He’d Soon Come To Regret Hooking Up With Her
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“Two years ago, one of the managers hooked up with one of the bookkeepers. It was against company policy and supposed to be all hush-hush, but she couldn’t keep a secret and told the rest of us in accounting. Surprise, surprise, it got out and back to the senior management team. They had to have a big meeting with HR about how to handle things, where she announced that he had knocked her up.
Everyone assumed she was lying, but sure enough several months later it was quite apparent that she was keeping the baby. Then she started getting creepy. Despite the fact that it was a fling and he wanted nothing to do with her, she kept pestering him, leaving him voicemails, showing up at his house, the whole stalker thing. I guess he didn’t want to poke the bear or something and left it unchecked for a while.
Then one day she showed up very not pregnant. He walked by and asked if she’d had the baby over the weekend and said he was amazed at her being back to work already. In response, she said, ‘You’d be a terrible father, you miserable jerk. I got the baby aborted, so I wouldn’t be reminded of you.’
Keep in mind, she was like eight-months pregnant at this time. We have no idea what actually happened that weekend. She did end up getting dismissed a few weeks later though for insubordination, but the mystery that was Caroline’s baby will live on as an office legend.”
Scandals Seem To Follow Him Wherever He Goes
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“I work in advertising, SO MANY SCANDALS! Here are just a few, from various agencies I’ve worked, at various times in my career:
- A married colleague texted a pic of his junk to the sweet young receptionist and got fired on the way to the Christmas party. Everyone was like, ‘Hey, where did George go?’
- Group Creative Director got canned for sleeping with an account executive in the parking lot of our office building, which was owned by our biggest client, who had the parking lot under video surveillance. Apparently, there was a video of his white butt cheeks bobbing up and down that the client’s global CEO viewed.
- On a commercial shoot in South America, the Creative Director got wasted on the plane, walked off with two paid female companions at the airport, and disappeared for two straight days. He missed the pre-production meeting, location scouting, final casting. No phone calls, nothing. We thought he was dead. He shows up on shoot day, trying to act nonchalant, but finally admitted the women tied him up at a motel near the airport, robbed him and left him there. He’d spent the last two days wriggling out of his ropes.
- At distillery school in Sweden, after we won the Absolut business, the gay owner of the agency blacked out at a bar, got handsy in the bathroom with a straight guy who started beating the crap of him, and the creative director literally had to fight their way out of the bar.
- The married with kids president of the agency had a mistress who showed up unannounced at the production studio and made the in-house photographer take raunchy pictures of her feet, which she planned to present to the president as a Christmas present.
- My boss used to download so much smut that it slowed down network server performance for the ENTIRE AGENCY. The IT department had to have several VERY awkward conversations with him.”
She Thought They Were Recruiting Them, But That Wasn’t The Case
“The National Security Agency (NSA) sent a guy to Detroit to try to recruit Arabic-speaking residents. The Detroit metro area is home to the largest number of Arabic speakers in the world, outside of the Middle East.
The NSA guy (his name was Mike Stone) talked my boss, an Iraqi American with strong ties to the Arabic community, into helping him recruit these people. This Mike guy more or less convinced my super greedy boss that he could put together a language institute for the NSA and make a bunch of money doing contract work for the NSA. My boss ate it up.
In the process, we hired several ex-military people, one of whom was well versed in the security clearance process. This woman was then given an abbreviated version of the SF86 to have EVERYONE my boss was trying to attract to the program fill out so this Mike Stone guy could look them over and help us pick the ‘right candidates.’ We collected THOUSANDS of these things from people and more or less turned them over DIRECTLY to the NSA.
After about a year, this Mike Stone guy evaporated and we never heard anything from them ever again.
I’m pretty sure I helped the NSA gather domestic intelligence on the local Arab community in Detroit.”
His Reaction To A Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Was A Little Overblown
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“The boss at a place I worked at years ago was a total redneck prick. He fired a guy when he found out he was gay. So, the gay guy sued for wrongful termination (like you would), and the boss guy went to his house and beat him within an inch of his life. He’s in jail now. I quit right after.”
When You Become Part Of The Story
“The day after 9/11, I was working as a videographer with a news reporter who broke the story that Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi had trained in Venice, Florida. It was a huge story. Six months later, we went back to visit Rudy Dekkers, who owned Huffman Aviation where the two extremists had trained. Up until this point, the US government had claimed that the terrorists had entered the country illegally and that they were illegally trained to fly.
As we spoke with Dekkers, he went to check his mail. Lo and behold, the INS issued visas for the two terrorists had arrived in the mail that morning, proving that the US had known all along that they were here. It was a HUGE blunder.
We broke the story and within hours the CIA showed up to confiscate the visas. The next morning, the place was crawling again with media and guys in black suits and glasses. To put it into perspective, I got up the next morning and watched as President Bush addressed the nation about the story we had done the night before.
Ultimately, the INS was disbanded over the issue and reformed as ICE.
We won an Edward R. Murrow award for continuing coverage for that story. I also have a photocopy of their visas around here somewhere.”
The Mustard Incident
“I work at a manufacturing plant that runs continuously – three shifts a day. The graveyard crew can be a colorful bunch of folks and something odd or unusual has been known to happen from time to time. So when a bunch of mustard packets started showing up in the men’s room every morning, people just figured it was those wacky overnight guys making trouble and being weird again. But it kept happening. Then there was more than open/empty packets. It was smeared on the walls and the floor of the men’s room.
So security started doing diligent patrols of the bathroom attempting to find out who it was. They walked into the men’s room in the wee hours one morning to find two gentlemen, half-naked, engaged in some rough fun on the floor, with mustard to make things easier.
The company tried to keep it secret, but yeah right. It is now referred to as the ‘Mustard Incident.'”
The Big Boss Was Living A Secret Second Life
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“I work in a government building. One of the more prominent figures in this building, also a staunch conservative and very vocal on his stance against gay people, was terminated from his position when he got caught sleeping with another guy in his office.
The guy has had a wife and kids, but I really don’t feel bad for him. He’s a creep and shouldn’t be involved in our government. I’m just a college kid and work with other people my age, but I remember one of my coworkers telling me about how this guy had added him on Snapchat and would invite him out for dinner and stuff, which I thought was a little strange but never gave it much thought. Then apparently he would add guys my age (early 20s) on Facebook and message them asking for pics.
One day, after he had been fired, I got an invitation to connect with him on LinkedIn. I opted out of that one.”
Even Though They Were So Close, He Still Kept Secrets
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“It was my first job. I got on really well with this guy from work. It was totally platonic but everyone we worked with knew how close we were and would tease us. We worked in an office and ignored all the gossip. We went to lunch every single day for over four years and would talk about everything, mainly his wedding and, after that, his baby being born. He was strapped for cash after the baby came and complaining about needing a raise etc, but then he suddenly stopped complaining. I thought he’d just decided that maybe I didn’t want to hear about it or maybe his wife had gotten a raise or something – so I never really questioned him about it.
Turns out he was in charge of ordering the prepaid postage bags at work and was helping himself to some and selling them on eBay. He got caught as he used his work email as the eBay contact. He was marched out of the office by the police and charged.
The thing was, seeing as we were so close, people assumed I had something to do with it or at least knew about it. I had no idea he’d done this and hadn’t spoken to the guy since. I ended up leaving that job shortly after because I couldn’t handle the fact that I was under suspicion. Before this event, I’d been implicitly trusted by my boss to do anything. Suddenly I had IT going through my emails and Finance checking all of the company purchases I’d made (and there were lots as that was sort of my job).
It was a heartbreaking situation. It had totally nothing to do with me and I’m still angry as heck at the guy.”