Please share your profession and event you witnessed you would consider the worst and never wants to see again
What’s The Worst Shocking Thing You Have Seen in Your Line of Work?
Aerith-Waifu on 02/07/2025 - 14:14
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I don't believe this on the account that I don't believe you work.
Does being electrocuted count as the most shocking thing?
I don't think you witnessed your electrocution if you wrote that post… Or did you, GhostDuckie2hh?
I’ve seen quite a number of shocking and serious things happen at work over the years at different jobs I have done, and some were also funny. Here’s some I can quickly think of in the moment:
A serious privacy breach that involved 2 people from the general public who were fighting each other all over internet social media platforms, that lead to the employee getting fired.
A truck driver employee hit power lines causing a fire, the trees on the nature strip and a nearby house went up in flames.
Massive fights between staff over work related issues and non work related matters, such as political beliefs and the war in Ukraine.
A mentally ill customer have a whole back and forward conversation with themselves in a mirror for 20 minutes.
When I was a young lad back in 2001 I went out for Thursday night work drinks, and colleagues were betting who could successfully take home at the end of the night a woman that another colleague had brought a long that he had liked for a while that he was desperately trying to officially become the boyfriend of.
Not long after Covid, a guy in training have a complete meltdown because the trainer coughed.
A Vietnamese colleague was paid by another colleague to look after some pet chickens, and he ate them.
A Vietnamese colleague was paid by another colleague to look after some pet chickens, and he ate them.
I heard that story before, except it is usually dogs.
I don’t personally know of a situation where someone ate another persons dog. Eating dog definitely was said as a racial slur a lot when I was younger though, in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. The world has changed a lot though since then.
The Vietnamese colleague that ate the chickens was on a working Visa, he didn’t have much money, most of his money was being sent back to Vietnam for his wife and kids.
The Vietnamese colleague that ate the chickens was on a working Visa, he didn’t have much money, most of his money was being sent back to Vietnam for his wife and kids.
So he decided to erm.. eat a
friendcolleague's pet knowingly? What was the ensuing conversation like?@zonra: A lot of swearing and arguing in Vietnamese. The conversation happened about 6am in the morning, I remember the guy that ate the chickens telling the other guy to F off, it was too early.
One of my sons had a Korean girlfriend.
The first time he brought her home she said "Arthur looks tasty", when she was introduced to him.
Arthur was my dog.
Arthur was my dog.
Your use of past tense did not go unnoticed.
@Mikeer: ROFL.
No, she was just kidding, she was a wonderful girl who treated Arthur very well.
Arthur died of old age when he was about 16.
And he had a proper doggy funeral. Nobody ate him.
@Muppet Detector: Then she slow cooked his body.
I really am joking on this.
I saw Anh Do do a stand up routine when he was first starting out in Australia.
He said
“How do you know if a Vietnamese person has broken into your house?”
“Your dog has gone but your homework is completed”.@Muppet Detector: He could say it but I certainly couldn’t. Playing to the stereotypes, particularly at that time.
I saw a comedienne talking about a guy who performed a complete takedown of Trump. He said he hadn’t seen anyone get into a Presidents head that much since John Wilkes Booth.
@try2bhelpful: I worked in Korea and Vietnam when I was an apprentice chef.
Dog was on the restaurant menu.
I guess it's the same as I eat cow and other cultures find that distasteful.
Every time I come across venison, I can't help but think of Bambi.
@Muppet Detector: I’m a carnivore as well. My issue is how humanely the creature is treated and how quickly they are killed. Unfortunately I suspect a lot of them are not well treated in either case in some countries. I think live sheep exporting is abhorrent. I eat free range chicken and buy free range eggs.
@try2bhelpful: I lived in suburbia but my parents owned cattle farms.
At the farm I had a pet cows called T-Bone and Roast. Some sheep called Stew and Cassie (short for casserole).
They did not die of old age, nor was their death accidental, but legend has it, they tasted really good.
@Muppet Detector: My other half grew up on a sheep/wheat farm in the Wimmera. The orphan sheep were hand raised but they were sold off with the rest of the stock. The family got mutton instead.
My grandparents had a hobby farm where they raised chickens, geese etc. We used to watch my grandad cut the heads off the chooks for dinner but I couldn’t do it now. Frankly I would be very happy to eat lab grown meat.
@Muppet Detector: This one’s whopper, this one’s Big Mac, this and our chickens are called tender and McNugget.
@Muppet Detector: In Vietnam restaurant that serves dog only serve dogs and nothing else. Vietnamese don’t eat dog as a source of meat. It just a believe you eat it to rinse of the bad luck. So unless you work at that type of restaurant you won’t see dog on the menu.
@tenpercent: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comedienne
Is Webster dictionary a credible source for use in Australia these days?
If so, they disagree.
@Protractor: Oxford is actually Australia's preferred choice, but Webster was first google result and I didn't care enough to put in any more effort than that .
@Muppet Detector: Macca dictionary of Strayan English. It's our word bible. Oy Oy Oy
Anywho, comedienne is certainly a legit word, and has that meaning, as above, albeit it's losing traction in our receding culture. AI will eat up our language at some point. If we last.
Where do you work???
Stratton Oakmont
A Vietnamese colleague was paid by another colleague to look after some pet chickens, and he ate them.
BEST.
Back at AusPost, someone trying to send a bottle of liquid (alcoholic), a naughty adult toy, a book and cash in the same parcel to someone in a foreign country. We only know that because of what came back on the X-ray.
They x-ray outgoing packages?
Yep always for packages going onto planes.
Did it pass or got rejected?
Years back I consulted for a company (let's call them Company B). A new employee joined Company B after resigning from a rival firm (let's call the rival Company A). Said employee was often on sick leave and was only in the office 2-3 days a week but kept their head down and did their work.
Turns out this person never actually quit Company A and was drawing two salaries and was turning up to both jobs 2-3 days each week and called in sick when they had to show their face at the other job. Only got found out a year or so later when another person quit Company A to join Company B and blew the whistle to HR. They lost their job at both companies as I believe most employment contracts will prevent you from working for a rival at the same time.
He was Overemployed before it was a thing. Much easier to do now full time WFH is a thing.
Uber and didi at the same time?
damn what a dumb snitch the other person was :(((. He coulda asked the dude to cash him in and give him a cut or he whistleblows. Dont whistleblow right away smh
Years ago I went on a business trip that was being paid for by a large company. Business class flights, 5-star hotel and all the trimmings. A colleague asked our host if it was OK to have the hotel do some laundry. Turns out he had packed a week's worth of dirty washing. Our host was good to his word and covered the bill; it was over $500.
Funny enough, two days later the same guy missed the courtesy car back to the hotel (by 10 whole seconds) so he had to find his own way back. This was pre international roaming and Uber, and he had no local currency. Took him 6 hours to find his way back…He doesn't know how to navigate by looking at the stars?
Will be interesting when we get to the WFH stories.
Got one.. Lady at work fell down the stairs while WFH, sued the company and won as she was getting a coffee at 'work'.
During lock down or after?
It was pre lock down, we used to WFH before WFH was cool.
I see my wife always getting harassed by someone with a tiny weiner.
My condolences on your tiny Weiner…..
It was kind of you to capitalise it. That shall not go unnoticed
Sounds like you both need to find a new butcher.
I was working in the office one day and one of my colleagues had a medical incident and died. He was doing prep work with another colleague and he had a bad turn. His callous BS management compounded the situation by sending an email that said because the guy wasn’t a family member if people in his team wanted to go to the funeral they would need to take holiday time rather than compassionate leave. I sent this email to the lady who ran the overall account and she was absolutely mortified. She smacked the management hard. Not only was compassionate leave given but a bus was organised to take people to the funeral.
Well done- that's how it should be
I worked with a guy and it was 1 day a week in the office after COVID. The rest was WFH.
He started his own business that was in competition to who we were working for. He ended up stealing a client who was worth around $120k a year plus another one that was worth about $80k. He then resigned to continue that business full time. Little did he know that what he was doing at home was being synchronised to a work account that others could then review and see. It showed when he was doing his Invoicing through Xero, when he was doing/looking at the "his" clients work and it all was during time that he was supposed to be working for the business.
This was all in breach of the employee contract, and he was sued. Unsure of the outcome, but it was nasty from what I heard.
LOL, Sticking it the man, who tried and failed, to stick it to the man.
Mostly just verbal and emotional abuse from managers unfortunately. Certain managers known to be very abusive, make various staff cry yet keep being promoted and never disciplined. Really disappointing.
Otherwise a fair few data breaches where customer information was leaked due to staff incompetence. Although in this day and age it actually doesn't seem that unusual unfortunately as well.
Working in the casino and a guy wearing nothing but a bright yellow raincoat and smoking a massive cigar rode his bicycle right through the middle of the casino, past all the gaming machines and tables… all the way through and out the other door.
And when I said “nothing but a raincoat”, I mean nothing but that raincoat.
What’s The Worst Shocking Thing You Have Seen in Your Line of Work?
You go first
Well, I honestly cant think of anything that surprised me to the core while working.
My old boring retail jobs doesn't really have much excitement.
If you must name one then it has to be my old boss asking me to come to work early everyday around 20-30 mins before my shift starts without pay and also wont let me leave until all work is done.
It adds to about 1 hour+ each day unpaid (on bad days sometimes up to 2 hours). Before you ask I was only on $42k at the time, not some high earning jobs.
Left the bloody place and cant be happier
reply all email to whole of company (over 10k people) to be removed from the email list
then a reply all email agreeing to also being removed from email x5
then a reply all email telling people to stop replying all x10
then a reply all email saying ok
oh dear! haha
My work had something similar but, the poor person emailed the whole company from America about a printer part, and this went out to absolutely everyone globally (and there's an office in most countries)
Cue this email chain going around for at least 3 days from various countries. I'm surprised more languages weren't being used.
Was this at deloitte? I remember being included on an similar email trail but think it started from Germany haha
My 'favourite' email experience was when I was managing the Exchange server for 100 or 200 users.
This was a while ago so technology (and users!) were less advanced back then.
Someone set an out-of-office autoreply and then tested it - by sending themself an email from the same account…We had one of those chains but the original email was telling people not to do reply all to emails. The manager finally cracked it and said the next person “replying all” to this would be fired. We were tempted to say it was him because he replied all to say this but decided discretion was the better part of valour.
Similar experience, but much worse. There was some IT glitch which meant that a company wide email (about 5k staff) was repeatedly being sent, like every minute. Some dude out at site must have thought that his colleagues were messing with him or something, as he replied all "fxxx off cxxx!".
I see you OP are bored! No one making you laugh?
Homework assignment shortcut.
On the contrary, I am busy as hell at the moment hence I needed something to take my mind away from what I am doing
Mining accidents. Shocks, amputations, cyanide leaks. I left after a rusty bridge collapsed connecting CIL tanks.
Enjoying the reading very much, keep it coming:)
Working in office so nothing too shocking unless you count the sheer amount of financial illiteracy…
There was also the time we had a staff member go off on stress leave while I was trying to coach her to meet her targets. A month or so into the stress leave she popped up on the front page of the local newspaper, opening her new beachside cafe. Needless to say her employment was terminated pretty quickly after that.
And - not so much shocking but pretty amazing - in the leadup to 1st January 2000, in preparation for possible chaos caused by the Millenial Bug, I had to stay back at work one night with the branch manager so we could take delivery of a special cash assignment, meant to help the branch out if all the ATMs etc went down on 1.01.00. I now know what $1,000,000 in cash looks like! And no-one other than the BM and myself knew it was there.Cybersecurity "incident".
All Windows devices which were powered up were wiped during the last night of a significant public holiday period.
IT manager was on holidays. They heard about the issue and not just did not come back immediately to help, but extended their holiday.
Convenient alibi
Sounds Scomo-ish
I don't hold the ethernet cable.
Very few things shock me these days. I've seen too many.
I can't talk about them, not even with my wife.
Used to work for Optus retail
A customer tried to stab a rep with the receipt metal pin stand.
A Optus wide retail email went around for all stores to throw away the receipt stand.
2: a customer purchase a box of tissues from Woolies next door, set it on fire and threw it in our store. Wasn't effective because I was the one that stomped on it, wasn't a big fire ball like he hoped. Had to make a police report but the cameras wasn't enough to identify him cause he threw it out of the store, in.
3: had a customer go on a slapping spree in our store cause he couldn't get what he wanted. He slapped a customer, then tried to slap me, then tried to slap another customer whom push him, then he got up and tried to slap a woman and everyone was like…. GTFO! While I was on the phone to security, he ran then he slapped a customer walking in.
A customer tried to stab a rep with the receipt metal pin stand.
Whenever I see those I always think they are an accident waiting to happen.
Hope that guy got slapped with a law suit!
As usual, workers don't get an update on what happened. But anything can be used as a weapon if the customer wants to.
BAHAHAHAHAH!! Classic!
Felt like that! Security couldn't find him after he left
Some years ago now …
Depot up in KNX - opening up trailer +++ millions of bees flying everywhere + stinging staff.All due to supplier in Perth not restraining beehives to pallet.
One time a coworker brought in raw frozen (and apparently rancid) fish to defrost in the fridge… She intended to microwave it for lunch.
Some time mid morning, the stench was so strong that we could smell it through a closed fridge coming two rooms away. She realised it was hers when we were all commenting on the smell and 'took care of it.'
By 'took care of it' she meant she threw it in the bin in the hallway… Right next to our floor's AC riser, the stench got so bad and so widespread that everyone on the entire floor had to evacuate the building for fresh air while she actually threw it away into the bins outside.
Quite funny at the time but I'm sure I never want to see or smell that again
How dumb can people be…
people not finishing their current work because they need to secure their job for the next quarter
It seems to say a lot and the company than about the people. Something seems fundamentally rotten there.
So most of the big corporations then…
Software Engineers speaking against writing Unit Tests and saying that instead the focus should be on writing as much code as possible.
My team helps manage a fleet of vehicles for a government department which employs alot of contingent labour. We get a call saying one of our vehicles has come off a brige and rolled a couple times. Ambo and fire called they both got out without a scratch on then. Both their stories didnt match up and they ended up going on work cover. I pulled the telemetrics on the trip turns out they were going 100 in a 60 on a dirt road and essentially sent the vehicle flying. Car was a write off and i believe they sacked him.
@Protractor: LOL
Yes, and stealing your lunch is stealing and it is a crime. And nobody should touch any of your stuff without your permission (or some other legally available excuse).
However, just because someone commits a crime that affects you, it doesn't mean you get to retaliate and commit a crime against them. By doing so, you have also committed a crime.
This means that two crimes have been committed and both of you can be penalised.
"He did it to me first" isn't a type of provocation or self defence excuse available to you for something like this.
So, if somebody gives you the shits, your go to solution shouldn't be to give them the shits in return.
It really is in your best interest to either suck it up or utilise appropriate legal resources such as reporting the theft and let whoever is supposed to deal with that, (HR or police?), do their thing.