Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have experienced a plethora of ridiculous things at work. I've seen loud arguments over nothing, fist fights, and I was even physically assaulted once. No terminations resulted from any of these events.
The most ridiculous thing, however, happened one night traveling home from work. There's a lot of travel for my job, and a group of us travel in a company van to get to and from job sites. Well, one night I was half-asleep, it was dark, and the guy in the seat next to me was holding something what I thought looked like a cigarette, and he asked me "do you mind?" I was groggy and didn't know what the hell was going on. And so I said "yeah, no problem" thinking he just needed a quick smoke to take care of a nicotine fit.
Well, he started rolling something after the chick in the passenger seat handed him some kind of device, which I discovered later was a bong. After he put the contraption together, the bong made it's way around the van. It dawned on me that my co-workers were smoking marijuana in the company van. They were passing the dutchy around like it was cotton candy. One of them would take a drag and then pass it to the next person. Even the driver partook. There was a lot of coughing, and it was such a bad scene. I didn't say anything. I just curled up into a fetal position in an attempt to prevent a contact buzz.
I had spent my entire life avoiding illegal drugs, and my first experience watching people do drugs was at work of all places. After the doobie session, we stopped at a convenience store because my co-workers had a serious case of the munchies. I was mostly upset because if we would've got pulled over for speeding or something, I could have been arrested simply by association even though I didn't want any part of it. I never told my district manager, but I told another co-worker and eventually my district manager found out and, as usual, did nothing. This happened 5 years ago and it hasn't happened since on any road trip I've gone on. I've heard it happening on other road trips though.
sucks you were in a position that made you uncomfortable, and the driver taking hits is rather reckless. however, think of it like this: in a few years weed will be legal or decriminalized in whatever State that toke place in. So, it will just be that you were forced to hang out with smokers.
Oh for crying out loud. She carried herself in a professional manner. The temp was the one who was behaving unprofessionally. It's one thing to ask if an employer is married. Quite another to ask if he is happily married or if perhaps the wife is in a home or something.
I think it was a hoot that the mother dropped by and put a stop to the nonsense.
Temp people can be unpredictable and unprofessional. That experience sort of reminds me of my own with a temp I had to deal with (though not all temps are bad!). My boss decided to get HR to hire a temp for me to do some clerical work. This temp was polite and friendly when any man was around, but sabotaged any task I gave her and was belligerent as well. Somehow, she didn't want to understand that she was working for me. I tried telling my boss that she was more of a detriment than an asset and to get rid of her. He couldn't understand because she was so nice and flirty with him. After a month of this craziness (and many sabotaged projects), I gathered up samples of all the things she "worked" on and showed them to my boss one early morning.
Thankfully, after he picked his jaw up off the ground, he had the good sense to tell her to leave.
My first paid job when I was 16 was in retail working for a now defunct toy store chain. Long story short, we took on an assistant manager that was caught red handed dealing drugs in the tiny back office of the store. A further investigation revealed that he was actually hiding his supply in the ceiling of the place. He basically turned the place into his stash house. I knew something was up with the guy when on a slow day he came out on the sales floor and tried to sell me (illegal) fireworks.
There's a levee that runs along the Mississippi Delta. The maintenance supervisor would tell us he stopped every morning and do his business outside on the levee. So the guys attached a toilet seat to a square tube that could be slid onto the hitch on a truck and it was presented to Mr. Nature so he wouldn't have to squat. Insanity at it's redneck finest.
This sums up that failed machine shop I was recently working at. They are "borrowing money to pay the utility bills" - nice - but absolutely will not change their failed business model. Lay off people who were doing their job while keeping the company drinking buddy, hunting buddy, bimbo, etc. employed? Sure... Actually get off their rears and start properly quoting parts for realistic prices and ship dates? Nope. Do something about the culture of hate and blame that is dragging the place down? Nope. Stop replacing skilled sub-contractors with cheaper nitwits? Nope. Stop ditching reliable customers for new ones that won't even pay the company? Nope.
In the time I was there, I often thought to myself upon leaving work each day that the place didn't deserve to be in business... and it looks like that is how their story will end.
Yep. Sounds like a real redneck operation, by my experiences in the past. I always saw this sort of stuff when I worked as a warehouse manager in the construction industry. Classic redneck behavior patterns.
My first job out of college was at a state psychiatric facility where the nurses and aides rarely came out of the nurses' stations. The nurses handed out meds and charted from behind plexiglas. Endless amounts of "charting" though what they charted about remains a mystery to this day as how would they know if X was depressed or Y was experiencing hallucinations? Other than "Take your meds, Ralph," they never spoke with the folks on the floor.
The aides huddled in the back of the nurses' station and rolled cigarettes for the patients. I'm not kidding. There were these little machines that they put loose tobacco in and paper tubes and voila--cigarettes. They even made them with filters. They claimed this was to save money for the patients. But A) ready mades were not that spendy back then, and B) why weren't the patients doing this? Seemed to me it would be a nice switch up from wandering around aimlessly or watching TV for hours on end.
The housekeepers provided what behavior management, therapy or even interaction with staff that was went on. They would dole out cigarettes (ready mades, the housekeepers as well as the patients preferred ready mades for a variety of reaons) to those that made their beds, helped them mop, and behaved themselves.
If there was a fight, the orderlies would appear from a back room where they played games of poker, sometimes with the patients who had sufficient funds in their commissary account. If someone had to be restrained, the nurses would appear with an injection of Haldol, administer it while the orderlies held the person down, and then dash back to the nurses' station for more charting.
Usually, the housekeepers just handled any fiasco. "You behave yourself, now. Don't pay no mind to his nonsense. Come help me mop the activity room and I'll give you half a pack." This calmed down all but those in the midst of psychotic episodes that required summoning the the orderlies, the nurses, and Haldol.
I tried to get some activities going in the activities room. (I was fresh out of college and still quite optimistic with my newly minted sociology degree.) You haven't lived until you've tried to run a Bingo game on a psych ward.
The housekeepers loved to play Bingo and won most of the prizes. They threw me a going away party when I left.
I really should write a book about all the crazy jobs I've had.
I once worked for a transitional housing nonprofit where one of my coworkers complained endlessly about the police hassling her live-in boyfriend. When he was arrested for dealing cocaine, she raffled off her sofa, bed, and dining room set to raise money to bail him out.
I objected to her selling raffle tickets to our clients, seemed a breach of professional ethics. I really objected when her two friends won all her furniture and then, as luck would have it, donated it all back to her.
She did all this on work time which wasn't so unusual as most of the staff came in late, left early, took loooong lunch hours, and spent most of their work time on personal projects or talking on the phone to friends and relatives.
I also objected to the amount of staff time spent on organizing and running end-racism workshops. The agency was funded by a variety of government grants aimed at providing subsidized housing with employment support, financial education, and other services aimed at helping clients become self sufficient.
I was told that if we ended racism then we would be accomplishing the goals we were actually funded for.
Though ending racism was a lofty and worthwhile goal, most of the women in the program were there because of domestic violence, drug and alcohol use, limited job skills...
I refused to fudge the figures on two grant reports and was let go for not being a team player.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So the guys attached a toilet seat to a square tube that could be slid onto the hitch on a truck and it was presented to Mr. Nature so he wouldn't have to squat. 
Insanity at it's redneck finest.
