NationStates Jolt Archive

I worked at Mcdonalds as a young man for 2 years. What a mistake and a learning experiance (Never knew what weed looked like, etc...).

One time a customer came through and threw a penny at me, gouging my eye. That went well.

Another time a customer threw a large cup of hot coffee on me. Burned, and he got a visit from the police.

And then, there was this onetime at bandcamp... :D

Well I'm a bell hop at a hotel and one time this guy said to me; "Here's $50 you worthless n*****" and.... well he actually gave me $50. :confused:

That was just weird, but nothing really crazy.

Well I'm a bell hop at a hotel and one time this guy said to me; "Here's $50 you worthless n*****" and.... well he actually gave me $50. :confused:

That was just weird, but nothing really crazy.

Heck for 50$ someone could call me anything they wantd.

The first day of school in my second year of grad school, a disgruntled student (upset because he'd been kicked out of the grad program after ten years of making no progress) shot and killed a professor right down the hall from me. I was the last person to see the shooter alive--I was creeping past the office and he slammed the door. A cop showed up two minutes later and the guy shot himself in the office.

It was the University of Arkansas, fall semester 2001, in case anyone wants to fact-check me.

Oral sex in the break room from female coworker I was dating at the time :cool:

strangest thing that ever happened to me at work...

i was a generation dispatcher at a large midwestern power concern... it was august 14 2003... load started swinging heavily at some of our northern generating plants... we were receiving calls from nukes about fluctuations in voltage... contacts with our transmission folks revealed "nothing amiss..." alas, they didn't realize their computer applications were frozen and that the system was degrading rapidly. high voltage lines started to trip, along with them went numerous generating plants.

the end result was a massive cascading blackout from michigan to the ocean in the northeast US, including major blocks of canada. we spent the next several hours trying to maintain what was left of our generation and transmission systems, then spent the next two days putting everything back on line, then spent the next two years answering inquiries from NERC and FERC and DOJ and innumerable legal suits...

...just another day in the office. :upyours:

I was a nanny last summer and my charge threw a table at me because I told him to put his shoes on so he wouldn't burn his feet walking back from the swimming pool.

'Course, Jordan has tuberous sclerosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberous_sclerosis) and is missing a quarter of his brain, so I became quite accustomed to getting shit thrown at me, being spit on, ignoring him having tantrums in his room, et cetera. I could even take care of him and the baby at the same time! It was the awesomest job I've ever had, but my family and friends are still astonished that I was able to do it.

I have been hit on by the mothers of children I have entertained. Some were more strenuous than others. One mother took my hand and much to my surprise, stuffed it into her bra.

SOme women have a thing for clowns. ;)

strangest thing that ever happened to me at work...

i was a generation dispatcher at a large midwestern power concern... it was august 14 2003... load started swinging heavily at some of our northern generating plants... we were receiving calls from nukes about fluctuations in voltage... contacts with our transmission folks revealed "nothing amiss..." alas, they didn't realize their computer applications were frozen and that the system was degrading rapidly. high voltage lines started to trip, along with them went numerous generating plants.

the end result was a massive cascading blackout from michigan to the ocean in the northeast US, including major blocks of canada. we spent the next several hours trying to maintain what was left of our generation and transmission systems, then spent the next two days putting everything back on line, then spent the next two years answering inquiries from NERC and FERC and DOJ and innumerable legal suits...

...just another day in the office. :upyours:

Ah yes, I remember that. The positive side about the blackout was that the Stars and Stripes ran with the headline "Ohio's Fault" the next day, which I cut out and pasted over my Ohioan roommate's cot.

Well, I'm a student employee at the John Glenn Institute, and naturally that means there's some level of interaction with the Senator. Well, the Senator is a normal guy, but he's got some people who are downright obsessed with him.

A while back we held a conference on globalization, and the Senator would be there to speak a piece. Well, about three weeks in advance we got a call from a guy named Dion Waterman, or something like that, and he was flying in from California to the conference, he was dead set on talking to the Senator, and I said there was a chance he might be able to do so, and I shrugged him off as an overeager fan, and truthfully, I ignored most of his rambings, Solitaire is quite an important aspect of my day after all.

Well, come the next day, he calls in, and my friend Allison (her name has been changed, so as to protect the innocent) answers the phone. She's much nicer and more sincere than I happen to be, so she listens to Mr. Waterman, and addresses some of his concerns, at which point, Mr. Waterman promptly tells her that he's quitting his job to come to Ohio, and he wanted to be certain that he'd be able to see the Senator. She politely tells him that she cannot ensure that he'd be able to see him at any point in time. So he promptly proposes the idea of going to dinner with her as a way to "work some stuff out." Remember, Allison is around 20, and Mr. Waterman is like 45.

This freaks poor Alli out, and she turns him down, and she's certainly freaked out, but she didn't tell anyone except her fellow student workers. I make a mental note of it, as I know I will be working with Allison on the day that the guy will be here.

Well, the next day, I'm at the desk, looking like a total moron, hopped up on coffee and excedrin, probably burning a hole through my stomach lining, when Mr. Waterman calls again. He promptly asks for Allison, and when I inform him that she's not there, he reiterates his questions regarding the Seantor to me again. Now I'm a bit worried, it seems like he wants some personal time to talk to the Senator, and, I'm sorry, but if you're just a stereo speaker salesman, you don't get face time with the Senator.

Needless to say, Dion keeps calling, and, we, the student workers, decide to talk to our bosses about it, and so we do, and they make arrangements. There will be police on the premises the day of the event, and Mr. Waterman will be kept away from the Senator. Everything goes smoothly, and then Dion comes upstairs, Allison stays away from the loony. But, strangely enough he asks to get his picture taken behind the student workers desk, as well as in various other public places.

Eventually he leaves without too much disturbance, but the whole incident was really strange.

I worked at Mcdonalds as a young man for 2 years. What a mistake and a learning experiance (Never knew what weed looked like, etc...).

One time a customer came through and threw a penny at me, gouging my eye. That went well.

Another time a customer threw a large cup of hot coffee on me. Burned, and he got a visit from the police.

And then, there was this onetime at bandcamp... :D

Working at a casino allows me to see some crazy "stuff" (I've been employed at a casino for over 5 years). Like one time, when a guy was losing in blackjack, he decided it was the dealer's fault, whipped out his unit, and pissed on the table, the chips, and the dealer. Needless to say, he wasn't welcomed back ever again (he was also arrested for assaulting the dealer with his urine).

I was walking around the casino floor recently (in the slot area), turned the corner at the end of one of the aisles, and saw a man sitting at one of the slot machines, getting "serviced" by his girlfriend/wife/really good friend. He was also escorted out, and given a different type of ride (in a police car).

I once saw the aftermath of a woman deffacating into a coin bucket, simply because she had to go, but didn't want to lose her machine.

I've seen chinese employees (kitchen staff) have a kung-fu cafeteria fight, although I don't know the reason why. In that one, one of the combatants went to the hospital in critical condition (the other went to jail).

There was someone who fell off one of the escalators (he was sitting on the rail), cracked his head open, and (nearly, I think) died.



Damn, I can do this all day! :eek:

I was a nanny last summer and my charge threw a table at me because I told him to put his shoes on so he wouldn't burn his feet walking back from the swimming pool.

'Course, Jordan has tuberous sclerosis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberous_sclerosis) and is missing a quarter of his brain, so I became quite accustomed to getting shit thrown at me, being spit on, ignoring him having tantrums in his room, et cetera. I could even take care of him and the baby at the same time! It was the awesomest job I've ever had, but my family and friends are still astonished that I was able to do it.

Once I was told by the vet to get a patient ready to be seen, so I lifted the dog up and set him on the table. I turned around, put on some gloves, then I realized I put pressure on the part of the dog I didn't want to. Next thing I knew compressed liquified dog diarhea was shooting out of the dog all over me much like a firehose, and the dog began to howl as if he were about to takeoff and go visit the spacestation MIR in orbit.

He was a big dog.

I have had quite a few weird experiences at different jobs, but the best would be...

In high school I worked at the cemetery my father ran. One day there was a service in one of the poorer sections, and a particularly GIGANTIC women was walking through an unsodded and loose area of dirt (no graves there yet)...and she sunk up to her waist. She started screaming about being drug under by zombies...I had to jump behind a tree so no one could see me laughing my ass off.

In college I was head cook at a bar and grill just off campus, and after closing one night a girl I barely knew came up banging on the door. She was all G-ed out, horney as hell, and knew I was at work. She just decided to stop by and ask for sex. I didn't say no.

My last job (before the two I have now), was as a mailman. Hey, the pay was good, great benefits, government job, and it was easy. One day I am delivering to this wealthy community with it's own golf course where they have NDCBU's. (I won't confuse you with the acronym, it's basically a communal mailbox with locked compartments for each house on a street) Anyways, a VERY hot, young, blonde sees me coming and walks to the box to get her mail. In her bikini. (it's summer, and this is Florida after all) After talking with her for a bit, I drive on, but keep staring at her in my mirrors. (post office trucks have GREAT mirrors) She drops a piece of mail, bends over (so, naturally, I have to stare even harder in the mirror) and I drive right off the road, thru the cart path, and onto the 8th tee.

This is some twenty years ago.
I arrived at work one day, went to the lab and started preparing the brucellosis tests when one of my bosses appeared in the corridor outside looking slightly worried. He glanced through the window in the lab door, smiled and came in to the lab.

He told me to take off my lab coat and follow him. I was a little puzzled but, obeyed. We went outside to one of the pens behind the lab block, where there was a pair of large bolt cutters leaning against the wall. He told me to pick up the bolt cutters and follow him. So again , I did as I was asked.

We went along the row of pens until we arrived at the last one, where there were a couple of other staff waiting.

We then all went into the pen, where there was a Fresian heifer which we put onto her side and pinned down with her legs held still, while we took turns trimming her hooves with the bolt cutters.

That is the strangest thing that has ahppened to me at work. I think.

All the best stuff seems to happen too my co-workers or outside work.

Weird things that have happened to me:
When I first started teaching, I was renting an apartment that the teacher I replaced had lived in. One evening, about a month into the school year, a young female student knocked on my door. I was pretty surprised, because I always make it a point to keep such information as my address private. She told me that the previous teacher had been her "friend" and she wanted to be my "friend", making it pretty clear she meant sex friend. (I said no.)

All sorts of odd questions from students, sometimes resulting from scrambled English and sometimes from scrambled ideas of foreign culture.

Teaching a returnee student who's grown up in my hometown, 1 block away from my old house was fun, but a little freaky at first.

The best was probably the crazy guy who would randomly stand up in class and burst into song.

Weird funny things that have happened to co-workers:
One guy I worked with is a middle-aged female stalker magnet. He had several students "fall in love" with him and tell him they want to marry him.

Another guy had a student who was a schizo and went off her meds halfway through the school year. Somehow she'd gotten his email, and sent daily messages to him about their wedding plans.

My current and previous employers both have internet based lessons. I've heard all kinds of funny and crazy stories there - students signing into lessons nude or drunk seems to be the most common. But the student who masturbated was the worst.

At one branch school, they had a psychiatric out-patient who would come in and read his English diary full of disturbing fantasies, which included one about killing everyone at that branch.

At another branch, there was a schizo who would walk in and threaten physical violence to the teachers and staff. The management refused to ban him until he actually attacked a staffer.

And the best was the guy who got fired for having sex with a student in a classroom during class time (private lesson). Best part was he was fired not for that, but because the boss walked in accidentally with a prospective student.

At the record store there was 'skirt man.' He wore a short flimsy skirt and ill fitting t-shirt, also thin. He would come in Saturday mornings nad read the porn. When tents where pitched he'd be asked to leave. Which probably helped him get off...

The masterbating cross dresser.

The dude that was following two teen girls. When the cops arrived (the chicks said he'd been following them for a few stores) he pulled a porn magazine out of the front of his pants and tried to stuff it in the understock while standing infront of the police officer, who grabbed him by the throat.

At the movie theater, we too got one of those crazy kung fu fights that went through the lobby. Which was strange. Not as cool looking when it isn't choreographed.

There where of course the occasional blow jobs and bonin'.

A dude threatened to 'knock the beard off my face.' I told him if he was seriously that bent about it I'd give him two bucks. (the price of admission)

One dude who missed his movie because he read the listing wrong (initially we thought the listing was wrong, but when we looked it up it turns out it was right and he had read the start time for another movie) he told us that his time was worth @$20 an hour as an electritian. I had to tell him thats only if he's wiring stuff for us, if he was here to watch a movie he was worth about a dollar an hour-unless he bought popcorn...

Baby born in bathroom. Not sure if they named him John, but that was our vote.

Someone beating meat to a Benji movie. You heard me.

Tear gas in a theater, bomb threat (which my manager handled with such calm I think I've always aspired to it since then-"What was that?" "Starts with B, ends with T-rhymes with 'Bomb threat.' Here, hand these passes out to people as they come out. I'm gonna try and find the projectionist." All like he was telling me to get something from the box office.)

I have weird things that have happened in my current work but you'd have to know about that kind of work so it's not really that spectacular or interesting to anyone who isn't in it. I wish I hadn't typed out the story first to realize that if I wasn't in my field that story would be pointless and boring.

14 people called in one day asking if we had Waterboy on VHS.

While working, I often like to loudly pretend that I am a woman in labour, and scream YOU DID THIS TO ME!!! and the like at whatever plumber happens to be near (%$#&ing plumbers). That isn't really something happening to me, though.

I've had lots of jobs but the one with the most craziness had to be the grocery store. I was a bagger at said store, and I learned firsthand that every crazy has to get their food somewhere. And like with regular people, that somewhere is usually the grocery store.

I saw that the most common price of an item a kleptomaniac will try to steal is $2. And, that there are many more kleptos than I ever would have guessed!

Chicken Lady was the weirdest klepto. She'd buy over $200 worth of groceries every week. A full cart. But, despite not having a problem paying that, she had an odd compulsion to try to steal a small, $2, frying chicken. She'd hide this chicken in the lower framework of the cart and try her best to avoid paying for it. Years later, I saw this woman in the competing store across the street. Sure enough--there was a chicken on the bottom of the cart...

There was a more normal type of thief who tried to make off with a $45 beef brisket (I think that's what these were called). What she didn't realize, was that the way they packed those, made it feel absolutely disgusting to pick them up. Kind of like the texture you'd expect from full intestines, but cold from the fridge case. GROSS! So I knew for sure, that I hadn't bagged THAT thing! After a bunch of theatrical yelling about her "integrity", which I ignored in a Spockishly emotionless way, she paid up.

There was another, non-klepto, crazy woman who would leave a gallon of milk in her trunk for 6-8 hours on 80-degree F (26.6 C) days, and then come back screaming about the fact that it had curdled! She would demand a refund or exchange, insisting that it wouldn't have spoiled if it was fresh to begin with. This went on weekly for several weeks, until the management finally grew a pair and told her to shop elsewhere.

There was a woman who would scream to get a discount despite refusing to use the Bonus Club Card (a "club" people had to join to get the discounts). She said it was an invasion of her privacy, even though all it required was a name and address (which she could have just made up--nobody checked). It's important to note that this person always used Food Stamps (a form of welfare). She'd get the management to manually do the discounts every time--a long and tedious process frought with errors. Finally they had enough and told her to shop across the street. On a whim, I followed her out that day, why I don't know. She tore out of the parking lot...in a new Mercedes (no more than 1 or 2 years old).

There were multiple handicapped people who drove their motorized carts as if they were racecars. Worse, some intentionally aimed at people and tried to run them down. Often, these would be older men, but not always.

There was a weirdo who would get into the store and then use her car remote to open her trunk. Then she'd ask an employee to go close it for her!

There was a short middle-aged guy who kept coming into the store at night and making eyes at me. Creepy, even though he wasn't bad looking. Weirder yet, on a later job doing pizza delivery, I ended up going to that same guy's house!! And, he had a wife! She didn't say anything but looked very suspicious when I obviously recognized him. I could see the relief when I mentioned that he used to come into [store name]...I think she was well aware of the fact that he would've cheated if given a drop of encouragement.

There was a guy who put bottles into a bottle-return machine--that was almost totally dismantled. It made a horrific noise when it tried to run! Topping that off was when the store's resident crazy (who would often break bottles in a rage, in the back rooms) came out and gave him what he deserved. LOL you could hear her call him an idiot halfway across the store!! Ha ha! He soooo deserved it. And, she got away with just a reprimand.

A guy used to come in and yell that he didn't get his bottle money, produce a bottle return slip that didn't look quite right, and demand that they cash it--without making him wait in line. He did this every few days. I hated him and knew it was BS and that he was making a scene to stop people from thinking about it, but they wouldn't listen and gave him the 50c or so every time. Later (after I had quit) it came out that he had a route among several area stores--and he had forged $50,000 (fifty thousand dollars) worth of bottle slips! Ha ha, served them right. He ended up in jail, but not due to any complaints from my store's management. I hope they enjoyed eating that crow *gloats*

There were several crazy people who got their jollies from yelling until everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and looked at them. As soon as this happened, they'd calm down (NOT out of embarrassment!) and go away. Finally I started to counter their antics by refusing to look NO MATTER WHAT. By the time I left I would have seemed to ignore it if someone was at the service desk yelling Allahu Akbar! (keep in mind that baggers do learn how to "happen to" be in other places at critical times, without making obvious moves away.)

Once when I was getting carts and had a huge cart train in motion, some jackass decided to throw his car in reverse as if I could make 30 carts just warp out of the way. Then he had the nerve to get out and complain when he backed into them! (Fortunately, I had seen the inevitability of what was coming and let go of the carts.) When I asked him where he thought I was going to move to, he stood there with a dumbfounded look. Then he mumbled an apology and got back in his car.

The IDIOCY of the people in general drove me to despair. Once there was a fire at the store. We were all standing outside waiting for the all-clear from the fire department. Around the doors the FD had put tape that said, "FIRE LINE DO NOT CROSS" on it in big type. One by one, people came and asked: "What happened?"
or
"Was there a robbery?" (WTF?!?)
and
"Oh, you've gone out of business?" (WTF again!)

The day of the fire, the ATM service guy argued with the manager on duty, that the ATM had sent an "out of service" signal and he HAD to service it. Never mind that the power had been cut due to it being an electrical fire!
Out of about 100 people, only 2 actually read and understood the obvious words on the tape!!

The fire itself was caused by the error of the refrigeration company. Some dumbass had swung (with a crane) a heavy container of coolant into the electrical box on the roof.

And of course there was the fact that people exaggerated everything. One day a woman claimed she left a "whole cartful" of groceries behind. I'd seen so many exaggerations by that time, that immediately I started looking for a cart with about 2 bags in it. I was close. There were 6 half-full bags--so few groceries, that some unobservant person had just rolled a new cart train in behind it and it went into position like it would going into an empty cart! About $20 worth of stuff if that. The woman didn't even notice how much of an exaggeration it had been or think that was odd, she just said "yeah that's it" and went out like nothing was weird about calling that a "cartfull." Idiot...

A weird fact is that people who went to customer service and mentioned how much they spent at the store every week to try to bolster their arguments, ALWAYS spent some little amount like $50. Yet they were the ones who thought they spent a lot of money! Meanwhile, the $200 and $300 orders were being rung up behind them at multiple checkout lanes. Those people, though, never mentioned how much they spent, even when they had complaints. And, they had less complaints than the low-dollar people.

I bag groceries in a supermarket. I've had a heap of crazy shit happen to me, but my three favourites are when I had a bottle of tomato sauce smashed in rage upon the counter, being slapped in the face by an old guy, and having a kid piss all over my register (had to clean that up with nothing more than paper towels). Oooh, and I got burnt by garden lime once, and it's sortof left a scar on my left hand.

Heaps of verbal abuse coming my way too, usually about my physical appearance but occasionally questioning my mental capacity. It's great fun.

I worked in a cold storage warehouse in Richmond (California). A guy got murdered in broad daylight a few blocks away during my last week.

A large shipment of thanksgiving hams fell over the night before the FDA inspector came (they were very poorly packed). We repaired what boxes we could with tape, and the ones we didn't have time to repair we just hid behind other stuff.

I suppose having a dock collapse under me has been the craziest thing that happened to me at work so far.

Well, its not really work, but...

It got to 40 degrees celcius, and a girl had a seizure (sp?) in the middle of class.

We once had a 90 y/o senile granny in the clinic, who continually handed out pralinés.
Being company politics, nobody ate them, but threw them right away, until someone took a closer look - those brown globes the lovely old lady distributed only looked like chocolate. ;)

It's not exactly crazy, but pallet surfing in the cold room was always fun.

Well, its not really work, but...

It got to 40 degrees celcius, and a girl had a seizure (sp?) in the middle of class.

Pfeh, 40 degree days are more or less routine here in summer.