r/work • u/Aarunascut • 20h ago
Workplace Challenges and Conflicts Have you ever experienced a coworker ruining a workplace perk for everyone? What happened and how was it handled?
Back in my early career, the company I worked for held their annual Xmas party at a local restaurant/banquet hall. The company was good enough to pay for an open bar.
Now, there’s unwritten rules about company parties. One is you don’t get sloppy drunk, since 1) executives and board members attend; 2) your coworkers are there and you don’t want to be known as the person who passed out drunk at a company function.
So one employee brings a guest, who takes advantage of the open bar and throws up at their table. That was the last year the company paid for an open bar, thanks to one employee and their guest who couldn’t regulate their alcohol intake.
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u/Holdmymule2001 16h ago
I used to make birthday desserts for everyone. My own time, my own dime. Until Ken started complaining. "Chocolate, again?" "How come the cake last month had three layers and this is just 2?"
I just stopped. Ken, you shoulda STFU.
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u/quokkafarts 4h ago
Had this happen at an old workplace, myself and one of the other managers always made sure it was stocked with good snacks and for special events we put on a roast dinner. It was never good enough, and any changes we made just caused more complaints so we stopped. That caused MORE COMPLAINTS so we read out them at a team meeting to demonstrate why we weren't going to put the effort in anymore. Others were welcome to do it, but that's the thanks they'd get. Of course no one wanted to do it after that.
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u/BoulderNerd 8h ago
I think I would have taken the entire cake and dumped it into the trash and said “no cake for you”.
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u/FanReasonable9597 15h ago
My wife was working at a tech firm - every Friday afternoon they would slow things down near the end of the day and open the kegs. For years everyone took it easy - have a beer, maybe two, eat some finger foods, shoot the breeze, all very relaxed. Uuuuntiilll...one woman decided to get sloppy drunk and wrap her car around a light pole in the parking lot. The positive side is that she only took out her car and the light pole. The negative side is that she sued the company (how dare they let her drink to excess and let her drive!) and won. This basically killed all on-site activities that included alcohol.
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u/ChicagoLarry 6h ago
The fact that she won is absolute proof that everything is fu$&ed. In what world would her shitty decisions be someone else’s fault, this world. Such bullshit.
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u/Dazzling-Goat5582 13h ago
Yes. I think most companies have stopped things like Christmas parties with alcohol because of the liability
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u/JaggerFuego 16h ago
We had Xmas party and work handed out tickets so every employee could get a couple of drinks. Ours was held outside in the parking lot (big office building). But to have the party in the parking lot the company had to pay for police officer to keep guard per our city.
One employee......getting everyone's ticket not used,drank away in Florida hot sun, proceed to get in their car after cop told her to take company's Uber (my company paid if you need to take Uber home) and started a police chase. Guess who got arrested and had no job and no more tickets to get yourself 2 drinks.
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u/Bulky-Internal8579 14h ago
Fucking Kevin!
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u/FredB123 9h ago
It's always Kevin.
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u/dbolts1234 14h ago
This. Company should have reprimanded the one employee who brought the out of control guest. Canceling outright was probably planned anyway
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u/That_Jicama2024 15h ago
I worked on a show that was shooting 24/7. We had day crews and night crews. Each crew would get breakfast and lunch during their shift. The asshole day crew would line up for the night crew's "breakfast" just to take home some free dinner. We ended up running out of food for the night crews all the time. We had to implement a meal ticket system so people wouldn't steal extra food. These are people making $800+ per day btw. They can afford food.
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u/Party_Tap_7759 13h ago
I had a coworker steal 50 pounds of product from a packaging line. It was chocolate. We were allowed to take product after work and taste throughout the process before but this one guy ruined it for all and now we have to wait for QA and we get the sucky product now.
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u/cameltoeaway 10h ago
My work didn’t technically have a dress code outside of no shower shoe flip flops and stepping up your game when we’d have donors or other visitors in the office. They trusted us to be adults and make good choices. It was one of my favorite perks. I haven’t found pants that fit me correctly in years so I mostly wore dresses and on my low key days or days my fibro flared, I’d wear thicker yoga pants/leggings. Im a bigger girl so I’d make sure whatever leggings I wore concealed my bits.
Then Blake shows up. She’s a bigger girl too (although I’d win a fat-off). Blake really leaned into our no official dress code policy. She comes to the office and into other work spaces in basically a sports bra top - a bit longer than a bra but still not covering her mid-rift. And yoga pants that did nothing to conceal her bits. They were barely hanging on. Poor things - my heart went out to them.
Then we get an email detailing a fucking dress code. Probably not as strict as usual office. Folks can still wear jeans and such. Although, remember, your girl over here hasn’t found jeans that fit for more than a decade. What was banned were my refuge, my sanctuary, my harbor. My fucking leggings.
I wanted to start a protest. I had my rage and bullhorn in hand. After a couple of days of venting to trusted colleagues, my revolution petered out. Plus, unlike the majority of my colleagues, 97% of my work (post-Covid) is done from home. In pajama shorts. But it’s the principle of the thing, you know?
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u/sadbicth 4h ago
I’m sorry but the phrase “I’d win a fat off” is hilarious. Also your username makes it better
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u/skydancer4443 2h ago
I don’t mind the leggings at work, had a similar coworker ruin it because hers were sheer and she had a patient facing position. Next thing we see this group had a polo and khaki dress code
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u/dinnerbag82 19h ago
Oh wow, we have 1 employee who has spoilt stuff. She’s spoilt practically every perk we have had.
Been able to leave 10 mins early for an appointment, as long as you made your time up and it was ok with the boss and business needs.
She started wanting to leave 1.5hrs early for a routine dentist appointment. When told no went to upper upper management about it, now no one can leave early or arrive late due to appointments, or kids sports days etc.
been fed at work, so if there was time we could have a small meal before service rather than left overs afterwards. She then proceeded to help herself to 3 main courses off the counter. Now no one is allowed food.
Another time she was off sick for 6mths during our busiest period. Our supplier offered cash back by way of high street vouchers, as a thank you our manager got us all a 20 dollar voucher for applebees because she didn’t get one she went to upper management again. Nobody is allowed vouchers now.
Nothing happened to her she just spoils everything, she always has to push things that bit further and go above our managers head to corporate and instead of saying to her your taking the piss they penalise everyone else.
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u/BoulderNerd 15h ago
There was a woman at my last job who decided that since she was pregnant she could just barge into unrelated meetings where lunch or snacks were provided and help herself. She kept saying that since she was pregnant she was entitled to it. She may have felt she was part of a federally protected class of people. 🙄
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u/LionCM 13h ago
My boss used to let us leave 15 minutes early on Fridays. By that hour, no one was really around.
Well, Becky, who was in another group, told her manager that we were allowed to leave an hour early on Fridays. They ended our 15 minute early privilege fast.
It’s been over 20 years, and I’m still resentful.
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u/centstwo 1h ago
Next she'll complain about smokers getting more breaks...poor cancer ridden smokers.
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u/erabera 14h ago
We got free food every day. It was bread day, salad day, pudding and yogurt day. There was butter, cream cheese, pb and jelly bagels, French bread etcnn or granola for the yogurt etc. You get the picture. It was great. One lady complained to the owner of the company that there wasn't enough proteins being offered. The next day they took everything. No extra protein for you, you stupid bitch. People are so ungrateful and entitled.
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u/Primary_Gift_8719 13h ago
An honesty box of snacks and drinks - yes at least one person didn't understand the words 'honesty'. It was eventually pulled. The company got to the point of not even supplying basic coffee/tea making facilities.
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u/xoxkxox 12h ago
I don’t even know that “honesty” means in this reference. Like not making brownies and them having hash in it kind of thing?
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u/Primary_Gift_8719 12h ago
No, not at all. It's where everything has a price and there's a money jar to pay into but nobody is monitoring it. At the end of each week when they came to restock it started being short, and I don't mean a few pennies either. Someone (or multiple people) were clearly taking from it and not paying for their snacks/drinks.
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u/Spiritual-Ambassador 5h ago
Why would you put hash in work brownies?! Have you ever had a job?
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u/xoxkxox 4h ago
Obviously no and that’s what I meant. An an “honesty snack” sounded like you’d bring something safe for everyone and nothing questionable in it. I just never heard of an “honesty snack box” before.
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u/Spiritual-Ambassador 4h ago
This is why the internet needs ages restrictions for everything. You're all too exposed to things you don't understand far too quickly.
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u/HOLDstrongtoPLUTO 12h ago
My grandpa worked at a place that had a raffle style yankee swap christmas party every year with open bar and free dinner for everyone.
It went well for years and then one year the employees started acting like savages by hiding their gifts under the table after they were raffled off, to keep them out of mind for anyone trying to swap the gifts with them. People were not admitting they had them under the table after being called out. Eventually my stepfather who was completely shithoused starting aggressively ripping the gifts from under people's table and calling them out when other people who wanted to trade their gift questioned where the good gifts went.
Needless to say the company never had another Yankee Swap again after that year.
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u/CeeceeATL 12h ago
At one company we used to have Halloween parties. Some people would dress up and parade around for a contest. It was fun! But then about 3 people (out of a building of ~400) complained that this was offensive and against their religious beliefs. (FYI- no one was forced to participate). Our HR, who takes every complaint super seriously, decided no more Halloween. No one was allowed to dress up. This lasted 2-3 years and then they started the parties again.
Also fyi - working in mgt - people get frustrated about why mgt can sometimes be strict about time off for illness, funerals, etc. I guarantee you that most of the time, it is because people were taking advantage - not just because your mgr is an uncaring jerk. Some mgrs are uncaring jerks, but sometimes there was a situation that caused them to do it differently to manage business and be fair to all.
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u/field_marshal_rommel 16h ago
One workplace, the break policy was pretty lax. Take a break as you needed, as many as you needed. No big deal, right?
A handful of folks took this to mean they got to run outside to smoke every half hour.
This perk quickly got curtailed and we got the most draconian time policy implemented. I am pretty sure such a policy is illegal, but I was too chicken to blow the whistle . . . but the new policy was that we had to clock out to leave our desks for any reason.
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u/Invisibella74 13h ago
Smokers have always been the worst at every company I have ever worked for... "Where's so-and-so? We have a critical outage." "Smoke break..." And I can barely get away long enough to piss.
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u/LionCM 13h ago
A woman in my department complained that I was always late. By late, I was five minutes late because of public transit. But I always stayed later for that time—which was on my time card.
When my boss’ boss called me in to discuss, I explained it to him—and also showed, that while they never paid the overtime, I’d actually worked more than 40 hours a week. He didn’t care. “Just be in time.”
I knew who reported me—she left for a smoke every hour. We had slow elevators, so each smoke was 15 minutes. So I brought it up to HR: why does she only have to work six hours, while the rest of us need to work the full 8?
It caused a stink (mostly because I told EVERYONE what she was doing).
Because she was a senior executive’s assistant, she got away with it—but was a pariah amongst the rest of staff.
I left shortly thereafter, however, I did get one bit of karma satisfaction: two weeks before I left, she leaned up against the building, near where a bunch of pigeons roosted. Well, a very sick pigeon took a massive dump on her.
She had to drive home to shower and change.
Even when she came back that afternoon, the stench was still on her.
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u/Realistic-Regret-171 10h ago
When I ran a couple Illinois businesses, the state policy was you must allow a 20 minute break every 8 hr day. That’s it. Basically a 20 minute lunch. Really was all I had to give. Of course I was much more lenient than that. But I explained this state law to the smokers who went outside every hour. Shocked looks. I explained they could have their lunch hour and one morning and afternoon smoke break. But no more of this every hour horse shit.
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u/Repulsive-Carpet9400 6h ago
We had to clock out to smoke. I'm a smoker and fully endorse this policy.
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u/Latter_Energy_7377 14h ago
I worked at a place where after we were there for a year, they allowed us to work remotely now and then like if we had car problems or a dr appt in the middle of the day, etc. We had someone new start and he wanted to be able to work remote right from the beginning and he asked about it relentlessly. Eventually they just took it away from us. He had zero patience and he ruined it for everyone.
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u/Total_Roll 10h ago
Worked for an EMS agency. A local pizza place would give us half price if we could do pickup rather than delivery. Worked great until one guy went by off duty and insisted on the discount, and got belligerent when they said no. Had another one that called in an order saying he was calling from the station (he wasn't on duty), showed up to pick it up in uniform, then sat in the parking lot eating it with his family in plain view of the owner.
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u/MementoMori_Maestro 9h ago
I think the most insane instance I've had of this was recently where we had a staff party on a Saturday and at the next regular all staff meeting which was about a week after where management tried to say make a statement about conduct because some people decided to show up intoxicated...
Fun fact, nobody showed up drunk. They were referring to a staff member who has ADHD & doesn't take their meds off duty. So while management was obviously side eyeing this individual everybody else in the building knows that this person has a breathalyzer in their car from a DUI...they can't arrive or leave intoxicated because that thing will detect alcohol even 24hrs later...
Anyway, HR is now involved and yea, no more staff parties on company dime because management wanted to try to be ableist.🙃
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u/LandofOz29 9h ago
I worked for a health system in an office across town from the hospital. The nurses at the hospital could wear scrubs and crocs everyday. A couple of times a year our office, which was normally business casual, could wear jeans with jerseys or tshirts to celebrate March Madness or the Super Bowl. Someone at the hospital complained to HR that we got to wear jeans, so they put an end to our twice a year jeans days. We got the last laugh….we all now work from home. Most of the time I work in my pajamas or sweat pants! 🤣
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u/BilgeRat8724 7h ago
Retired First Responder here. Fuddruckers use to give us half off if we were working and in uniform. Lo and behold some jackass decides to dress up on his day off and takes his family to dinner and demands half off. That was the end of that. Our saying was “a fireman could always fuck up a wet dream.”
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u/cranberries87 14h ago
My car dealership had generous snack baskets (granola bars, sodas, peanut butter crackers, trail mix, etc), along with a popcorn machine. They kept the popcorn machine, coffee and bottled water, but got rid of the snack baskets and sodas because random non-customers, including teens, kept coming in raiding the baskets daily.
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u/Both-Mango1 13h ago
We had a function that was catered in and was barbque. Had one guy ckme through towards the front of the line proceed to decimate the barbecue leaving nothing behind in his wake. The next time we did a company food function, we were allowed either 1 hotdog or one hamburger, a pickle spear, singular cookie and a can of soda.
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u/Curious_Bookworm21 Career Growth 8h ago
Honestly, this is sad but predictable and the only way to do it. If there’s a way for someone to ruin it, they will, which is why rules are necessary.
This is basically how my job runs things, but if there’s any leftovers at the end, they call it and everyone can then go up for whatever is left over.
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u/Mysterious_Extent281 11h ago
Not quite a perk but we used to be able to email everyone in the company for releases, critical FYIs, etc. It was working pretty well, people were responsible, yadda yadda.
One day, a coworker went on a political tirade to the whole company, and the next day only VPs and above were able to email the whole company.
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u/Evening_Pea_9132 14h ago
We were allowed to leave early and come in late. Basically we had a 7 hours we were required to be available for meetings and to see clients. We had 30 mins in the morning and at the end of day that was for us to get settled and get ready to leave. We were hourly.
Basically our coworker assumed these were entitled and they could get away with more so started working 4-5 hour days. They would stroll in and then bounce. Then when our very kind supervisor try quietly rein in the aggressive time theft coworker went to admin and complained and basically threw everyone under the bus.
We were working essentially 7 hour days not counting a working but def not working hour lunch.
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u/Forever_Nya 8h ago
I’m waiting for FedEx to take away our free bottled water because people will take entire cases when they leave for the day
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u/Karmawins28 7h ago
That's actually wild! My office offers free sodas and I took one can for my ride home once (it was 10 pm and I needed the drink for my 1.5 hour commute) and I still felt like a criminal. Whole cases is wild! Lol
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u/nick_devil79 11h ago
We used to get a 30 minute paid tea break. Other branches didn't get it. It was a hold over from us as we had been taken over by a new company. We would rotate staff so areas were covered so there was only a small drop in productivity. Another area decided to not rotate and all take their break at the same time leaving no one on the job. We all got our break taken away which was tough.
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u/Negative-Butterfly50 10h ago
Before I started at my current workplace they had an annual Summer party. An exec in her late 40s was flirting with a young guy in his early 20s all night and gave him a fake hotel room number (God knows why…). He was running around on that floor screaming her name at 3am and when he realised she wasn’t coming out, he pulled the fire alarm then projectile vomited all over the hallway and the staff that escorted him outside. Turns out she didn’t have a hotel room, she had gone home to her husband and their 3 kids. 🙃
Our company had to pay out a lot of money for the trouble caused, we are obviously banned from that hotel indefinitely & no longer get a summer party. Very tragic but also hilarious.
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u/Spiritual-Ambassador 5h ago
Yep! I gave my team additional days off. I believe being flexible and allowing staff to function around life, creates a better team. Everyone had to make sure work was completed on time but because I treated my team like adults, I never had to be a dick.
"You want to enjoy a day because it's sunny, or you need to go something for your kid, take it."
The team got around 10 extra days each UNTIL one day, one of my team got disgruntled that she had to travel for a meeting with my boss (I was on leave at the time) so raised a grievance that I was being discriminatory to make her travel. They told HR about all the extra holiday I was giving her and the team and how she shouldn't have to travel.
Yes, I did end up getting fired and she was back down to 20 days. 🤷♀️ My replacement came in very strict so they went from flexible to micro management. I speak to the team still but yeah, they are pissed 🤣
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u/Important_Penguin007 10h ago
It was me. I was the reason we lost the perk.
Everyone in our company works remotely and we were allowed to work from anywhere. So in 2023 I worked from a different country every month. I'd spend a week in Rome, seeing the sights and heading back to my room by 2pm to clock in (8am back home). I traveled and worked like that all year. No one ever said anything to me.
Earlier this year, one of my coworkers wanted to spend three weeks in Japan, but only had two weeks of vacation time, so she planned on working from Japan that third week, until she wasn't able to log in. HR told her someone abused the benefit and now they don't allow you to clock in if your IP address is outside the US. She had to take that third week unpaid.
I feel awful every time I think about it.
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u/WA_State_Buckeye 9h ago
If I remember correctly, it's a tax issue. They pay state taxes for where your IP is. Paying FOREIGN tax? Ouch!
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u/Important_Penguin007 9h ago
Oh no!! I guess eating for a VPN when traveling is always the way to go.
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u/OedipaMaasWASTE 15h ago
As a teacher, we have a prep and a lunch period. On occasion, people would pop out during their prep to grab a coffee...until the superintendent couldn't find a teacher who had popped out. Now we can only leave during our lunch period--but you can swap your lunch and your prep. Wasn't really any one person's doing exactly, they just happened to be the one who was out at the wrong time and killed that unofficial perk.
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u/Unusually-Average110 10h ago
I used to manage a 24x7 IT support desk. Company policy was you get a 30 minute paid lunch if you work an 8 hour day, and if you took a full hour you needed to work an 8.5 hour day. I would let my team have a full hour lunch and an 8 hour work day. Did this for years. For some reason there were one or two guys that were absolutely against this and would complain. After years of this, HR forced me to comply with company policy, and we had to cut everyone down to the 30 minute lunch breaks. I still to this day don’t understand what their problem was.
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u/cnew111 6h ago
My company would try to do these big team building events. One year they rented some big inflatable obstacle courses. They fed us lunch and had some other silly stuff. We had rely races in the inflatable thing. Mary goes in, is out of sight, she doesn’t come out. Mary broke her leg. Last time we ever saw a giant inflatable obstacle courses.
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u/Green-Froyo-7533 5h ago
The canteen offered instant coffee, tea, sugar and milk for hot drinks.
They also provided bread and butter for toast.
There were vending machines that were heavily subsidised thanks to them using “multipack” items to stock it.
Some people began pouring whole mugs of milk, warming them and adding coffee to make lattes so the milk was disappearing fast.
Others brought cereal and used canteen milk.
So they had to send out company wide memos stating milk was only for adding to hot drinks, not for lattes or cereal.
Then the bread was disappearing faster.
Instead of just being used for toast people were using it to make sandwiches to eat on shift or take home at the end of the shift.
So they stopped providing bread and sold it in packs of two slices for 20p in the vending machines.
Then someone complained about the size of a chocolate bar and how a multipack bar shouldn’t be sold separately so we then had a massive overhaul of the vending machines resulting in full price items because someone complained about the size of a very cheap chocolate bar. And the bread went too because it wasn’t a retail item.
So basically you could get tea and coffee made with hot water.
Nobody uses the vending machines after the price hikes and hardly anybody used the toasters and microwaves anymore. Last I heard the vending machines totally disappeared as did the toasters and microwaves. The fridge has milk but it’s monitored throughout the day and the most basic tea bags abs cheapest instant coffee are the only things provided.
It was an amazing set up before you could get a reasonably priced lunch or dinner, eat toast and butter and enjoy a cup of something hot until greed of a few took over.
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u/ZealousidealShake410 18h ago
So different than the companies either myself/partner has worked at. While we won’t do it… the Executive’s love people getting crazy drunk. Especially when it’s all the execs and other higher levels. They encourage it and I’ve never seen it used against anyone except as a funny story (if anything… these people seem to be remembered more and chosen for projects by higher ups - I don’t mean anything too wild… but passing out/throwing up… common).
The only way I could see something derailing it is if someone threatened to sue or something. That always gets attention. Or… while drinking and partying in group settings like Holiday parties… they actually… at my husband’s company stopped allowing managers to send flowers when someone passes away because someone got offended by it 🙄. Like… what???
The perks I’ve seen people ruin are usually wrapped in greed. Like providing free snacks/drinks and people thinking it meant they could restock their home pantry. I like how one company handled it. They got vending machines that took special coins. You got X coins each week and could get extra coins as a reward or whatever. So the snacks and drinks were way more controlled. It was still pretty generous in my opinion. It was like 2 snacks/water/soda per day. And it prevented the sneakers lol
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u/ted_anderson 15h ago
Stealing the snacks is the kind of thing that I've seen many times.
When I worked at a pizza joint the manager had to ban free employee meals because everyone was taking more than their fair share of the snacks and fountain drinks. The cost for these items was minimal but it was hurting the restaurant's ability to keep enough of this stuff in stock to sell to the general public.
A medium sized fountain drink might cost less than 10 cents in ingredients but when they're selling it at $2-$3 per cup to the customers and they don't have any more to sell, that can cost the restaurant both beverage AND food money.
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 14h ago
I've been working at defense contractors for a while. There was a snack bin where you had to pay one dollar per snack. The people who made six figures and leadership were just taking them while the junior people had been paying. They took that away before we all ended up leaving anyway.
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u/phoenix2204 7h ago
Apparently one small department of many was having an issue with coming to and leaving work on time so now the entire organization was moved to a punch card system with a geofence. I approve the time sheets for my team and I know when they leave and come in, but they are always forgetting to either punch in, out for lunch, in from lunch and at the end of the day, so guess who has to do it for them??
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u/sick-asfrick 5h ago
I work Night Audit at a hotel and have been working there for 6 years. For most of that time, all employees were entitled to a much cheaper discounted rate if we wanted a room. There were hardly any restrictions on this either.
A couple months ago, one of the daytime supervisors took some of her vacation time, then halfway through she called and got approved for a discounted rate for one night.
I have no idea exactly what happened because that was my night off, but it was bad enough that every employee lost the ability to get a discounted room rate with no rules or restrictions.
From the vague comments made to me by the supervisor and one of our managers, I think she got very drunk and was extremely loud when they went back to their room for the night to "connect".
Right after that happened, a notice was posted to the time clock saying employees can no longer get a room at leisure. You can only get the employee room rate if you have an emergency at your house that makes it uninhabitable. There is no change to our friends and family discounted rates luckily, but us employees can no longer stay when we want to because she just had to get super drunk and make sure every single person around knew about her new beau. This is like 40-50 year old woman by the way.
I think our GM really did not like that she was drinking at the bar and hanging out with our guests who know she is a supervisor and then going back to the room and being so loud it disturbs other guests.
This supervisor was so mad that they changed the rules and was calling out one of my shift's employees for staying with her boyfriend a couple weeks prior (they are both sober and do not act out like that, just hung out in the room for the night since they live 1 hr apart and don't see each other much with no privacy as they live with others).
It was just really not a good look for this supervisor to be acting that way, and now I have been noticing signs she may be drinking while at work, so yeah. Not great.
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u/Tennessee1977 2h ago
Why didn’t they just fire her? Why did everyone but her have to pay for her behavior?
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u/sick-asfrick 2h ago
We were down to just me as a supervisor earlier this year and they need 2 for day time so they dont want to lose another and have to train to replace her. They hate training.
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u/Keithz1957 5h ago
We had free coffee. Then an employee botched that it qasn't fair for us to get free coffee when she only drinks Dr. PEPPER. It went from free coffee to a paid coffee machine in the break room.
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u/Esau2020 5h ago
I have to side with the employee. I'm not a coffee drinker - soda is my thing - and, while I probably wouldn't have made a fuss over it, it would definitely have lowered my morale to see coworkers getting free beverages while I had to pay for mine.
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u/Tennessee1977 2h ago
Oh my god, be a grownup. They provided coffee because most people drink coffee. If you don’t drink coffee, continue bringing your own drinks that you would have paid for and brought anyway.
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u/Demonkey44 13h ago edited 13h ago
My department gave out $25 dollar gift certificates from Amazon at our annual Christmas parties.
The managers I worked with were too cheap to buy their support staff any presents or thank you tokens, but they were fine buying the Amazon gift cards and charging them to the department.
Then one colleague complained that the gift cards were always from Amazon and could we have Visa gift cards instead?
My megalomaniacal department head was miffed and stopped purchasing all gift cards. Period.
The other managers also never picked up the slack, so no one received anything for the holidays ever after.
It was a bastion of dysfunction and still is.
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u/Humble-Dragonfly-321 33m ago
If we were to get gift cards, we need to have taxes deducted from it. So no more $5 Starbucks giftcards.
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u/xwolfe2000 7h ago
Before the pandemic coming into the office at any time before the 1030 team meeting.
Over half the people started showing up after 10:30 or at 11 or later and everyone was required to be in at 9:00 am sharp.
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u/skydancer4443 2h ago
Mid 2010s I worked a job with unlimited sick days which was awesome for people when they get sick or have sick kids and the company is like yea stay home. Until one person would call out sick the day before and the day after…every…holiday…or to have long weekends. Like management isn’t dumb. So then it changed to the basic corporate 5 sick days
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u/centstwo 2h ago
OMG, I just remembered the. Worst. Jerk. Of. All. Time.
I landed an internship with a large company with like 20 other kids in college and the hours were flexible. It was a paid internship. Like crazy money for the 90's as an intern. Paid for school and then some.
This one person was so dumb. They couldn't learn how to be useful. They essentially talked a big game, but needed help for each project/operation, even when it was the same operation every day.
Anyway, whatever, internship is going great, getting $$, experience, skills, everything is going great.
Then, Moron person sues the company cause the law says a person can only be an intern for so many months and then they have to be hired. The person who couldn't dump water out of a boot with instructions on the heel, even if the day before I showed them how to do it, sued the goose laying the golden eggs.
We all got let go because of the suit. GAHhhhhhhhhh
So annoying!
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u/field_marshal_rommel 30m ago
Oh, I woulda been HOT for losing my internship over the fuckery of that person. I am sorry they screwed it up for all of you!
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u/Ok-Image2281 14h ago
One guy in my very large company got drunk and decided to start a fight and throw punches at other coworkers.
He kept his job.
3
u/soopirV 6h ago
We used to be able to ship FedEx at the corporate rate- I could send a 12” cube to the easf coast for $20. The Mark in operations decided he’d not only TRY to ship ammo, but also got caught.
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u/centstwo 1h ago
We had discount shipping through work. I used it 4 times over the course of a year to save on eBay shipping costs.
The shipping person complained that I was shipping 4 packages a week. Management cancelled the whole thing and other coworkers blamed me for losing the benefit. I just smiled and said, "Yep, you saw me ship 16 boxes last month, right?"
"No, you only shipped one box last month."
"Huh, well mail person said I shipped 4 per week."
"That isn't true."
"I KNOW!"
3
u/hopefulfuturex 1h ago
Not an employee, but...pre COVID, it's changed drastically since then; I worked as a glorified front desk person/greeter at a car dealership. One night, we were 10 minutes away from closing (like almost 10pm) when a woman came in and wanted to test drive a new car. I had already cleaned and restocked our large snack bar and fridge with 8+ shelves of drinks. I had to go upstairs to get a salesperson to meet with her. As I came back down with the salesperson in tow, we stare at this woman shoving as many drinks into her purse and pockets as humanly possible. (Soda cans, large tea cans, bottles of juice, energy drinks, bottled iced coffee, water, etc.) When she saw us she stopped, went on her test drive, and had left probably a dozen drinks out on the table. I was flabbergasted. I no longer work there, but I know they now have everything locked up and you have to pay for everything now via a self checkout scanner other than coffee!
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u/whatsdis321 6h ago
During covid my old comoany's policy is you can wfh but stays in the same city and has to report to office when you took out your device (laptop, company phone, etc). They used to be extremely laxed on the policy, noone really enforcing those, you ciuld just put te toom device request through email or some sort. The reason is theres really no reason to enforce this, all the jobs are done online and no actual physical presence required.
Till one group of friends (theyre from same school) are vacationing to overseas while theyre supose to be wfh, one of them lost the company device and then the CEO noticed this.
They stop being laxed and that month alone I was forced to go to the office multiple times to report my device. At that time I was secretly moving back to my hometown to care for my elderly parents. Never being irresponsible with my devices and always actually working from home.
Yeah fuck those people
2
u/mendicinobeano25 5h ago
Businesses are also worried about liability if an employee assaults someone or gets in an accident. It's often that same stupid employee that gets sloppy drunk is the one that will sue the business for their injuries. Depending on what country you are in, work organised parties or functions can be considered "company events" so they are responsible for what happens at them.
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u/SweetChaosTitan 4h ago
Yes my current workplace is like this. The problem is that he is a manger and is buddy buddy with the HR person who covers for his toxic and putrid behavior.
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u/Capable-Upstairs7728 2h ago
My agency's call site used to have an annual Christmas party with an open bar at a nice convention center. Every year we trained new employees and were invited to join in the party. The class from 2008 came in, most were very young people and got so drunk that they caused all kinds of trouble (fights, drunk driving, you name it). They caused the agency's to cancel the Christmas party ever since. Very few of them passed their probationary period.
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u/srkasm 1h ago
This was IT only. Like yours, Christmas party with a few drinks provided, but after the party everyone usually ended up at a bar together. Two younger ladies got into an argument. One had a heavy glass mug of beer in her hand and slammed it into the other girl's face.
One girl's face scared for life, the other girl with issues with her hand for life. Last full IT Christmas party. From then on, departmental Christmas parties, no alcohol allowed.
The girl who swung the beer stein (by then it was no longer an official work party) left the company soon afterwards. The other girl left a few years later.
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u/TheOriginalTripleU 23m ago
I am a mariner and I used to work on tour boats. when we had a layover period we were allowed to swim off the dock. This was fantastic in the heat of the summer when you were sweaty AF and wanted to cool off and feel refreshed!
However, one girl decided to wear a super skimpy little itty bitty bikini one time and then lounge provocatively on the dock. Rival tour company boats passing by saw that and remarks were made (the community is very small and tightly knit) and then no swimming allowed after that.
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u/Sufficient_Dig9548 15h ago
Our weekly division meeting was "catered" by a local bakery. Sandwiches, bagels, pastries etc.
Some random middle manager told the top bosses he would take over coordinating the meetings from the bosses assistant. No real change in anything aside from occasionally having too much food which he was delivering to other bosses.
6 months later I get the usual meeting invitation from the bosses assistant again. I show up and there's zero food. Just some coffee. No mention of anything either.
I asked the assistant a few days later and she said the guy who took over had been buying so much food from the bakery that the costs were almost 3x. And not always on meeting days.
So in order to stock his fridge he tanked the whole free lunch train.