Recently, we wrote about people's wild coworker stories, and the BuzzFeed Community submitted even more stories. Here are the most shocking stories about people's coworkers, along with some answers from the original Reddit thread that were too shocking not to include.
NOTE: There are mentions of violence, murder, drug use, and sexual harassment and molestation.
1. "My hardest working employee, who quickly learned new skills and volunteered for overtime, was the perfect employee until she intentionally ran over her ex-husband in the work parking lot."
"He didn’t die, just a few broken bones."
2. "He murdered someone and went to jail like 15 years ago. He got out I guess a month ago, and added me on Facebook. ... He always seemed so nice!"
3. "The IT department had noticed a huge increase in the company internet usage (this was years ago, when you still paid for the amount used rather than just having an open, unlimited supply). So they started monitoring everyone's browsing habits. The company was pretty cool on 'normal' internet usage, so no shit given for browsing Reddit or social media, etc. Turns out one of the sales guys had downloaded literally terabytes of porn, more than anyone could possibly watch in one lifetime. He received a final, written warning for this as he had been problematic before."
"A few weeks later we have a company event and this brain surgeon proceeds to get obliterated and stick his hand up our female CEO's skirt. Needless to say, he was fired over the weekend and asked to bring his laptop and equipment to the front desk on the Monday morning, which he dutifully does, with an added surprise. When the IT guy goes to inspect his equipment they find that he's curled out a turd on the laptop keyboard and mushed the lid shut. The smell in the office was apocalyptical and everyone was sent home until the place could be aired and cleaned."
4. "Guy came to work on meth apparently and no one really noticed — like, he was a professional meth user. Anyway, he was on forklift duty and he accidentally ran someone over BUT instead of getting out of the forklift to check on the victim, homie and his meth-brain decide that the best course of action is to back up over the body. So now the victim has been run over twice."
"Unclear which time killed him, but he absolutely dies. Guy was arrested and his wife and baby left him. Word is she didn’t know about the meth either. He was in jail last we all knew."
5. "He hid a camera in one of the toilets in the women's room. The cleaner found it. Police were able to identify the culprit by checking the footage. Apparently, he started recording before the camera was set up and thus his face was seen putting the camera in place. Lost his job."
6. "Robbed a cash-free bank and failed to hijack a car to escape. All this in a small town of around 5000 people while wearing the company clothes. There are only 30-ish guys in the company so they found the right guy quite quick. He got off all charges and still works for the company in another town."
7. "I worked for the Mouse as a character. One gal was just...odd. She had zero filter and would just blurt out whatever was floating in her head at the time, and more often than not, it was just MEAN and nasty and unwarranted. She would pride herself on being 'brutally honest' — yeah, one of THOSE. Anyway, one day she simply snapped during a hotel shift. She went over to the buffet, IN CHARACTER, grabbed a fistful of bacon, and almost threw her head off but the lead luckily stopped that in time and escorted her to the back. She was fighting and struggling with the lead, but never let go of the bacon and kept screaming 'BACON' over and over, and started smearing the bacon all over the costume. Lead had to call security. She was fired that day, obviously, and when she was being escorted out, she was acting like nothing had happened saying, 'See you fucks tomorrow, bye!'"
"We heard from the only person kind of close to her that the day before this all happened, her boyfriend broke up with her and she fell apart. After she was fired, she went to his house, broke in, and destroyed his room. I don't know what else happened after that, but yeah...damn. That was wild to see.
(I was Pluto that day, and she was Chip.)"
8. "Coffee shop downtown. We were very understaffed, so when this nice clean guy in his mid-twenties applied, we hired him without much thought. We'll call him Justin. First couple months he was an above average worker. Fast learner, kind, always smiling. Justin was not shy talking about his past, however, which included stories of when he was manufacturing and selling meth, smuggling it across the states, and then spending like four years in jail. He seemed to be past all of that though, and even apparently led a weekly NA group. After a couple months Justin just stopped showing up. Completely AWOL, no one could reach him and no one knew anything as to why. After he'd been gone two weeks, I was on a morning shift when I heard some yelling outside the front door and I looked and saw a woman scrambling to get up in the middle of the street as the car she'd just fallen out of sped away."
"We helped her inside, got her some water, and once she could breathe again we learned that she was an Uber driver and her rider had just put a knife to her throat and forced her out of the car before taking off.
Thankfully she still had her phone with all the ride details and sure enough, it was our boy. Conveniently, the woman was also able to GPS track the car from her phone, and the police response was pretty quick as well. They had him arrested about an hour later. As for details, all I know is he was picked up from the airport, and after stealing a car, he was headed to the next big city a couple hours east where he had some family."
9. Coworker #1 cashed her paycheck at lunch. It was about $400. Coworker #2 was seen in the back room rifling though everyone's stuff. #1 noticed her money was missing. Cops were called. The money was located in #2's hoo ha."
"She was promptly fired. A few days later, she was arrested for robbing the ice cream place down the road.
This was the USA about 10 years ago. Apparently she was a known drug addict and there were cameras showing her putting the money down her pants."
10. "I worked at a bar that had a small kitchen that could be run by one person. A guy 'M' was hired and only worked a short period of time when a regular started yelling at the TV screen, 'holy shit that’s M!' We all ran to watch the security cam footage of clearly him robbing a gas station convenience store."
"It gets worse. Frantic for a place to go, he reached out to a former bartender. I have no idea how he knew where she lived. She must’ve denied him because her roommate came home from work to find that he slit her throat, and presumably robbed them as well. He did get caught and charged with both the robbery and her murder. RIP."
11. "I worked for a municipality in the rural South. One day they hired a lady from California as a Department Head. Three days later, her background check comes back and she had just gotten released from prison. Killed her daughter. Did 30 years. She was let go immediately."
12. "I worked at a country club in Florida. We had a dishwasher who was super nice. Hard-working, always happy. One day he comes in and his demeanor is completely changed, he's scowling. We ask him what's up and he says that his roommate is a crackhead and if he comes home again and he's smoking crack that he was going to kill him. We kind of talk him off the edge and he was the smiling, happy dishwasher again. That day, he stole a butchers knife from the kitchen and went home and killed the roommate and some poor bastard there smoking crack with him. Hacked them up beyond recognition."
13. "I used to work as a waitress where the cook was secretly putting her trimmed pubes in people's food that she didn't like. How'd we find out? She was always super quiet and kept to herself until her boyfriend broke up with her. She came in the next day, high as a kite, and pulled two of our coworkers aside and goes 'check this out' and pulls out a little ziploc baggie of thick, coarse hairs, opens it up and sprinkles it over this guys pizza burger and closes the bun and tries to send it out. Obviously the coworkers told the boss. Turns out she had been doing it for over a year to the same customers that 'side eyed' or 'judged' her. Needless to say, she was fired and the restaurant closed down four months later meaning we were all out of jobs. Oh, Tanya."
14. "I worked at a fairly large garden center for 28 years. A few years after I started working they hired this weird guy....all us girls were creeped out by him even though he didn't do much but stare. One day while at work I get a call from the Veterinary Hospital that is next door (but they were all the way at the end of our fairly large parking lot). She tells me that one of our workers is out behind our garbage dumpster (which was close to their parking lot) and he was jerking himself off while the vet techs were out back taking the dogs for a walk. The only manager there that day was my friend and she had to walk down there and tell him he was fired. He was behind her the whole time insisting he did nothing wrong."
15. "He worked in the kitchen at the restaurant I waited tables at. He gave off creepy, violent vibes and I avoided him when I could. The restaurant closed and I thought I'd seen the last of him. A woman who lived in my building found him walking a puppy with bloody paws and brought him to our building to clean the puppy up. He'd been in a coworker's car once when I needed a ride, so he recognized the building and mentioned me. The girl brought him in and they knocked on my door. I was cordial but excused myself quickly saying I had an exam later."
"After that, I slept with my windows closed despite the early spring heat and lack of A/C. I was terrified he'd come back. A month or so later I learned he'd been arrested for murder. His brother had been in an altercation with a man at a party. His brother left the party, picked him up and then went back to hurt the guy from the party.
The intended victim was gone. All that remained was an 18-year-old college freshman who was cleaning after the party. He stabbed her to death with a carving fork. That summer I slept with the windows closed and spent many nights at my boyfriend's.
Meanwhile another coworker from the place I knew him from and I were working together at another facility. We picked up a few extra hours one week while another person had jury duty. She came back to work and announced they had found him guilty. She started sharing details and we realized we knew whose trial she had been on. We gave her his name and she confirmed it was the guy."
16. "He’s doing time in federal prison for arson. He set fires in a university library (luckily there was only minimal damage), then set an entire multi-million dollar apartment complex ablaze while it was still under construction. No casualties, thankfully."
17. "The executive director of the for-profit university I worked for was always being gross and inappropriate with women. A during-work-hours car accident with one of his managers — with whom he was having an affair — apparently clued upper management in to his behavior, and they started investigating. They eventually found nearly 20 women, including at least one student, who had been touched or treated inappropriately by him. He was asked to resign, only to immediately get hired by a similar university in another state. The saddest part is that most of the board of directors wanted to keep him because he made a lot of money. It took one board member threatening to resign in order to get rid of him. Oh, and his replacement ended up being let go for showing up at graduation drunk. The whole place was a mess."
18. "I had a guy who worked as an order picker at the warehouse where I work. He was just a major tool with a massive chip on his shoulder. He would pick a fight with anyone who crossed him for any reason, including me because I told him he needs to wrap his pallets when he drops them off (that’s part of the order picker’s job). After a couple of months, my boss got tired of people complaining about him and fired him. A few weeks later, we find out that he was in the hospital with some serious injuries. Apparently, he beat up his girlfriend, and her brother and a couple of his buddies beat the living snot out of him in retribution. This was maybe three years ago. I’m not sure where he is now, but hopefully he learned his lesson and got some help for his anger issues."
19. "He was caught stealing from the company, and they asked for the money back. He laughed and told them, too bad so sad, I spent it all on blackjack and sex workers. So he was arrested, but within a few weeks he died of cancer. Turned out he was terminal, and he wanted to go out with a bang."
20. "Long ago, my coworker got his tie stuck in the buster/decollator and almost got sucked in. On another occasion, using the tier/wrapper plastic, he wrapped his head to a stack of reports he was preparing for inter-company delivery. Finally, he drove the wrong way out of the parking lot and blew his two front tires. Couldn't figure out what to do, so he just drove forward and shredded the back two as well."
"Another guy got terminated for firing up porn on his laptop in a public training session in which he was not in the back row. I could go on and on."
21. "I worked in a grocery store deli on college breaks. Coworker came in messed up on some shit and decided to flash me, as well as everyone else standing near the deli counter. Was canned that day."
22. "I worked in a toy shop over Xmas — the woman that worked there as an assistant manager stole the contents of the safe!!! Over Xmas!!!!!! In a toy shop!!!!!! And went off the grid! Some people are desperate, obviously."
23. "Owner's husband met him at Toastmasters and offered him an accounting job at our shop. The owner liked the guy and she hired him, gave him access to everything. Six months later, he stole her Jaguar and disappeared. They found the car near the CA/NV border. He'd been robbing her blind the entire time and I guess he figured that he couldn't hide it anymore, so he took off before he got found out."
24. "My old boss used to try and get me drunk when we’d have meetings after work. He kept beer in his office and would constantly tell me to ‘let my hair down’ and have a beer. I always replied no thank you and made sure the subject was business. The SOB also insinuated to the team leaders (all men) that was I was sleeping with him. I found that gem out later. The bastard was given a golden parachute when our department (corporate) was merged with another company — he walked with millions. What an ass. I hope he eventually got what he deserved."
25. "He somehow managed to work his way from a parking attendant to parking manager at a major public institution. He then insisted on designing a massive parking lot that was incredibly confusing and had no drainage. One day got frog marched out by the police — turns out he had disabled the card readers on a bunch of the parking machines to encourage cash use, skimming tens of thousands over the years. He got busted because he was going to the bank every two weeks with a literal sack of $1-2 coins and depositing them in his account. He was officially charged with stealing about $60k but it was likely far, far more, going back decades."
26. "When I worked at Disneyland, I had a female coworker who constantly made flirtatious comments and advances to one of my male coworkers. He refused to be alone with her and she was unbothered by everyone’s reminders that he was engaged and loved his fiancée very much. Nothing could get done because he was too shy and too nice to say anything to management. The comments turned into touching of the shoulders, and it escalated pretty quickly because he wouldn’t say anything. Some strange part of her thought it would be a GREAT idea to jump on him and bite his neck. He immediately went to management, and within minutes security took away her ID, had her return her costume, and took her completely out of the parks/backstage area."
"I saw her years later while I was working at a completely new job and she recognized me. I pretended to believe that she had left due to other career opportunities to avoid anything awkward (i’m not comfortable with certain conversations). But she felt the need to tell me that she had left Disney because of something stupid she did. I left it at that."
27. "I used to work at a very small tech startup. My boss 'didn't have time' to fire an under-performing sales guy so he had me (marketing director and only female employee at the company) do it. No problem, we go into the conference room sit down, I pull out the paperwork and compassionately but matter-of-factly explain its not working out and he's being let go. His reaction was to tell me 'I'm a f-ing bitch who needs to get laid,' storm out while making a scene, and (presumably) leave. Our office was next to a gym and apparently he went into the gym, grabbed (stole) several hand weights, and threw them through the windows. Nobody was hurt but going from a quiet office environment to shattering glass, windows breaking, and little weights thudding onto the carpet was really something."
28. "I was in the military and we got a new supervisor who was cool as hell. One day we were out working on one of the jets in the hangar and he got pulled off for a phone call. Never saw him again. Turns out dude was sexually assaulting his 13-year-old stepdaughter."
29. "When I worked in the kitchen/dining rooms of a nursing home years ago, this guy got hired on that gave me major creeps. (Semi-related, he was living with my friend's family in the area, and the youngest daughter was also majorly weirded out by him). He cornered one of my female coworkers in the kitchen one day, and some days just wouldn't show up to work. He finally got fired for trying to sell weed to a resident. A few months later, I saw his name in the paper. Apparently he was arrested for elder abuse and assault. Needless to say, he no longer lives with my friend's family."
30. "When I worked at Walmart there was a son of another employee who acted like a huge dick to his coworkers. His mom was a cashier so when he was training to be a cashier, he kept telling everyone that his mom is a cashier and he knows how to do the job, and would be very rude and disrespectful to anyone who trained him. Eventually management switched him to cart pusher because I guess some customers complained about his attitude. One day he brought in a bunch of carts and left them in the middle of the entry and our door greeter asked him to move them because they were a fire hazard. He looked at her and said, 'I can have you killed.' Said this calmly and matter-of-factly and of course the woman reported it to management. The guy was fired of course, but I don't know if he received jail time or anything additional."
31. "I worked at a digital company during the first dotcom boom. Although still small, there were three of us with the same first name. By order of arrival, I was 'First Bob. Then there was 'Second Bob' and 'New Bob.' Our new receptionist calls me, 'Bob,' down to her desk. When I arrive, two plainclothes cops ask me if I'm 'New Bob.' No, I'm 'First Bob.' Can you show us ID? I do. Receptionist apologizes, she's new. She calls down 'New Bob.' I pass him on my way back; he looks freaked. Never saw him again."
"Cops had an arrest warrant. Apparently the bank he had previously worked at discovered he'd set software to skim deep decimal percentage points into his own bank account, figuring no one would find out. They did."
32. "They ~allegedly~ stole a dementia patient's credit card and went on a shopping spree thinking it would go unnoticed because the patient didn’t have any close friends or family members around. Management ~allegedly~ gets a phone call from the patient's relative living overseas who assists in managing their finances and asks if we took them on a shopping trip because there are these strange charges on the account. ~Allegedly~ there is solid cctv footage of them making these purchases with the credit card."
"Obviously a disgusting offense, but for everyone else working on the ward kind of a blessing in disguise because they were TERRIBLE to work with but they had a permanent position and it’s almost impossible to be let go from a permanent position in this job for just being a crappy worker, you gotta fuck it up real bad to be fired. Which they did. And it became a nicer working environment because of it."
33. And finally, this one's super long but worth a read.
I had a job working as a security guard right out of high school. One of the guys I worked with was your average run of the mill oddball. He was nosey and often did stuff to see how people would react. He would wait for you to leave the desk and he would check what you brought for lunch. He wouldn't mess with it or take anything, he'd just see what you had. When you'd come back, he'd say 'ham and cheese again, that's three days in a row.'
On the weekend midnight shift, we'd often watch a movie or two in between our other responsibilities. He would always bring the the most fucked up gory horror and zombie films that nobody ever wanted to watch with him at night in a dark security office. ... He shared a house with a couple of other guards and upon moving in, had to be told not to hang a cross upside down on his bedroom wall.
... One weekend, while Oddball was thankfully working with someone else, he disappeared from the desk for a couple of hours. While a break from his weirdness was generally welcomed, the guy he was working with was flipping out because he needed to use the restroom. Oddball returned to the desk only after being called several times on the radio and left again immediately after the other guard returned. A short time later, another building employee stopped into the office to grab something he had forgot at his desk. He came across Oddball using a carpet cleaner to clean up some 'oil' on the carpet. The employee dipped something into the 'oil' and said it looked like blood not oil and told him to stop. The two of them looked around for someone who might be injured and found some personal items on the desk of a woman in HR. They checked the immediate area and washrooms and then headed to the front desk to see if she had possibly signed out and headed to a nearby hospital. After checking the sign-in book, it was discovered she had signed out about an hour earlier when Oddball was at the desk. He indicated he remembered someone signing out but didn't lift his head from the book he was reading to see who it was. A check of the parking lot revealed her car still parked.
At this point, the other guard called the police and our manager. As the police and our manager were headed to where her desk was, a building engineer saw them and said he'd found what they were looking for. Her body was found in a stairwell leading to the roof with her wrapped in a garbage bag. The two guards working that evening as well as a few other people who were in the building were put on temporary paid leave pending the investigation. About a week later, Oddball was located at his parent's farm. He was talked out of killing himself, arrested, and charged with first-degree murder. ... About 8-9 months after his arrest, he plead guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years. ...
It was never released what his motivation to kill her was. My theory was he got caught looking at personnel files in HR. Human Resources was included on the route of the security rounds completed several times a shift. We were supposed to check that certain doors were secure and make sure wall-mounted file storage was locked in a few areas. I assume he wasn't aware she was at the office as it was a Saturday. He likely found the HR cabinet unlocked and his nosey nature led him to start poking around in some files. She likely caught him and headed to the front desk to report him. This would have cost him his job immediately. In a state of panic, he probably grabbed her and hit her in the head with the punch clock he carried on his rounds. The round metal punch clock was encased in leather, about 9" in diameter, 4" thick, and it weighed 10-12 lbs. He then wrapped her head in a garbage bag and headed to the only stairwell with unmonitored access to the roof. The other guard's need to piss likely interrupted his original plan and he left her on a landing halfway to the roof. Had he gotten to the roof, he could have dropped her onto the grass on a dark side of the building. Upon returning to the area following his co-worker's piss break, he probably thought cleaning up the blood puddle was more important than getting the body onto the roof.
Despite the outcome, in the 35 years since, he's not the oddest person I've ever encountered on the job. He's probably not even in the top 10 characters. If you had said to me at the time one of my co-workers would kill someone, Oddball wouldn't have been in my top five nominees from the list of the 12–15 guards I worked with at the time."
Got any more wild coworker stories? Let us know in the comments.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.