Has anyone here ever have a melt down at work

[powerboy]

I saw K245five's thread in Morons in Management about manager meltdowns.

This is for anyone who has had a melt-down, while on the job. I will tell mine, as soon as I remember the details.

[Saydrah]

I have a severe phobia of dead things, especially small dead animals. If they're mine, I can hold them to be euthanized if necessary, and I've laid in bed with one of my hedgehogs and held her as she passed naturally- she had untreatable ovarian cancer. But I break down as soon as it's over and I don't need to be there for them anymore. Not mine? I'm terrified. I don't even squish mosquitoes because I don't want their tiny dead bodies on my skin. If I find a dead bug in my house, I scream until someone gets it for me.

Note: I am not a steaming quarter pound of wussburger, as everyone who hears this immediately seems to think. I handle six foot long wild snakes at the drop of a hat, bare handed, even though I'm not a snake person per se- I just have gotten the job of unofficial snake removal person at my horse's barn, after stopping various gangs of gangly gabby teenage girls to stop hitting snakes with rakes ("DAMMIT you! They keep the mice out of the horses' grain, and those ones eat RATTLESNAKES, do you want RATTLESNAKES here?") so often that they just come get me whenever a big ol' snakey wanders into the pasture. Never been bitten by a wild snake- only snakebite I've gotten was from a domestic, captive bred Albino California Kingsnake, and he was just a JERK. I watched my horse's knee surgery and took pictures the whole time (they're online, wanna see?) and I've helped treat more disgusting and scary injuries than you can imagine in 11 years of working with horses. I'm just terrified of dead things.

Anyway, when I worked at Red Dog Blue Cat Store, a manager of mine decided I needed to 'get over' this phobia, which I DID disclose when they hired me, and which everyone else was pretty nice about after seeing me go pale, shaky, and greenish the first time they thought I was just making it up to get out of gross jobs and threw a dead fish at me. But the one manager decided it was her job to get me over my fear, and one day late at night there was a dead frog in the habitat- guess who she told to go take it out? Handed me a black plastic bag and keys to the freezer of dead animals and told me to put it in there.

I panicked so hard I threw up and started shaking. I begged the other person in the store to help me, but manager lady told him not to because she wanted me to get over my fear. I was seeing things blurry and quivering from head to toe, seriously considered quitting the job because of that, and was sitting by the habitat trying not to puke again from being so near it when the manager lady saw me and took pity. I was rattled for over a week from that any time I went near the reptiles- it is absolutely horrible to be confronted, suddenly, without warning, with a serious phobia and worry that you'll lose your job if you don't get over something that took YEARS to develop THAT VERY INSTANT.

I'm a little better with that phobia now that I'm away from that store and the Freezer of Death, but I'm still pretty freaked by anything dead- I don't even like handling meat (though I do eat it).

[Broomjockey]

Yes. In fact it led to my quitting my second theatre. I will not go into details though I will say it was not pretty.

[Foxglove8778]

the one manager decided it was her job to get me over my fear.

The hell??? What gives her the right?

[Becks]

I have a severe phobia of dead things, especially small dead animals.

Anyone interested in my fear of dead things story? If so, I'll mention it...if I haven't already...

Back to the thread at hand.

No personal meltdown stories...yet. Give me a bit more time.

[gunsage]

Not meltdown, per se, but I tend to react...oddly...when I got surprised while doing security. On one incident I was patrolling a large church at night when a student who was there after hours turned a corner, not really paying attention, and I saw her at the last second. "GAAAH!!" was my response, if I remember correctly...kind of a low, loud man scream. I felt really bad though because she jumped back with a high-pitched scream and dropped all of her books. I apologize and immediately started helping her pick her books up.

On another incident, I was working at the bus terminal at night and proceeded to enter one of the busses to check it out as part of my patrol. I had always suspected that the baggers were lazy good-for-nothings, but this proved it and in probably the funniest way possible. As I stepped on the bus and went up the stairway, an arm flopped over from the front seat.

I didn't have time to catch my breath and immediately responded with "H...HEEEEYYY!!!" "Oh shit...!" one of them responded as I turned on the interiors.

Me: "Oh...God...what are you guys doing here? Sorry about that."
Bagger: "Nah...nah, it's okay, man. We were, uh, just resting until the next bus came through."
Me: "Oh...whew...okay."

We all had a good after that. And finally, the following happened to me at my last security job. There were actually two sites I worked for that belonged to the same company. One was a well-lit, open 24/7 but closed to the public during the night facility. And the other? More or less an abandoned property where they kept storage supplies.

It was almost winter and I approached a door, business as usual, ready to jiggle the door handle to verify it's, err, "lockitude." Anyway, I reach for the door, jiggle the handle, then I hear rustling beneath my feet where there were a bunch of leaves. I proceed to "GAAHHH!!!" and then stomp the area repeatedly! Fortunately I missed...a stray cat ran like a bat outta hell from the leaves. I laugh now, but I would've felt terrible if I had hit it. That's about it from me, but I'll see if I can remember anything else.

[blas]

I had a melt down just last Wednesday night. I had been helping out in another department and was allowed to come back and work with my trainees. I was told by another operator that the "impossible" trainee was doing just fine. Well, once I got there, he started fucking up. That's when he started ignoring safety and doing as he pleased. He wasn't listening to me, he broke the machine, the room runners fixed it and talked to him, and he lied about it. I was shaking, I was so mad. SO mad.

The room runner said "If you want to go sit in the break room for a few minutes and take an Aleve, go ahead. I wouldn't come back until the homicidal urge goes away."

I really do need to learn to control how I react to people like him, but for now, when he starts doing stuff like that, I just freak and bottle it up.

Before that, I'd had several meltdowns when I first got promoted and other employees were trying to get me fired. I spent hours in the bathroom crying like a little girl. Many times I looked at the time clock and contemplated clocking out, throwing my badge at security, and leaving.

[smileyeagle1021]

my work meltdown was the one where I ended up sending an email to my manager calling my coworker a "fucking incompetent asshole" (this was the guy who misquoted the availability, the rate, and the company policy).

[Jester]

I am sure I have had more than my share of meltdowns at work, but the one I most vividly remember was way back in the early 90's when I was working as a server at (God help me) a Denny's in Phoenix.

I was about 23 at the time. I had a very annoying coworker, Richard, who was 17. I am 5'8", at the time I weighed 130 lbs. Richard was about 6'2" and about 180-200 lbs. This is kind of germane to the story.

Anyway, at one of my tables was a young mother and her very hyper 8-10 year old son. And this kid was driving his mom nuts....she was almost literally pulling her hair out. I felt some pity for her, and tried to make the meal as easy as possible for her. As I was taking their dessert order, Richard came over and said something to the kid along the lines of "order the most expensive dessert, little guy!" This of course set the kid off into more craziness, and took a moment for the mom to calm him down and order dessert (not the most expensive one). Mom was very unappreciative of Richard's comments.

I was not unappreciative. I was FURIOUS!

I placed the dessert order, then rounded the corner to the back and saw Richard. I grabbed him by the shoulders, threw him up against the wall, and said "Don't you EVER fuck with my tables again!" His normal look of amusement changed to one of shock. Either from my reaction or the fact that someone of my size would do that to someone his size, I don't know. And I didn't care.

And then I walked away to get dessert for the lady and her hellion.

Shortly thereafter, my General Manager asked to speak to me in the back. I was not surprised. I also was not done being pissed off. To the best of my recollection, the conversation went something like this:

GM: "Jester, you can't be threatening other coworkers."
JESTER: "You mean Richard?"
GM: "Well, yes. Richard."
JESTER: "Well then you might want to tell Richard not to fuck with my customers."

I then recounted the events that led up to my confrontation with Richard.

GM: "Well, yes, Richard was out of line, but you are the older one here, and should be more mature."
JESTER: "You are probably right about that, but maybe YOU should look at training your employees to not harass other servers' tables."
GM: "Well, I want you to apologize to Richard."
JESTER: "No."
GM: "Excuse me?"
JESTER: "I said no. I am not going to apologize to Richard, period. What he did was wrong, and he knows it, I know it, and you know it. My actions may not have been the most mature thing I've done, but I stand by them, and I absolutely will NOT apologize for them. Period."
GM: "You're kidding me, right?"
JESTER: "Do I SOUND like I'm kidding? Look, if you have to write me up, write me up. If you have to fire me, fire me. I am good at my job, I am good with customers, and I am not going to allow anyone, you or Richard or anyone else, to make MY customers' time in the restaurant I work at to be anything less than excellent. If you have a problem with that, then fucking fire me. But right now, I have some customers out front that I have to go wait on."

And with that I turned and left the office.

And I never heard another word about the incident.

And, not surprisingly, Richard never did anything like that to any of my tables ever again.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Don't Fuck With Jester.

[protege]

I went apeshit on one of our interns one morning...after she'd decided to be a bitch.

Keep in mind that I was leaving for vacation the next day, and she was to be taking over my duties for the next week. As usual, she was in her own little world; staring at the wall, wasting time, and just being a pain. She didn't seem to be too interested in wanting to do anything, or even taking notes on what I was telling her. So understandably, I was pissed. However, since she was the boss' daughter, I had to be nice.

...up to a point, that is. Midway through the morning, she started whining about how "stupid" things were, and how she didn't want to do them. At that point, I lost it. I literally ripped into her I'd had enough.

I simply told her that I "don't have time to deal with this crap. You have work to do, so shut up and do it." She whined that I wasn't "allowed" to talk to her that way, and being the bastard I am, I said that I just did...and she threatened to tell her father about it. Again, I told her to go right ahead.

Imagine my surprise when I get back from vacation...and nothing happens. Actually, the most her father said about the incident was... "I heard you had a run-in with my daughter. About damn time someone put that bitch in her place." Now *that* made my day

[PuckishOne]

Luckily I had an office with a door at the time, so my meltdown occurred out of sight of any and all. The proximate cause was my being overlooked for a promotion, but the root cause was the callous way it was done.

[Hon'ya-chan]

Too many. Too, too many.

[Flood]

Only once. It was pretty big. Caused me to lose my job (though my bosses at the time refuse to admit that that was why). Every time I try to talk about it, I feel like it sounds as if I'm trying to shift the blame to others around me, and I don't want to be that kind of person.

It ended with me spending two weeks in a mental hospital under suicide watch (though I was never in any way suicidal), and if I ever set foot on an Air Force Base again, I could be sent to jail.

[K245five]

I believe I mentioned this in the "Kmart going to pot?" thread. During my brief tenure there(approx. 1 month), I ran into some of the most nastiest, surliest people I have EVER had the misfortune to work with.

The meltdown occurred when a Night Crew Lead screamed at me at full volume and called me derogatory names just for moving a box on her cart that was sticking out and blocking my way. I told her in some very nasty, vulgar words at full volume myself that I wouldn't be spoken to that way, manager badge or not.

I fully expected to be disciplined or fired, but nothing ever was said!

[smileyeagle1021]

I simply told her that I "don't have time to deal with this crap. You have work to do, so shut up and do it." She whined that I wasn't "allowed" to talk to her that way, and being the bastard I am, I said that I just did...and she threatened to tell her father about it. Again, I told her to go right ahead.

I

wait wait wait... back up a step, she threatened to tell her FATHER was daddy dearest at least someone at the company, still something really pathetic to threaten to do though.