Recently, we rounded up some surprisingly juicy petty office dramas, and the comments were full of even wilder stories from the workaday world. So, naturally, I had to play Lady Whistledown for a minute and round them all up too. Here comes even more office drama:
1. "When I was 20, I went to school in the morning and worked in the back office of a bank in the afternoons. During finals week I didn't see my boyfriend, so he left a rose and a poem on my car every day at lunch. I'd bring them into work so they wouldn't wilt. My highly jealous, middle-aged coworkers went en masse into my supervisor's office to demand that I be told to leave them in the car."
2. "I have a coworker who is constantly getting in trouble for the way she speaks to clientele and other office staff, and she never thinks it's her fault — she thinks that she's being picked on. To get back at all the staff, she does petty stuff all the time. The worst was when we had a potluck at work; she volunteered to bring the main course of barbecue because she lived by the restaurant. Halfway through the potluck, she told the manager she wasn't feeling well and needed to leave. The manager let her, and she took ALL the meat with her when she did. Only a few people had gotten any."
3. "I just started a new job. There are two other employees in my department who were supposed to be training me. On day two, the entire company raised their minimum pay, and I got an automatic raise. On day three, one previously friendly and helpful coworker stopped doing any work once I came in."
"She would barely acknowledge me, scroll on her phone all day, and tell me, 'You got this,' whenever a customer came in. After about two weeks of her refusing to train me and completely slacking on her own work, I heard her complaining to someone else that we were making the same money and I hadn't earned it. She's being petty as hell and talking trash on me like I personally raised the company wages, instead of focusing her energy on the people who can actually do something about it, or simply appreciating that she ALSO just got an automatic raise."
4. "There are two age groups at my office, with a 10- to 15-year age gap. The younger group (20s–30s, no kids) is constantly trying to figure out why the older group (45ish–60s) won’t come out for team-building events. The older group wants to know why every team-building event is in the evening and involves drinking, but don’t want to be involved with organizing anything."
5. "My coworkers were mad at me for not working from home when I was out with COVID. I was super sick, incredibly tired, and legitimately delirious. I would have been no help."
6. "One person at my work is SO convinced that everyone, including the managers and owner, are stupid and that they are the only person who has good ideas. They are so negative about everything, and it’s honestly exhausting. They think it’s OK to just completely change setups (we have multiple locations, and they need to stay consistent), move shit around the shop, and make up rules for other people to follow, all without consulting any of our superiors."
"We had to have an employee meeting about not just changing things around without asking the managers. They’re 19 and think that they’re the smartest person ever and that everyone else is just dumb. The amount of times I have heard them call our wonderful manager 'stupid' is appalling."
7. "I have a co-worker who quit and walked out of the office. She came back several months later because we were short staffed. Then they fired her because she was not doing her job — just did nothing for weeks. Six months later, they rehired her. Three months later, she got promoted, and within 24 hours everyone in her department quit. She is literally her own department."
8. "Two middle-aged co-workers who had access to the department’s information proceeded to use the cellphone numbers to send spoof calls, texts, and flash texts to play with people. It’s been done to the president of the company, and they regularly send those types of calls to the emergency line that is supposed to be for medical emergencies."
9. "Half our staff chose to still work from home after COVID. The rest of us come in five days a week. We're all happy with the arrangement. Some come in one day a week. But we have one woman who treats her one day in the office like a family reunion."
"She literally walks from cube to cube and sits down and asks, 'So what's up in your life?' And then tries to chat for as long as that person will allow. She's also a chain smoker, so she goes out to smoke every 15 minutes, then spends 10 minutes in the bathroom washing up. She always champions the lunch order on her days here. We are right near all the restaurants. She takes like an hour to get the food. She leaves really early to pick it up. Every time she leaves one desk, that person emails the person she's headed to. It's like, glad you want to catch up on your one day here, but the rest of us have work to do."
10. "Recently our head of human resources reached out to me for my personal email. Turns out she sent me an invite to her wedding. I've barely spoken to her since I've never been in trouble and don't have any staff issues. One of the other supervisors had the invitation up on their screen when she did a screen share in a meeting, and it became very evident that she had only invited a select group."
11. "An office manager once told me I was too new to be initiating conversation with my coworkers. Basically saying I was only allowed to speak when spoken to!"
—Stephanie Spurling Holloway, Facebook
12. "In my office, the toilet in the ladies room kept getting clogged over and over. After a bit they figured out that someone was flushing ENTIRE ROLLS of toilet paper each time, but they still couldn't figure out who was doing it. When announcements about it didn't end it, they finally put a camera in the hall outside. And they checked the stall many times a day until they could figure out who had consistently gone in right before they found it clogged."
13. "Three female RNs in my ER were talking one night like I wasn’t there (perks of being a tech) and discussed finding a male RN’s Bumble page. He works in the ER as well. They started making fun of him behind his back because his profile said he loved anime."
14. "Someone at my old office took her lunch break in the women's restroom. She would bring her computer and type away or make personal phone calls while sitting on the toilet. HR sent multiple emails asking people not to bring their laptops into the restroom or make phone calls while in there. She just kept moving to different floors. We had to post an admin at the entrance to every women's restroom around noon every day to make sure she didn't go in with her stuff."
15. "We had a serial pooper in our office. We’d keep finding a huge 💩 in the middle of the bathroom — right in front of the sinks! Like, why?!?! It happened like once a month and then stopped, and we never caught the person."
16. "One of our offices has a puzzle table, and apparently a cheeky guy in HR takes one piece every time, and no one knows until it’s done and obvious. They’ll probably find a bunch in his desk when he retires shortly."
17. "I'm in war with the serial smoker who works on the same floor as me. She's been habitually smoking in the women's restroom for a year, and the office managers keep posting signs about not smoking indoors. I caught her three times and reported her to the health department and office management, but she continues to smoke in the women's restroom like it's 1974."
"She's been fined numerous times for it but refuses to stop. Every time I catch her, I loudly call the health department in front of her, give them her business name and phone number, and let them know she's still smoking even after they told her to stop. Did I mention she's a doctor smoking in the women's restroom?"
18. "Someone at the office dug up some modeling pictures of a new co-manager. They googled his name at random, checked images, and found the set. The 'suspenders pose' became an inside joke in the office for a month."
19. "My cat and I are in a petty home office feud stealing seats, drinking my water when I'm not looking, and he loves knocking my pens off my desk when I go to the bathroom. I've reported him to upper management, but they have done nothing about it. Ugh."
20. "At a former workplace, a female supervisor called me aside to tell me that I needed to be more careful because my shirt had ridden up in the back, and the shape of my butt was 'distracting and putting bad thoughts in our male clients’ minds.' I was wearing black opaque leggings, a long top, a sweater, and sneakers. My actual ass DGAF and isn’t responsible for anyone’s thoughts but my own 🤷🏼♀️."
Finally, always remember, "These are very enjoyable to read as stories, but if they’re happening to you it’s a special level of hell."
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.
Do you have a tale of petty office drama to share? Please tell all in the comments.
And for more stories about work and money, like how one woman paid off her student loans on a low income or an expert's social media tips for jobseekers, check out the rest of our personal finance posts.