15+ Managers who had bizarre employees: 'We had to throw away the last 2 hours of product...$650,000 estimated cost'

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 3, 2026 11:00 AM EST

These managers are spilling the stories of the employees who made them gasp with their ridiculousness. 

In this world, you will come across a lot of people. Some will be smarter than you, others not so much. Somehow, we frequently end up with the world's dimmest bulbs as our coworkers, as you may know if you've worked, well, anywhere. 

Some workers simply cannot follow the rules — they don't even attempt to. It's like they walked in on day one and just started working with 0 instruction. Rule book? We don't know her! 

This type of employee can be absolutely infuriating to work with. You can correct them, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Managers can correct them, and even impose consequences, but some workers are absolutely resistant to learning even the simplest tasks. 

These bosses get so fed up with their workers making huge, and often costly, workplace mistakes. There are times when workers have done things that are so wrong and so inexcusable that they have to be fired. I think a lot of employees take things lightly, but if you lie to your boss even once, for example, how could that boss ever trust you again? Or if you're so late all the time that you've gotten reprimanded time and time again, and then you're late on an important day,  you can't say you weren't warned about the consequences of your actions. While many bosses will stand up for their workers, a lot of bosses also don't want to deal with the hassle of an employee who only has their self-interest in mind. 

Plus, let's be real, some misdeeds are truly irreversible! Just ask the boss who had to clean up the mess after an employee tried to invoice one client… yet managed to send all the clients everyone's invoices. Oh. My. Gosh. Can you even imagine messing up that badly in front of all your colleagues and your bosses? Just humiliating. You just have to quit the job at that point (if you're not fired within like, a millisecond of the boss discovering your mistake). And that's not even the worst offense, as you can read about down below with these unbelievable tales from managers who have face-palmed hard over their employees' mishaps. 

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  • 01
    Woman in pink shirt sits on couch and looks unhappily at woman across from her who holds a clipboard
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02
    lluewhyn When trying to print out invoices to send to a customer, they printed out every invoice for every customer into a single PDF and sent it to them. That customer now got to see all of our other customer and how much we were charging them.
    via u/lluewhyn
  • 03
    Ok_Mention_98... Last week someone didn't notice their metal scoop go into a industrial mixer, and didn't think the loud machine g in like noise was bad enough to inform anyone so they ran it like that until someone else ran up and shut it off while walking by.
    via u/Ok_Mention_9865
  • 04
    1-The entire production line was shut down for 6 hours to do a deep clean. 2-Maintenance had to tear down the mixer and grind down the mixing blades 3-We had to replace the pump and the injector heads (the machine injected creme filling into snack cakes)
    via u/Ok_Mention_9865
  • 05
    4-had to throw away the last two hours of product because we cant take any chances with that getting into food and we couldn't pinpoint for sure when he did it Around $650,000 estimated cost to the company in down time, lost product, and parts.
    via u/Ok_Mention_9865
  • 06
    And that is just the newest thing to happen not even the worst.
    via u/Ok_Mention_9865
  • 07
    Rude_Bat890 One guy "accidentally" deleted an entire week's worth of reports right before a big presentation. The panic was real, and I'm still not sure if it was sabotage or just pure incompetence.
    via u/Rude_Bat890
  • 08
    SuperTulle New dishwasher put the glasses in with the opening upwards. When they came out full of water he insisted that our dishwasher was broken.
    via u/SuperTulle
  • 09
    donorcycle This isn't the worst but I still think about it time to time. Had an employee who let us know she had a passing in the family, wanted to know about bereavement et all. She hadn't been there long enough but I told her to take her time, handle what she needed and I'd still pay her accordingly.
    via u/donorcycle
  • 10
    She took the week off, returned back to work, of course we all checked on her to make sure she's okay. Said she was still struggling so a few more days of leaving work early, couple days she couldn't come in as her and her family were still trying to cope with the loss. "I'm just glad my mother got to spend 12 wonderful years with Barry."
    via u/donorcycle
  • 11
    Me - "Barry was a child?! I'm so sorry you lost your brother." Her - "Oh no, Barry lived to be an old man." Barry turned out to be a poodle.
    via u/donorcycle
  • 12
    notyourgurl2222 Sent me a meme in the middle of a performance review and it was actually funnier than my joke.
    via u/notyourgurl2222
  • 13
    whiskerbiscuit2 1. They forgot their keys back at base 2. They returned to base far earlier than expected 3. When questioned said he'd done all the work much quicker than expected despite not having the keys to enter the site
    via u/whiskerbiscuit2
  • 14
    4. The next day, the customer complains the worker never came to the site 5. Check the gps tracker on his vehicle, he indeed did not enter the site. 6. Confronted him, he calls me and the customer a liar. His version, he did attend the site, which had been left unlocked, and
    via u/whiskerbiscuit2
  • 15
    the gps tracker failed to track him because it's sh software that doesn't work, and even questioning him about it is unprofessional and grounds for a tribunal and also the customer is lying too. 7. Didn't show up to work the next day or ever again.
    via u/whiskerbiscuit2
  • 16
    Zeruvi Team leader. Couple come to mind: -In a team with a static shift roster (as in, you have the same pattern of shifts across a ~7 week rotation), dude took an out of state trip on the night of his first shift. Afternoon shift pulled an extra few hours until I could get back in to cover, can't even remember how
    via u/Zeruvi
  • 17
    we covered the rest of the shifts I was so tired. -One job we genuinely didn't have work to do, corporate forgot us. Was an hour of low effort crop and 11 hours "security" monitoring, except there were actual security staff already doing that, we were an extra redundant layer that was never needed. Some of the
    via u/Zeruvi
  • 18
    team gamed all night, others watched shows, some just slept under their desk. I didn't care but I found out one person was clocking in, doing their hour of work, then straight up going home. At that point I didn't care, we were all waiting to be let go, but that seemed a bit much to me.
    via u/Zeruvi
  • 19
    Lebenmonch Had shellfish for lunch. They were allergic to shellfish, and wanted to find out if they were still allergic. They didn't bring proper medical equipment in case they were, y'know, still allergic.
    via u/Lebenmonch
  • 20
    StoneRiver92 Not the boss, but a witness: an employee ordered food using the company's corporate card and accidentally sent the delivery person straight to the director's office. The box had his name on it and was marked "paid for by the company." He was fired faster than the sauce was delivered.
    via u/StoneRiver92
  • 21
    millenniumtree We had one guy who we STRONGLY suspected of "working" multiple online development jobs simultaneously. Talked very little, took forever to respond, produced code only when I was literally talking to him on voice chat, and he seemed unfamiliar with very basic concepts.
    via u/millenniumtree
  • 22
    What he produced was entry-level, to be very generous. This was before Al, so I imagine a lot more people are doing sh like this today, and potentially getting away with it.
    via u/millenniumtree
  • 23
    N Someone I was supervising "accidentally" spilled a drink all over their laptop and had "forgotten" to back up files. to the server so all the files on her computer were lost. I didn't do anything though because this was right after finding out we were all losing our jobs (I was offered the opportunity to move 3 states over to a small town from a major
    via u/Zoomwafflez
  • 24
    metro and turned it down) like 2 weeks after the CEO had visited the office to assure us he was absolutely not going to close our office and our jobs weren't at risk. So yeah, him and the company could get f ed for all I cared.
    via u/Zoomwafflez
  • 25
    Select-Depende... During a company trip they posted a photo, on Linkedin, of the speedometer of their rental car at 123mph. With a caption something like "Work should know better than to give me a Doge Challenger for a rental car."
    via u/Select-Dependent6640
  • 26
    whitedogsuk Doing some maintenance work on top of a skyscraper. Went to find my other colleague to grab some lunch. Found him sitting on the edge with his feet dangling over the edge with no safety harness.
    via u/whitedogsuk
  • 27
    mooscaretaker Municipal employee - turns out she was working 2 full time positions in two separate towns and pulling 2. full time salaries. She ended up in front of the state board and blacklisted from all govt jobs
    via u/mooscaretaker
  • 28
    Woman in tan sweater holds papers in both hands with tan background
    via A. C. For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 29
    reved 19 One guy once called in sick, but I saw him that same day at the mall... proudly wearing the company polo he forgot. to change out of, holding a Cinnabon like it was a trophy. I didn't even get mad, I was just confused if I was his boss or his babysitter.
    via u/reved19
  • 30
    Infinite-Cry-7989 Printed out a list of their usernames and passwords for customer accounts and left it in the printer in an unsecured area
    via u/Infinite-Cry-7989
  • 31
    bakedspade I worked Food Production at different levels for a few years. One fella tried sending underweight product out. Gone. A woman sent to help out in a time I couldn't realistically achieve everything needed tried to send sub par samples. Gone.
    via u/bakedspade
  • 32
    A bunch of other reasons within the same industry, handling food without wearing gloves, picking uncovered product from the floor, using incorrect ingredients as substitutes.
    via u/bakedspade

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