More stories:

I had an intern who volunteered to take urgent, priority first-delivery to FedEx - which he lived next to, because I was working on a tight deadline and wouldn't be out of work by drop-off time. The next morning all 25 people called because they didn't have the packages. He had forgotten to drop them off at night, so did it first thing in the morning! And then Devil Boss scream me out because I should have done it in the first place.

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About 13 years ago I worked for about 6 months with a young admin asst. who thought she was oh-so-smart and intelligent. But her work was only average at most, and she proceeded to use the office as a place where she starting her own business. So she would use the work phone and computer for her home business. They finally let her go, and no one was sad about that.

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I supervised someone who took unscheduled days off even tho it was against policy and even after she was warned several times. We weren't unreasonable with her, she was calling in every other week with an unscheduled vacation day, usually Monday, leaving a message around 5am on my voice mail even tho we'd asked her to call during regular hours so someone could speak with her in person (ie, ask some questions). Nothing doing, she would call in every other Monday, say she wouldn't be in, no reason, and not answer the phone at home if I called. Next day she would tell me she had to take the day off to go to a funeral. Eventually even she had to admit she'd run out of relatives, so she switched to telling me she had to have the day off to go to a funeral for a close friend. Then it was former neighbors. Everyone she knew was dying. I finally asked her if she could go to a funeral and then come to work afterwards, since it seemed she had become a professional mourner. Nope, she informed me, she had to have an entire day off to go a funeral because she might have to drive out of state. And, she told me, no way was she going to make any changes, she would take off whenever she felt the need. Thankfully, when I told my boss about this conversation, it was the last nail in the employee's coffin and she was downsized shortly afterward. Before she left she told everyone she knew that I got rid of her because I wanted her job.

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I became a controller and office manager of one of my companies subsidiaries a couple of months shy of my 22nd birthday. I supervised just three women (all older than me - one late 20's, one mid-30's, one early 50's), but it was certainly trial by fire. Within about 9 months, 2 of them (the younger two) were having affairs with plant supervisers. All four were married. :o/ I realize that intracompany romance is common!, and they were discreet - sort of - but it was still a difficult situation for me!

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We had a girl in our office who went out every night to clubs and would come straight to the office afterward. One day she came in wearing a black mesh shirt with large holes, so you could just see her bra.

We have a girl who leaves her dirty dishes in the office sink or at her desk for days at a time. Once she went on vacation for two weeks. A colleague and I discovered a mouse in our office and went around to see where it could have come in. We saw five dirty dishes laying on the floor under this girl's desk caked in mold and mouse droppings.

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I once worked as an art therapist for an organization serving severely troubled children. My assistant at one point was a nice woman, but extremely flakey. One day she thoughtlessly left a SHARP KNIFE in the classroom sink (it was usually locked up.) Immediately, one of our charges noticed, grabbed the knife and began threatening the other kids and us with bodily harm. Eventually, the only course of action was to leave the room and lock him in until the police came. In the meantime he sliced up all the other kid's artwork, detroyed a display that I had stayed up several nights to finish, and got himself into a whole lot of dangerous trouble. I watched the police use pepper spray to subdue him and take him away, handcuffed, in a squad car. The boy was 12 years old (although he had 100 pounds on me). It was very sad for everyone. I left the organization the next year and don't believe the assistant was rehired.

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the worst situation I dealt with was our IT support guy. We were under a huge deadline -- had to get two massive documents filed by a 4:30 Tuesday afternoon deadline, and I had been working round the clock with another associate to get them done. Sunday night, about 1:30 AM, the document freezes, and then we get the Blue Screen of Death. Computer ate the first document.

I immediately paged our IT guy (first time ever), apologized profusely for bothering him in the middle night, but explained our deadline and said I needed to recover the document right away (at that point, didn't know if we'd lost just the changes or the whole thing). He basically said, "I'll get to it tomorrow when I come in." I explained again that we needed it now, and he said, "if it's not due until Tuesday, I don't see why you can't wait until tomorrow." I again tried to explain that we needed it now, because we had two documents, and unless we could finish one tonight, we wouldn't be able to get the second one done tomorrow. To which he said, "do you know what time it is?"

I absolutely lost it -- first (and last) time I have actually yelled at someone at work. I started screaming that I knew %&*^@%(@ well what time it was, because I'd been there working on this document since 7 in the morning, on 3 hrs of sleep because I'd done the same thing the night before, and was going to be doing the same thing again the following night, for which I needed a document to work on. And turns out, when he got his butt out of bed, he was able to log in from home and recover an earlier version of the document for us in under a half-hour, so we only lost 2 hrs of work -- if he'd just TOLD me he'd try that, instead of giving me flak, I'd have been happy as a clam.

Luckily, he was let go within a couple of months. But that associate I was working with never forgot the day she saw a completely different side of me!