We had a science teacher totally lose it a few years ago. No real warning signs, he just went nuclear on a student in the middle of the morning, screaming at her and throwing things around the lab. Admin and security were there in seconds, and he was never seen on campus again. Took a medical retirement.
Nah. Some people have yelled (not insults or threats, just work-appropriate content with raised voices) or cried (in response to yelling or other passionate behavior) but no violence, meltdowns, or even needing to step out to compose oneself. FWIW, I don’t see raised voices or crying as problematic when they’re not typical behavior and don’t interfere with the job-I want my co-workers to have feelings.
There is only one exception. Many years ago I worked for a bookstore owner with bipolar disorder. She was abusive, loud, and inappropriate when manic, which had the secondary effect of making some of her employees cry or leave. When I quit, she asked why. I said, “Because you are abusive, loud, and inappropriate when you are manic.” She thanked me, stiffed me on my last paycheck, and that was that.
I remember one time when I didn’t lose my shit. I worked for a small company that was always in serious financial trouble. The CEO and VP basically used company funds to finance their own personal projects. Paychecks, when issued, usually bounced. We owed everyone money and we were constantly getting threatening letters from creditors. And I was the finance guy! I had 100% responsibility, but zero power. It was frustrating to say the least.
One day I had a conversation with the VP.
Me: “We need to set a budget.”
Him: “We can’t set a budget until we’re financially stable.”
Me: “I think we won’t get financially stable until we set a budget.”
Him: “Well you think wrong!”
Instead of giving him the face-mangling that he so richly deserved, I stormed out and went for a walk. A long walk. I bet I was gone for three hours.
When I came back, marginally calmer, a girl I worked with said she needed my help getting something off of a tall shelf. She led me to another room, in which were gathered every employee there, sitting around a birthday cake. When I entered they all yelled “Surprise!” I was hardly feeling celebratory, so I just faked it. During the party the CEO said “A great man once said that you should live every day of your life like it’s your birthday.”
How I managed to not murder him is something I’ll never understand.
There’s a current news story in the UK like this - a teacher hospitalised a 14 year old student by twatting him with a weight used in science class! Kid’s in hospital with a fractured skull and a bleed on the brain, whilst the teachers been charged with attempted murder - story here
There’s something about science teachers… our 4th year chemistry teacher had a breakdown in the middle of our class, started howling and banging his head against the blackboard.
He took stress-related retirement soon after.
I left my last job, in which I’d already lost it once relatively early on, when I saw that I was on the verge of losing it again, but bigger… or ending up in the hospital.
The time I lost it early, I already told about it in these boards. First, I have “MS-like symptoms:” the scan comes out fine so it isn’t MS, but it works as a shorthand. In my case that means that under negative stress I get the shakes, vision problems, language problems (understanding things, keeping my languages separated), vertigo… Sometimes I wake up later than usual and already have mild symptoms, sometimes they start due to a specific trigger, but in either case they keep getting worse until I stop and rest.
That day I was having symptoms, mostly difficulty concentrating, vision problems and language problems. We had a meeting; I gave a presentation (and got congratulated on the clarity of my explanations, as it often happens when I’m having language problems) and handled most of the questions; another coworker had been handling the computer. This coworker asked me to review the notes she’s taken to make sure they were in Proper English (we were in Scotland, a team of Spaniards and most with English as Third Language). The computer’s screen was blackened, the image was on the big screen.
I’m reviewing the notes when Sheboss says something, but since I can only do one thing at one time when I’m like that, I continue what I’m doing. She jumps (not walks, jumps) in front of the screen. I yell “geroff!” and jump away. She starts telling me I “musn’t get like that” and trying to hug me, I keep backtracking, finally another coworker grabs her off me…
That team consisted of me (low 40s), Sheboss (high 30s) and half a dozen people in their high 20s. All the 20-somethings have been on sick leave or in the hospital for stress related illnesses during that project.
At the time I left, Sheboss was making us email detailed “what I did today and will do tomorrow” reports every day; then we had to do the same thing in the morning modified according to whatever emails she had sent in between. She didn’t read anything: we had over a dozen documents that were overdue because they couldn’t go to the client until she’d reviewed them, and she didn’t do it. Several times she sent back a document saying “the footer on page 3 is wrong, I can’t believe you’re so sloppy, this is terribly unprofessional, you shame me and our employer;” no comment on the contents though. So after sending those daily reports, we had to spend upwards of one hour re-giving them verbally, either in person or over the phone. Then she upped the ante for me: I had to tell her what was I going to say, line by line, before any conversation with anybody, and after the conversation or meeting report again.
I was ending up with the shakes every day. I didn’t have time to do my job, plus she would forbid me from using the tools I needed (“you can’t use MS Access because I don’t like it because I haven’t used it because I don’t know how it works because it isn’t necessary because I don’t understand it”), then all of a suddent ask how come I wasn’t using them.
Yeah, I did quit…
At a…Defense Contractor? I guess the Mind Hammer™ test run went well, aside from the targeting problem.
Well, this one is actually fairly minor, but in the first few months at my current job, the senior programmer, D, started to lose his shit. He was a colorful character, around his late forties, ex-Canadian forces (at least according to himself,) who had taught himself to write code from old books. (We’re still running into some of his ‘interesting choices’ when we have to make changes to the oldest part of our web application.)
But D started getting into trouble with management, butting heads with them - demanding a raise loudly that they weren’t going to give him, (he had to maintain a house and an ex-wife,) and grumbling that they were ‘out to get him’ when his buddy, the call center supervisor, was laid off, because they’d been carpooling and now D had to pay for his own gas on a 100km commute.
The part I remember most, I think happened the day before D finally got let go himself. He came to me when we were alone in the programmer’s room, saying that he’d had enough of taking c**p from management, that he was seriously considering resigning, but he didn’t want to leave the two of us, (there was another programmer who had been hired six months before me,) with the deadline and so much to do on getting the website running live.
I thought about it, considering honesty, (and also the fact that I was a little tired of D’s antics and thought we’d do about as well without him,) and with what tact I could manage, said that it would be tough, but he had to do what he had to do and I thought that we’d be able to struggle along okay without him.
D might have been expecting an answer that would flatter his ego better - he totally turned on me as if what I’d said was a huge betrayal - saying that he’d supported me when I came in for my interview and that this was a fine way to pay him back, and mentioning that there was some really cute Korean girl who’d also applied for my job, and maybe they should have given her a chance instead. (D didn’t have the last word in hiring for the team, though the guy who did must have asked for his opinion.)
So, there’s my contribution, for what it’s worth.
I remember a fistfight that was caused by a colleague quitting.
See, Colleague had worked at the company in the past and then quit to take a better job. The company the better job was at went bankrupt several years later. My boss wanted to rehire Colleague, but the Big Boss said no - said he’d just quit again the minute something better came along. My boss went to bat for Colleague, saying he’d spoken to him about that and that he’d never ever quit again. Big Boss grudgingly said OK.
Well, you know what happened - another much better job offer came along. Colleague quit again, and that’s what started the fight, which spilled out of the boss’ cubicle and right onto the main work floor. The only person who got hurt was the (much smaller) guy who tried to stop it - he got a nice shiner for his efforts.
In the place I used to work, the sales manager and the quality control manager would have a screaming match every few days. The vast majority of the time, the root cause of these arguments was the fact that the sales manager was a stupid jackass. Eventually, though, the quality control manager was fired and replaced with another stupid jackass.
I was out of town when this happened, but it’s been retold so many times in my office that I feel as if I were there.
Morale was bad, so management held an “airing of grievances” but they got more than they bargained for. At one point a particularly outspoken guy got in our VP’s face and yelled, “What exactly do you do, anyway?!” A totally appropriate question IMO, considering our VP’s days consisted of sitting on his fat useless ass collecting his paycheck.
The guy resigned shortly thereafter. He went to grad school for a year and then applied for his old job back. Didn’t get it.
And then of course there’s the Taiwanese Parliament. Those guys are always losing their shit.
And nobody knows why!
At a former company we had a “grievance meeting” type thing with the vice president to address morale issues. There were actually two meetings, half the company in each. I was in the first and this happened in the second but I heard the story so many times I almost forgot I wasn’t actually there.
Things got a little tense with the VP getting hammered with legitimate (IMHO) questions but was far from out of hand. Suddenly the owner bursts in (he was listening from an adjacent room) and goes into full flipout mode. Screams a little and ends with “Anybody that wants to work, go that way (pointing to the door to the shop) anyone that doesn’t, go that way! (points to the door to the parking lot)”
Meeting over.
You know, sometimes I would love to see a good old-fashioned brawl on C-Span. Might liven things up.
I ticked off one woman who worked with me. Everyone shared the one cash register. But she considered it hers. I didn’t know this. What I knew was that every morning she would bring in the newspaper and put its ink stained rubber band in the drawer. We never used the rubber bands so when the drawer wouldn’t close I just took a handful out and threw them away.
She went nuts, hollered and whirled, knocked over lamps and bookcases and pounded on glass tables, making people rush to restrain her. And I had to apologize, and nobody said another word about it.
At one other place, one woman got mad at everyone and punched slits in the bottoms of all the foam coffee cups. At break, each person in line got two steps and started to realize they’d spilled something. She must have got 10 people stained with hot coffee before they realized it was the cups and not just their own clumsiness.
I kind of admire this. Maybe on my last day I’ll do this, as well as flipping everyone’s desktop display (CTRL-ALT-<down arrow>), using twist ties to tie their phone cords together, and putting Saran Wrap over the toilets.
There’s been a few cases.
First that springs to mind was when I was working at a service station. We had accoutns, but were VERY strict about their maintenance. Bear in mind I was new to the place and knew no-one. I tried to process one account, turns out that it was something like 5 weeks overdue. When I told the account holder he was some sort of “important customer”. My boss freaked at me (bear in mind I was very polite about the overage) and threw a clipboard at me.
Another time myself and a senior were involved in a screaming match in a closed office - this was after hours and we were the only two left. We were both red in the face and screaming at each other for maybe 15 minutes. Violence was not threatened.
Third was when two colleagues had to be separated. Vistors to the office heard them from the conference room. Bad impression.
OK, not where I work, exactly, but entertaining all the same:
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Back in my rebellious youth, I ended a lot of late nights with friends at the legendary Coney Island Lunch in Johnstown, PA. With crowds of snot-flying drunk patrons staggering in to sate their desperate need for one or two chili dogs with onions, things around 3AM sometimes got, er, a little volatile. The most spectacular was one time when, for no apparent reason, one of the dishwashers came flying out of the kitchen, hurled a (heavy ironstone) plate at at one of the patrons, then proceeded to beat the living crap out of the hapless customer with his fists. The dishwasher was taken away in handcuffs. Hot dog consumption continued without interruption.
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Much more recently, I’m waiting in the lobby of a huge oil company in Houston, waiting to be escorted up for a meeting, when a guy storms in, says he left his access badge at home and demands to be let past the barrier by the security drones who check people in. They can’t do anything about it, as the rules are clear: no one goes up without a badge or escort. The guy argues with them for at least ten minutes, getting louder and louder, saying there are ten people waiting for him to make a presentation upstairs. Eventually he’s practically screaming, while dozens of people look on in wonder. Finally he walks away, shouting to no one in particular,“That’s why this (effing) company is going down the tubes!” and slams the exit door so hard the glass cracks.
I have no idea why he didn’t just call one of the folks in the meeting upstairs to come down and let him in.
A few weeks ago Corporate (again) went back on their word and rolled through another round of layoffs.
We had an operator attack our site manager - no serious damage, though the guy did get a ride in a police car
Sad, because the fury shouldn’t have directed at the site manager. It’s the corporate fucks who need a good solid beating from a beefy pipefitter.
I work a factory job on the floor. This is par for the course. An example from today;
ME: Hey Rob man got a minute I’d like you to look at something.
DON:Sure.
ME: Assohle-Incompetent-Engineer-Turned-Plant Manager - not his real name -designed this wrong and it’s causing problems. Can you fix it?
DON: Yup, but it isn’t my job (they make him do things well outside his payscale and he’s not doing extra stuff anymore unless they’re willing to pay him for his - truly - extrordinary skills).
ME: Okay, what would it take for you to tell me how to fix it?
DON: A blowjob.
ME: Other than that.
DON: A second blowjob
ME: You know what, fuck you!
DON: Only after the blowjobs.
That’s how us blue-collar folk work. If you don’t want to get fucked with; with fuck back. Then it all becomes good fun 
ETA - fixed quote and diction