'[I] caused a 30,000+ order backup': 30+ Employees who had strange and unexpected days at work

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 21, 2023 11:00 AM EST

Some days at work will stick in your head more than others. If you're working hundreds of days each year, you probably won't recall what you were doing on some random Tuesday in April. What you'd definitely remember are the days that caught you off guard. Maybe you walked into the office and suddenly saw that the big boss chose that day for a surprise visit. Perhaps you'd recall the day that a customer made a giant deal with your company, leading to a huge celebration. 

When u/Voraxia had an unbelievable day at work, it was because they accidentally sold negative one car. They didn't sell any vehicles that day at their dealership, and then a customer returned a car. That's tough. The OP asked others to share what their most unbelievable work days were like, and the answers ranged from funny to shocking. Many other people who answered were employees who had commission-based jobs. Some others were from office or retail backgrounds (like the dude who accidentally let 30,000 orders pile up). 

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  • One particularly funny story is the guy who sold a fossilized pastry to a customer. You know the kind: at some pastry shops, they'll have one display muffin or croissant that's sprayed with a chemical to make it last a long time. These pastries let the customers get a good idea of the tasty treats they're about to order. And one guy somehow managed to sell the old, hard-as-a-rock sample pastry to a customer! If there was ever a time to insist on a full refund, this would be it. 

    Next, check out these students who pulled off some really impressive senior pranks, like the teens who stuck “25,000 plastic forks in the football field.” 

  • 01
    Today at work, I sold -1 cars. Reddit, what things have happened at your jobs that you just did not think were possible? A lady came in and threw the keys to the car she bought Saturday and left. Her lawyer came in and produced a sheet signed by a judge declaring her mentally incompetent 6 months ago and her son has power of attorney in regards to money management. He wasn't present Saturday and obviously we didn't
    via u/Voraxia
  • 02
    know she was bat crazy, because hey, how often does that happen in a dealership? I guess she just decided it'd be great fun to buy a car randomly. She was actually a really nice person when you came in. Today however, she seemed about 2 seconds away from beginning to froth at the mouth.
    via u/Voraxia
  • 03
    Chefbexter I cooked a lobster tail in the microwave and the bartender called me and my co-worker out into the dining room so the customer could tell us it was the best he had ever eaten and, "Red Lobster has nothing on you!" In our defense, there should have been 5 cooks and there were only 2 of us, and the oven and steamer were both broken, so everything got microwaved that day.
    via u/Chefbexter
  • 04
    Lotus Flare I work as a software developer at a very large online retailer. I tested a system I was working on for 15 minutes and caused a 30,000+ order backup. It wasn't supposed to be possible. I found a way.
    via u/Lotus Flare
  • 05
    LakeWashington I was one of the signors of a 500+ million deal between GE and another company. I just happened to be in the room. during the signing setting up a PC and they needed a witness.
    via u/LakeWashington
  • 06
    96 gypsyblue You've probably heard the phrase, 'like yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theatre' to describe the onset of utter pandemonium, yeah? This is in fact not true. We had an electrical fire in one of the projection booths while I was working at a very busy (20-screen) theatre. All of us employees had to go around to the individual cinemas to announce that there was a fire in the building and everyone had to stay calm and follow evacuation instructions.
    via u/gypsyblue
  • 07
    No one really moved. The films were still running (except the one with the fire in the projection booth) and people were extremely reluctant to leave, even though we TOLD THEM THERE WAS A FIRE. tl;dr if you yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, people will probably just sit there like idiots because they want to see the end of their film.
    via u/gypsyblue
  • 08
    oseary I was told--just yesterday, actually--that at the next management meeting, I have to give an hour presentation on how to use Google and its related services. IT is cubicle
    via u/oseary
  • 09
    MsDigbyChickenCaesar I work as a background actor in TV and films--a minimum wage job where talking to an actor on set could get you fired (which has happened to many of my friends.) One day I was sat next to Jimmy Smits in a bar scene, and tried to keep to myself. Next thing I know, my brand new and completely silenced phone is ringing. I didn't know the alarm would go off even if everything was set to silent. I ran out of the room, only to return to one of the other actors in the scene
    via u/MsDigbyChickenCaesar
  • 10
    saying I should be fired. Jimmy Smits then stands up and announces to the room, "I'm sorry my phone rang, everyone, but I had to take it. It was my agent." He gave me a little nod as he sat down, and saved my job. TL;DR: Jimmy Smits saved my job, and proved there are nice celebrities out there.
    via u/MsDigbyChickenCaesar
  • 11
    goldy496 I work at a Sharis restaurant, which is basically like a regional IHOP in the PNW. In our front display case with fresh pies, we also had a tray of caramel pecan cinnamon rolls that were at least four years old, because they were sprayed with food preservatives and other stuff. Calcified/hardened, impossible to do anything with. Apparently, we had a host (was eventually fired for good reason) that sold one of those rolls to a customer. A lady
    via u/goldy496
  • 12
    asked him for a roll, and pointed at the one in the display case. Instead of telling her that those rolls were for display purposes only, he apparently took the tray into the back of the kitchen (how no one noticed is beyond me) and hacked at it with a steak knife and god knows what else. He boxes the roll up, and sells it to the lady - meanwhile no one has noticed that the tray of rolls in the front display case is gone. Several hours later, this lady calls back and demands to speak with a mana
    via u/goldy496
  • 13
    Apparently she had no idea what she was supposed to do with this "fossil" Was she supposed to call the health department, the police, or what? I don't think she tried to eat it, though reportedly she microwaved it and it started smoking. Needless to say, we gave her a full refund, as well as a free pack of cinnamon rolls. You'd think the guy cutting into it would have realized that if it takes that much effort to cut into the rolls, there's probably something amiss.
    via u/goldy496
  • 14
    tl;dr an ex-coworker sold fossilized cinnamon rolls to a customer.
    via u/goldy496
  • 15
    FerdThe PenguinGuy I worked in a movie theater that sold giant pretzels. We had a display to advertise these pretzels, but the pretzels in that display were rubber and glued down. Some idiot trainee managed to break open the case (which was bolted shut), pull the glued rubber pretzel off of the tray, microwave it, butter it, salt it, and give it to the customer without a second thought. Said customer took a bite out of the
    via u/FerdThe PenguinGuy
  • 16
    pretzel, and promptly returned it. For the next two months, we had a rubber pretzel with a giant bite mark taken out of it sitting in the display.
    via u/FerdThe PenguinGuy
  • 17
    jakegrubbs19 I am a bank teller, and one day when balancing out my drawer I came up $30 short. Our policy says any outage over $25, long or short, results in a write-up. I was looking franticly hoping to find it, I've only been at my job for 3 months I didn't want to be wrote up. After 30 minutes of searching every possible reason for why I would be short $30, I pilled up what my
    via u/jakegrubbs19
  • 18
    computer read for my tills, it said I had $980 in fifties. $980! In fifty dollar bills! I bring this to the attention of my boss so we could correct it. She confirmed that was the reason I was short.
    via u/jakegrubbs19
  • 19
    [deleted] We had a manning shortage and I ended up working in the fore-ends of a submarine and firing torpedoes worth over $6.5 million. I know that in the movies it looks like the captain fires a torpedo by pressing a button in the control room, but in fact it only sends a signal to the forward torpedo room where a guy (in this case me) operates a handle with a small button on the top (like the hand-break on an old car) that actually propels them out of
    via u/[deleted]
  • 20
    the tube with a burst of compressed air. I 'fired' 6 Mk-48s that day worth (I was told at the time) $1.1 million each. Of course the expenditure was not actually so high because they were retrieved.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    [deleted] Customer Service rep here. Someone actually called back to thank me and told me I did a good job. I about burst into tears!
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    4scoresn7yrsago I work at a computer repairs shop and a kid came in looking for a heatsink. I showed him where it was and he said thanks and walked out without paying. I even said "Have a nice day."
    via u/4scoresn7yrsago
  • 23
    CherrySlurpee If I'm 5 minutes early for my job, I'm considered late. understands No one how time works.
    via u/CherrySlurpee
  • 24
    BrokenSea I wrote a novel during work hours using a work PC. Researching it using work internet access and printing draft copies for line editing on work printers. I'm now working on my second novel in the same cubicle and recently got a 5% payrise.
    via u/BrokenSea
  • 25
    I work for the (not US) government and for some reason the amount of work required by me is about one eighth of the hours I am contracted to be at work. I take breaks when I feel like it and no one cares when I turn up or when I go home. I have five managers.
    via u/BrokenSea
  • 26
    Wadka I used to work at SEARS back in college, and we were on commission in lawn and garden. One month we had a MASSIVE storm, with trees down all over town. Some people were looking at weeks to get out of their driveways, etc, if they waited on the city to clear. So they would get out on to a main road and get a ride down to our place, figuring they'd buy some chains to yank the tree out of the way, or a chainsaw to cut it up, or
    via u/Wadka
  • 27
    something equally imminently reasonable. In theory. Once they got home, they realized their Honda Civic wasn't going to pull that 40 foot tree anywhere, or that they didn't actually know how to use a chainsaw (blade oil, fuel mixture, etc.). The city was actually incredibly good at getting stuff cleared, so most of this got returned on me (I think we had a 1-month window where it could take our commission back). So I come in to work and clock in that weekend, and I'm something like -$1,500 on my
    via u/Wadka
  • 28
    ✪ [deleted] I overcharged a guy $20,000 on a credit card. He had a bill for $2,222 and I charged him $22,222. I had no idea a credit card machine would accept that much, let alone that anybody has a spending limit over $20,000 on a credit card.
    via u/ [deleted]
  • 29
    told him what happened after I found out over the weekend from the accounting department what I just did. So I called the guy and told him we were going to reimburse the $20k. His reply: "oh that's embarrassing. I didn't even notice it was missing." Turns out he was a former Google VP.
    via u/ [deleted]
  • 30
    roflharris I used to work at McDonald's. When they were paying the manager's their regular bonuses, they put it to F. Lastname and got me (Franky Lastname) instead of the actual manager (Freddy Lastname). I saw it, let them know, and they reversed the payment so I wouldn't pay tax on it. I never got the honesty reward they promised, but I did get a paycheck for "$-176.00" which I have framed at home as a memory of my three years there.
    via u/roflharris
  • 31
    numbers. No one had ever seen someone start that much in the hole on a single day.... Worst day of my retail career....
    via u/roflharris
  • 32
    Mathlete86 A buddy of mine accidentally added a $5 million excavating truck to our warehouse inventory. The way our stocking system was set up, each part had a unique code of 2 letters followed by 4 numbers. Anyway, he was adjusting some returned parts back into our inventory and meant to adjust a certain part back in but entered a letter wrong. The part he meant to put in the system was about $12 and the part that was 1
    via u/Mathlete86
  • 33
    letter different was a $5 million truck. Company policy was that we could only adjust up to $500 in inventory and had to report all adjustments over $300. Anything higher had to be done by people in the front office. Needless to say, people kind of threw a fit when they saw a random extra $5 million in inventory with no explanation. We all had a laugh about it, though. One of the rare good times there.
    via u/Mathlete86
  • 34
    [deleted] Well on a more positive note... I am in college to become a special education teacher but I currently work part-time in a special education classroom as a paraprofessional. We had a six year old girl with autism last year- sweetest kid in the world, but she didn't speak. Her mom had given up, and eventually she split and left her daughter in foster care. Luckily a foster family in the area took her, so we were able to continue working. She was working well with a speech device, and tha
    via u/[deleted]
  • 35
    for her teacher... but not for me. I tried to get her to speak at every opportunity. June rolls around and it's the last 2 weeks of school. She's come a long way and done so much, but still hasn't said a word in her life. We're outside, playing in the grass, and I ask her "Jane, what's your favorite color?". I expected the mechanical voice of the touchpad, but instead she deliberately pointed to the sky and said "Blueee".
    via u/[deleted]
  • 36
    I cried, the other paraprofessional cried, and we called her foster parents so they could cry too. We never dreamed that would happen, but it did. She's doing very well this year and has a vocabulary of about 20 words. I babysat for her over the summer and her 5th word was "friend", in reference to me.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 37
    I work as a server and have ended up losing money on more than a few shifts. I come in, order myself a burger, then don't earn enough in tips to pay for it. So I leave work that day with negative income.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 38
    sleeping_gecko Working the Customer Service booth at a grocery store. I answer the phone: "Hello, 'Grocery, this is sleeping_gecko speaking, how may I help you?" "I'm 81 years old, and I trusted you!" "I'm sorry, ma'am, what happened? What went wrong?"
    via u/sleeping_gecko
  • 39
    Over the course of an hour and multiple phone calls, an elderly woman cussed me out and called my credibility into question because she purchased oranges that did not meet her highest standards. Not only was she upset that the oranges were not tasty (I immediately offered her a total refund, exchange, refund and exchange, etc), she accused me of pulling a bait and switch scam. In her words,
    via u/sleeping_gecko
  • 40
    "What is this? You put out the good oranges, then when someone tells all their friends to buy them, you put out the ?!" "I'm sorry, ma'am, that you had a negative citrus experience, but I can assure you there was no intent to trick or deceive you." "YOU KNOW_...... WELL WHAT YOU'RE DOING DOWN THERE!!!!!!" tl;dr: I didn't think it was possible to be cussed out by an 81 year old woman I had never met regarding oranges.
    via u/sleeping_gecko
  • 41
    franzyfunny One of our students rang me just after the birth of his first daughter and asked me to phonetically spell out her Arabic name for her birth certificate so that people would pronounce it correctly when reading it in English. TL;DR Got to name someone's kid!
    via u/franzyfunny
  • 42
    THE_Aft_i09_Giz about 4 years ago, a guy at work accidently ordered 1 billion barrels of oil through our maintenance MRO system; sadly, if we would have actually ordered that, we'd be billionaires right now
    via u/THE_Aft_i09_Giz
  • 43
    bdepz Spent an entire 8 hour shift at papa johns without making a single pizza. no wonder they shut down.
    via u/bdepz
  • 44
    proto_ziggy I started a garage sale with 9 couches, and ended the day with 11 and an extra bed. Worst garage sale ever!
    via u/proto_ziggy
  • 45
    noburdennyc Most of harlington texas called us to tell us off for taking the cowboys off the air. The local news put our number up in error as the number to file complaints for NFL coverage.
    via u/noburdennyc
  • 46
    Damocles2010 When I was going through college I used to work nights as a security guard on a factory site. The afternoon shift workers left at 11pm and I was alone the rest of the night. Monday night - my first shift - factory fire at midnight... Fire brigage thinks someone may have triggered a fire with welding sparks...
    via u/Damocles2010
  • 47
    Tuesday night - grass fire at the back of the factory at 1am... FB think it might have been kids smoking near the railway line... Wednesday evening - before afternoon shift leave - car catches fire in the staff carpark...5 minutes after I start shift at 3pm. Thursday night - fire in the lunchroom - just after staff leave at 11pm. Friday morning- I get a call that they don't want me back cause they think I like fires.... Wasn't me - honestly....
    via u/Damocles2010
  • 48
    HereToLearn Computers Returned cars would probably happen a lot more often if more people realized that most high-pressure sales contracts can be nullified within 3 days of agreement - at least where I live. P.S. Notice how a lot/some of times you sign for a car, they need a few days to "get it ready" before you take it home? I'm not saying that's why, but it's possible.
    via u/HereToLearn Computers
  • 49
    Miss_rampage I know that feel!!! I sold cosmetics at Macy's for commission, and had a daily goal. I come in for a 3 hour shift, with a goal of approximately $100. Apparently I'd had some returns earlier in the day, because I clocked in with -$1000. I ended the day around -$900. Feels bad man.
    via u/Miss_rampage
  • 50
    timasuprema I worked at Subway and a guy got mustard on his meatball sub. I thought that was the weirdest thing ever until I got a customer who wanted every kind of sauce on his meatball sub. He got mustard, spicy mustard, sweet onion sauce, vinaigrette, literally EVERYTHING. I didn't think it was possible for someone's taste buds to malfunction so severely.
    via u/timasuprema
  • 51
    BickNlinko That happened to me one time when I was selling cars. An old man came in and bought a car off of me. A few days later his son came in with some documents saying we had to take the car back because he was nuts. What makes it worse is that my lunatic sales manager knew this guy was nuts and that this would happen and proceeded with the sale anyway. I got charged back like $250.
    via u/BickNlinko
  • 52
    gman4757 This wasn't me, but I was there to witness it: A few years back, I was in a Gamestop, perusing whatever console's section when all of a sudden I hear kind of a quiet laughter, and one employee whispering to another to get over there, he needed to see something. Apparently, a lady had been trading in some old PS1 games, and they were so unpopular, obscure, bad or whatever, that instead of earning whatever paltry sum
    via u/gman4757
  • 53
    in trade-in value ps1 games are worth, she actually owed them a penny. Everyone working went over and took a picture of the screen that showed it, because nobody had seen anything like that, and they couldn't believe it. tl;dr-lady trades in games, owes gamestop money
    via u/gman4757
  • 54
    SURAD Apositivebalance I too work at a dealership. A guy with an OBVIOUSLY fake drivers license came in to purchase a car one Saturday afternoon. Identity theft is a big deal around here and we called the police to see if we should send him packing or let them come pick him up. Surprisingly enough we had a squad car at the store within 10 minutes and the customer sitting in the back seat.
    via u/Apositivebalance
  • 55
    The cops ran his ID through their database and found out this guy actually MADE A FAKE COPY OF HIS OWN DRIVERS LICENSE BECAUSE HE LOST HIS REAL ONE. This license was near transparent, it reeked of fake. So the cops let the guy out of the car and tell him to go to the DMV and he says "can I still buy the car"?
    via u/Apositivebalance
  • 56
    elizabethmeghan I am a Dental Hygienist. My 8:30 patient cancelled this morning and I found myself at Burger King's drive through exchanging the regular coke my boss received with the diet coke-no-ice he was supposed to receive. Small, I know, but I did not graduate college and get licensed as an RDH to be someone's personal assistant.
    via u/elizabethmeghan

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