Inspired by this comment thread in another recent forum post, I thought this deserved its own post.
So what is the most outrageous thing you've brought home from work?
Poll: have you brought home any of these…
What Is The Most Outrageous Thing You've Brought Home from Work?
tenpercent on 01/04/2025 - 15:02
Last edited 01/04/2025 - 15:59
Last edited 01/04/2025 - 15:59
Poll Options
- 80Husband/wife/mistress
- 52Furniture
- 43Stationary
- 20Other (comment below, if it is popular I will add it to the poll options)
- 14Food stuff
- 13Toilet paper rolls
Comments
- 1
- 2
Do I dare ask what was the workplace and scenario?
Marine Biologist, Port Phillip Bay
Was the sea angry that day?
And crabs.
Someone quit and claimed they lost the new iphone…
Which in any properly run organisation you'd be able to remotely brick via MDM, so seems a LOT of effort to fail to steal a phone..
I used to deploy mobile device management systems for companies - one client had the new guy log into the system using his own account, remove about 20 brand new iPhones from the Apple DEP (meaning that the devices were no longer registered to the company) and make off with them.
Left an audit trail as long as my arm. At least your guy had plausible deniability!
Add to poll: a colleague
Sub options:
..Voluntarily
..Against their will
Sub options:
Well if I'm taking them home I'd hardly be expecting them to top…
A clock
I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently it was quite an expensive clock!
Also, right before covid, I took a chair home on the train
I didn’t know it at the time
Must not be a very good clock then
Also, right before covid, I took a chair home on the train
Five HM chairs.
But TBF they were just giving them away due to an office move.
I think you won the thread with five HM chairs, those are bulletproof. I got one from an office refurb place, Mirra V2 with Armrest for $220 it's so sturdy. Have tried to get friends to buy one but the ones with armrests seem to go for a lot more these days.
Yeah, mine are also Mirras. Gave most of them to friends. Had to almost force one guy to take one because he was used to cheap crap chairs and didn't know that higher tiers of chairs existed.
He thanked me so much afterwards :)
A wife
Who's?
Whose?
So many owls around here
Myself every working day luckily
250 verado.
My paycheck since, you know, I'm here posting comments
Comments, meh, come back when you’ve trained your bowels to use company time ;)
My other half was responsible for closing out and cleaning out the Melbourne Office for an International company. He was allowed to take what he wanted with what was left. So we ended up with the leftover stationary, some chairs, Xmas decorations, kitchen stuff, Ethernet cables, etc. He also paid a small amount for a comms cabinet and a desk.
Chicks.
Do you work on hen farm?
try Caged once
work
i bought home work to complete
I had a stroke reading this
Glad to see you're recovering well.
Did you use lube?
Why would you buy work to bring home to complete?
Misses homework they used to get in school.
or someone else's work from someone lazy.
Multiple of the options and…
Lockers
But they were being given away. Make for great shed storage.
Stationary
Classic ozbargain.
I'm not moving.
Yes, I don't get it either. Why have I seen it spelt "stationary" twice now in this thread.
Is it now going to become acceptable like Barbeque, just because that's how everyone thought it was spelt.
Mandala Effect
Classic ozbargain.
Yep. ESL.
Covid
An executive assistant…
Gardening gloves
The 70cm bluescope steel sign they said I couldn't have, even though the business was moving and they weren't taking it with them. Snuck it down to the car while the manager was at the bank. The other employees kept watch.
Ricketts Rd? I used to work in that building. Parma rolls from across the road were legendary.
Your story inspired me - I just went there and stole one of our old parking signs as a memento. We moved out of the building 10 years ago, but one sign was still there.
A 27” qhd monitor- they did a give away when they upgraded to curved widescreens. They were sill quite good at the time
Another workplace - get to keep your iPhone/android when it gets to 3 years old. Laptop when it gets to 4
I still have my COVID monitor from an old employer.
Most fun was a SNES with 4 tap multi-player and controllers when my employer got acquired and no longer needed the “start up” vibe in the corner when showing prospective staff around. Someone else got the PS2 and foosball table.
Kinda funny that the SNES is worth more than the PS2.
Whose work?
A piece of partially chromed railway track inscribed with "Thank you for your contribution to Rail in South Australia" with my name under the message.
It was given to all Adelaide Metro Train Drivers just before we were rented out to Keolis Downer by the then Liberal Goverment.Working in IT, several rich clients used to regularly upgrade their equipment and toys to the latest and greatest and tell me to "just get rid of" the old stuff, which was often still very good….
More work…
A taxidermied fox
Just for a visitI got a 4m long x about 70cm wide x 80cm high super heavy duty table that could hold anything I could put on it and got it delivered as it was cheaper than paying the tip fees.
Smallpox
3 very large framed photo prints, one of which I took
I have "taken" 2 monitors, 2 laptops, infinite sugar/milk/blend43, an "old" TV from a floor which was being decommissioned and was going to be dumped in the skip.
The old TV was a brand new 65" OLED I ordered for $4k while I had insider information that floor was being decommissioned.
many ipads, a few apple TVs
I once took a $200,000+ limited edition Range Rover top of the line model home… I was allowed to take a vehicle home if I was working on saturdays and this was a “demo” model.
While not really seeming “outrageous”, I did live in the arsehole of Melbourne (Werribee) at the time, so a $200,000+ vehicle was absolutely out of place in the part of Werribee that I was living.
I spent the whole night stressing and hardly slept and any noise I heard outside made me jump out of bed and go check on the car…
that would have screamed 'im a dealer' in your driveway
Ironically, it was worth more than what I paid for my house at the time and this was back in about 2001, and calculating for inflation, it would be the same as driving a car home today that is about $370,000 in today's money.
Should've dusted off the old school steering wheel lock. My parents got me one when I was on my P's and I actually used it when I parked at shopping centers or uni, no idea why I bothered since it was a 1994 Toyota Corolla AE92 worth like $3000 at the time I doubt anyone would bother to steal it. That car was painfully slow.
You lived in the areshole of an arsehole?
When I was working at a bank branch that was closing for renovations I noticed a pile of Dell keyboards, still in their boxes, in a shopping trolley that our site manager was about to take out and dump. He let me grab what I wanted - I only took one as that was all I needed. Missed opportunity to make a bit of cash on the side.
All the same it was a better bargain than the other item I acquired from work. Many many years earlier I was sent on a training course in the city and met this absolute pest who just followed me around for the duration. On returning to my branch I discovered I'd been transferred to the pest's branch. Couple of years later we were married (though not any longer).
I'd take the keyboard hands-down.What a rollercoaster.
Two leather executive armchairs when they refurbished.
I have a former Director-Generals office chair in my shed after a change of government.
A mate's work used to give away old laptops and he scored me one a few years ago. i5, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD (in stick form).
It's very handy, but the keyboard is a bit rooted likely because it's been bashed on my nerds furiously typing.
Wages
All of the above plus more……..
Diseases… all the time i mean
Childcare or health?
from work and childcare both… people get sick and show up to work without taking leave or isolating themselves and spread it around, kids go to childcare bring home diseases
3-5kg of protective plastic for archery targets + 1kg bag of meat seasoning
What kind of a weird workplace are you at?
Coles
That makes sense.
Set of Masamoto Sohonten Chef's knives from our mentor that passed away from cancer. Was starting to rust in storage since we couldn't use wooden handled knives at work, so i rescued them. Been using them weekly for the last decade and i try my best to keep them as razor sharp as my old treacher did.
lube.
Pharmaceutical company did a total office refurb at the same time as a major rebuild of their production area.
Result was a fully fitted out home office (desk/chairs/bookshelves/credenza/wall art/rugs/drinks cabinet) that is almost identical to the CEO's old office other than the size.
My work shed is fully fitted out with stainless steel work benches and cabinets, as is my BBQ area.Was all delivered to my home using the company's truck.
Total cost - a bottle of whisky for the driver.
Picked up a pair of bullet proof sunglasses that had been binned, when I was contracting for the Army.
How does this work? I assume if you got shot in the face all that kinetic energy still goes into your face, not to mention the shrapnel?
The bullet doesn't penetrate your brain. Sunglasses do.
I believe it's a requirement that the glasses/lens meet the MIL standards - similar to these https://frontlinesafety.com.au/wiley-x-vapor-2-5-two-lens-w-… Protects the eyes, not the face
Quite a few years ago I took 20 CDs of Windows 95 as the company no longer used them. On-sold all of them, nice profit.
When we were closing the office down I found still shrinkwrapped copies of MSDOS and Windows 95 and some other misc legacy software. Took some photos of it before we binned it, doubt it would have any resale value as this was only a few years ago. Also had stacks of old driver discs, I threw out the discs but kept some of the slip covers as they had cool retro artwork on them.
A Santa Claus costume.
Runway lights.
From a catwalk?
No, from an airport that had just upgraded it's existing lighting to newer types
Couple of handheld CB radios, rolls of garbage bags and a few Dell Thunderbolt docking stations - all fished out of the trash.
Monitors when it looked like we were going into lockdowns the next day.
One under each arm lol.
- 1
- 2
Kelp