“What's The Most Insane Complaint You've Had About An Employee That Turned Out To Be True?” (35 Answers)

I just fired an intern because he thought it'd be funny to smack one of the girls on the a*s. Upon further investigation, she had been having anxiety coming to work because he would ask all sorts of ridiculously inappropriate questions. For example, he asked her if she had a good weekend. She told him it was a good weekend or some plain answer and he then asked her if it was because she f****d her boyfriend a lot. Needless to say, her anxiety was warranted and we fired him as soon as we could. The mood in my group seems a bit more relaxed this week...

That the guy was stalking a female employee. It was a 24 hour retailer and she was a morning shift and he was night shift so I just thought there was no way they knew each other. Then one day I was filling in for a different manager and he came into the break room and was taking pictures of the morning shift schedule. I asked him why and he told me some story about another employee just wanted him to send their schedule etc. I came in on my day off later that week during day shift and caught him staring at her from a different aisle while she was stocking. She had no idea, he would follow her home and watch her house and all that. She was 17, he was 38. I called the cops and had him escorted off the property and helped her get in touch with the right resources for a restraining order. He ended up violating the order multiple times and is in jail last I heard.

Working in a bank. Had a teller (about 19 year-old) get pissed about the way a customer (retail store owner) would send in her deposits at the drive up window. The teller complained about the customer on Facebook! Tagged the lady personally, as well as the store! Customer called the bank and told me, furious of course. I told the customer we would investigate, I asked the teller. She straight up admitted it, and says "What's the customer or Branch Manager going to do about it? My Grandfather is friends with the bank President." I called HR and Bank President on conference. Girl lost her job in under 15 minutes of me receiving the call from the customer. Breach of customer confidentiality in banking is a MAJOR law violation.

Mechanic here. I had a coworker whom would poke a hole into customers tires just so they would come back and buy more (yes he did it to new tires as well). Finally caught him one day after I found it odd that it was only the customers he put tires on that kept coming back for more tires, at first I thought maybe he wasn't putting enough air into them so I kinda hawk eyed over him without him knowing and sure enough he would put the tire on the rim (we have a special machine to put tires on rims) and he would put a small slit with his pocket knife in the tread on the tire. Caught him red handed doing it. Fired on the spot. F**k you Brett. 

Many years ago, the bookshop I worked at hired a new employee with terminal cancer - very sad, since she was quite young. She wasn't around too much due to the chemotherapy etc., but when she was in she worked in the children's department. She was actually a pretty good children's bookseller, and was a huge fan of a fairly major American children's author; she ran the UK branch of his fanclub and knew him personally, he occasionally flew her out to the States for events.

One day, she wasn't in, and all employees were called to a staff meeting. We were informed that she had passed away. There was a lot of sadness; her close colleagues were devastated.

Only... a few days later one of our staff happened to go into a branch of McDonalds in a nearby town. Guess who was working behind the counter? Go on, guess.

Turns out she was never ill. She had made the whole cancer thing up, as well as *faking her own death,* for reasons that we never really fully understood. The general consensus was that it started out as a way to connect with her author hero and kind of spiralled from there; in the end she couldn't handle living the lie any more and so... just up and had her mother tell people that she'd died. And then got a job in Maccie D's a few miles down the road, and was surprised when she got found out.

That was a pretty what-the-f**k sort of experience for us all.

Huge well known international company. Young straight-out-of-college guy just hired (as in, first day the same week), who had moved from eastern europe to corporate location. Cue company ski trip. Free booze. Some of his new colleagues/"friends" told him that this woman was checking him out.

He wasn't exactly sober, and started hitting on her. She told him to knock it of, that she wasn't interested. He kept being pushy. Large scary dude beside the woman told him to knock it off. He swung at large scary dude, and promptly found himself face first in the snow.

The woman in question? Head of global HR. The large scary dude? Head of global corporate security, ex military. The young schmuck? Fired.

Hired a guy on a trial basis. He was super polite and careful when speaking to me, but several of my female employees told me when I wasn't around he was creepy. After about 5 days, one came to me and said almost verbatim: "I think he's a r****t." She just a had a gut feeling about him. So I ran a background check on him... yep, he was a convicted r****t. 

“Our night supervisor bought a ten foot python and walked around the warehouse with it around his shoulders” Checked the videos. Yep, bloke had a python. At one point he put it down, and then spent the next half hour trying to find it. Was the final straw - sacked him.

Had a new hire (as in less than a week on the job) at a movie theater, where I worked as a supervisor, throw a very loud, unbelievably childish tantrum in front of a lobby full of customers because her direct supervisor asked her to sweep up some popcorn that a customer spilled. She kept screaming "I ain't cleaning up someone else's mess! Make them (the customer) do it!" She was 24 years old. The meltdown she had when she got fired for her tantrum was nuclear, with lots of screaming & threats of how her parents were going to "call the company and get all your a**es fired!". The next day someone *claiming* to be her dad did call & tell us that we "are going to rehire my daughter & apologize to her and fire (named her supervisor and manager) or else." but nothing more came of it, the top manager just laughed & hung up. I've yet to ever see such an epic, entitled tantrum before or since.

Had a coworker who always had a really strong stench and thought it was just bad BO. Turns out she was addicted to mothballs and was licking them during working hours. The chemicals give off an unbelievably strong smell through your skin. We got complaints about her odor but didn’t take them seriously (thought people were just being a******s) until someone saw her actively licking on the job. 

Night shift at a packing line. We had two new temps and they were polar opposites. One super bubbly religious guy who was pretty emotional (cried during his favorite songs) the other guy was grunge, pretty cynical but a damned good worker. Well they both ended up working on adjacent lines and I was training them. Things were great till the bubbly guy decided it was his mission to befriend the grunge guy. Grunge dude wanted to be left alone so he could work but bubbly guy kept going to our team lead to tell her he couldn’t understand why grunge wouldn’t be his friend. My team lead comes down and tells them to play nice and be friends. (She was despised by most of our crew) she’s oblivious, I told her that bubbles needs to leave grunge alone but she wouldn’t have it. Grunge walked out. And bubbles cried for two nights straight then never came back.

The cemetery director was selling plots, pocketing the money ($750), and selling the same plot to another family. The second family would show up ready to bury their deceased only to find the grave already being used. He got away with it for a year.

I knew a guy who worked at subway back when they gave out stamps. Basically for every six inches of sub you bought you earned a stamp and once you filled a card with 8 stamps you could get a free six inch sub.

So this guy started only giving stamps to customers who asked for them. If they didn't ask he pocketed their stamps and grew a sizeable stack of complete stamp cards.

Then over time he started cashing them in. When a customer paid with cash he would ring it in as a freebie, place his own completed stamp card in the till, and pocket the cash. Customer got their sub, subway's till was balanced, and he had an extra five to ten bucks in his pocket - everybody was happy.

He worked there for a few years and word was he racked up a few thousand dollars running this scheme. No idea if anybody complained, or if he was ever caught, but he did buy a motorbike.

I was the head night auditor at an upscale airport property. Had a youngish night auditor who put a room into out of order status and let his friends in to party and have an orgy that he joined during his lunch break. He got caught because of a noise complaint. Police called, he was fired and blacklisted from being hired back.

I had a guy call in sick so he could go to the same company’s christmas party.

When my wife was in college she worked as a teller at the bank. Tellers were responsible for checking out and checking in a certain amount of cash on every shift. One of her coworkers doing the evening shift decided to take the money to the casino with the idea that he would replace it in the morning. Unluckily for him there was an audit in the bank the next morning before he came in and he was fired on the spot.

I (HR Head) got a call from a “sex chat administrator”, informing our official account is unpaid. They will take legal action if we don’t pay immediately. I thought it was a joke. Anyways we did get a legal notice! Then legal and HR investigated. The “sex chat” company sent a phone call copy. As soon I played it, my HR lady screamed- I know this guy, he works in supply chain!!

Later on, we realised we had a employee who used to make phone “sex chat” calls using our company landline. We politely told him to pay up and settle the matter. Then issued a final warning letter.

On his second day at KFC, he tried walk out with two buckets of chicken and ran right into our boss.

When I worked at Sams club, one of the cashiers pocketed a few grand from his drawer and put it on Facebook.

We were a new club, so if that much money went missing, it would have taken them a while to figure out. Or so I was told.

One of the managers overheard and they put two and two together. He got arrested and was fired.

Once had a co-worker selling shrimp from the dumpster. Picked them out after brunches. Popped a few on a skewer, and sold them in the bars that night. Got caught in a bar with the manager, and the CCTV caught him dumpster diving. They had him arrested