As much as we may not want to admit it, many of us love indulging in juicy gossip. Whether the stories involve a celebrity, an estranged cousin or a colleague, we can’t keep away from a good scandal.
To keep your appetite for drama satiated, Reddit users have been sharing the most shocking and infamous incidents that have ever occurred at their places of employment. So grab some popcorn and enjoy reading through these tales, and be sure to upvote the stories you’re glad you didn’t have to witness firsthand!
#1
I worked in a factory that had windows on one side. Upper management would give tours to important people to show off the factory. One of the maintenance guys got in a huge fistfight right next to the window just as a tour group walked by.
Image credits: QuirkyUser
#2
I used to work at a big corporate law firm, and every year they would take on about 15 law students. One year, 3 of the students were almost identical. Kind of generically pretty honey-blondes, about the same height and body type, all with similar haircut, very similar glasses, similar clothing style, etc. 2 of them were with us for 3 years and the other for 2, and for that entire time people at the firm were mixing them up. So the first year, when they were still pretty fresh and literally nobody could tell them apart, one of them (or more??) got white girl wasted at one of the firm events. She (they??) started asking people to do m***y with her in the bathroom, insulted one of the senior partners, got in a fight with an important client, threw up at the bar, and made racist comments to the hr director about the cab driver and refused to get in with him so a second cab had to be called. The partners were furious, staff was furious, clients were furious, hr was furious. There were senior level meetings about it for about 2 weeks, but the problem was that nobody could say for certain which one of them it had been, or even if it had been only one. They were interrogated repeatedly but nobody confessed and nobody was able to implicate any one of them with any real certainty. So nothing happened. Only one of them ended up being hired on as a lawyer, and to this day (11 years later) nobody knows if it was her or not.
Image credits: Mtldoggogogo
To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to the Reddit user who posed the question, “What was an infamous scandal/incident that had happened at your workplace?” Lucky for us, Swag_Paladin21, or @SwaggyG_2102 on X, was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda about how this conversation started in the first place.
They shared that nothing in particular inspired them to start this conversation, but when the question popped into their mind, they just had to reach out to fellow Reddit users. And thankfully, Swag_Paladin21 hasn’t yet witnessed any crazy scandals in their own workplace. “I only work at FedEx during the summer, and I’m a full-time college student,” they explained.
#3
This was a pretty famous incident (at least amongst my work group) at a large company I worked for a long time ago…. My boss’s admin wrote a semi erotic sci fi fantasy western story with him as the main character. He wrote it on his work computer and when he was done he tried to email it to someone. He emailed it to EVERY person in the region who held a specific job, about 20 people. Needless to say, they shared it with anyone they could. By the end of the day it had been read by a vast majority of employees on the west coast. Hundreds of employees read this thing, with the senders name on it as well as IN it as the protagonist. Somehow, he did not get fired. I really have no clue how he didn’t. Anyway, it’s a thing of beauty. This happened in 2008 and I still have it saved in my personal email. I read it at least annually for a laugh. It’s got everything. Sex, cowboys, aliens that bestow rocket fart powers.
Image credits: Prinad0
#4
Had a pretty boy boss (ex airforce) that was a serious womanizer. He got his son a job at the same glass factory. The son was over the moon as his wife was having a baby. After, it was born, the DIL confessed that the father-in-law as the real birth father. Daddy cleaned out all his bank accounts and disappeared with the DIL leaving his wife destitute. The last I heard the son had a gun and was looking for his dad!
Image credits: worker911
#5
Had an IT guy that didn’t wash his hands after he pooped. He wore Nike shoes that were like super bright and vibrant, so if you were sitting in a stall, and saw those shoes next to you you’d know it was the IT dude taking a dump. You’d hear him wipe, flush, pull his pants up, and then walk out of the bathroom. His nickname was poopy fingers, and ever since then I have always had a thing of Clorox wipes at my desk. Like this guy would put his hands on your mouse, all over your keyboard, desk phone, and it was possible he had just taken a s**t before working on your computer. Several people went to HR, and for some reason they literally did nothing. People do this day still wonder why I don’t partake in office potlucks. Well, one day ole’ Poopy Fingers didn’t show up for work. Then it became a few days, then about a week, and then a couple of weeks. People started asking, and looking around. Turns out Poopy Fingers was a huge c*****e dealer, and very involved in money laundering. The FBI raided his apartment and has been incarcerated ever since. That was approximately six years ago.
Image credits: mothershipq
The OP also doesn’t believe that dramatic stories such as these take place in all work environments. “I believe scandals are like rare events that happen in a fairly mundane environment,” they shared.
As far as what Swag_Paladin21 thought of the responses to their post, they told Bored Panda that they really enjoyed them, but nothing in particular shocked them. “I knew that there was going to be some wild stuff that was going to be posted in the replies before I even submitted my post,” they noted.
#6
When I was 17 years old I got a job at the neighborhood donut shop that my family had been going to for years. There were a lot of regulars who hung out and drank coffee (and smoked cigarettes) there for hours a day (this was before coffee shops were really a thing.) A few months before I got hired it got bought by a new owner and it was run by him, his wife, and his wife’s mother who had all worked together at other shops. There was another waitress there who was a 17-year-old foster child. She spent a lot of time with the family, which didn’t seem suspicious because they had an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old that she babysat and we thought they just felt sorry for her because she was in foster care so they included her in family outings.
Yeah, you can see where this is going. ? Within 6 months he had left his wife, who moved out of state with her mother and the children, and moved the 17-year-old in. The regulars begin gossiping and he literally banned staff and customers from discussing him or the girlfriend, as well as staff from coming in when we were not working. Keep in mind, I had been coming into that donut shop my entire life at that point. My dad stopped going in entirely after that, except when I was working, and I think that was just to keep an eye on the situation. We lost most of the other regulars because they refused to stop gossiping about him and we were supposed to kick them out when they did. ? I didn’t really care, even though when I worked shifts with her she didn’t do anything and I kept walking in to the back to find them making out which really grossed me out because he was almost 40. But when he told me I had to start sharing my tips with her I quit (we had never pooled tips before and she wasn’t getting any because she wasn’t serving anyone.) Shortly after I quit another waitress quit for the same reason and the few customers they had left stopped coming in at all. He went out of business less than a year later. I’m pretty sure he and the girlfriend broke up shortly after that, but I never saw or heard from either of them again. Ironically, I still talk to a lot of the regulars and my current mechanic, 30 years later, was one of them. ? He and I still sometimes talk about back then.
Image credits: Hippy_Lynne
#7
Single woman was notorious for dating married co-workers. The woman had lots of money and lured them with vacations, gifts etc. She took one on a vacation, the married guy told his wife that it was a work trip. Someone tipped his wife off and she met them at the airport and dumped his clothes in front of them and told him not to come home.
Another single woman had an affair with a married co-worker. She got pregnant. His wife said, end it now or I’m walking away with half of your pension, the house and kids etc. The guy got a transfer to another location leaving his pregnant with twins mistress in the dust.
Image credits: JanuarySoCold
#8
Security work for a government acronym agency. 2 supervisors were having an idle conversation which turned into a disagreement regarding the interpretation of a procedure. They took their disagreement to a manager. Manager kicks it up the chain, which led to an investigation. The result of the investigation led to 37 people being suspended and 6 terminations. It made the news.
Image credits: Icy-Corner4704
Finally, the OP added that “workplace scandals are like school scandals, just less teachers sleeping with students and more people losing their jobs over the dumbest [or most] selfish of things.”
#9
Worked in a fast food place in high school. Manager in his 30’s had a relationship with one of the employees, a high school senior. Faked a burglary of about $6k and manager got tied up to a tree and drove car off a cliff. Police saw right through it. Owners did not prosecute but fired both and made them pay everything back. The two stayed together and got married several months later. Not sure where they are now.
Image credits: Beenthere-doneit55
#10
Manager was caught having sex with a married subordinate in a room that was open to anyone at the workplace. No one did anything about it until the dudes wife caught wind of it and called HR. They fired the manager and she’s actually homeless now.
More recently another manager with quite the promiscuous reputation was caught fellating two male subordinates in that same room! She was immediately fired.
Image credits: QueasyDrummer00
#11
I was an English teacher in Japan and at one school we had these “private” rooms that were basically meant for 1 – 3 students and a teacher.
They were tiny rooms with a round table. The doors were made of transparent glass.
One of the teachers was caught having sex with his student on the table when she requested a private 1 on 1 lesson.
To be fair they were already dating and both were of age. It was, however, against school policy to f**k your students.
Another time we found a wireless hidden camera in the girl’s toilet.
Image credits: Ya-Dikobraz
#12
A production manager and the HR lady had a fling going on. The general manager replaced her office door with a windowed door to cut down on their alone time. She raised hell with corporate to get it switched back because she required privacy with “disciplinary discussions”, neglecting the fact that disciplinary meetings always required 2 managers.
Image credits: BlueHerringBeaver
#13
Work had to call in a substitute for me because I was at a conference. They called in a sub manager who had been drinking all day so they reported anyway. So, she goes to use the restroom in her state, locks herself in a stall and can’t get out. Instead, she knocks down two of the three walls of the stall. While drunk. Sent her home that night for good.
Image credits: boheme013
#14
Let’s see, my old job had several:
Guy working on a machine got decapitated because he forgot to turn the lift off that was right above him. I was there but did not see it, however, production continued and all they did was section off the part of the plant he was at.
Another guy had a heart attack on the assembly line, witnessed as they tried using a defibrillator to bring him back, but we were all given very specific instructions as to not stop the line whatsoever.
A couple got caught having sex in the bathroom and the wife tried to claim that she was only helping him tie his shoes.
This crazy woman decided to come in on night shift (when she worked day shift), locked somebody in a supply closet and wasn’t found out until she was spotted sitting in front of the closet and singing to the person she was holding hostage.
Image credits: Dragonborn83196
#15
The crazy bunny hoarder lady. She was completely normal and forgettable at work, but turns out to have hoarded hundreds of bunnies in her home; filth everywhere, the usual animal hoarding setup. She quit when she was arrested and the bunnies were removed from her home and she eventually moved away. One of the terms of her release was that she was not permitted to have pets and all her neighbors had to be informed of her animal abuse and were instructed to call the cops ASAP if they spotted any signs of her collecting bunnies again. There were jokes at work for years about checking desks for hidden bunnies, and every time a new employee asked what the joke was, someone would Google her and find out about whatever her newest bunny-related charges were. She did not stop hoarding bunnies.
Image credits: WonderMew
#16
At my wife’s workplace one evening, one of her workmates was being banged on the boardroom table by a manager, seen by a whole array of people at a 2nd story bar across the road. The colleagues must have thought the glass wasn’t see-through from outside. Cellphone footage went globally viral in a matter of hours. One of the witnesses at the bar was a friend of ours, who sent a text to my wife when we were home that evening. After a few hours, my wife text her workmate to see if she was ok, because my wife thought the girl would have found out the global sensation by now. She didn’t know, and my wife had to tell her that she was on a viral video of her being screwed in the office.
Come Monday, butt-prints were found on the table when people arrived at work. Poor girl agreed to resign while the older guy continued his career.
Image credits: Bokkmann
#17
Headmaster of my daughter’s school had an affair with a parent. She and her husband blackmailed the school to keep quiet. When that tactic didn’t work, they outed him by 1) throwing fliers around at a PTA meeting and 2) simultaneously sending whatsapp messages to the entire parent body…. Of the naked selfies he sent to her. This sparked a chain of events including press exposure (no pun), he said-she said. 2 very broken families and damaged children. Selfish as f**k. The next headteacher who took over was m******d shortly after.
Image credits: Basic-Escape-4824
#18
The 39 year old IT guy who drove five hours away to have sex with a 15 year old girl he met online. He got caught and was never seen again by anyone from the office.
#19
Old man who owned our company retired and let his son run the company. Son got caught having an affair with a woman from the secretarial pool. Son got divorced married the secretary. Old man died, leaving the company to the son. The son died of a heart attack, leaving the company to his new wife. The wife went from secretary to owner in less than 5 years.
#20
About 30 years ago a lady at my work k***ed her father because he had cancer and was in pain and asked her to. She was arrested, there was a trial, the whole thing. I live in a kinda conservative country so it was big news and hotly debated. The oddest thing was that our company paid for her defence. She was found not guilty although people said it was only because of emotions and not facts.
#21
We rented out a restaurant for the christmas party of our department. Things escalated quickly, people started snorting lines everywhere and everyone got s**tfaced. The department consisted of 80% uni students (m+f) age 19-26 and 20% single mothers age 40-50… A couple was caught f*****g in the kitchen of the restaurant and the party was ended by the owner. The kitchen had to be sanitized and the costs had to be payed by the two lovebirds… Needless to say our christmas partys looked different after that one…
#22
Years ago, our overnight shift manager was “caught” blowing dudes in the bathroom. Except she wasn’t actually caught. She admitted it was how she motivated the overnight crew who got bored easily. But it was a good thing we replaced her with a c***k addict. Who ended up stealing a ton of our computer equipment. And would also blow dudes in the bathroom. We outsourced to India and haven’t had any issues since.
#23
Worked in a restaurant. One of the servers wondered what the big “in case of fire” button in the kitchen did. The answer was it blasts a siren and dumps vast amounts of foam on all the cooking areas. Ovens, hobs, deep fat fryer, microwaves, everything.
Restaurant could only serve drinks that day as the foam takes a long time to clean out. All reservations cancelled.
Person did not lose their job, but we all had to go through for safety induction again.
#24
Not exactly a scandal, but it was an open secret our Chief Pilot only has a job because the original owner died before he could fire the dude. the old Chief Pilot had to step up and run the business as the CEO, and with a recent airline hiring kick, and loss of the Owner who made the place what it was, they had lost a good chunk of their long-time pilots and the job of Chief was left to this incompetent dumbass. I suspect the only reason was because the paperwork kept him off the flight-line as much as humanly possible, though I could assure you when he went flying it was always… interesting. there was more than once the conversation of “should we let him k**l himself this time or should we say something” was said when this jackass took an unairworthy aircraft out (Yes, it happened *multiple* times). Unfortunately for humanity our own moralities won out in the end. I still expect to see an NTSB Report with his name on it at some point if he’s still flying.
#25
My old work, before I worked there, made the local news when one of the senior people threw himself off a cliff one day. Everyone was so confused and sad, why would he do that? People gave tribute and spoke at his funeral.
Then it turns out that the guy had stolen millions from a client account and was about to be found out and had no way to pay it back so took the easier way out. The other senior people had to get money together for the client themselves to save the business. Apparently the big boss’ hair went white like overnight, he had been planning to make the guy his successor and took a lot longer to retire instead.
Needless to say there were a lot more security measures around client accounts by the time I started there ?
#26
We had to do a sting operation in our work where a bunch of lockers over a couple months were broken into and all employee cash nicked. Didn’t take long to realise it always happened after pay day and the employee was talking in the lunch room about going shopping after work. Well we loaded up a camera in a locker and had a colleague announce loudly in the break room about going xmas shopping later and how they were worried about having so much cash on them. It turns out it was one of the managers. Honestly that woman was the shame of the place. Was immediately let go and last I heard was practically chased out of the town we lived in. (Her house/car was constantly getting vandalised).
#27
A guy got fired for stealing a roll of toilet paper. (It was a really well paid office job, so it was a WTF moment, that someone risks his career for a roll of TP.)
One time the whole police department showed up and arrested a guy. Multiple police cars, tens of officers. They candcuffed the guy and escorted him out of the building. Turns out he stole our clients’ Credit Card info and tried to order stuff online.
One girl dropped a bottle of water which laned next to a power outlet. Some electrical overload developed, she basically fried all desktop PC’s in her office. 10 people spent the day waiting for the IT department to fix the issue.
#28
Owner of company had affair on his wife of 25 years. With his bookkeeper that had a bf for 9 years and was 20 years younger than her boss. The same bookkeeper that babysat bosses kids when boss and his wife were working day and night to keep business running. The same bookkeeper that’s the daughter of companies biggest customer. The same bookkeeper that is the owners goddaughter.
It was an ugly divorce and the owners kids don’t talk to the owner anymore. One got pissed, ended up married and moved states away and the other took over his moms half of the business and is currently subverting the owner out of his half.
It’s been a wild thing to witness.
#29
Worked in academia. One of our professors embezzled his research funding to spend on one of his students whom he was secretly dating.
#30
some guy went on the speakerphone of the hospital and started cursing bc he didn’t know he turned it on. he got fired
#31
Accounting person would order construction material but had some of it delivered to his place. Company paid for his house. ?
#32
Two coworkers had a thing going on between them and the woman’s boyfriend or ex-boyfriend shot the both of them near the workplace. The woman survived but the guy didn’t.
#33
My boss met a girl at a cafe and offered her an “interview” then training . Cut to a week and a half later she’s screaming at him in the office bc he doesn’t want to have sex with her anymore .
#34
Factory had a serial pooper. He was never caught, he would leave giant piles of poop all over the place, sometimes with cigarette butts in them. They actually made a poop task force of people who would routinely walk around the factories less busy zones in order to catch him
#35
About 20 years ago I got an internship working in an office of a random factory near campus for one semester. It was a peanut butter factory. One day someone drove a forklift off a ledge into a giant vat of peanut butter.
I witnessed the discussion among managers of if/how the peanut butter could be saved. They ended up not saving it, but there was a huge fight as the general manager really really wanted to hide this accident.
#36
There was two goofball I worked with, lets call them Jim and Kevin.
Both of these guys were pathological liars, and pretty stupid to boot. As a couple of examples, Jim bought a sport bike her could barely ride and immediately claimed he was in the “Rough riders”, a motorcycle stunt gang. Kevin would make outrageous claims like the exhaust on his truck netted him a hundred horsepower, or that Subaru was a German automaker. They were always calling each other out on their obvious lies, and loathed each other.
The controversy begins when we had the yearly shift bid, and Jim took a spot that Kevin wanted. It’s seniority based, so Jim of course has every right to take the shift. Kevin didn’t like that so he followed Jim to the local 7-11 at lunch and tried intimidating Jim into pulling his name. Jim goes to our manager and makes a complaint. Kevin denies the whole thing, but they suspend him while they investigate. So Kevin leaves and waits across the street for Jim to leave. He follows Jim home, but Jim is the smarter of the two and drives a police station instead. Kevin, being the moron that he is, follows him into the police station parking lot and is quickly set upon by the officers there. They drag him out of his truck and it turns out he was armed. Not completely sure what happened to Kevin after that, but we never saw him again.
Image credits: Pyrochazm
#37
One teacher was accused of abuse because he didn’t give the girl a good grade. His reputation was ruined. An investigation cleared him.
Another teacher was caught taking pictures of students and was arrested and prosecuted; no alarms were raised by students but by his wife. He went to jail.
Both incidents happened at the same time.
Image credits: LordMoody
#38
Someone was caught stealing scratch cards from the customer service desk, scratching them and trying to claim them from the lottery. Didn’t know that the tickets aren’t valid until “Activated” at the till, similar to online store credit coupons.
Also, the company’s regional manager almost cost us our liquour license because he tried to force a checkout employee to run alcohol through for a suspected underageed customer and, when said employee refused even with the objections, tried to kick her off the till and run the purchase through himself (because she was still logged into the till, it would’ve been blamed on the checkout girl since the evidence pointed to her). The shift manager had overseen the argument and dragged his a*s out the back to give him the third degree, but not before asking for ID and refusing the purchase.
Turns out it was a police-sanctioned test purchase.
Image credits: res30stupid
#39
District manager was sleeping with the regional manager. No romantic relationships allowed between anyone not on the same level. Still happens a lot since it’s a huge company.
However, regional manager was married with children. Both disappeared.
#40
We have food vouchers to give to customers if they’re left without power so they don’t go hungry.
A couple of people very naively went into the system and took some codes…. And ordered food to their home addresses.
#41
Guy who reported to my same boss, different team, went a little nuts, got in a fight with a Walmart employee, and pulled a gun. He did pull the trigger, but didn’t hit anyone. The company couldn’t fire him fast enough.
#42
One of the owners just wanted to f**k everybody. He was having an affair, it ended and they wanted to fire her, she sued them and is still working there. One other chick was bouncing from guy to guy(pun intended) at that same place too. It was wild.
#43
I once went to check up on a drunk woman I assumed was puking in the bathroom and it turned out she’d either passed out then s**t, or s**t then passed out but regardless she mad a f*****g biohazard in our THREE stall ladies bathroom, and she had the f*****g balls to show up for Sunday brunch THEE NEXT DAY.
#44
Fine dining restaurant transfered in a new manager after old one got drunk and drove into someone’s front yard. New manager had kitchen make trays of wings and nachos and servers carry them across the street to where his family lived. He didn’t even try to hide them in takeout boxes. Stole bottles of wine and everyone’s tips. Took months for the owners to realize.
#45
We recently attempted to unionize our hotel and they subsequently shut down the restaurant located in the hotel, it was the largest department and it was where I was worked. We got a lot of news coverage as we were and highly regarded restaurant, we were also able to have some support from local politicians and organizations and we subsequently won unionization and reemployments although we are still waiting for it all to happen.