14 Stories That Prove Office Is an Adventurous Place

Sometimes the office can be like a second home. And that’s why all sorts of workplace curiosities can be taken too personally. You want to share with someone how the boss taught a messy colleague a lesson, or what a marvelous coffee machine is in the office. The heroes of this article shared the stories exactly like this.

• I quit my job so abruptly that I forgot to remove all my personal information from my work computer. On the very first day of my absence, our office manager called me and told me that the programmer was reading my private Skype correspondence. Then he called me and told me that he was reading my messages to see if I liked him. And he was such a quiet, modest guy. © Inna Pogribnaya
• Today the boss wrote in the general chat, “Everyone, urgently gather in the conference room, I’ve got an important announcement!” We all come in, sit down. He enters, looks at us and says, “I just had a baby, everyone gets a bonus, and we celebrate today!” © Ward No. 6 / VK
• Employee asked to have Friday off to watch a big darts contest, failed to give nearly enough notice, but what the hell, okay. Phones the boss at home Sunday.
  — “I’m through to the third round, which is on Monday. Can I have Monday off?”
  — “You said you were going to watch a darts contest.”
  — “Well, yeah, but I wasn’t expecting to get past the first round, then I would have been watching after that. Can I have tomorrow off?”
  — “No, you’re needed. It’s too short notice.”
  — “Oh. Okay.”
  Doesn’t turn up for work on Monday. In the evening, his girlfriend rings up. “Paul’s made it through to the fourth round, tomorrow. He asked me to call and say he can’t be at work tomorrow.”
  — “Sorry, but if he isn’t at work tomorrow 8 a.m., he needn’t bother turning up at all.”
  Doesn’t come to work Tuesday. Turns up 8 a.m. Wednesday, and seems genuinely surprised when he is told to get lost, he’s fired. © faithle55 / Reddit
• We have an employee in the office who constantly forgets to wash his cup. To change this, the supervisor took this cup and washed it himself. He then filled it with soil and planted seeds in it. Now there are plant cups everywhere in the office as a reminder to keep them clean and wash them up yourself. © Not everyone will understand / VK

• At work, we have a coffee machine that stops working for some reason from time to time. Everyone got used to it, but one day someone put a note on it, “If I don’t work, pet me, it feels good.”
  At first, we all laughed, but after some time it became a ritual. Everyone who comes up to the machine makes sure to pet it before choosing a drink. And the funny thing is that after that, more often than not, it starts working normally!
  Now we have a machine that not only makes coffee, but also lifts everyone’s mood. Who put up the note is still a mystery, but thanks to this person. © Not everyone will understand / VK
• My keyboard got broken. It showed a minus in anything I typed in. I couldn’t work for an hour. Then invited the computer guy from the third floor.
  He came in. And, looking me in the eye, picks up the calculator, which lies on the edge of my keyboard, and therefore presses the minus button all the time. He continues to look me in the eye and silently walks away.
• I worked for the personnel office. Someone asked me where the applications were, and I pointed to a table. The girl came back because she had trouble filling it out. Apparently, she was filling out our cake order forms that were placed next to the job applications... © Blackrose06 / Reddit

• The other day we had a corporate table tennis tournament in the office. Everyone were playing, but Ms. Peters, the cleaning lady, surprised everyone the most. She quietly watched the games until someone jokingly suggested, “Would you like to try?”
  Ms. Peters took a racket, and then the show began — she beat everyone, one after another! It turned out that in her youth she was the table tennis champion of the city, and we didn’t know this. In the end, Ms. Peters won the deserved cup, and now we are afraid to play with her. © Not everyone will understand / VK
• We often left dirty cups and plates on our desks. In the morning, they were waiting for us clean on the same places. This went on until my colleague came to the office very early one day and saw the cleaning lady washing our plates and cups in the floor bucket with dirty water and rubbing them with floor cloths.
  There was a scandal, and the cleaning lady said that she was not obliged to clean our cups. Well, nobody asked her to. In the morning, everyone washed their own cups, each one their own. Thanks god that I and a few other colleagues always washed our cups in the evening. © Elnura Barakanova
• I had an employee quit because he was afraid of the dark. He was supposed to be a security guard on the night shift. Quit half-way through his shift. © Unknown author / Reddit
• I don’t spare coffee for my colleagues, we often took it from each other. I had a mishap once. I came in the morning, brewed coffee, and it was sour.
  A colleague came and said, “Don’t boil the kettle, I put citric acid in it to clean it.” But I had already boiled it! Thanks god, she didn’t use chemicals. © Irina Leonova

• My colleagues had a bad habit of not washing cups after using them. They just put them back in the cupboard until they ran out of clean ones. So, someone used my cup!
  I come in, and it’s covered in red lipstick. I washed it once, then again and again. And then I put a note inside the cup that said, “Choke on it.”
  2 days later, one of the colleagues comes up to me and says, “Don’t be rude to me!” I escorted her to the cupboard with the dirty cups. © Nadezhda Svintsova
• I have an office job. Sometimes there is nothing to do at all, but you still have to look professional. At first, I printed out books on the used paper sheets and read them with a smart look.
  Now I write books myself and type them on the computer. From the outside, I’m an exemplary employee! Everyone wonders why I’m always in a good mood. I love my work! © Overheard / Ideer
• I’ve started a new job. The salary is good, and I like the work. But our directors are, frankly speaking, a bit strange. In addition to a sweet gift for the employees’ children, they give gifts for cats and dogs of employees, saying that they are also children.
  The gift consists of 3 cans of good pet food, a small bag of crisps and a toy. You have to provide a photo with your pet to prove you have it. It’s kind of nice, and they don’t do anything bad. The team is somehow more united thanks to it.
  But there’s still a strange aftertaste. They could spend this money on something else, increase the amount of bonuses, for example. I have a cat myself, and I love it. I accepted the gift. But it still doesn’t feel right. © Overheard / Ideer

And here coworkers proved that the office is a real drama.