12 Workplace Plot Twists That Turned Funnier Than a Sitcom

At the end of the day, your workplace is basically where you go to earn a living and doesn’t necessarily have to be the most interesting place on Earth. That being said, even the dullest of offices tend to have stories and anecdotes that can make everyone laugh and break the ice. Here go some such pranks and events that brightened the day, at least for the audience.

• The CEO sends a cryptic email saying he has a big announcement. He’s an older dude, so people immediately start worrying that he’s either announcing his retirement, or announcing the sale of the company, or something like that. At the time, we were having a great year, but people were still freaking out that maybe he sold, and now our futures are in jeopardy.
  Everyone shuffled into the conference room, where he’s there with a microphone. There’s champagne and candy on a table. He goes into this spiel about how it was our best year ever, and he couldn’t be more proud, and he heard the retirement rumors, but it won’t be any time soon. So there’s 100 people in this room, like, “Ok, so?” The tension was unreal.
  “Please help yourself to some candy. Also, the executives and I are going on a Caribbean cruise to celebrate! Join me in congratulating them on this great success!” What followed was the most tepid, dumbfounded round of applause I have ever heard. I felt like I was on an episode of The Office. The fun-sized M&Ms were good, though. © soomuchcoffee / Reddit
• My dad told me of this doctor who would always pop open a Coke before surgery, take a few sips, then leave it on the counter. Others would always screw with him by drinking it and leaving the empty can. Fed up, he stuck a post-it note on the can that read, “I spit in the this.”
  When he got out of surgery, someone had written, “So did I.” © BoilerBear1971 / Reddit

• IT Consultant here. I currently work for a demo/plant hire firm. One of the not-so-bright yard workers was breaking down some reclaimed materials next to a skip. As he’s chopping away with his little axe, he notices a can of expanding foam, brings it towards him, and, for some strange reason, decides to hit it REALLY hard with the axe.
  All I heard was a loud bang and a lot of swearing. He walks out from behind the skip, noticeably expanding due to the sheer volume of this stuff he had on him. He looked like a very confused, orange Marshmallow man. © Techpaste / Reddit
• At a funeral I was working, I watched the estranged mother of the deceased try to threaten and intimidate the young widow. The thing is, the mom didn’t speak English, and the widow didn’t understand a word of Spanish. So, while mom was telling her how she was going to pay for taking her son away from her and from his country and how she’d make her life miserable, the widow was just smiling and nodding.
  The mom was getting increasingly frustrated and finally got out something like, “You, he, meet soon!” The wife took it in a very different way, scooped the mom up in a big hug, thanked her for that, and said she loved her too. The mom gave up and stormed off.
  I managed to keep my face straight long enough to pull the deceased’s brother aside and have a word. The brother rolled his eyes and assured me that he’d have his mom on the first plane back to Spain, and I retreated to the prep room for more tissues and an extended fit of giggling. © Haceldama / Reddit

• I used to work part-time at a fast food chain. On my first day shift, things were going smoothly—until the soda machine exploded. I was refilling the syrup when suddenly, it started spraying everywhere like a fire hydrant gone rogue. The entire floor got soaked in sticky soda, and I was standing there drenched from head to toe.
  Customers were watching, fries half-eaten, as I tried to stop it, but it just wouldn’t quit. Then, as if things couldn’t get worse, my manager walked in, slipped on the soda, and went down like a cartoon character. Everyone froze, and I was convinced I was going to get fired on the spot.
  Instead, the manager just started laughing, and soon, the whole restaurant joined in. We spent the next hour mopping up the mess. Safe to say, my restaurant career got off to a wild start, and I’ll never look at a soda machine the same way again. © Cathy_Love / Reddit
• Off the top of my head: we were having a “red white and stew” potluck in my office yesterday; someone brought in venison stew and marked it “Bambi’s dad.” © agarret83 / Reddit

• I work in the dining room of a retirement home, and some residents use scooters. On Halloween, I got to wear my costume, and I was dressed as Luigi. So after one resident was finished eating, they asked me to get their scooter (the best thing ever, btw, those things can go fast).
  About halfway to the table, there is a banana peel on the ground, and I slowly swerved to avoid it. And then I realized I was real-life Mario Karting. © Unknown-author / Reddit
• When I was in a management position, I had an employee who was, like, 4’9″ and made great use of her diminutive stature and theater training to sneak up on and scare the living poop out of me at my desk by breaking out into show tunes...
  Until I bought her a bell (that I absolutely OK’d with HR because bill 168 and all that) that made her jingle, like a kitty. © piratelibrarian / Reddit

• Fast food coffee shop, good evening crew, really boring dead shift, so we split into teams and played hide and seek on rotation. One guy hid on top of the walk-in freezer. Not in it—got the ladder, climbed into the wall above it, and pulled the ladder in with him.
  It took us so long to find him that he fell asleep and stayed there most of the shift while we debated what to do about it. © sh***y-biometrics / Reddit
• Someone called in a noise complaint at our police station, so my partner and I went to check it out. The noise was coming from the house where an old couple lived, so we felt it wouldn’t be something too dangerous.
  When we knocked on the door, we could still hear the chainsaw running. The noise stopped, and the old gentleman opened the door. He apologized profusely and asked us to come on.
  Apparently, his wife had made steak, and he found it tough. So tough that he ran the chainsaw to prove a point — the meat could not be cut with a knife and had to be chainsawed into bites. This went on our hall-of-fame board. We did confiscate the chainsaw, though.

• I work at a hospital lab. Someone kept eating the food I kept in the office fridge, though I marked it as mine. I was getting madder by the day, and I tried to catch the prankster, but they always managed to pull a fast one.
  One day, I made delicious cupcakes and put them in, as usual. Just before lunch, I heard loud retching noises from the kitchen and popped in to see my boss, trying to douse the fire in his mouth, caused by my “cupcakes.”
  I had made them using hot sauce, jalapeños, and tons of salt, all covered in artfully-designed toothpaste. Suffice to say, it stopped, and he paid me back for all my stolen food.
• Our new boss was a fitness freak. From literally snatching away our “unhealthy” lunches and lecturing us on joining marathons, he had tried it all. Then again, maybe not.
  One day we come to the office to find all the chairs gone and replaced with exercise balls.
  Imagine sitting for eight hours, trying to write and perfect code, balancing your bottom on bouncy balls. They weren’t comfortable at all, but the boss refused to listen.
  We were miserable, until someone had the bright idea to turn the thermostat down so that the personal space heaters began to turn on to warm the frigid office air. The exercise balls began to go pop, one by one, with the loudest bang coming in from the boss’s office. Needless to say, the chairs were back for good.

If you think only workplaces can give such fantastic plot twists, think again. Here go some childhood stories that turned out way wilder once realization set in.