Urban legends in the workplace

[squall]

Anybody heard of any outlandish tales that originated from before your time at your current workplace? Or maybe it happened while you were there. An employee or customer does something so outlandish as to be the talk of the ages?

This one was before my time. One night crew employee where I worked was fired for shoplifting(at big box retailer). The company could not prove it, but it is believed that he broke into the locked security office of the store on multiple occasions and turned off all cameras so he could do his dastardly deeds. He removed a ceiling tile next to the office in our breakroom and crawled through the ceiling over a wall. The tile was located over our vending machines. The tile still shows evidence of damage today. They said he literally destroyed the tile within the office and knocked over a bunch of stuff and that's how they know somebody was breaking in there. He was finally caught by cameras that he thought were turned off.

After I started working there, a manager I barely knew was fired for supposedly having a relationship with his team lead after people started talking and they were followed to his house. It was said the the female team lead boasted a little too much about their little affair and that's how the wheels got rolling.

[powerboy]

That we are going to be advertising.
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Sadly, you thought, I was joking. We are never going to advertise, and why, because it costs the main owner money. He wants it to be all word of mouth, which for one thing, is not doing any more business, then what we get now, which by the way, is very little, because we are stuck in the worst part of town, which we cannot be found unless, you are actually looking for it. Sorry for that run on sentence.

[BookstoreEscapee]

There's the music manager who was arrested and led out of the store in handcuffs. From what I understand, he was ordering in music, not receiving it, and taking it to sell on his own. That happened shortly after I left in 2000.

There's also the guy who punched a hole in the wall in receiving. He had some kind of argument with the manager and was really mad. He was fired and the hole is still there, at least 6 years later. I was working there when it happened but I came in later in the day that it happened. The community relations manager called me at home to let me know he was fired since I was friends with him.

There's the party that one of the women threw at her house. People were swimming and going in the hottub, and one of the guys didn't have a suit. Did that stop him? No. He just went without. I didn't notice until I saw him holding a tiny towel around his waist when he got out. The hostess didn't know until her husband pulled her out of the hottub that the guy was also sitting in. That was a number of years ago now, and it still gets mentioned.

There is one guy I worked with, he was a department manager back in 97 when I started. He met his wife working in that store. (She no longer worked for the company when I met him.) He is now a store manager elsewhere; a few years ago he was having an affair with an assistant manager in the store he was managing at the time. A divorce ensued, but no one got fired. They are both managers in different stores now.

[digilight]

Not exactly our company, but in our previous building (3 story building) there was a company who rented out a unit on the third floor. They pretty much only worked at night. Why you might ask? They were a naughty picture studio (yup porn boys and girls) I guess they worked after the other offices in the building shut down for the night. And at times some of the models (scantily clad if at all) would wander down the hall to use the little actress room. Well the janitor (had been doing it for years) knew all about and didn't really care since it gave him some interesting stories and some excitment. But the building owner was pissed when he finaly found out, and had them immediatly evicted from his building. I guess that their lease agreement didn't say anything about clothing optional : )

[MadMike]

That we are going to be advertising.
.
.

Sadly, you thought, I was joking. We are never going to advertise, and why, because it costs the main owner money.

I imagine that works about as well as it did at the home improvements store where I worked. Very few people ever even heard of the place. We did have a weekly flyer in the Sunday paper, but that was really about it. No radio or TV ads. Not surprisingly, the chain went under quite some time ago.

Back on topic, one of the cashiers at the supermarket job had a reputation for messing around with the truck drivers who delivered to our store. In fact, she had a nickname, consisting of two words, the first one being "Trucker", and the second word rhyming with the first.

I don't know if there was actually any truth to it or not, we all know how rumors go.

[ahanix1989]

Rumour that an employee committed suicide in the bathroom, back when we were an IHop

[Lace Neil Singer]

At the pizza place, there was a story about an SC so bad, he threw a chair at the manager and got hauled out of there by the police. O_o

[Noelegy]

Not an urban legend. Two former employees were fired for having conjugal relations in a stairwell, all unaware of the security camera trained upon them.

[Sandman]

One serious, one funny

The serious one: We had a co-worker who slit her wrists right before the DM was coming. Her timing was a bit off and they took her away just as the DM was arriving.

The funny one: We hang Yankee's fans (we are a very big Boston Red Sox fan store) from the ceiling upside down by their feet and hit them with plastic clip strips.

*Please note* We do not do the funny one, it's just a little funny story we share with the new hires *Please note*