family emergency, and she never came back. Don't even think my manager was ever able to get in contact with her at all after that to find out what happened, because nothing before that seemed out of the ordinary 160 Reply Share
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