'I was the lucky person tasked with "printing the intranet"': 30+ Employees share their funniest facepalm moments at the workplace

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 29, 2023 11:00 AM EDT

What would you do if your boss asked you to print the whole internet page by page? Or what if they asked you to water the plants while it was literally raining outside? These people shared stories of the absolute dumbest things their bosses have ever done---including those two examples above! 

Some bosses rely heavily on their employees to keep things running. For example, in some offices, the assistants will be the first ones in and the last ones out, tasked with answering phones, working with clients, or keeping the office clean and stocked. Then bosses will stroll into the office around noon with questions about how things are being done. No matter if the office is working perfectly well---some managers think they need to implement their own changes in order to prove they're good at bossing people around. But if your office is already running smoothly, and the boss's ideas make your life harder, it's hard not to facepalm at your supervisor's decisions. 

And, as you can read below, these bosses span a variety of industries. Some people just fail upward, I suppose. 

Check out these dumb-as-a-rock bosses below. Then, check out these people who had one job, and still couldn't get it right. 

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  • 01
    Font - What is the dumbest thing your boss has ever asked you to do? My previous boss wanted me to write a java program that would parse and organize incoming Outlook e-mail into different folders. I was like O_O.
    via u/joe2100
  • 02
    Font - [deleted] Find a Chimpanzee to dress in a fireman's outfit and train it to run across the top of a massive lightbox that had fake flames along the top 18 feet in the air, that was part of the trade show set I had built for the company. He wanted the chimp to carry a little fireman's hose and pretend he was putting out fires because the company product was "so hot". This is absolutely true.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    Font - [deleted] A former boss once told me he was sick of finding out things I hadn't been told about at work. So, he asked me to make a list of all the things I didn't know. When I tried to explain that this wasn't possible he told me to stop being argumentative. I gave him a blank piece of paper and told him I'd fill it in as soon as I learned what I didn't know.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    Font - newnametime Not to think. The direct quote was, "I pay you to do what I tell you to do, I do not pay you to think." The next day, he was all over my a for continuing to copy flyers even though they were going grey (hot copier issue). He asked me "What were you thinking?" Apparently, the correct answer to this question was NOT "You don't pay me to think, you pay me to do what you asked."
    via u/newnametime
  • 05
    Font - KarateBillP I was once hired as a web designer at a company that sells machine parts. I was supposed to create and maintain their web page for them. On my first day at the office I was seated at my desk... which had no computer on it. I was told that I was to draw the website on paper and after it was approved I would get a computer.
    via u/KarateBillP
  • 06
    Font - Maladroit01 I worked for an idiot who thought he knew how to be a graphic designer because he bought the Adobe suite. He sent the image of another company's logo, something like "The Downtown Market" and wanted me to erase "Downtown" in favor of the word "Garlic", because our client was apparently a garlic grower somewhere south of the bay area. He then wanted me to insert a picture of a garlic bulb he found on Google behind the (stolen) logo to "make it look different". The picture, he s
    via u/Maladroit01
  • 07
    Font - msingerman My old boss did not understand that servers require power. No, really. We had a farm of servers that ground through 3D renderings. He wanted to add more, I told him not without more power. He said the UPSS we have had plenty of open sockets, I told him that's not the same thing. Well, we ordered them and he said he would order more power circuits, but instead he just got in before me, plugged everything in, and blew everything up. And then blamed it on me.
    via u/msingerman
  • 08
    Font - [deleted] Unaware of the fact that it was raining, my boss told the new girl to go outside and water the plants. She asked me if he was serious. Not wanting to miss a chance for shenanigans, I looked her right in the eyes and said yes. She did it.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 09
    Font - [deleted] I work for a company that helps rich Chinese kids get into schools in the US. This one absurdly rich guy pays my boss like $200 per hour for me and my colleagues to teach his son SAT words, analogies, US high school literature and history, etc. His son does not speak English, other than hello/goodbye/OK. But the dad keeps paying, so my boss keeps insisting that I spend hours a day trying to tell a kid who can't pronounce his own name what "gregarious" means, instead of teaching
    via u/[deleted]
  • 10
    Font - antisocialmedic My old boss once asked me to wash all of the dishes in the break room. None of the dishes were mine and there wasn't even any soap. There were a few of the dudes who worked there who weren't busy and when asked why he didn't just get one of them (they actually used some of the dishes) he said "Nah, dishes are womens work". I refused to do them and nothing bad happened to me.
    via u/antisocialmedic
  • 11
    Font - caaptainmontereyjack "Transcribe these perfectly good Skype guidelines so that it looks like our department made them." Why can't we just give them the f directions that are already there!?
    via u/caaptainmontereyjack
  • 12
    Font - MexicanRedditor My boss: "Why didn't you bring your laptop to our meeting? Now you have to go back home, get your laptop so we can have access to the company's emails!" BIGGEST FACEPALM OF MY LIFE.
    via u/MexicanRedditor
  • 13
    Font - trickiwoo When I was going through Army basic training I had a drill sergeant tell me to dig up a metal sign post. I asked to speak freely and told him that there would be a large cement block at the bottom that we wouldn't be able to pull out by hand. He said "Think so? Dig." So we dug the hole, hit cement and was told to fill the hole back in again. I often wonder how many times that post had been 'dug up' just to keep a soldier busy.
    via u/trickiwoo
  • 14
    Font - CreativeHandle In high-school I worked at a fancier restaurant as a busboy. Part of the job was taking the huge bins of food waste out to the dumpster. I went out one time only to see that the entire dumpster was filled with leftover giblets of food and other Not wanting nasty c to overfill the dumpster I went inside to my manager to see what he wanted to do. He told me to climb up into the dumpster and squash that nastiness down with my feet to make more room. I looked at him (probably w
    via u/CreativeHandle
  • 15
    Font - SanchoMandoval I once had to sell the guy's truck on eBay. Also I had to manage his fantasy football team so he'd impress his own boss by winning the league (fantasy football is something I absolutely hate but paradoxically am good at). This was all while I was supposedly working as a network engineer. Luckily I no longer work there.
    via u/SanchoMandoval
  • 16
    Font - itsalongstory My boss asked me to make the website one pixel wider. ↑ 26 Share [deleted] Did you do it? 15 Share itsalongstory. Of course. I'm paid to do, not to think.
    via u/itsalongstory
  • 17
    Font - Billy BBone I was implementing a web customer feedback form. One of the questions was "Where are you visiting from?". My boss asked me to make this a popup with the values: USA, England, Japan and "Third World". Being from Canada, I didn't take too kindly to this. I ended up implementing a list of all of the countries recognized by the UN, displayed in their native languages, with accents and everything.
    via u/BillyBBone
  • 18
    Font - Race the new golf carts to find out which was the fastest. Thinking back it may have been a good idea since his boss was a little on the heavier side and may not have been able to make it up some of the larger hills on campus without one of the more powerful carts.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 19
    Font - andrewsmith1986. My boss would force me to take back anything. I was a butcher. You could leave your newly bought meat in the sun for a week and bring it back and you would get the same amount for free.
    via u/andrewsmith1986
  • 20
    Font - rottinguy He asked me if he could borrow 10 bucks for lunch, I said sure just stop by my desk and pick it up. Then he asked if I could just email it to him, cuz he was in a hurry.
    via u/rottinguy
  • 21
    Font - micahi21 Four years ago at my previous job the local management team wanted to have our intranet-based employee reference and training site documented for review. I was the lucky person tasked with "printing the intranet" because I was "good with computers." I agreed to the task after protesting that it was the wrong solution to the problem. 3000+ pages of following every single link on every single page and printing.... it took me two and a half days. I imagine the task was similar print
    via u/micahi21
  • 22
    Font - As an act of defiance and disgust I found a copy of a Dilbert cartoon where the secretary is asked to print the Internet out and put it in binders. In the end they only used the first 100 pages of the documents I had printed. It was an amazingly dumb way to waste my time and a couple of toner cartridges.
    via u/micahi21
  • 23
    Font - Second Class Petty Officer ordered me to vacuum all the toner out of the hopper in the copier. Then, when the toner fried the Electrolux, she said she was going to book me for destruction of government property. She was a stupid idiot.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 24
    Font - wicket146 My first year interning in an IT office when I was 18. One of my bosses wanted me to organize all the different electronic cables we had. That's not the dumb part though, he didn't want to waste twist ties. So instead he had me cut up old CAT5 cables and use the wires as twist ties. Beat that.
    via u/wicket146
  • 25
    Font - diamond At my previous job, I was developing software for an embedded Linux platform. So, naturally, I ran Linux on my computer. They told me to wipe it and install Windows, so that I could effectively write Test Protocols in Word format. facepalm
    via u/diamond
  • 26
    Font - busstopboxer Little late to the party... Had a client come back to me asking that I rewrite part of a job description I'd written for them; they wanted the language simplified so that it was more easy to read for potential applicants with poor English language skills. The sentence in question went something like this: Candidates must be able to demonstrate native level fluency in English...
    via u/busstopboxer
  • 27
    Font - [deleted] I worked at an internet marketing company in Hollywood a few years back, and the owner of the company was in his sixties, and he had married into money. He started the company to keep himself busy during the day, and didn't really know much at all about the internet. He would always ask us to "get YouTube on the phone" so they could send someone down to film us working and put it online. That has to take the cake for me...
    via [deleted]
  • 28
    Font - MHam 1. Clean the vacuum with another vacuum 2. Wash and dry the recycling box (only used for paper) 3. Use WD-40 to 'clean' rubber hoses 4. Perform maintenance on the computer (by wiping it down with a damp cloth)
    via u/MHam
  • 29
    Font - [deleted] I have a supervisor who always asks me to make him Excel documents. When I ask him for the parameters he comes to my desk and makes me watch for 5-15 minutes as he draws a picture of an Excel chart. He has also made me drawings of PowerPoint presentations.
    via u/deleted
  • 30
    Font - 13374L We work with copiers and printers. My boss asked me to set up a customer's machine so that incoming faxes were forwarded to email. I told my boss that he would have to have a fax board installed on the machine to do this. He insisted did not, as the machine was capable of forwarding to email. He's worked in this industry for 25 years. Yes, you need to plug the machine into the phone jack if you want to receive a fax on it.
    via u/13374L
  • 31
    Font - + [deleted] My boss once asked me to never speak under any circumstances.
    via u/deleted
  • 32
    Font - artivan Once my boss picked up the phone (not looking at the caller ID) walked across the store and asked me to answer it.
    via u/artivan
  • 33
    Font - nuxi To assume the test is wrong and simply change the expected result to match what the program returned. BTW this was a safety critical embedded system.
    via u/nuxi
  • 34
    Font - satman33 I used to do service and installation work for a small company with one van as a service truck. The owner called me into the office one day and informed me that we would only buy gas from a station 5 miles from the store, near his home. He had made a deal with the owner to buy all his gas from him and would receive a five cent per gallon discount. I tried my best to reason with him and explain that we would burn more gas going across town to fill up than he was saving. He would h
    via u/satman33
  • 35
    Font - [deleted] I'm an editor at a publishing company. My boss told me I was responsible (from that day on) to ensure that the communal lunch table was crumb-free every day, in case he decided to work there.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 36
    Font - [deleted] Not wear shorts in a work area that was 90F and 100% humidity...for "safety" reasons...when he couldn't name any potential safety concern. heat stroke anyone?
    via u/[deleted]

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