14 Bizarre Workplace Stories That Sound Too Strange to Be True

Workplaces can be unpredictable, with different characters and people coming together in the same place at the same time. Strange things happen when you least expect them, and sometimes they’re so bizarre that you wouldn’t believe them unless you saw them yourself.

• “My boss was out of town and I managed a tea shop near a Starbucks years ago. This kid came in (foreign) and said he was supposed to start today. We were hiring and I trained him etc.
  My boss came back two days later and had no idea. The kid was in the wrong place, but he stayed with us. Hired on the spot without even applying.” ninetiesluddite / Reddit
• “I used to be the front-end manager at a supermarket. One night I had to head back to the deli for some reason. As I made my way through the kitchen, there was a bucket of rice on the floor that they used to make the rice dishes we served at the deli counter.
  To my surprise, two rats about the size of my hand jumped out of the rice and scurried under the oven. I told the deli manager the next day, and he just brushed it off. Said he was aware of the issue. I’m 99 percent sure they still used that rice.” BearJ**KnowsBest / Reddit

• I worked in an office where every now and then, someone’s computer speakers would randomly play a man’s voice whispering, “Are you there?” IT couldn’t figure it out. No open programs, no audio files, nothing. It kept happening for weeks.
  People started getting genuinely freaked out. Finally, they found the culprit. One of the managers had a wireless mouse and keyboard linked to a coworker’s PC and had been messing with them for months. He thought it was hilarious, but HR did not.
• “If I ever see that my old chef is working at a restaurant I’m eating at, I will walk out. I once told him that a big pot of stew that had been left in the fridge had some mold floating on the top. He got a spoon, started stirring it up, saying, ’I can’t see any mold.’ No, because you just stirred it into the mix. ” j-c-s-roberts / Reddit
• A new hire showed up, claiming he had worked there five years ago. He acted like he still knew everyone, reminiscing about the old office layout (which was accurate) and bringing up inside jokes, except no one remembered him. When he mentioned sitting at a desk that no longer existed, IT checked the records. He had never worked there.
  A week later, he quit without explanation. Later, the truth came out he was an old colleague’s ex, obsessed with her. He had learned everything about the office through her and somehow convinced himself he belonged there.
• We had an ongoing mystery in our office, someone kept stealing lunches from the fridge. Not just taking a bite or swapping, they would just disappear. People started marking their names in giant letters, putting notes that said “I have licked this sandwich,” and even spiking food with hot sauce to catch the thief.
  One day, our boss walked in, mid-sentence, took someone else’s burrito, and just started eating it. No shame. No hesitation. Just took a bite like it was his. Everyone just stared, speechless.
  When someone finally called him out, he just shrugged and said, “Well, I assumed it was for anyone.” He had been the office lunch thief the entire time.

• We had an unspoken rule in our office: never use the third stall in the bathroom. I ignored it one day and walked in and found a guy inside. He made direct eye contact, and said, “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
  He wasn’t using the toilet, but sitting there, eating a sandwich. He took a bite and I instantly closed the door. I’ve never went near that stall again.
• “Working at a computer repair shop. One guy left his laptop to get fixed, we opened it up to replace the hard drive and saw it was infested with roaches. We all freaked out and had to put the laptop in a sealed plastic bag. The worst part was how offended and angry the guy was that we didn’t finish the job.” Final_Distance_9275 / Reddit
• Our vending machine was old and sometimes spit out extra snacks. One guy figured out the exact combination of buttons to make it give him free food. HR found out and called a meeting about “vending machine misuse.” They reset the machine, but it never worked the same again.
• “I had a coworker once become so in love with our boss that he tried to sneak into her house at night. They never dated or anything, but he knew where she lived and tried to break in. Luckily, she got an alarm system and he was deterred.” tippytoemaster / Reddit

• “The IT crew at a large government office worked on a ticket system, meaning that the government workers submitted their problem online and one of the IT guys would pick it up on their end. The new guy just started his first day, logged into a computer at an empty office, and submitted a ’reinstall entire OS’ request so he could spend all day there.
  The manager decided to check in on him before lunch to see how he was doing, and he was completely asleep. Fired before they even finished his hiring paperwork.” UltimaCaitSith / Reddit
• “We had a recent college grad that would use his corporate card for personal purchases. He figured that the company would just keep deducting from his payroll until it was paid off. He was fired after three months of constant reminders to stop doing it.” CBus-Eagle / Reddit
• Worked at a café, and one guy paid with actual gold nuggets. We thought it was fake, but nope. The manager took them to a jeweler and got them appraised. He was literally paying for coffee with real gold.
• “My boss today got a rose from a ’secret admirer’. When I say a rose, I mean a fantastic flower arrangement centered around a massive rose. This thing must have cost at least £50.
  The thing is that my boss tends to keep between 3 and 7 women on the go at one time, besides his wife. As far as we know, none of these women know about the others. He spends most of the working day on the phone to them arranging meet ups.
  He is now in the position where he doesn’t know which of his women gave him this rose, so he can’t thank them for it, but one of them is going to be very, very unhappy when he doesn’t.” overk*** / Reddit

Coworkers can make work more fun, but things get tricky when two people match on a dating app, especially if one is your friend and the other is your coworker. That’s what happened in this story, where the heroine stepped in after discovering a coworker’s true intentions.