What's the craziest situation you've been in at work?

[Vasilisa Jade]

I feel like I am going crazy. I just realized I can vent here.

I work for a big cell phone company. I sell cell phones, handle billing crap, technical support, meet my sales quotas, educate the public on new technology... one button at a time, lick rear ends, and perform brain surgery.

I am a retail sales associate.

I have a lawyer client that is blatantly crooked. He is probably around 60-70 yrs old. He is activating a bunch of phones with me. He is overly polite to me, but he takes business calls in the middle of while I am trying to work with him at which time he paces and curses and screams. Other customers and my coworkers are like- what the hell is going on over there??? This can go one for 20-30 minutes at a time. All methods of efficiency are gone at that point. He's there 5 times longer than he should be.

He has to reiterate everything I say back to me in Queen Elizabeth lawyer jargon high diction. Then he draws me pictures of what I just said. It took me 4 hours to deduce what the hell he was going to want exactly and confirm for myself that his expectations for these phones wasn't too high.

Then in a matter of 5 minutes he changed everything and put me back at square one.

He actually said something was, "smaller than the pubic hairs of a gnat." He calls his secretary "Octopussy." That is just the tip of the iceberg with his word choices.

He is going to be opening up a strip club in the neighboring area and asked me if I would work for him.

It's actually ironic cause I would love to be a pole dancer as I have mentioned elsewhere, but.... no. Not for these two.

He absoluetely insisted on giving me a hundred dollar tip, for... doing my job. Even though we are not allowed to take tips... I am holding onto it and paying his bill for him with it once this is over.

So I am activating a huge deal for a perverted probably crooked unpredictable lawyer. I feel.... like even if I dot my i's and cross my t's I am going to be somehow deeply scarred from this, if not sued somehow.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I think the craziest was when I was working at a gas station. The men's room always stank, partly due to splash, urinals that went all the way to the floor, and guys with bad aim. My boss told me to bleach the floors to clean them. So I poured the bleach straight onto the floor thinking I have done that before, nothing will happen.
Next thing I know, the bleach was foaming up, and creating a very thick cloud in the restroom. After a few minutes, the entire store had a very thick bleach smell, and we had to open up all the doors to attempt to get rid of the smell. As I was standing outside the restroom door, some old guy started to head in there, and I told him about the bleach and it wasn't a good idea to go in there. A couple minutes later he came out with bloodshot, teary eyes, and was gasping for air.
A couple months later, it was discovered that the assistant manager had used the Works on the floor the day before I used the bleach.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

O_O

So did whatever was in the Works combine with the bleach and make a toxic gas cloud???

I don't know what is in the Works.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

Oh, another time, back when we had desks, I was busy on the phone with tech support, and my coworker across the room from me was helping a guy and an older lady that seemed to have a mental illness.

The whole office started to smell like pee.

The lady stood up and the whole backside of her pants was soaked in urine, and the chair was soaked.

I was like O_O *BLEAH

I sent my coworker and my coworker next to him a quick email, cause we always keep our email open, saying, "THAT LADY ****** HER PANTS GET THAT CHAIR OUTA HERE AND DON't LET ANYONE SIT IN IT!"

Then I go back to working. My boyfriends best friend walks in with his rahter annoying girlfriend. I say hi and go back to work.

The lady with the urine all over her butt and the guy with her get up and leave.

The annoying girlfriend being her annoying self, doesn't wait to be called and charges my coworkers desk and plops right down in the pee soaked chair.

I had my nose in a laptop I didn't see her run over there.

She smells it, realizes her butt is wet, sticks her hand in it and smells it. I see her sitting in it and I jump up and gasp and say "Oh my god I am so sorry!" I try to help her to the bathroom to try to clean up but she's flaming ticked off and storms out.

I was the villian. She hated me for forever after that.

LOL!!!! My coworkers still laugh about that.

The moral???? WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE CALLED!!! It is so annoying when you are still finishing up your last transaction and someone charges you.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

Oh speaking of pee.

This happened to my coworker.

Lady walks in and says her phone doesn't work, and she hands it to my coworker.

My coworker does the first thing we all do, try to power it on, and when it won't come on she pulls the back off and looks underneath teh battery.

Coworker says: "This phone has been liquid damaged."

Customer: "It was dropped in a cup of pee while we were driving."

You can imagine what was going through my coworkers heads.

You just handed me a phone like you didn't know why it wasn't working and you already knew it was dropped in a cup of pee!! And you handed it to me!!! And how the hell does someone just have a cup of pee sitting around in the car!!!!!

Apparently they were driving down the interstate while thier son badly had to pee. Instead of pulling over and making him endure ******* in public or holding it, they gave him a cup to pee in, then they sat the cup in thier cup holder, then thier phone slid into it.

You know... why throw a perfectly good cup of pee out the car window when you can sit it in the cup holder and smell the car up with it?

 

[Caladan]

I think it would be illegal for me to talk about the crazy situations in my past jobs

 

[Draka]

This is funny, at least for me it was, but takes some backdrop or you won't understand it at all

I was an avionics tech for helos while I was in the Navy. This meant I worked on navigation, communication and sonar equipment. I was the main flightline tech for our shop which meant I was the quick diagnose and fix person for when the aircrafts would come in for flightcrew changes. If anything was wrong I'd run in, troubleshoot and fix the problem on the fly so they could go right back out on their training maneuvers. There is a piece of equipment called a sonar transducer which is a half a million dollar submarine tracking device, which is lowered via cable on a reeling machine, through a hole in the bottom of the helo, into the water and relays information back up to the helo.

On this particular day our shop got a call over our speaker from maintenance that a certain bird (helo) was coming in with sonar problems and they needed an AT out there quickly. So, I grabbed my tool pouch and ran out there and the helo was just coming in. Once they were stopped and chocked I was motioned in and I went to the cabin door where two aircrew guys were crouched in front of the transducer housing. I asked what the problem was and one kind of laughed and asked "how do you fix this?" and moved to the side so I could see the housing...empty but for a piece of frayed cable. They were laughing. Turns out they used the electronic raise (the machine is hydraulic) emergency button incorrectly (when they shouldn't have used it at all) and brought the ducer up so fast that it slammed into the bottom of the helo (nice dent in the bottom by the way) and snapped back so hard it broke the cable completely and dropped this $500,000 device into the San Diego Bay. Did I mention they were laughing? They weren't laughing at all later when I saw them escorted to a command transport van to be taken to medical for drug screening for what they did. They didn't look that happy at all then.

 

[.lava]

wife of my boss throwing a plate fullfilled with meat balls, spagetti and salaat into the sink with rage and looks at me with hatred because i do not want to eat. yea this is the first memory that pops up in my mind.





.

 

[Caladan]

This is funny, at least for me it was, but takes some backdrop or you won't understand it at all

ahh hehe military situations

I guess I have a few, and here's one off the top of my head..
getting off a hummer and walking around at a night vision only large scale exercise in the Golan heights, when tanks are rolling by and not a single light is authorized to be on.
what was so important that I had to get off the hummer against all safety instructions? im not sure.. but I think I had to take a leak

 

[enchanted_one1975]

Apparently they were driving down the interstate while thier son badly had to pee. Instead of pulling over and making him endure ******* in public or holding it, they gave him a cup to pee in, then they sat the cup in thier cup holder, then thier phone slid into it.

And that, my friends, is probably why Karma put their phone in that cup of pee. I hope they hadn't purchased the insurance plan.

 

[monta]

Found guy dead on the toilet, stalked by Bible Jesus, accidently outted collegue as a drug user

 

[Nepenthe]

Found guy dead on the toilet, stalked by Bible Jesus, accidently outted collegue as a drug user

Remind me to update my cv- I wanna work where you work! :sarcastic

 

[monta]

Remind me to update my cv- I wanna work where you work! :sarcastic

You wouldn't last 5 minutes

 

[Nepenthe]

You wouldn't last 5 minutes

Probably not. Especially when you're killing guys on the toilet and snitching on fellow employees while managing to avoid a stalking Lord and Savior himself...

 

[Wandered Off]

Especially when you're killing guys on the toilet

In her defense, he never put the seat down.

 

[YmirGF]

When I was a manager at a consumer electronics company, I absently gazed at the bad cheque list for the day while on the phone. I don't know why, I just did. The first name on the list simply caught in my small brain and I went about the day.

About 3 pm, a client I had sold a bunch of computer stuff to the week before comes in and tells me he wanted to buy his sister a similar setup. Though unusual, I had no reason to be suspicious. He seemed pretty normal for your garden variety computer geek. After I had written up the sale and had collected his cheque - I went and looked at the bad cheque list. This is odd simply because I never really looked at the list. As you might guess, his name was there at the very top.

Well, I ad-libbed and said due to the amount I needed the store manager to co-sign (which was a lie, but it was all I could think of) and that he was at lunch. The guy said, "No problem, I'm in no hurry" and I set him down at a computer and let him try out a new game. In the background, the police had been called and about 15 minutes later they arrived and he gave up without a struggle.

As is normal, the police went to his home and found lots of other goodies, but while they were there his landlady approached them and asked one of the officers to come and look at a car that had been parked in the back of the house for a few days, belonging to the fellow. There was a terrible smell coming from it. They investigated, popped the trunk and found the remains of a young man who had been murdered. The charge was added to my former client's list and oddly, I never saw him again. As far as I recall, he never went to trial for the cheque fraud. I did get a commendation from the Vancouver Police for being on the ball a week or so later. Yup... that was pretty crazy, but obviously, he wanted to be caught.

 

[Vasilisa Jade]

Oh my F'ing god dude! O_O

That is some crazy **** right there.

In my town and I'm sure most other places too...

we are saturated and I mean saturated with sex offenders. A cop friend of mine used to work night shift in town and they drive around aimlessly a lot at night and just run tags looking for stolen cars, expired ones and whatever else... he said 4 out of 5 tags he runs in town... at any time of day, are sex offenders.

That means 3-4 out of 5 of my customers are sex offenders. God knows how many are worse than that.

This is why I am bound dammed and determined to finish school and get the hell out of retail. I bet my crazy lawyer customer runs an underground sex slave business. Wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Draka]

I know one thing that happened where my mom works. She works at a hardware store and since they sell many different kinds of chemicals there, ones that can be used to make meth, they must get ID and keep a log of who buys what when certain chemicals are purchased. One day she had a guy come through her checkout with several of the supplies that are ingredients in meth (a stupid thing to buy them all together no doubt) but my mom took the guy's info and after he walked out she also followed him and took down his vehicle information and called the police (which is what they are suppose to do in this area of any suspected meth lab operator). Now, luckily it was my mom that happened to be at the register and took that guy's information that day because...if it hadn't been,...I would have had my home stormed by police. Yep, the guy's address on his ID was mine. I lived in a rental at the time and it was obviously an outdated ID. My mother at least could tell the police that the address was inaccurate. When asked how she knew she said "that's my daughter's address...I think I know who lives there and that man doesn't live there".

Thank goodness it was her that day. Anyone else and I can just imagine the drug task force barging in my door.

 

[monta]

I know one thing that happened where my mom works. She works at a hardware store and since they sell many different kinds of chemicals there, ones that can be used to make meth, they must get ID and keep a log of who buys what when certain chemicals are purchased. One day she had a guy come through her checkout with several of the supplies that are ingredients in meth (a stupid thing to buy them all together no doubt) but my mom took the guy's info and after he walked out she also followed him and took down his vehicle information and called the police (which is what they are suppose to do in this area of any suspected meth lab operator). Now, luckily it was my mom that happened to be at the register and took that guy's information that day because...if it hadn't been,...I would have had my home stormed by police. Yep, the guy's address on his ID was mine. I lived in a rental at the time and it was obviously an outdated ID. My mother at least could tell the police that the address was inaccurate. When asked how she knew she said "that's my daughter's address...I think I know who lives there and that man doesn't live there".

Thank goodness it was her that day. Anyone else and I can just imagine the drug task force barging in my door.

That is bloody scary stuff :faint:

 

[Vile Atheist]

O_O

So did whatever was in the Works combine with the bleach and make a toxic gas cloud???

I don't know what is in the Works.

By the sounds of it, chlorine gas formed.