Consulting job. The project is so bad it’s legendary, it seems as if half the freelancers in Spain have worked there at some point. I was there three years ago, by which time it had been going on for five years: it’s still not finished. If it had been managed properly, it would have been done in nine months.
In my first week, one of the guys was feeling so bad he asked another one to call a cab for him to go to the ER. The colleague drove him instead; he came back two hours later, whiter than the walls and saying “man, they’ve admitted him!”
The sick guy came back the following Tuesday, after a whole week in the hospital. The boss, a moron who thought he was Al Pacino, or maybe Marlon Brando, with a twist of Clint Eastwood and a dash of John Wayne, kept calling the guy who’d been sick “a wuss,” “a nanny,” and slapping his shoulder hard enough that mine hurt in sympathy. The sick guy told him again and again to cut it out; the boss would laugh and hit him again, until the sick guy grabbed the boss, immobilized him, and while sitting on him on the floor spelled out “you’ve got a handspan on me and you’re the boss, but I’ve got ten kilos on you and I know how to fight. You wanna spank something, spank your fucking monkey and shut the fuck up for once.”
The boss still wanted to go on, it took two other guys to grab him, fly him into his office and sit him down until he stopped behaving like a three year old… and no, neither one lost the job.
Mind you, that boss used to come in real late looking like shit and get suddenly better after his first bathroom trip
I went to the AAA office to get some maps. The young woman, who normally take the AAA card and tells you which person to go to, to get your maps, was screaming at an older man saying “Don’t yell at me”, She had tears streaming down her face, and kept screaming “Don’t yell at me”. No one was saying a word; we all were just staring at her. Then she turned away and hid behind her chair. I went away without my maps.
Another one I remembered. “Erotic suggestion” lady from the OP - her name was Cora.
Cora originally recruited me (as a copywriter) from my job as a reporter. When I joined the agency she gave me an induction talk, and said “this is an advertising agency, so we’re nothing like a newspaper. There’s no dress code, though we’d like you to look fashionable, and there are no enforced hours in the office. You can come and go as you please. We know our people are creative types, and we don’t want to force you into conformity - just turn up when you like, leave when you like, and do the job.”
So the next week, taking this to heart, I strolled in one morning at 10, not 9. Cora slammed her office door. Then she stuck her head out and yelled “Jim, come in here NOW!”
I went in, puzzled, and sat down. She was shaking with anger. “What the HELL do you think you’re doing, coming in at TEN?!” she screamed.
“Er… you said there were no enforced business hours-”
“You are NOT A PROFESSIONAL PERSON!!!”
At this point she picked up a pen that was on her desk, and flung it in my face. It hit me point-on on the cheek and left a little ink dot. Smarting, I stood up without a word and walked out of her office.
About an hour later she disappeared, and reappeared a few minutes later, and put a chocolate cupcake on my desk.
To this day I have no fucking idea what that was about.
About 20 years ago I worked in the credit department of a regional department store chain. I worked with a guy that kept needling me. It would be considered sexual harassment now, but things were different then. I told him to stop several times, but he kept on and on. Our supervisor could see what was happening, but she didn’t do anything about it. Finally I just lost it. I flew off my chair and was on top of him, dragging him to the floor. Then I was punching him. I’m a small woman, who at that time weighed about 105 lbs and was a little over 5’ tall. He was an average sized man. He didn’t get up until they pulled me off him, and was out for three days (whether from pain or embarassment I couldn’t say). I wasn’t reprimanded, although he didn’t last much longer in the job.
I have a long fuse, but when I blow, I really lose it. It happens very rarely, which is good.
One time I got a clerk mad at an electronics store.
I came in and he instantly stood in front of me and demanded to know what I was looking for.
I said I’d just look around and went around him, but he followed and asked again, so I said “Show me your cheapest VCR”. He said “Why would you want the cheapest, can’t you afford better?” I said “it’s for spare TV in the guest room” He said “Some host you are”. So I said, I’ll just look around and turned my back on him. The next clerk asked if he could help and I asked to see the cheapest VCR, and I bought it.
The first clerk followed me out to the parking lot! He was shouting “You were MY customer! Why did you buy from him?!” I didn’t say a word, but got into my car and locked the doors.
He put both hands on my hood and was shouting, red in the face. As I backed out (and believe me I was tempted to go forward over him), I saw the other clerks crowded in the doorway watching the scene.
What was the issue that had you and him (her?) at each other’s throats? What was the final outcome of this incident? Did you and the senior patch things up, or did you try to avoid this person for fear of other conflicts and shouting matches?
Manager was having a relationship with a woman in his department who got some very (too) rapid promotions to Lead. Then they broke up.
Well, besides the screaming fit in his office, she walked out one day and committed near felony level keying of his car in the parking lot. About 100 feet from the employee entrance and directly on camera.
Yes, she was fired. I think she was even arrested for it, but I’m not sure.
I didn’t work with this guy, but I have personal knowledge of what he did. He was called into the office and was being fired. The manager left the office in the middle, and the guy picked up her computer and threw it out the closed window. This is where I came in. I was outside smoking, 18 floors below. Had I been standing 10 feet to the right…
We had a technical guy go off at this job…shouting and screaming and throwing things. At my old job, I’ve seen two managers (both technical, and awesome guys) get so frustrated with programs or machines as to throw and kick things. Fortunately, neither of them ever directed that frustration at people.
I did corn detassling one summer when I was in middle school. I had a foreman who was a real prick - the type of guy who, when he wasn’t belittling the teenaged employees, was screaming his head off. One day I let him have it with both barrels, telling him, among many other things to go fuck himself with various implements.
I didn’t come to work the next day.
Since then I can’t say I’ve done anything too crazy at work, but I once did work for a guy who didn’t yell directly at us, but when he was unhappy would grumble and curse quite loudly to himself, stomping his feet and pounding his fists like a two-year-old.
In that same job two supervisors once got into a shouting match over some territorial dispute. Their office had a big glass wall, so you could see everything going on - finger pointing, arm waving, everything short of coming to blows.
Good times.
I lost my shit big time a few months ago and am surprised that there were no repercussions.
The two mail room guys at the mega-office where I work fancy themselves as witty and charming, when in fact they are irritating time-wasters. “Barney” responds to every request with “it will cost you twenty dollars – haw haw”. Ask “Jimmy” a straightforward question like “Did the urgent package from opposing counsel arrive yet?” and he’ll deapan “not yet”, wait until you’ve started walking away before saying, “Just kidding! It’s right here!” and hand it over with a smirk.
Anyway, one day I ask them for an empty photocopy paper box with a lid, explaining that I’m going to fill it with the armload of legal papers I’m carrying that have to be couriered to opposing counsel within the half-hour to make a litigation deadline. Barney produces his empty lunch bag asking if that will do; I tell him I don’t have time for games and to please get me a box right away. He says it will cost me $20, I repeat myself. “How about this juice box? I could rinse it out!” I repeat myself. After jerking my chain some more Jimmy finally hands me a box … and jerks it back with a smile when I reach for it. I reach again, he pulls it back again and, swearing, I briefly ponder dropping my files and leaping over the locked half-door to get a box myself but instead stomp off before I choke a bitch. Jimmy calls after to me, “C’mon, we’re just joking around. You can have the box!” and I go off like Krakatoa.
“Will it cost me twenty dollah –- haw haw? Are you KIDDING ME? Are you fucking KIDDING ME? I don’t have time for this!” I’m not even sure what else I said during my brief rant but I know I mimicked Barney’s Chinese accent when I repeated his catch phrase. :o Later, after I sent the package off and returned to my desk, I patiently waited for someone from HR or something to come to my desk and have a severe chat with me or escort me out of the building with a box of my belongings, but to my surprise nothing happened. I don’t know if it’s because Barney and Jimmy said nothing, or if somehow no one overheard me, or because anyone who did felt my pain, but in any case the mail room guys now answer my direct questions and no longer prolong our encounters.
When I was and undergrad and working office jobs I worked in an office I worked with a woman who flipped out. Apparently each year she would get her doctor to write up FMLA papers for a short term disability for mental health reasons. She’s be off for six weeks at 100% of her salary. I guess the insurance company that decided the disability claims was starting to give her a hard time about it since it happened each year.
This was a call center and people were sitting in rows of cubicles taking phone calls. This woman finished up a call she was on and then sat at her desk for a minute or two. Then she threw back her head and started shrieking over and over and over again at the top of her lungs.
She was nearly carried out by her supervisor, manager, and a security guy.
Not an employee but a customer at my fast food place once got pissed that her coffee wasn’t hot enough. She stomped back and demanded a refund and when she got it, decided it wasn’t good enough and yelled at our poor cashier some more. Then unexplicably she tossed the coffee right into the FACE of this cashier! Lucky for us it really wasn’t that hot, but our manager nearly leaped over the counter to grab this psycho bitch! Later, our security managed to escort her out.
I’ve seen many reports by Starbucks employees where somebody threw coffee in the workers face. All these coffee throwers should spend time in jail, and not just until they post bail.
We have an engineer and a designer who have gotten into it - almost to fisticuffs - at least three times in the last two years. I’ve missed all of them! They have still yelled at each other since the last huge blow-up.
They have both been written up, and have both been sent home for the day (or two! paid, no less) to “cool off.”
The sup and the VP got in a screaming match in a conference room.
They’d been sleeping together, leading to both their divorces - then he cheated on her, and the final straw was that he wouldn’t up her pay from $50,000 to $100,000. It was a loud, hour long argument. She then walked out to never return. We were supposed to ignore it.
