Happy Halloween everyone! It’s that time of the year once again when we gather ‘round the campfire and tell urban legends and ghost stories that will make your hair stand on end and your blood rush. But that’ll be for later tonight…
Today, you’re in for a different kind of horror story. These scary tales also fall under the category ‘things you wish won’t happen to you.’ We’ll tell you horrific tales about personal experiences that really happened to us here at The Help. What follows are dark comedies, comedic tragedies, or borderline horrific experiences that we’ve actually had around the workplace. We hope they tickle your funny bone and make you cringe.
Office hours are 9 to 5
Josh was excited to get to his new job as Corporate Communications Manager. He was up at 4 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep so he thought he’d just go to work early and enjoy the view from his new office. The office complex was a sprawling 8-acre compound with parks and benches. After a hearty breakfast at the cafe, he hung around for a bit to kill time and clocked in at exactly 9 AM. As he sat down to make himself comfortable, he was promptly called to a surprise meeting along with 20-ish other employees. Alas! They were getting laid off. He looked at his watch – it said 9:05 AM. He lasted all of 5 mins in his new role. This gave a whole new meaning to the term 9 to 5.
The case of the missing lunches
Annika’s husband can cook. He is a chef after all. He works for a fusion cuisine bistro and most nights brings food or special menu items home for Annika which she promptly packs to take for lunch the next day. One time, she brought chocolate infused chili con carne to work and shared it with her colleagues. Her lunches are always the talk of the workplace. Even the simple salads and sandwiches she packs for lunch are gourmet.
One day, her lunch went missing. Her beautiful thermal lunch bag was still in the communal fridge but her lunch wasn’t in it. She resorted to buying food from the canteen. The next day, the same thing happened. Her colleagues’ lunches were intact but her lunch was once again missing. On the third day that her lunch went missing, she decided to tell her supervisor. Was someone stealing her lunch? They checked the CCTVs to find out. It turned out that one (hungry) newbie heard about the legendary lunches and decided to try them out for himself. The newbie seemed to enjoy Annika’s lunch and was stealing them for 3 days in a row! Suffice to say, the newbie didn’t last long in that job.
Press record
Joe did systems training as part of the onboarding process. He liked to record his sessions so that newbies have a personalized copy to go back to in case they wanted to revisit a process. There was one particularly special training session for a new system that Joe wanted to capture on record. The session went seamlessly and Joe was pretty happy with how it went. When he went back to review the recording, he couldn’t hear a sound. It turns out, the screen recorder was using the camera mic instead of the headphone that Joe was using. The camera mic was extremely efficient in noise canceling that it canceled ALL of the sound it picked up during the training. What was left was akin to a silent movie.
Do you have any workplace “horror” stories to share with us? Share them with us in the comments. Remember to work smart and be a blessing to someone today. Stay safe and healthy!
Written by Jaie O. TheHelp