'I never thought anyone could actually fall for that': 30+ Empty-headed employees who made the silliest mistakes on the job

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Feb 6, 2024 11:00 AM EST

Not everyone can be the employee of the month. Some employees are destined for mediocrity, while others are so dim-witted it makes you wonder how they ever got the job in the first place. These people have been shocked by their own especially goofy coworkers, which they told to the r/askreddit community. U/Colossus252 asked, "What's your story of the dumbest coworker you've ever had the privilege of working with?" and more than 1,100 Redditors revealed their funniest stories. 

There's one at every workplace, no matter which industry you're in. One particularly egregious example was the person who spent weeks making sure their coworker would know how to cover them while they were out of the office. The coworkers swore up and down that she was prepared… only to do absolutely nothing while the OP was out of the office. Not a single thing! This kind of coworker is infuriating to deal with, and many bosses will barely punish a worker for it. 

Check out all of the shocking and hilarious stories these fed-up employees had to share. Then, check out these very silly reasons that managers had to let an employee go, like one worker who got the boot for stealing pancakes. 

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  • 01
    What's your story of the dumbest coworker you've ever had the privilege of working with?
    via u/Colossus252
  • 02
    imhermoinegranger Had someone new start who had some experience. I spent, literally, months repeating myself about the most basic and finally had enough so told her if she has trouble remembering she should write things down...you know, like normal people would. She then proceeded to call me in pig-Latin to her friend over the phone in a earshot of me. I stepped out to call my S/O half laughing because this 44 year old grown woman used pig-
    via u/imhermoinegranger
  • 03
    Latin thinking I, a 25 year old at the time, wouldn't understand what she was saying. Did I mention her job was easy? She took less than a quarter of my work load. I could do her job in an hour. Main reason she was hired was so that whenever I was on leave/vacation there was someone there to do my work without it being stressful and vice versa. She lasted in the job 9 months. 9 months too long.
    via u/imhermoinegranger
  • 04
    estral23 Worked at a retail store. One gentleman who had been working there for a few years was working the register. We sold big appliances. A couple comes in to buy a washer and dryer with cash -- $100 bills. My co-worker marks every bill with one of those counterfeit pens. If the bills are fake, it will be a dark color and if they are real they will be yellowish. Well, every one turned black and he called the police. Police came. Turns out my coworker used a permanent marker and not the count
    via u/estral23
  • 05
    moocal She had no sense of diet and that's fair, some people don't get that information. Sadly, she was then diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and decided to make MAJOR changes. First, she was going to eat more fruit and less candy. So she came into work and saw that I was tired and said "MOOCAL! You look tired, that's low blood sugar (it was 4:30am) here have some fruit." She opens
    via u/moocal
  • 06
    her purse which is completely filled with Laffy Taffy banana flavor. She also switched to only drinking Orange soda all day, again the fruit. She was constantly having blood sugar issues and wouldn't listen any of us idiots about how she's just piling sugar into herself. It was fruit you dummies.
    via u/moocal
  • 07
    wenhaver I worked with this woman who was just... gah. We got this new software and workflow, which I mostly trained myself on because only one person knew how it worked. In turn, I was tasked with training the rest of my department on it. I had a training session, and this woman attended. She didn't get it. So I had another training session for people who couldn't make the first one, and she attended again. Still didn't get it. I sat with her at least three times to train again, using different
    via u/wenhaver
  • 08
    that we'd find something helpful for her to learn this material. She thinks maybe she gets it. The time comes when I'm about to go on vacation for a week and a half, and in order to keep the project on track this woman has to use this new workflow (which is 6 months old at this point). HAS TO. She insists that she's got it, and doesn't need any other help. I didn't trust that she was telling the truth, so I spent a ton of time documenting the every loving out of this process. Annotated screensho
    via u/wenhaver
  • 09
    clear, very basic instructions broken down to a level that would make anyone else crazy in their specificity. I spent an hour going over this document with her before I left, and she swears she gets it, and if she forgets these instructions are perfect and clear. Ok, then. I go on vacation. When I get back, nothing has been done. Nothing. She didn't know how to use the software because I never trained her properly. I pulled up the documentation, and asked her if she could pinpoint
    via u/wenhaver
  • 10
    where she got stuck so that I could revise the instructions to be clearer and talk her through the process from that point. Oh, she didn't look at the documentation. She didn't even try to do anything because she didn't know how to do it. Why didn't she look at the documentation? SHE DOESN'T READ. I clarify: you can't read? Oh, no, she can read. SHE CHOOSES NOT TO. She did nothing for a week and a half because she just.. doesn't read.
    via u/wenhaver
  • 11
    I got written up for "making her feel bad" when I said "what do you mean, you choose not to read? How is that even a thing?".
    via u/wenhaver
  • 12
    AiryNan We had an invoice that needed to be paid within 120 days, dated a few months back. She pulled up a calendar and started counting days one by one. She looked at me and said "are we really about to count to 120?" I took the calendar and added up the days in each month, plus the day of the month it currently was. She looked at me wide eyed and very genuinely said "wow you're really smart."
    via u/AiryNan
  • 13
    I_throw_socks_at_cat A call centre job. New employees coming in all the time, because the old ones quit so fast. (It was a legitimately awful job.) He finished a week-long training programme with the rest of his incoming class. The GM came in to congratulate them all, give a short speech, etc. Our guy announced to the entire class, and the man running the company, that he hadn't had lunch yet -- then pulled out a burger and started munching on it.
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
  • 14
    His first day of actual work, he left for two hours in the middle of the day to open a bank account. Without telling anyone. These were just the things I heard about. There were more. At the end of his 60-day trial period he was informed that his services wouldn't be needed and he was free to pursue other employment opportunities. He got down on
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
  • 15
    his knees, crying, and begged for another chance. The HR lady was so embarrassed, she gave him one. The next day he got into a screaming argument with a customer over the definition of a word, and had to be dragged away from his desk by security because he wouldn't go willingly and he was audible to other customers calling for help.
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
  • 16
    throwawayjoe1997 I've told this one before, still memorable. I was working at a Thai restaurant as a frontman. Most people there were from Southeast Asia, and they needed someone who spoke fluent English. One day, one of the managers asked me, in busted-up English, to help cut chicken. Not too much instruction. So, I followed the other sous-chef's example. As I was about to learn, that was too thick.
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 17
    Chicken Lady came back in, saw me, and lost it. Started screaming, holding up fistfuls of raw chicken, "You cut da chicky too thick!!", and even threw some pieces on the floor. I could see customers coming to the front, and I told her I have to take their orders, but she blocked the exit and kept ranting. Next, she paced around the kitchen grumbling and pulling at her hair with her raw chicken covered hands, ignoring the line of customers. Eventually, she sent the sous chef-who didn't speak Engl
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 18
    stir a big pot of soup for the rest of the day. As I was stirring this soup, she went back to pacing, while and moaning. She looked at the chicken on the cutting board, then at me, and said "we can't let (the boss) see this." She then picked up some slices of chicken, tossed them onto the drain in the middle of the floor, and started waffle-stomping them through the grate. I told her to stop it and grow up, and she shot back with "Back to pot!" and continued to stomp the chicken down the drain.
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 19
    stomped a good handful or two of chicken down the drain, it clogged, and liquid started pooling around the grate. So, what did she do? She waddled over to the kitchen sink, and started mashing pieces of chicken down the sink drain. For the rest of the day, she kept coming up to me and holding pieces of chicken inches away from my face and shouting some gibberish about how thick they were. Eventually, she pulled out more chicken and started hacking away at it with a cleaver, she kept saying "If (
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 20
    'you're fired!' is what he would say!" Eventually, the soup I was stirring started to burn. I tried a few times to turn it off and start the dishes, but when I turned off the burner the soup was on, Chicken Lady came charging back in screeching "Back to pot! Back to pot!". When our boss came back, we were running low on chicken, the soup was ruined, and none of the dishes were done. Oh, and remember the sous chef who didn't speak English? She was having a terrible day, trying to communicate with
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 21
    The manager tried to cover her, but our boss went through the security footage and saw the whole thing. He told the sous chef and I we could leave early, and we heard them shouting in some language I couldn't understand as we left. Apparently, when you jam raw chicken into drain pipes, it starts to smell, and the health inspector paid us a visit the next day. Then Chicken Lady got fired. She definitely seemed to have some issues, and I hope she gets the help she needs.
    via u/throwawayjoe1997
  • 22
    Navydoc91 I have no how she even got into the program, we worked in anesthesia. Our supervisor told her she had to get rid of her acrylic nails (for obvious medical reasons, she was told before she started she couldn't have them). To take them off she put nail polish remover in the only cup she could find, which was styrofoam, and put it in the microwave because the heat would make the polish melt
    via u/Navydoc91
  • 23
    faster. Microwave was ruined and she burned all the tips of her fingers. She should not be in a medical field. She also turned to me after completing the basic CPR class and said "do you feel confident saving someone? I don't, how many breaths do we do again? Plus I don't want to put my mouth of someone else's I don't know" (they give us one way valves to carry with us for that purpose, she thought it was a duck call)
    via u/Navydoc91
  • 24
    rem1021 I'm an engineer. I had to explain how parentheses work (in math), to another engineer. He never understood it.
    via u/rem1021
  • 25
    TWITCHAY I worked with a guy who decided to look for a propane leak on the forklift with a lighter. Didn't work with him after that.
    via u/TWITCHAY
  • 26
    Bobs_my_Uncle_Too Summer job during college, working assembly line. My job was to put two screws into each item that came down the line. Everyone else had a similarly mind-numbing task. We'd all have been replaced by robots by now.
    via u/Bobs_my_Uncle_Too
  • 27
    About once a week someone would bring in a rubber snake or spider and put it into a part coming down the line. When the part made it to Janet, Janet would scream. She would pick out the spider with her fingernails and put it on the line next to the part. Then the line would move and the spider would come to me. I would wait until she wasn't looking and throw the spider back up the line to a guy that would put the rubber spider into a part and send it down the line. Janet would scream every time.
    via u/Bobs_my_Uncle_Too
  • 28
    Drumlin Crashtest Kevin. The guy was amazingly accident prone. I worked with him over the course of nearly 2 years, and it was simply amazing to watch. We were environmental field techs, performing field testing work on landfills. He dropped his car keys in to a groundwater monitoring well. I don't even know how you do that, but he managed to do it. There is no way to recover your car keys from a 400 foot deep groundwater monitoring well, and to this day, I do not know if the keys would cause
    via u/Drumlin
  • 29
    the water to come back 'hot', meaning a failed sample. He would forget when he placed his soil or water samples on top of his truck, and would drive off, destroying the samples, meaning he would have to work late to collect them all over again. This was a regular occurrence. I seriously could type up dozens of examples of his stupidity, but I think you get the idea.
    via u/Drumlin
  • 30
    MorasEscritoras I knew a woman that would disinfect her keyboard every morning. Like spray her computer with a "cleaning solution" and wipe it down like she was scrubbing a toilet. Not long after, she complained to IT that several of her keys were no longer working.
    via u/MorasEscritoras
  • 31
    I_throw_socks_at_cat I had a co-worker once who got into the habit of writing notes for herself in sharpie on her CRT screen and later wiping them off with alcohol. (Actually, is co-worker the right word for someone who works at another office, who you've only met once in ten years? Whatever the right word is, she was one of those to
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
  • 32
    me.) She continued doing this after IT switched her over to an LCD screen, which has a plastic membrane instead of glass. After a few days she complained that the image was getting 'wavy'...
    via u/I_throw_socks_at_cat
  • 33
    scrabbleinjury I worked with someone who ate at the workspace we shared before I came in every day. When I complained about her mess and she got called out on it she started leaving sticky notes in the middle of her crumbs telling me I might want to clean the desk because she ate there.
    via u/scrabbleinjury
  • 34
    Bikinigirlout I had a coworker who took credit for what I did. I work at my old high school as a janitor and sometimes I would stay after to blow the bleachers out after I was done with my route. Just for extra money. Well, it got to the point where I was doing it every game. Sometimes I would have to rush through my route just to get HER stuff done and I was starting to get off about it so I started asking the supervisor at the time "Why isn't she working on her route? She was the one who wante
    via u/Bikinigirlout
  • 35
    she should be the one who's supposed to be doing her job." His reply. "Oh, I'll talk to her about it." Never did. A few weeks later we have a meeting and she lies in front of everyone in the office, including the boss and the supervisor who knew she was lying through her teeth. She was like "I'm the only one who helps out around here, I'm the only one who cares about my job. I'm the only one who asks the supervisor if he needs help"
    via u/Bikinigirlout
  • 36
    I was so off about it because the supervisor knew she was lying and thing didn't say a Then me and her had to have a meeting and she blamed it on the fact that she had kids and a disease and it was like, "Everyone here has kids except for me, and I have a disease too and I'm doing your work and my work." She end up quitting a few weeks later because she didn't get the supervisors job after he quit.
    via u/Bikinigirlout
  • 37
    After that, I decided " I'm only doing my work and my work only and then I'm going home," I stopped staying after, I stopped helping other coworkers, I don't talk to new people unless they have been there for awhile, I stopped caring about my job and I'm basically only going now because it's a pay check and it's 15 minutes away from where I live.
    via u/Bikinigirlout
  • 38
    yellowzealot Worked at a home improvement warehouse in the garden section. Had a coworker who would routinely hide in the plastic sheds instead of doing the work he was getting paid to do. Customers would from time to time open up the shed he was hiding in and then he would move to a new shed.
    via u/yellowzealot
  • 39
    Fireball_Ed I worked in a restaurant with a girl who fit the description. One day in the daylight basement where the prep kitchen and walk-in fridge are, she was slicing tomatoes. I came down to get something from the walk-in, and she immediately started yelling at me to shut the door and not let the cold air into the room, that she was freezing, and had been wearing a sweater all
    via u/Fireball_Ed
  • 40
    day. This is winter in Oregon, so yeah it's cold sometimes. Then I notice the window behind her is open. The large, completely open window that is directly behind. her is wide open. She could have fallen out of it. When I mentioned this, she just kind of stared at it for a second and said "oh, yeah, I guess so".
    via u/Fireball_Ed
  • 41
    rockgoddess72 I worked at a small collection agency. They hired an HR person and she was interesting. On Veterans Day, she made a poster to celebrate the employees that were former military. It said something like. "WE HONER AND SALUTE YOU." I emailed her and let her know the poster had "honor" misspelled as "honer". She went on about how she has a college education and I don't and how
    via u/rockgoddess72
  • 42
    dare I. Blah blah blah. Now the email I sent her was to actually help her so she wouldn't be embarrassed. But she was a haughty, I am better than you about it. So I sarcastically conceded and agreed that my lack of college degree proves I am wrong. About 10 minutes later, she fixed the misspelling after several of our veterans pointed out her mistake.
    via u/rockgoddess72
  • 43
    retailzombie87 Worked as overnight stocker at a home improvement store. We had a guy who would operate our order picker; a fork truck with a rising platform instead of forks to put things like water heaters, refrigerators, etc away. Instead of pushing the bulky stock onto the shelves while in the air, he would step onto the shelves and pull the product onto it only to get himself stuck between the beams of
    via u/retailzombie87
  • 44
    the shelf, and the product itself. It would become an almost weekly occurrence where we would have to grab some ladders, climb up the shelf, and get him unstuck. To this day I have no idea why he didn't get his license taken away.
    via u/retailzombie87
  • 45
    ren_egade84 I work at a law firm and one of our legal secretaries was "putting paper in the shredder in the back room" for months before anyone realized she had been feeding paper into one of those big, metal grey electrical boxes that has a hundred warning stickers with lightning bolts all over them indicating a fire and electric shock hazard. (I don't know what the box does tbh)
    via u/ren_egade84
  • 46
    ghoulishgirl Not my story, but my friend used to work at a famous toy store that went out of business years ago. She was a manager and was in the back doing some paper work and an employee nervously approached her saying he wasn't sure if he should take the money a costumer gave him. My friend asked what was wrong with the money
    via u/ghoulishgirl
  • 47
    and he showed it to her, it was black and white, and only was printed on one side. She came out to tell the guy he would not be getting the Playstation he was trying to buy and the guy just snatched it and ran.
    via u/ghoulishgirl
  • 48
    Mathmango I'm on mobile and it's not my story. I'll link the original later. Behold Slingshot Tim: Probably Slingshot Tim, a guy I used to work with, who managed to slingshot himself into an office table during a meeting. Tim was the definition of an unnecessary hire. His dad was one of our most important suppliers at the time, so the boss was forced to hire him for a job he basically couldn't do, but also couldn't ever really be fired for. It was the moron's sweet spot.
    via u/Mathmango
  • 49
    During one meeting with Tim, I saw him lean really far back in his chair during a meeting. Far enough back that the chair started to creak loudly. So far so standard, but Tim had done this maneuver without turning the little thing under the chair to give himself a little slack, so he had to push really hard against the base of the table to stay in his 'casual' position. It looked like a surprising amount of effort; Tim was visibly sweating to stay 'cool'.
    via u/Mathmango
  • 50
    Eventually, Tim couldn't take it anymore, and ended up slipping about two thirds of the way into the meeting. Thanks to physics the lack of tension shot his chair forward, throwing him into the conference table. He took the entire desk to the chest, shaking the projector enough to unplug it from the wall and spilling more than a few cups of coffee. It was the most hilariously loud and stupid thing I've ever seen in a meeting.
    via u/Mathmango
  • 51
    Even people walking by the conference room completely stopped to witness this grown man turn himself into a human catapult. He picked himself up off the floor in a daze, then started hurriedly packing up his stuff amidst uproarious laughter and ran out of the room. I'm not sure if Tim still works there, but I'm definitely sure the legend of Slingshot Tim endures to this day.
    via u/Mathmango
  • 52
    lexaquin Myself! Two summers ago sold drink tickets at a festival, had to do a manual input of the amount on the paying machine (what's that called in English?). Guess which idiot typed a zero too many and made somebody pay 170 dollars for five drinks.
    via u/lexaquin
  • 53
    leex0 Bobby. Working as a valet at a hotel, whenever someone needed their car from the garage we would drive another car to the garage, park it, then bring up the car that was requested.
    via u/leex0
  • 54
    Wasn't much organization so you pretty much would park wherever you could find a spot, then wander around the garage and find the car you were looking for. Bobby was tasked with this one day. Drove to the garage, got out of the car, wandered around for a little bit, then brought back the same car he parked. Because he forgot which one was which.
    via u/leex0
  • 55
    mr_bots Was turning some inspections into the admin who was reading numbers off of an open Excel spreadsheet and adding them on a calculator to get the sum to put into a cell on the same spreadsheet. Jaw hit the floor and I walked away in shock.
    via u/mr_bots
  • 56
    LordKilcullen They worked in the deli attached to the store I work at and two of my favourite stories were when they (repeatedly) cooked chickens with their plastic wrapping still on them, and when taking a full tray of sausages out of the oven they walked to the hot counter, saw it was rather full and instead of moving stuff around to make space just walked straight to the bin and dumped the whole tray. Didn't understand why that wasn't the right thing to do.
    via u/LordKilcullen
  • 57
    TooLazyToBeClever I posted this a few weeks ago, but it still fits: I worked with a girl who was entitled, and dumb, so we used to mess with her. Once I told her we were out of paper and asked her to call up OfficeMaxtm and have them fax us over 100 blank sheets, and charge it to our account.
    via u/TooLazyToBeClever
  • 58
    Then we watched as she tried for a few minutes to convince the worker to fax us paper. Pretty sure she thinks the only reason it didn't work is because the guy wouldn't charge it to our account.
    via u/TooLazyToBeClever
  • 59
    Dr_McKay A new admin assistant in my dad's office sent the same fax 18 times before the recipient called them up to ask why. She replied "I pressed send and the sheet just came back out"
    via u/Dr_McKay
  • 60
    ThisIsAStuckUp I had a coworker once who came into work really upset one night. I asked her what was wrong and she said someone had stolen her identity. I expressed sympathy for her and asked if she knew how it had happened. I had no idea if she had lost her card or there was some sort of data leakage. So she tells me, she's home alone one night when the phone rings. It was an employee from Windows and
    via u/ThisIsAStuckUp
  • 61
    he said that there was something wrong with her Computer and he can help her fix it, he just needed some information to get into her account, so she gave it to him. I never thought anyone could actually fall for that scam.
    via u/ThisIsAStuckUp
  • 62
    MrCrowley007 Overheard a conversation between two of my graveyard guys while looking at an OSHA poster. Guy 1: OSHA? Guy 2: ya, I think they protect the ocean or something. Guy 1: make sense. All this while they are literally starting at a poster explaining OSHA and employee rights.
    via u/MrCrowley007

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