These are some of the most shocking stories we've read about the crazy stuff that people see while they are working. They get completely insane!
(Content has been edited for clarity)
A Bleeding Weirdo
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“I used to be a cashier at Barnes & Noble.
Ours was a smaller store. It was in the little shopping district of an upscale city just outside of Seattle, so most of our customers were housewives with their kids, teachers getting supplies or professionals buying the latest hardback bestseller.
Anyway, I’m standing alone at the cash wrap one sunny weekday afternoon. I’m at my register, looking down at the schedule when someone I hadn’t heard approach clears their throat roughly from the other side of the counter. Well, now I feel like an idiot. Wonder how long they’ve been standing there.
I look up, and there is a tall, dark-haired, bearded guy looking back at me with a slightly disgruntled expression. He drops a sci-fi book on the counter, but I don’t immediately make a move to pick it up because I’m distracted by the fact that he’s covered in blood. Dark, viscous rather important-looking blood is dribbling steadily out of his mouth, down his chin and neck and has already stained most of the front of his plaid shirt.
‘Oh my god, are you alright? I’ll call an ambulance.’
He clears his throat again (which now sounds more like a necessity than a social cue) and pushes the book at me.
‘You look like you need medical atten–‘
He pushes the book at me.
So I dumbly rang up his book, took his cash, gave him change, and watched him walk out the front doors, leaving a Jackson-Pollock trail of blood spatters behind him. I informed the store manager, who found blood all over the men’s bathroom and in the sci-fi and fantasy areas. We called the police, who wouldn’t have had much better to do in that city but look for bleeding weirdos, but they never got back to us to let us know whether they found him.”
Not A Shower In Elegance
“I was working at a big construction project in a big industrial plant at the time, and we had about 1,500 people there. Obviously, when you have so many people working in something like construction, you have some sketchy people there, so stuff happens. There was a guy selling fake IDs, drivers licenses, college degrees and stuff like that; there were a couple of poop-smearing guys, dealers and the list goes on.
The most messed up time was when some guy got in the locker room showers probably in the middle of the afternoon, when everyone was out working, unscrewed the top part and filled the inside part of the shower with poop, and then put the top back on. At the end of the shift when people were changing their clothes and showering, some unlucky guy got a poop shower. We never found out who did it.”
A Gruesome Scene
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“I delivered medical supplies for two years. Two of my patients were murdered after a robbery attempt, and I had to pick up their equipment at a FEMA Trailer Park (Right after Katrina) at the crime scene. They had been in the trailer for six days before anybody found them. The older lady was shot to death on the couch and the other patient, her husband, had brain cancer and was immobile, so he died of heat exhaustion. The robbers turned the heater way up in the trailer and also turned on the gas stove before they left.
The police took the bodies out after the scene had been CSI’d. I had to come in and remove my stuff which was a hospital bed, a wheelchair, and a bedside commode.
The first thing I notice when I open the door is the smell, then the huge pool of blood that looked thick and half dried and a yellow, soapy looking substance by the entrance and on the couch. I think the yellow soap was looking substance was fat or something. The furniture inside was overturned, and the plastic stuff around the stove had melted from the temperature. There was another pull of blood in the bathroom that I later learned had come from the couple’s dog, that had also been shot.
It took me about 20 minutes to find my equipment in the house and load it up. Afterward, I poured bleach on my shoes to try and remove the smell.
The trailer from what I heard was going to be destroyed by FEMA.”
Basement Fun
“Well, about three years ago, I worked weekends at a bar. It was an upscale gay bar, and we usually had a good crowd. As a barback, I was pretty low on the totem pole and spent my nights running cases from the basement up to the bar.
Well, one night, we were pretty busy. As I was coming up the basement stairs (employee only area), an older gentleman opened the door and began walking down. I didn’t have the time to stop him at the moment and sometimes the owner’s friends would go down to the basement to use their phones or whatever.
I told my friend and coworker about it, and he brushed it off. I kept up with the rush until I needed to run more cases. I asked my coworker to come with me in case the man was still down there (I’m of the female persuasion by the way, and I was got a weird vibe from the guy).
We descended the staircase together and turned the corner. At this point, we could see straight back into the storeroom. The man had stripped naked, borrowed a bottle, set it on a cardboard box, and was using it for some ‘backdoor’ play. He was slowly going up and down on the top of the bottle, flaccid junk flopping about.
This image will be forever ingrained in my memory.”
Stop Sneezing!
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“I worked for a small flower company back in high school as a delivery driver. The store itself always received a ton of orders, but the product that I delivered was always terrible. This was due to the owner being insane. To paint a picture, he was a 40-year-old man that looked exactly like Weird Al and only wore jean shorts, a tank-top and Hawaiian shirts. To top it off, he was addicted to painkillers. When I say addicted, I mean he was snorting and popping pain pills constantly. I came back from a delivery one day, and my boss was in the bathroom making the most disgusting noises. Suddenly he burst out the door screaming. I looked over, and he had blood covering his hands and face. He was grabbing tissues trying to smother the blood spilling out of his nostrils. He ran up to me and said that I had to take him to the hospital because he had blown part of his brain out through his nose. I was confused until he (with blood still pouring out his nose) showed me a piece of toilet paper with the most disgusting 5 inches long snot thing, I can only describe it as some sort of clot in his sinuses that he had someone blown out his nose – he wasn’t lying when he said it was his brain.”
Not What You Expect To Hear When You Talk To A Customer
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“This happened to me last night. I work at Best Buy and noticed a young couple (probably around 20) walking around but very close to each other. The guy was wrapped around the girl from behind with his hand down the front of her gym shorts past the last knuckle on his hand. One of the other employees went over to tell them they had to leave since we received a few complaints about them.
The girl immediately started crying and told the employee that it was ok, she just had terminated a pregnancy, and her boyfriend was helping hold the pad they gave her to prevent blood from leaking everywhere. They talked for a minute or two and it ended with the guy offering to show the pad to the employee as proof, which my co-worker declined.
The employee walked back to me with this look of horror on his face and recounted the entire thing to me. To top it off, the happy couple was there with their grandmother and mother. The mother was wasted and was playing tag with another customer’s son in the cell phone section. Turns out they were all at the store to get the girl a new cell phone to make her feel better.”
Machine Of Death
“I work for a jet turbine repair and overhaul company. We once had an engine that had ingested a person who happened to stand a little too close to the intake duct. Any time an engine fails, it has to be sent back to us for investigation.
The engine arrives, and after we unbox, we notice all the red splatter. We have to unscrew the covers to expose the internal mechanisms, all while wiping human flesh and blood off our hands.
In the end, there was so much flesh inside the compressor that we had to hose it off. Blood everywhere.
Investigation conclusion: ‘Yep, this engine ingested a person.'”
Arms And Legs Akimbo
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“When I worked at an ICU in a big hospital in Germany, I once had a patient who fell from a ladder while cutting a tree. He had broken arms and legs, and they were dealt with fast at the ER. One thing he forgot to mention, probably because he was ashamed, was that he fell on a stick coming out of the ground, like 1.5m long. The stick penetrated him at his perineum, found it’s way through the guts up to his diaphragm, which was punctured and made the lung collapse. He pulled it out himself and called the medics, but told no one of it. Luckily he got a CT scan, and it was found relatively fast so that the problem with his breathing could be fixed, but every time I think about it my whole body cringes.”
Size Comparisons And Terrorists
“I’m an IT guy for a school board. I work in a bunch of different schools.
Once at lunch, I was in a room full of fifth graders while they were being supervised only by some zoned-out lunch lady. They were having a civil, though heated debate on whether or not Osama Bin Laden was actually dead. This was the day after Obama had announced they’d killed him.
When I was done, I made my way to the staff room where the teachers were discussing the biggest junk they had ever seen in person.”
His Hands And Feet Were Mangled
“I do event security at an arena, and during a Phish concert, a patron came up to my partner and me and complained that there was a man in his section bleeding all over his stuff. So we went over there and saw this man, wasted, on I have no idea with what. It looked like self-inflicted cuts all over his hands. It looked like he was purposely getting his blood on people’s coats and seats. It was so weird and gross. We took him to first aid, and he refused to get bandaged up and was a mean dude, so we decided to take his ticket and kick him out. Half an hour later we ran into him again, he somehow got back inside, and he had fresh wounds and smeared his blood all over the walls. So disgusting.”
This Guy Doesn’t Want A Goldfish
“I was feeding my goldfish at work, and my coworker was standing behind me, we were having a conversation. He asked me if I like owning a fish. I responded, ‘Sure, he’s cute. I love my fish.’ Out of nowhere, he said, ‘I hate animals. I don’t care if they get burned alive, skinned to death, stomped on, or gutted.’
Awkward, wide-eyed silence. ‘Uh… so, I guess… you’ve never really had a pet.’
To this day, I find my fish’s filter frequently unplugged. One day the water was oddly frothy, and water-treatment chemicals were sitting out. I changed out his water immediately.
He’s a decent guy; I just don’t know what the heck he has against my fish.”
Animal Abusers Are Awful
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“I worked for a veterinary clinic… it was a sweltering day, probably close to 90 degrees. A lady pulls up in her beater car, opens the trunk and about six dogs jump out panting, sickly looking. Yeah, the lady put six dogs in the trunk on a hot day to go to the vet to get rabies shots. I called the humane society and refused to let her take the dogs. She fought us and then finally took the dogs, put them back in the trunk. We had the license plate number, her address (had to supply for Rabies shots), and descriptions of all pets, and names… idiot. Humane society loved this one.”
When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go!
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“I was working on a 17-story building during its construction. There is some law about having restrooms available to the workers, which meant that there were rolling porta-potties on every second or third floor, I can’t remember exactly how far they are spaced out. For anyone who had never seen one of these porta-potties, let me describe them. They are on caster wheels so they can be rolled around easily, one side is a urinal, basically just a trough with two dividers, so no one sees your package while you are going. The other side has a saloon type door, and a toilet seat. The commode side is so cramped that when I had to take a dump, it was hard even to turn around and wipe my behind. Needless to say, these are for emergency number twos, and for taking leaks, without having to go down seventeen flights of stairs.
So I was working on some floor close to the top and had to take a leak. I went down to the nearest floor with one of these porta-potties on it only to find it was not there. I radioed the man lift operator to ask for a ride down. For those of you that don’t know, a man lift is an outside elevator that moves men and heavy materials before the elevators inside the buildings are working. He told me that they were doing there weekly porta-potty cleaning and that the elevator was busy moving all the toilets down to the ground to be cleaned, and that the elevator and the porta-potties would be out of commission for at least half an hour.
Now here is where it gets fun. No more than a minute after I talked to the elevator operator, a plumber comes running up to me. ‘Hey man, where are those porta-potties?’ I told him, ‘they’re being cleaned.’ He asked, ‘so is there one a few floors down?’ I replied, ‘nope.’ He said, ‘Aww naw man, aww naw, I got to go now! Call the elevator operator man!’ I said, ‘I already did, and he’s not coming, so you better start running downstairs.’ At this point, the man looked at me with a look of anger and fear and almost pleading asked, ‘What am I going to do?’
I told him, ‘grab a bucket!’
Him: ‘No. Uh uh! Absolutely Not!’
Me: ‘Well do you want to poop your pants?’
Him: ‘Man, I. No man, I can’t do that.’
The man took off after that, and I thought, ‘Huh he’s going to try to run down the stairs.’ Just then I see him return with the most shameful look of defeat on his face, bucket in hand. He headed to a somewhat hidden area, to take what I assume was an evil rotten dump. I never saw him again.”
Streaker
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“I was loading up a patient for transport in an ambulance. She had clearly crapped her pants. They were baggy, brown stained and she reeked of feces. I put her on a stretcher and strapped her down despite her flailing about and eventually becoming dead weight. I tried to start the IV on her, and the paramedic stopped me and placed a blanket in my lap while pointing at her hands. She had been playing in her feces. It was all over her hands and fingernails. Then I saw her teeth. She had been eating it.
Please stay away from speed.”
It Caught My Nose
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“It was closing time at the Goodwill I worked at, a couple of years back. All employees did a sweep of the store to make sure no one else was in there before we locked the doors. I noticed that there was a light still on in the bathroom, which I had the pleasure of having to clean that night. I let everyone know that somebody, and not an employee, was still in the bathroom. I kindly knocked on the bathroom door to let the said patron know we were closing. Then a voice from the other side said, ‘You can come in.’ A bit weirded out but guarded with my mop, I turned the handle to enter the bathroom only to be slapped in the face by the foulest smell I have ever encountered in my entire 19 years. Standing in the middle of the washroom, almost like walking in on a child after they had gotten caught doing something bad, stood a woman of nearly 400 lbs, covered in her feces. Feces splattered on the walls. Feces splattered on the floor. Feces splattered on the sink. FECES. WAS. EVERYWHERE. The poop queen then proceeded to apologize for ‘the mess’ and said she ‘must be going now,’ leaving poop footprints with every step she took. It took me an hour to clean the bathroom. I got a $.25 raise the next day.”
Biohazard At The Movies
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“A lady had changed her dirty sanitary napkin in the theater, MID MOVIE, at the cinema where I worked. She left the tampon there, along with bloodied receipts and other things she found in her bag to wipe herself clean. There were toilets next door.”
Beach Play
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“Working as a lifeguard at a beach, summer going into junior year of high school. I was on the stand with this friendly female lifeguard, a little older than me, and we were just chatting it up.
This old lady came up to the stand and said, ‘excuse me, but a man is playing with himself over by the tree next to the parking lot.’ I was not sure how to react, so I looked behind me and lo-and-behold, this guy was doing the dew. I turned to the lady and said, ‘don’t worry ma’am, I’ll handle this.’
I lied. I had no idea what I was supposed to do in this situation. I didn’t want to make my female compatriot do anything about it because I was the man of the beach, this guy spanking his monkey was my problem!
We decided that she was going to call the police and I would deal with him… somehow. I got off the stand and turned around, and he was gone. I never really got a good look at the guy, so we couldn’t give the police a good profile of him. Not as bad as being showered in poop, but a weird experience none the less.”
Surprise!
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“I worked for the local parks and recreation department doing maintenance like mowing grass.
Routinely, men meet up in the park and go off in the woods to hook up with each other.
My co-worker radioed me and told me he needed me to come down to help him cut some downed trees with a chainsaw. I had to walk down the path because he had our Ranger ATV.
I was walking along when suddenly I spot a man hooking up with another man. They saw me, stop, and then walked away as if nothing happened. I still remember the look on the guy’s face when he tapped on his buddy’s shoulder to let him know they’d been spotted.”
One Woman, Making Everything Impossible
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“A woman who I worked with had major issues. She went through a nervous breakdown (she worked for the President of the company, who was the most demanding person I ever met) and she had an eating disorder. The woman weighed about 95 pounds soaking wet. She wouldn’t even drink water. She also hoarded stuff in her car; it was packed with trash and shoes up to the ceiling.
The President put her in an eating disorder clinic for eight months and brought her back. She still neither ate nor drank. She fell asleep constantly and couldn’t even function. The President made everyone take turns being her ‘lunch buddy,’ forcing her to eat. We would also find her standing in random offices in the dark, just staring in the corner at the wall when she would be missing for an hour or so. She also would order $1,500 worth of shoes at a time, at a size two sizes bigger than she wore.
After three years of this, I couldn’t take it anymore and told them that they should move her outside the corporate office to another location and provide us with an employee that could function. We couldn’t take off when we wanted or go to lunch when we wanted because we could never leave her alone. I was reprimanded and written up by HR and then pulled into an office three days in a row where some dude screamed at me for over two hours. I ended up leaving the fourth day because it was such a hostile work environment.”
