confess your moments of unprofessionalism here

by Alison Green on May 12, 2022

Professionalism isn’t a thing people are born knowing — and it’s often a rocky journey to figure it out. I want to hear about unprofessional things you did in your past (maybe the recent past, who knows). To kick us off, here are some great moments in unprofessionalism that people have shared here previously.

• I was in my early 20′s and working with a placement agency to find that perfect job that would take me out of food service. My agency contact had set up an interview for me for my dream job, the day after my birthday. Being young and not much of a responsible drinker, I partied like it was 1999. I showed up at the interview not just hung over but still drunk. The person conducting the interview asked me if I was sick, and if I was we could reschedule. I answered, “Nope, not sick, drunk.”

• I used to use my cubicle as an extension of my vanity at home. I’d usually put foundation and eye shadow on at home and then finish with mascara, blush, and lipstick at the office. (WHY?! Why could I not just apply those at home when I was obviously already in the throes of applying make-up?!) Sometimes I would just wait and put on all my make-up at the office. It was ridiculous. I had a full make-up kit in my drawer at work. I had an eye shadow palette. I had blending brushes. I had a hair straightener. What must people have thought as they passed my desk and saw a hair straightener plugged in?

• Phone interview for a bank role. They asked about how I would handle confidential information. I gave examples of experience I had with HIPAA info and handling private information and then I blurted out, “But ya know, everyone gossips!” I have no idea why I said that! I’m not a gossipy person! I think I was trying to say something funny or friendly or whatever to connect to the interviewer.”

• It was my first professional job out of college but I had been there at least a year. I was in the habit of making a cup of tea and chatting with my coworker who sat directly in front of the manager’s office. We had a new manager (one of my favorite managers so far!) and she had received a request from her boss to get something done ASAP and she asked me to do it. I replied, “Sure, right after I finish my tea” and then I kept chatting until I finished my tea.

• I once went to an interview where they asked for an example of a time I’d resolved conflict – and I responded with a terrible laugh and said, “Well, I’ve caused some trouble.”

Now it’s your turn. Please share in the comments.

And if you’re thinking it sounds like I’m collecting stories for Mortification Week 2022, coming this summer, you are correct.

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  1. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

    I hung up a Little Mermaid poster in my office of my very first Professional job. I also asked if it would be okay to lock the door and sleep under my desk during my lunch break.

    1. TimeTravlR*

      Lucky for me I have a health condition that requires me to take a nap sometimes so I actually used to do this (on a very rare occasion.. didn’t want to push it!).

      1. TheRain'sSmallHands*

        I used to have my own computer lab to build servers (late 1990s). I was a Mom with a baby under six months that I was still breastfeeding and an eighteen month old. I’d lock that door and nap through lunch on the floor all the time. No one would ever go in there but me.

        (I had a cube, so no sleeping at the cube – and the lab was little more than a big closet that could hold a desk but had a door that could lock)

        1. Shhh*

          I never intended to, but my previous job (academic library) had a rarely used meditation/prayer room that I fell asleep in a couple times. I’m a pretty anxious person and would sometimes go up there on my lunch breaks to (kinda) meditate and relax and once or twice it worked so well that I drifted off. Not great, but always an accident and never prevented anyone else from using the space.

      2. UnProfessional Tradey*

        My dad is a research attorney for a fed judge, and at 71 years old, has permission to lock the door and take naps as he needs to. It’s not unprofessional if it’s helpful and you have permission.

        1. L.H. Puttgrass*

          There’s almost no end to what you can do if you work for a federal judge and they’re okay with you doing it.

    2. Kpop Adult*

      Honestly the Little Mermaid thing is kind of charming. But I may be saying that as a person with BTS photos from a magazine pinned on my cube walls.

        1. Stuckinacrazyjob*

          Tbh my work desk has a lot of plushiez- an avocado, a unicorn cake, an axylotyl ( actually two but one is supposed to be the sofa one. It’s nice to have a desk! Remote work made it possible. My own desk

        2. IndustriousLabRat*

          *stealthily returns to my office hiding my Hello Kitty pyrex lunch dishes under a pile of papers*

        3. TiredAmoeba*

          I have growing collection of rubber duckies. It started out as a joke I don’t even remember but now people bring them to me. I have so many themes.

        4. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Someone tried to ‘borrow’ my Betty Boop coffee cup and I made sure everyone knew it was mine and I Wanted It Back, no questions asked. I do kind of wished whoever had it had cleaned out the dead oatmeal first, but eh.

        5. SixTigers*

          I may have a Vicious Attack Lobster sitting in my In-box, ostensibly to keep the papers from fluttering around due to the over-enthusiastic AC fan, but in actuality to keep people from putting MORE papers in there.

          It doesn’t actually work but that’s what I tell people. Especially when I assist it to make feints at people TRYING to put papers in there.

      3. Harvey 6 3.5*

        And on the opposite end of charming, when I was in graduate school, I had a six foot tall poster of some sort of weird monster on the wall between my lab desk and my lab bench. I don’t know why I put the odd picture there, and the suave full size Humphrey Bogart picture in my apartment, rather than the reverse.

      4. OrigCassandra*

        My Crowley and Aziraphale Funko Pops salute you.

        (Aziraphale is somehow missing an eyebrow. IDEK. I didn’t do it; he arrived like that.)

        3. Anonym*

          One of my most professional and impressive colleagues’ cubicle was guarded by a line of Funko Pops! They always make me think of her. Any questions/critiques of them would have been met with a forceful stinkeye (or, more likely, a sudden and delighted offer to explain what each one was).

          1. Buffy will save us*

            As I said elsewhere, I have two shelves of them in my administrative office

          1. Scarlet Magnolias*

            And hi says my Tyrion Lannister doll and werewolf dolls (too many to count)

      6. GythaOgden*

        I’ll be staying in a Little Mermaid room at Disneyworld next year. It was the first new Disney film I saw in the cinema when it came out. I can’t believe it’s more than thirty years old!

        1. Kammy6707*

          Omg – The Little Mermaid was the very first movie I ever saw in a theatre! Apparently I begged so much outside the theatre at the mall and my Dad caved, because we rarely went to the movies. I watched my VHS copy so much it ended up with a line running through it. I would LOVE to stay at this Little Mermaid Room – I didn’t know that was a thing!

          1. GythaOgden*

            It’s a wonder that my Disney Robin Hood and My Little Pony The Movie tapes survived. I’d watch them through once, then rewind them /with the image still on the screen/ and watch them again. I’d certainly had cassette tapes just wear out too, usually in the middle of a summer holiday. That said, I kind of liked the weird sounds you got when the tape had been twisted and so you were effectively hearing the other side backwards.

            Now everything is all digital I don’t miss fragile tape by any means (I play one of my favourite YouTube cartoon videos over and over and over while waiting for my Zoom therapy to begin — helps me relax), but there’s still a nostalgic part of me that devours YouTube shows like Oddity Archive that discuss old tech. I subscribe to Spotify and made playlists of some of my old mixtapes, but it’s just not the same without the garbled bits in the middle where the tape got chewed.

      7. Olivia*

        At my old job, I had these 3D paper Adventure Time characters taped to the top of my cubicle wall, but I don’t think it was unprofessional. I had come across them online and someone else at the office (who was one of the boss’s favorites) mentioned liking Adventure Time and was always wearing graphic tees, so I didn’t think it would be taken as weird or juvenile (I think this coworker may have actually been the one who told me about these papers you could print out). They were like an unfolded box pattern with the character printed on it, that you cut out and assembled–you can find them by googling “adventure time paper cube”. I had Finn, Jake, Slime Princess, Hot Dog Princess, several Gunters, and maybe some other characters. Some characters were too tricky of a shape and I didn’t want to bother with them. The Gunters were a simple cube so of course I had to make a mini penguin army like on the show. I’m too short to see over a cubicle wall, and to me it was like they were looking out over the wall for me. :) I also showed up one Halloween as Fiona, with a felt hat and backpack my mom had made for me.

        I think whether or not it’s seen as unprofessional probably depends on the office culture and the type of job. A lot of people probably wouldn’t want their wrongful death lawsuit handled by someone with fun pop culture décor, whether it was cutesy or Star Wars or whatever.

        The one office decoration I saw there that I thought was unprofessional were these bullet-hole cling-ons that one guy put on the outside of his office door. He was really into guns, both shooting competitions and hunting, and he originally put them up as Halloween decorations. Even as Halloween stuff I didn’t think it was really appropriate.

      8. wendycoded*

        I have a Shooky acrylic stand/mini calendar at my desk, in addition to a water bottle covered in fan-made BTS stickers. How do you do, fellow AAM ARMY!

      9. slmrlln*

        Yeah, I usually have a BTS photocard pinned up in my office (I rotate which one). I’m trying to be subtle about it!

      10. My dear Wormwood*

        Lol my desk with my Jurassic Park sign (This is a velociraptor free workplace, it has proudly been __ days since the last incident)

      11. Snoozing not schmoozing*

        I had classic Disney figurines and a huge amount of small stuffed animals, plus various small toys all over my workspace. But I wasn’t the only one. One of the admin staff organized a display of people’s favorite desk toys so we could all see what people in different departments had. Fun times!

        1. pandop*

          Now that’s the sort of team-building I can get behind.

          Unfortunately, with hybrid working and hot-desking, we are moving to a ‘clean desk’ policy :( Thankfully there is still space for Itty Bitty Wonder Woman on my home desk.

        2. SciSplainer*

          You can always tell the education office in a museum by the personal desk toys (not needed for the job). If there aren’t any toys, it’s a red flag about the department’s culture and I don’t want to work there.

    3. River Otter*

      Re: Sleeping under the desk

      Eh, The only unprofessional part of that was asking permission instead of just doing it without telling people. :-)

        1. CheesePlease*

          it’s also highly unprofessional to have a friend fake a bomb threat to the office

      3. MusicWithRocksIn*

        My very first (and second and third) jobs were as a lifeguard, and I still have to fight the urge to go find somewhere random to nap and/or play cards whenever there is a thunderstorm.

        1. Ex-guard*

          I still fight the urge to tell children to stop running. Even outdoors, in parks.

          1. Another ex-guard*

            Yes to the naps on a lawn chair in the guard office during the rain, and card games. And “stop running” anytime I see a child running remotely near a pool.

    4. straws*

      Mine was a Hellraiser poster. I was asked to take it down because it was concerning people (thankfully, I was wise enough to just do it and not argue or something equally unprofessional!)

    5. Campfire Raccoon*

      I received permission to sleep under my desk on my lunch break, during the first trimester of my first pregnancy. The fatigue was NO JOKE.

      1. pregnant librarian (literally)*

        i did not receive permission, i just shut my door and did it. i was *exhausted*

        1. Anonym*

          This is what my old office mate did! I guarded the door fiercely for her and answered her phone if need be.

          I am currently pregnant and desperately miss having an office with a door (damn you, open floor plans, damn you to hell!). So instead I keep finding reasons to work remotely on days I’m supposed to be in, and arriving late and leaving early when I have to be there. I have had at least one sad bathroom doze session. Which sounds really terrible now that I write it out. :(

          1. MAGC*

            I used to regularly fall asleep in a stall in the women’s bathroom at work during the first trimester of both pregnancies — not on purpose, it would just happen.

            And also at lunch with my head on my desk (best part: waking up with one’s cheek in a puddle of one’s drool). Fortunately, my cube was relatively private, and the only person who could see me was my closest work friend in the cube across the cube hall.

            The few times I fell so deeply asleep that waking up at work was a shock were NOT fun.

            1. Cedrus Libani*

              In my school days, I regularly cut class in order to sleep in the bathroom. Then I got caught. Someone reported the passed-out student, the teacher who came in to check on me couldn’t wake me up, so I found myself yanked out of the stall by my ankles.

              So I trained myself to sleep in class instead. And then I couldn’t stop. For an entire decade, age 18-28, I don’t think I made it through a single hour-long meeting without falling asleep at least once. Seriously, not once. I tried Red Bull, I tried standing up, I tried all the things. Turned out that I had a medical condition; got treated, better now.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                Nowhere near as serious, but I once had a reaction to a “non-drowsy” cold medication that had me nodding off all day. On the bus to work, at my desk (multiple times), at a meeting my manager also attended (he was not impressed), and on the bus home. I’m so glad I wasn’t driving back then.

                Unfortunately I forgot which cold medication it was (after I threw it out), so now I never take cold meds before work.

            2. Luna*

              I fell asleep during face massages during my cosmetic/wellness training classes. That was rather a given, you often fell asleep while receiving the massage. Just a small doze or nap. One time, I must have fallen so asleep that my brain thought my body was dead, so it sent a huge jolt through my body and almost made me jump awake.

              Scared my classmate, and me. Worst part was, that type of waking up is very bad and leaves me very, very tired. I was stabbing my hand with a pencil to keep myself awake in the next class.

          2. Mamabear*

            I get it. I’m not pregnant, just deal with insomnia. I’ve dozed on the toilet. ‍♀️

      2. code red*

        The swelling was awful my first pregnancy. I upended my trashcan to use as a footrest. Probably not all that professional but it worked and they looked at me weird when I asked if I could get an actual footrest.

        1. code red*

          I also worked overnight for the first couple trimesters of that pregnancy. I took a nap in one of the cubes on my lunch break. Even though it was my break, I would’ve been in a lot of trouble if management had come in and seen me.

        2. WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot*

          I never dozed while pregnant and still maintained some level of professionalism while dealing with EXTREME morning sickness.

          But towards the end of my pregnancy, I just started wearing beach cover ups to work. I didn’t care. I was pregnant with twins and it was summertime. I was massively uncomfortable. (They’d also done a few legally questionable things during my pregnancy so I did not give a flying F—!)

        3. Suzanne Brown*

          I refuse to not have a footrest. I don’t think anyone really notices or cares /cared anyplace I’ve worked.

        4. Hey nonny nonny*

          I stole a chair from the chair graveyard to use as a footrest in my third trimester.

          In my last month I developed this horrible itchy bumpy red rash and would soak coffee filter in water and then wrap them around my arms. I was completely over caring at that point.

      3. Jen with one n*

        I didn’t even bother asking, I’d just slouch down my in my chair and doze away. :D (second pregnancy, low iron, super-early start time… I hear you on the fatigue!)

        1. GythaOgden*

          This happened to me in my first year of work after university. I was training to be an accountant in Dublin and one afternoon just after Christmas I felt my head get heavy and my eyes grow dim (except this wasn’t Hotel California). I managed to snap out of it but it had been noticed because I was in the middle of being trained at the time.

          Thing is, though, I’d been away over New Year, been working full time and attending classes after work for three out of five working days and some Saturday mornings. I was just getting used to this regimen.

          So my boss calls me in the next day and says, ‘You fell asleep out there. What time do you go to bed?’

          I replied, ‘Eight o’clock.’ I was literally getting home, eating and clocking out. My mum tells me I did the same the first year I was at school. I can’t remember the rest of the conversation with my boss but it wasn’t taken any further.

          More recently, hubby (who died of cancer three years ago) picked up my Nytol sleeping tablets instead of paracetamol when he went in to work. He took one (I can’t remember if this was when his brain lesions were making their presence felt or whether it was totally unrelated) and…dozed off. He woke up several hours later, thoroughly embarrassed. He earned the nickname Nytol after that.

        2. Elenna*

          Yeah, I have definitely just fallen asleep slouched in my seat… multiple times… I’m not even pregnant, just bad at managing my sleep schedule and sometimes I think I’m fine and then post-lunch sleepiness hits.

          1. whingedrinking*

            My TESOL training was 9-4, five days a week for four weeks. And I worked at a coffee shop on the weekends. I’d just graduated from university and figured the schedule wasn’t that different from high school.
            I can’t remember being that exhausted at any other point in my life. One day I finally nodded off in class despite my best efforts.
            You know how when you have a stack of papers, you’ll tap them on a table or a desk to get them all lined up? The instructor for this class chose my desk to do this on. Only it was a giant-ass pile of handouts and she didn’t do a genteel little tap – she pretty much dropped them from a height of six inches or so. It made a sound like a gunshot and I woke with such a jerk I nearly hit the ceiling. I never did forgive that teacher.

            1. GythaOgden*

              My science teacher did that when I had the hiccups in class. Except it didn’t work…

        3. lilsheba*

          I think any and all pregnant people should get special accommodations no questions asked. You’re making another whole human (or two or three!)

      5. Random Internet Stranger*

        My office has a couch thank goodness. We’ve all fallen asleep on it at one point or another.

      6. Melicious*

        I hadn’t told people at work yet, so I napped in my car. First trimester exhaustion is intense!

        1. SoFresh&SoClean*

          I would go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet (hey, I was also constipated – pregnancy is glorious), put my head on the toilet paper dispenser and nap.

          1. LPUK*

            I did this once, though I had no pregnancy excuse. In fact I was on a training course in Prague and had been up til the early hours dancing on the table in some sleazy nightclub and swigging Russian champagne, which was surprisingly reasonable given the cost (4€ a bottle). I am not a drinker, so I was badly hungover and so tired I was swaying in my seat, so I decided to sleep it off in the toilet. Did I mention this was the first month with a new company and I’d been recruited as a sales manager? My most unprofessional moment in work I think. Though there was that time as a graduate trainee in a large open plan office where I got so stressed one day and broke into hysterical laughter, which I couldn’t stop, and which got worse as I attracted more attention until my knees gave way and I lay on the carpet, laughing and crying in the middle of group on concerned colleagues….

          2. ceiswyn*

            I used to do that occasionally.

            In retrospect, I was probably both anaemic and suffering from Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, but as a fat person napping was easier than getting a diagnosis.

      7. Lives in a Shoe*

        Fortunately during my first pregnancy, there was a lunch room with a private couch room off of that. I used to snarf down my lunch early at my desk and then flee to that little oasis and crash. Except one day I woke up and it was. . . very quiet. By the time I got back to my desk it was two and a half hours later. I asked them why they hadn’t woken me up, and they said, “We thought you needed to sleep. . .”

        They were very kind. After that pregnancy, though, I was parenting small kids while pregnant, so naps were not a thing much.

      8. allathian*

        Oof. I had to tell my then-manager that I was pregnant much earlier than I had planned because she found me asleep at my desk one day. She wasn’t very sympathetic to human failings, but that day she told me to go home early.

    6. Annony*

      Mine’s not so charming. At my first job I hung up a poster of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrell (Trauth Dairy Commercials). And kept it up. Even though a co-worker complained that it creeped her out and was unprofessional. I thought it was funny. Oh gosh sometimes we look awful in the rear view mirror….

        1. Forty Years in the Hole*

          For our basic officer training – where we learn to be, you know, “professional” – we *had* to have a framed picture arranged “just so” on our bedside table – which is fine but they could’ve added that to the list of “kit you must bring” instead of making us all march down to the base exchange and buy something no one wanted/needed. Fine…
          So, I bought some local newspapers, and every day before inspection, I swapped out the generic framed picture with a different picture cut from the paper: a dog, car, tree, whatever…they didn’t really notice. Then I found a Jim Varney-as-Ernest picture. Well…that got some looks and smiles, but no extra duties.
          Passive-aggressive…moi?

      3. LyndaWithaY*

        I had returned to the office right after working my first trade show, having flown to another time zone and working six long days. Sometime mid-morning, I jolted awake, mortified to discover I had face-planted onto the desk. Luckily, I was in my cubicle and I don’t think anyone saw me. I learned to take at least half a travel day when possible.

    7. Mm*

      The CEO of our 8,000 person company responded to a question about nap pods (like Google has) with “I don’t understand, don’t most people just nap under their desk?”

    8. A Simple Narwhal*

      I don’t think the napping thing was a big deal! But I probably would have just done it without asking. If you have an office with a door and no one could see you, who can tell you what to do with your lunch break?

      It’s also infinitely better than what a former intern did, which was just put their head down on their desk in an open office and visibly go to sleep. My manager had to politely tell them to go to the wellness room if they needed to nap.

      1. TheRain'sSmallHands*

        One of my first jobs had little rest areas in the women’s bathrooms (I don’t know if they were in the men’s bathrooms as well) with a chaise lounge that was appropriate for napping. And lots of people took catnaps in there. People knew – after all, it was the women’s rooms so people were in and out all the time. But the thing with public space napping is that it tends to be “I have a headache” or “I’m pregnant” or something along those lines – if you were in there every day for a two hour nap – people would say something. The other thing was that it was a downtown office in a city with commuter bus service – i.e. there isn’t anyway to get home if you are ill in the middle of the day short of a taxi cab since the buses to the burbs only ran during rush hour.

        1. TJ*

          A friend of mine had an amusing related incident when she first got a job in London (she’s American). She needed to ask her boss where the bathroom was but wanted to sound professional/maybe vaguely knew Brits don’t say “bathroom.” So, mid-morning on her first day of work, she asked him to direct her to “the restroom.” He gave her a VERY strange look and said “there’s a couch in that room over there if you need to rest.” What a first impression!

      2. LPUK*

        I used to nap in my glass fronted office , but before I did so I would tuck my telephone receiver between my neck and shoulder, pull my filing drawer open and drape myself so that ( in my imagination at least), I looked like I was on the phone and had just reached down to check a file. Bonus point was no one could actually phone me as the receiver was off the hook

    9. Jaid*

      I just have a Chinese Year of the Tiger calendar and Holo Taco peelie bag (for paper clips!, my unit uses bags of paper clips) as my funky décor.

      Oh, and a little statuette of Ganesh sitting on my computer power bank. Reminder that all things are possible.

      1. Rainy*

        My office is decorated with unicorns and coffee paraphernalia. So many unicorns. So much coffee. I love it so much, and in the before times when I had clients in person and not on zoom, most people would come in, look around, and sort of instantly just look more relaxed. I think it reassured them to get a sense of who I am just by walking into my office.

      3. Al*

        For a moment I thought your peelie bag was full of peelies. Considering people’s reactions to grooming activities in the office, I can only imagine the horrified reactions!

    10. DataGirl*

      I used to lay down on a yoga mat on the floor in my open cubicle when I had a migraine or back pain. Sometimes I’d put my feet up on my chair, sometimes Id fall asleep for a few minutes. I felt fully justified since I was in pain, but looking back it was probably not great when managers would walk by to see this woman just hanging out on the floor.

      1. LPUK*

        I used to flake out on the desk with a coat over my head to block light for exactly this reason

      2. Loredena*

        Earlier in my career a coworker hung up a Hooters calendar in his office. I promptly hung a Fabio one in mine

    12. Shira VonDoom*

      I mean, my boss, the managing attorney of the firm, has an office full of comic book art and Funko Pops, so the Little Mermaid poster honestly seems fine, LOL

    13. Librarian of SHIELD*

      Mine was a Prince Caspian movie poster, because Ben Barnes is pleasant to look at. But I got away with it because I’m a children’s librarian. :)

      1. E. Chauvelin*

        Librarians can get away with a lot of décor that might seem odd in other settings. Children’s librarians especially, but two years ago when our library was about to shut down indefinitely because of the pandemic, another adult reference librarian and I moved our cubicle dragon figurines/toys, plus a moose-shaped stress ball that was vendor swag from some publisher, next to each other on my desk so they could help keep each other company while we were gone. When he saw it, our boss went and got his Yoshi from his office.

      2. Oolie*

        My Edna Mode bobblehead is considered professional because I’m a costume designer, right?

    14. Katie*

      Someone at my company that I didn’t know got in trouble for sleeping on one of the couches. His response was ‘But where am I supposed to sleep??’ This was many years ago but I still make fun of the question.

    15. Mockingdragon*

      OK I also hung up a little mermaid poster, but it was my second office job and no one had said anything at my first! I also had my small collection of My Little Pony figures which I used as fidgets, and which made me happy to look at. Gonna be honest. I refuse to call these things unprofessional. I did great professional work while being surrounded by color and happiness and now I do the same thing but at my house so no one can judge me on it.

    16. Nathalie*

      This just reminded me of myself at 23, working in an office for the first time and thinking I should put some decorations in my cubicle like everyone else. By that moment in time photos were mostly digital so I didn’t have any current print pictures of family and friends to frame, so instead I put up a framed photo of myself and my siblings when we were little. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this made me look like I had four children.

      2. Bob-White of the Glen*

        On the other hand, people would have been understanding if you were caught napping.

    17. ThisIsNotMyName*

      More than once, I have blocked off times on my calendar to make it appear I was in meetings, locked myself in my office, and took a stealth nap. Sometimes for up to 3 hours. Insomnia and chronic fatigue should be covered as disabilities.

    18. MsKittyFantastico*

      I had “My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic” figurines proudly displayed on my monitor. All six of them. Nice, expensive ones. then covered my cubicle with 3d printed, hand-painted by me ones (and pokemon). If someone didn’t like it, no one Saif anything….but you can pry my Twighlight Sparkle and Pikachu out of my cold, dead hands… I’m 42.

      1. MsKittyFantastico*

        I had “My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic” figurines proudly displayed on my monitor. All six of them. Nice, expensive ones. then covered my cubicle with 3d printed, hand-painted by me ones (and pokemon). If someone didn’t like it, no one Saif anything….but you can pry my Twighlight Sparkle and Pikachu out of my cold, dead hands… I’m 42.

        ETA: I am a computer programmer, so this behavior is probably less unprofessional and more expected lol

      2. AnneC*

        Hey, I’m 43 and have a plush Pokemon (Umbreon), a collection of fidget spinners, and pictures of all my cats (one of them proudly wearing a little suit of leather armor I made for him) in my cube. Nobody bats an eye, and I am grateful to work somewhere we’re allowed to have a personality!

    19. Temperance*

      I have a vast collection of nerd shit in my office that’s way worse than a Disney poster, lol.

        1. allathian*

          Grogu rocks! I have a tiny Grogu (about 1 in high) stuck to my monitor at home with blu-tack.

    20. LavaLamp(she/her)*

      My first desk in my first job (I had a couple since they did a big renovation) was full of Monster High, Ever After High and other creepy dolls, toys, and various fun things. Since half of my coworkers were gamers, and one higher up dude went to SDCC every year and had really cool stuff in his office, no one batted an eye thankfully. Weirdly, a lot of people thought they were really cool. I was 19/20 at the time and everyone just sort of indulged me. After the reno my desk got much smaller so I took them home and started making miniatures instead that looked neat.

    21. Scary Teri*

      I used to work for a toy manufacturer so not only was it not weird but strongly encouraged to have a bunch of toys and plushies and even Funko Pop figures in my cubicle.

      1. LavaLamp(she/her)*

        Off topic, but I would love to work for a major toy company. I am still a kid at heart lol

    22. Buffy will save us*

      I may currently have two shelves of Funko Pops in my office (as a large dept. manager)

    23. toaster*

      I didn’t ask anybody; I just do it anyway. I bought myself a little nap roll with a built in pillow and blanket that I put under my desk. But I do have health issues that necessitate it and also a pretty informal workplace, so no one questions what I do on my breaks.

    24. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I had a snow globe from the movie Fargo on my desk. In addition to the figure of Marge Gunderson, it had a wood chipper with a foot sticking out, and some of the snow was red.

    25. JESUS IS THE MAN!*

      I would nap under my desk occasionally in grad school. But, you know, grad school.

    26. Trekkie4Life*

      I worked at very conservative finance company and as a college summer intern printed out (using the company printer of course) cute pictures of all my favorite TV and movie characters and hung them in my cube. The cat from Shrek and actors from Stargate were the most prominent, but full page color photo of Wesley Crusher is what haunts me to this day.

    27. Your Oxford Comma*

      I worked as a floorcovering installer in the late ‘7os, during a construction boom in mid/south Texas. I managed a team of 5 laborers. We worked large jobs, hotels, condo and apartment complexes, where every unit was virtually and often literally the same. It was boring, repetitive work, in the summer, sometimes in tiny bathrooms with no ventilation. The work was tough and the pay was great, and the after-hours partying was fun.

      One day, after an especially indulgent evening, I found myself still processing alcohol and feeling low. Once on the job site I gave my team their assignments. I found a finished apartment with a door, closed and locked it, and slept for 3 hours. My team never missed me. Ah, feckless youth.

    28. Lolllee*

      I had a manager throw a tantrum in front of me once, pounding his fists on his desk, shoving everything on the floor, throwing books and paper. He was yelling that he makes the decisions and the company would fail miserably if he left and on an on for 11 minutes. Longest tantrum of my life. I was trapped with him and his red face and flailing arms between me and the door not to mention airborne books and binders. It ended with him pounding his fists on the desk and yelling, “I’m important, God dammit!” I replied, “I’ll make you a t-shirt.” And left, walking on all the stuff he threw all over the floor. People gasp when I tell them this story and tell me I should/could have handled that more professionally.

      1. Englyn*

        Omg that’s up there in the top 10% of appropriate professional responses to that situation (also hilarious), do they think you should just have been a doormat? Anyone commenting that you should have been more professional has just shown themself to have very questionable judgement

      4. Luna*

        He wasn’t being professional, in general or to you directly, so why should you have to keep the polite professionalism up towards him?

    29. Lizzo*

      When I still worked in an office (in my late 20s/early 30s), there were several days where I did have to close my office door and lie down…usually because I had a raging headache or some sort of body aches. I’d always tell my boss (so that I wouldn’t be disturbed), and I would always set a timer. If she thought it was strange, she never let on…

    30. Student Placement Girl*

      re: Little Mermaid poster —
      Years ago, I was struggling in my job. I kept Management informed about the issues — they knew but didn’t care.
      So I stuck a huge full-colour picture of Flounder on my pinboard in hopes they’d get the hint.

      They didn’t.

      I resigned soon after.

      1. yalladopter*

        I taped up a printout of the “This is Fine” dog at my cube door for similar reasons… also didn’t help.

    31. Reluctant Manager*

      We had to tell a junior colleague that she needed to take down her “toxic masculinity spoils the party again” poster.

    32. Luna*

      I unintentionally fell asleep on my nightshift hotel reception job once.
      I put my head onto my arm on the desk, in an uncomfortable position, so that I wouldn’t fall asleep. But I must have been a lot more tired than I thought because I did end up falling asleep for about 45 minutes, not waking up until amost 6AM. Though that was the night where an alarm started sounding early into my shift, which probably took more energy to work through than I thought.

    33. Roo*

      I used to do this when I had my own office in a private school; the job was very high-pressured. One lunchtime one of the school porters unlocked my office door because they had received confidential materials (exam papers) which couldn’t be left unattended. After my lunch break I found it on my desk (which I had been asleep under) with a little note saying “For Sleeping Beauty”. Hehe

    34. FanOfBigfoot*

      I work in higher education administration (Executive Director level) and my office is in the suite of offices where the president and vice presidents are. I have Bigfoot all over my desk, but they’re the kind where they are so are artistic that you don’t really notice they are a bigfoot unless you really really look. And when you open my top storage area in the back I have a mugshot of Christian Slater in the movie The Heathers. It can get kinda serious in this suite of offices and I love it when some VP is being all dramatic and behind them is a hidden Sasquatch!

    35. Bookish Princess in my mind*

      I don’t consider The Little Mermaid unprofessional. I have a Belle wallet. The Disney company sells tons of merchandise specifically for adults and I’ve bought a fair bit, though my obsession is Beauty and the Beast. lol

    36. Clovenpine*

      I’m a contractor for a well-known Federal space agency, and I have an X-Files poster and a Special Agent Doctor Dana Katherine Scully Funko Pop figurine in my cubicle. My rocket scientist coworkers find it charming. :)

  2. TimeTravlR*

    Definitely not my proudest moment, but when I was about 19 my supervisor and I got into a screaming match (he was a screamer… so he kind of set the tone for the place, but it doesn’t excuse my behavior). At one point I told him to “Go F… yourself!” He turned around and stomped away and I did the same, right into a customer! I was so embarrassed. I apologized immediately to the customer. She smiled and said, “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

      1. Sarah in CA*

        After HS graduation, I got a job at a pizza place. It was a great place, owners worked there, everyone close friends, etc…

        Fast foward to a couple years later, I was not 21 quite yet so I couldn’t do anything with alcohol and that was the only thing holding me back from officially being made and paid as shift manager.

        Well, I guess they couldn’t wait anymore and hired someone new who rubbed me all the wrong ways. After a few months, I got upset over something trivial and complained to one of the owners, I was just so mad and jealous she had the job I wanted. It was not a good scene in the back room.

        I quit shortly after that to go to Taco Bell as assistant manager, and the two months there are a whole other adventure!

        1. Louisa*

          “You must save a lot of money BEING CHEAP.”

          Yeah, me, surly teen waitress, to the table of nursing students tipping a quarter a round on full trays of pints.

          It was 1979 at the Oxford Ale House in Harvard Square. Still underage myself but permitted to work booze because I was 19 when the drinking age went to 21, I got stiffed on tips a lot. Guys did it when I wore my glasses. Women did it… all the time. Harvard students were the worst, but nursing students were not great either. I got resentful sometimes.

          Nobody cared, of course. Another great moment from that establishment was seeing one of our bouncers kicking a guy in the head next to the sidewalk and telling him to “relax.”

          1. Fellow Bostonian*

            The cheapness of Boston restaurant patrons is kind of a shock. Friend took a waitressing job on Newbury Street and averages less in tips per shift than 40 miles south in the suburbs! H

    3. Eat My Squirrel*

      Oh man, I had forgotten about my teenage job transgressions… I spent a very short period of time as a door to door salesperson for the local newspaper. I was like 17 and took the job because the boss was hot and also, well, a salesman who sold me on the job. I ended up quitting when I found out that 1: the scholarship opportunity we used to guilt people into signing up for a subscription wasn’t real, and 2: I’m terrible at lying and sales.
      But in the meantime, my Hot Boss, who drove his crew around to different neighborhoods to sell to for the day, was always complaining about how stupid those concrete goose statues are, and saying how if anyone brought him the head of a concrete goose, we’d get a bonus. One particular crummy day of few sales, I found myself on the doorstep of a home with a concrete goose. Nobody answered the door, and as I stood there waiting and staring at the ground, I noticed that their goose’s head was already broken off and lying on the porch. I debated for a half a minute or so and then pocketed the decapitated goose head. When Hot Boss picked us up, I proudly presented him with this treasure. He… was not amused… I didn’t get in trouble, I think he realized it was his fault I’d done it, but I definitely did not get a bonus.

    4. Ace in the Hole*

      I have a reputation at work for being extremely even-tempered and “nice,” even with the rudest of customers. Which is generally true. But one day I was working alone and this customer was being a complete tool. Condescending, rude, arguing that the rules shouldn’t apply to him, etc. I tried explaining things professionally. I tried being nice, being firm, everything. He refused to listen and kept arguing with me saying “I don’t understand [blindingly simple rule].” It was a really busy day, I was super stressed doing three people’s work, and he’d been arguing with me for TWENTY MINUTES about a state law we have to follow while the line built up behind him all the way out to the street.

      Finally I snapped “That’s it, I’m done. No service for you. If you ‘can’t understand’ the rules by now you’re too stupid to come here by yourself. Now fuck off before I call the cops.” Customer was shocked. Said he’d report this to the manager. I told him to go right ahead, but it wouldn’t matter because I was the only one in the county who could legally provide the service he wanted right now and I wasn’t serving him. He left.

      I knew I was unprofessional and expected some kind of disciplinary action. That never happened. Turns out he did report the incident to management… and their response was “What? No, Ace would never behave that way. If she refused you service there must have been a darn good reason. Please don’t call us again.”

      4. Luna*

        Honestly, I have read such horror stories about how customers act towards retail employees, and management bending over for those same customers, I think if talking to them that way were more openly permitted and okay, it would actually cut down on a lot of this type of abuse.

      5. I edit everything*

        This is a perfect example of a lesson my father taught me: If you’re well behaved and responsible the majority of the time, you can get away with all kinds of things when you really need to.

  3. Allornone*

    Oh, dear.

    After having successfully blocked out most of my most embarrassing moments, this thread scares me. What if the memories come back? Noooooooo!

    2. A Beth*

      Ha, for real! I have spent too much time telling myself that embarrassing thing happened to someone else and I’m not the same person. I may have to just avoid this thread :)

      1. Allornone*

        Thanks! That is a great picture of Bette, although I imagine she took quite a few good pictures in her day. As for mine, it’s just one of the precious few pictures of me where I look halfway decent, taken by my significant other when I wasn’t paying attention. I made it black and white because, frankly, it just looked better that way.

    6. ariel*

      Right? I’m sure I did some incredibly stupid things in my 20s at work but have suppressed them all in favor of remembering the incredibly stupid things I did in my 20s in my personal life, in excrutiating detail, instead. Ha ha! Victory is mine!

    7. Sabina*

      Yeah, I posted the one story below but memories of others keep popping up. How did I forget smoking weed with my boss and coworkers at lunch while working a government job? Yikes!

  4. Amanda*

    I applied for a summer job between junior and senior year of college. I was late for the interview and when they asked what my strengths were I said “punctuality”. What an idiot.

    2. Shira VonDoom*

      AMAZING

      and here’s me trying to DODGE those questions in interviews, LOL. (ADHD poster child, the time blindness is real.)

    3. Ali + Nino*

      There’s a joke along these lines…
      Star-bellied sneetches are known for not being so bright. Sneetches without stars are known for not being very punctual.
      A star-bellied sneetch goes to a job interview, where the interviewer says, “I dunno, you sneetches without stars have a reputation for being late.” To which the star-bellied sneetch replies, “No, no! I’m a star-bellied sneetch, I’m stupid!”

    4. WhatAMaroon*

      Are you me? I wrote the interview time down wrong and was 15 minute late. They asked me my strengths and I said organization… With experience I should have asked if anything would have saved my first impression and just ended the interview.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I once showed up at a job interview half an hour late. I had rented a car and printed out driving instructions from MapQuest, then drove 60 miles in the wrong direction before realizing my mistake.

        Incredibly, they still called to make me an offer. They asked how much I’d been offered by other companies, so I answered honestly, thinking this would be the starting point for salary negotiations. Nope! They just wished me the best at the other company and hung up.

      2. Grace Less*

        Oh…yeah, I was like 45 minutes late to an interview because my GPS would take me in circles around the building, but not to the driveway. Eventually I had my spouse call them for directions. When I left, the person at the front said “do you need directions out? I didn’t give those to your spouse.”

        It turns out I got the job. I worked there for 10 years and everyone had printed directions next to their phones to provide, because this was a near daily occurrence! So…no need to hide behind spouse!

    6. Lucy Skywalker*

      That reminds me of my last day of 4th grade, when we had an assembly and the principal gave awards to various students. One of the categories was for perfect attendance, and one of the students who received the award wasn’t there that day!

    7. Not a mouse*

      I wrote “detail-oriented” as a skill on a job application wherein I wrote the year incorrectly for one of my previous jobs. I know this because they asked me about the year, so it must have been *obviously* wrong. (I do cut myself a little slack because I was in the place hand writing the application, instead of at home doing it online with leisure to check it over carefully.) (They hired me anyway.)

  5. Poffertjies!*

    I worked in a heart and vascular call center where I scheduled appointments and sent referrals to other offices. There was this one office who was very demanding and rude and all of their patient appointments were marked as urgent even though they weren’t. I hated my job there and I was checked out. One day the rude referring office called and demanded why one of their patients was scheduled next month instead of right away. I explained that was the next available appointment and it wasn’t really an urgent appointment (think consult for ongoing care as opposed to chest pain). The woman on the other line kept interrupting me and I did a high pitched, catty MEOW into the phone. She stopped taking and I finished my explanation. She said “ok. Thank you.” and hung up. I’m shocked I wasn’t reported. Not my proudest moment.

    1. Dr. Rebecca*

      Oh, I say. That sounds extremely cathartic, and like a lesson learned on her end!

      1. Mrs. Burt Wonderstone*

        I have a kid that likes the kids show Bluey and this made me think of one of the episodes and my eye twitched a little :))

    6. Sharkie*

      I love that. I worked in a call center for a health insurance company, and I was burnt out. When someone who is a pro level coach who is known for yelling at his players started yelling at me. I interrupted him and told him that he can yell at his players, but I will not allow it cause I am trying to help him and I know it is a power dynamic he is not used to, but him acting like this would NOT help the situation. He hung up on me after a string of curses. That call got pulled for call coaching and it made my mentor laugh.

      2. Dust Bunny*

        We have an occasional patron who is infamously condescending. My supervisor answered the phone one time and they were discussing what kind of material–we’re a research library–Condescending Man wanted, which turned out to be something we didn’t have in predigested form (meaning that Condescending Man would have to spend time researching it himself rather than having us just hand it over), and Condescending Man basically called my supervisor stupid. I don’t recall the exact wording but it was as flowery and convoluted as one would expect.

        Supervisor replied, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to call back when you’re ready to be civil,” and hung up. We were given orders that if Condescending Man called back nobody was to deal with him but Supervisor because the rest of us definitely didn’t get paid enough to put up with that nonsense.

        I think he did call back but behaved better since the alternative was to never get the information out of us.

        1. Aunty Fox*

          I support this, I always tell my team if people are rude to you hang up, you aren’t here to take their crap.

        2. Sel*

          I am a librarian in a research library, and I have absolutely hung up on rude, condescending patrons. I really enjoy helping people, but the social contract works both ways!

    7. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

      Not me but my team lead had to take over a customer call for another rep because the person was escalating. As she was talking with him she kept saying Meow instead of now. Like “we can’t do that right meow, but we can give you X.” The customer was confused and said “did you just say right meow?” and my team lead just went with it, no I said right Meow. Like it was a speech problem or something. It worked wonderfully to deescalate the situation because the customer was angry (for no reason just being entitled). But it’s not something someone should do as a de-escalation tactic.

    11. Mrieke89*

      I’m very sorry, but can I ask; why the spelling error in poffertjes? It’s probably a joke but it’s driving me nuts, so I thought I’d ask.

  6. KofSharp*

    Let’s see…
    1.) Surveying a job, fell down a 12 foot culvert, swore colorfully all the way down… fielding partner laughed his ass off. (I was ok but filthy)
    2.) Brought cards against humanity to a work happy hour WITH PERMISSION and found out my GrandBoss is hilarious
    3.) Accidentally submitted my draft process document that said “this is made so y’all have a quick reference instead of asking me the same exact question an hour later”
    4.) Warned new people that coming fielding with me usually ends up in at least one story. (Not my fault, but any time I’m out doing survey work, I usually have 1 cat-call, 1 person try to physically run us over, 1 person with a gun, and 2-3 dog encounters)

        1. Lynca*

          I get that alot. I usually don’t swear and it takes /a lot/ to get me to the point to break that professional line.

          I’ve had several people in the field be very suprised I can swear like a sailor. I once walked into a drilling spoils pit that wasn’t marked off and some colorful things were said. I was up to my hips in wet soil and miserable.

          1. SloanGhost*

            It’s a great example of “people hear what they expect to hear”–people are SHOCKED when they actually notice I’ve dropped a bomb, but I swear fluently…they’re just used to thinking of me as a calm, mild-mannered person, so they don’t NOTICE most of the time.

      2. Generic Name*

        Yeah, I was doing some fieldwork where I had to walk through a very dense thicket of bushes. Every time I got caught up in a bush, I quietly (I thought) said “dammit!”. Apparently the sound carried a ways and my coworker some distance away could hear. No big deal, except the client was with us and could presumably also hear me swearing. Ha.

        1. janeric*

          Awww, I was running a transect parallel to a coworker in heavy brush, and I could hear him swearing. As I got closer, I could make out words. “FRICK. FRACK. Frickin’ FRACK.”

          At the end of the transect I asked “how’d running that tape go? Sounds like you had some trouble?”
          “Thicker than peanut butter in there.”

    2. KofSharp*

      I can’t believe I forgot this one from my first job:
      I was being micromanaged and shouted at for wearing headphones during a client training that no one else wanted to hear. Everyone else was out for lunch while I was on this training (I thought) and the guy who’d been shouting at me walked past my desk 10 times in 5 minutes.
      So… I banged my hands on my desk like the gif of the cat who realized his report is due at midnight and it’s 11:58 pm.
      The micromanager stopped, turned around, and came back to stare after I stopped and I just looked at him, shrugged, pointed to the virtual client training, and went back to it.
      I’d already begun looking for a new job at that point and I did NOT care.

      1. Le Sigh*

        Sometimes that’s what you have to do! In my case, office job running reception. Our manager had lectured everyone into the ground about not hanging out at the front desk and/or talking loudly, because he didn’t want customers or company higher-ups to hear people goofing around. Fair enough. Except he would come up to the front desk area and loudly chat with other people, which, okay whatever, eye roll. Until one day when I had a difficult repeat customer on the phone; I just wanted to get the info so I could finish with them. The manager was just yammering away and I had to ask this extremely frustrating customer to repeat themselves several times, while waving my hands around, snapping, doing ANYTHING to get the manager’s attention to quiet down. Nothing worked. Finally put the customer on mute and slammed my fist on my desk. The manager looked startled, then like he was gonna kill me, until I pointed to the phone, mouthed, “BE QUIET” and our other manager ushered him to the door and told him to knock it off. I think she was afraid I would lose it.

    3. RPOhno*

      1 sounds like when I used to collect surface water samples on a site built in the middle of wetlands prior to wetlands regs. One time I made the mistake of wearing khakis… the first words out of my mouth, to my department director, when I came back to the office, covered in burs and thorny twigs, splattered with black swamp muck, and with a boot full of gross water, were “I’m changing my f%$#*@& pants.”

      2. KSharpie*

        Unfortunately my fielding partner that day was my boss for the office/design side of the job and he hadn’t been in the field for over 10 years. He’d “forgotten”

    4. quill*

      Fieldwork is one place where professionalism ends up out the window and knee deep in mud.

    5. ScruffyInternHerder*

      I feel like there’s a different bar for “unprofessional” for field-work related.

      1. I’ve made an ironworker blush before.
      2. CAH makes regular appearances at the lunch table
      3. Have informed the interns (that my name references) to either figure out the seating arrangements in MY vehicle or I was planting both their @$$es in my kids’ booster seats because they were arguing like my kids anyhow.
      4. I’ve determined that several trades do not have the capacity to blush or be shocked in general.
      5. I’ve told a field work partner that the object of the day is to get the work done AND not get shot at.

      1. Pdweasel*

        Same in forensics. I work in a morgue, so skull décor is pretty standard. One coworker has a Chucky doll in their office and that barely blips on the radar.

      2. Dinwar*

        Yeah, there’s definitely a different attitude. The running joke is, if HR ever found out how we act in the field we’d all be fired. Possibly out of a cannon, into the sun. After you put in 12 hours a day, 10 days a week with someone, save each other’s lives a few times, and the like, one’s concept of professional norms tends to shift.

        Makes life fun when I get to spend time in a real office. I have to keep reminding myself “Do not use driller-speak around senior members of the C-suite” and the like. It usually takes me about a month to fully shift gears.

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          Oh, that switch is hell. I went from a jobsite to the main office (sharing a wall with the owner) when things went sideways in 2009. My language, and my attempts to NOT use jobsite language, was definitely a source of amusement for him.

    6. KateM*

      Aaaah! Just what Allornone was afraid of!

      Once it happened that, inspired by another CV I saw, I had added to my CV a section of additional courses taken. I set down the list approximately as I remembered, thinking I will look up the exact titles later. And forgot. And that’s how I sent off a CV for a summer camp teacher position with:
      Courses:
      violence
      first aid
      something else

      1. KateM*

        Just in case – “violence” stood for a course on how to recognize when a student is suffering from domestic violence and what to do, and “something else” was a course about how to teach kids ethical values.

      2. Interview Coming Up*

        Omg this is amazing. I chuckled out loud and your story has already made my day better. I’m redoing my resume constantly these days and this could be me.

    7. ferrina*

      #4 is so real! My mom is like this- any time she goes on vacation, disaster is guaranteed to strike! One year it was record snow fall; another year it was a huge windstorm…now her coworkers plan on having overtime when they see her vacation on the schedule.

    9. Random Biter*

      I love working in the trades. OldJob was pretty buttoned up…none of my tats could show and someone actually suggested a swear jar until I said I’d have to just sign over my paycheck. Don’t get me wrong, I know when to NOT swear but the look on the EA’s face was priceless when after a very irritating sequence of events involving everything I had just explained to the person involved the day before I raised my fists to the heavens and said, “What the ACTUAL fuck is happening?!” The EA didn’t think “old” people knew those words. The owner, (and her boss), on the other hand said to me, “I wish I fucking knew.” Yay, old people!

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Reminds me of a story – one of our foremen ran into my doppelganger (no really, we’re friends and our MOTHERS do spit-takes when we’re together) on a site, not realizing it wasn’t me. Because why wouldn’t it be? Except she works there. So he hits the office all full of cranky, since he did need me to handle things, grousing his head off, yells that I ignored him, and then asks me when I got the tattoo on the nape of my neck?

        I don’t have one. She does. Tell him so. He flips my hair up, hilarity and cursing ensues (over the mistaken identity, over his touching my hair, over me slapping him…you get the idea) including him yelling “what the ACTUAL fuck?!?!”

      2. SixTigers*

        If someone suggested “a swear jar” to me, people down the hall would hear me laughing — just before I quieted down enough to say, “Fuck, no.”

    10. Yay, I’m a Llama again!*

      Google ‘Fieldwork Fails, Jim Jourdane’ – he made a book of all the examples he collected from scientists and it’s so funny!

    12. E. Chauvelin*

      Cards Against Librarianship is a thing that exists, or once did, as a free download. It doesn’t get as NC-17 as Cards Against Humanity but some of it would earn a soft R rating. I brought it to an after hours department party once and not only does it now get requested, but the boss at that time asked to borrow my deck for a management party, and when she left the external relations manager asked me for the files so he could print up a nice laminated set as a farewell gift.

  7. Oops*

    Not my proudest moment… I’m disabled and so ask for help from coworkers to move boxes of office supplies that have been delivered. My former boss (without me asking) grabbed up one of the boxes and stalked off to the back with it. When I followed to unpack it, he told me, “I shouldn’t be f-ing doing this. I’m not getting any f-ing younger. This is your f-ing job.” About 120000% done with his nonsense, I snapped at him that “I’m not getting any less f-ing disabled. Help or don’t, but either way, stop whining about it.”

    4. Belle of the Midwest*

      If anyone should be embarrassed by this story it’s the asshat boss, not you. Your response was perfect, f-bomb and all.

    6. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      This is one of those those that being ‘unprofessional’ was the absolute appropriate and perfect response.

      Also kudos to you for thinking of it on the spot instead of at 3am the next morning.

    7. 1-800BrownCow*

      Seriously, this should be “my proudest moment” and drop the “not” from the beginning of your post. You boss was a jerk and something like what you said is exactly what he needed.

    8. Iroqdemic*

      Agree this is a story about your boss being unprofessional, not you. Well done with the comeback- I always think of those things 2 hours after the event happened.

    9. Unkempt Flatware*

      I just pumped my fist and if this were me, I’d never ever stop pumping my fist until the day I die.

    10. Betsy Bobbins*

      Your boss was a jackass and your are my hero! Please let us know how he responded, it’s too delicious not to know.

    11. Cats Are Really Fuzzy*

      Agree with everyone, that is completely appropriate and I’m glad you said something !

  8. Barkley D.*

    Is it bad that I still put on makeup in my office once in awhile? I have a really far commute and have to wake up so early—I don’t always have enough time to do my make up before leaving the house!

    1. Hills to Die On*

      uhmm…I do this. I am in an end cube with not a lot of people nearby. And the lighting is so good since I am next to a window…

        1. As per Elaine*

          I also (pre-COVID) really wondered about the people who put on makeup on the subway. Though I am also impressed at anyone who can do reasonable makeup under such conditions; it is not a smooth ride.

          1. JMR*

            I’ve had the same thought! People putting on make-up on public transportation don’t bother me, but I do marvel at it. I’d 100% end up stabbing myself in the eyeball with the mascara wand.

            1. Empress Penguin*

              I have put on make up on a moving train before and I *did* stab myself in the eyeball with my mascara wand. It’s not a great look.

          2. Gerry Keay*

            One of my proudest moments when I was living as a woman was applying make up (including mascara) on a moving NYC subway and receiving a round of applause from the women sitting across from me.

          3. Pam Poovey*

            I was once on a very lurchy A train in NYC and watched this woman standing in stilettos put on flawless eyeliner and mascara. Wherever that absolute queen is now, I hope she’s thriving.

    2. kittymommy*

      Ehh, I think it’s more the cubicle than anything. I do this when I have an event after work. I’ll go in my bosses office (no one is here, btw) and change, straigten my hair, touch up my makeup. What’s weird is for some reason I will only use the office for my female boss, not my male bosses. I don’t know. I know it’s not different but it still seems weirder.

    3. lb*

      I think the distinction is between keeping a drawer full of makeup AND hair implements vs bringing your makeup case in your purse occasionally!

    4. anonymous73*

      Once in a while isn’t a big deal, but if you’re coming in every day and spending the first 30 minutes of your time at work applying your makeup, then it’s a problem.

    5. Daisy-dog*

      I pictured it from OP as a huge event with everything splayed out all over the place and even on top of work documents. And probably using a lot of focus, but also just casually taking her time. If you have an efficient system to do everything pretty quickly without a big show of a huge makeup case, then that’s fine.

    6. Meow*

      Back in the day, it was totally normal for women to touch up their makeup throughout the day. If I saw someone doing their makeup at work, I honestly would just think, “wow, they’re really committed to keeping their makeup nice” in a good way.

      But I also work in an office full of dudes who think it’s appropriate to cut their nails at work, so my standards may be a little off… I would much rather see people doing their mascara than see fingernail clippings fly everywhere. As long as you’re not one of those people with makeup caked in their phone earpiece, gag.

      1. Le Sigh*

        “an office full of dudes who think it’s appropriate to cut their nails at work” WHY IS THERE AT LEAST ONE OF THESE PEOPLE IN EVERY OFFICE? IT’S A QUIET CUBE FARM AND IT’S 9AM, JOSH, TAKE THAT TO THE BATHROOM OR I WILL END YOU.

      2. Not a mouse*

        I was once moved to a much nicer office, which was great, but I did have to seriously clean the phone which was literally caked with foundation from the previous occupant.

    7. Fluffy Fish*

      Depends. Are you doing full on makeup at work that takes a considerable amount of time (20-30 minutes or more), or are you swiping on some mascara and lipstick in less than 5 minutes?

    8. HE Admin*

      I have a full makeup drawer at work (in a cubicle). I walk to work and that means in the summer in my hot and humid city, it has all melted off my face by the time I get there if I do it at home. It takes about 5-10 minutes for me to do it and there’s no hair products going on.

      No one in my office cares, but I could see this very much being an issue in other places.

    9. Hats Are Great*

      I have a small-but-complete make-up kit in my desk drawer. I don’t wear make-up often but I have it available in case I have a zoom call and I’m looking like a zombie, or I have to go to a client meeting and need to be a bit more polished. I don’t think it’s weird at all to quickly apply it at my desk (especially if I preview myself on zoom and want to quickly touch myself up), although if I’m doing something more elaborate or full-face, I’ll go to the bathroom to do it.

      The light in my office at certain times of day makes my eyes virtually disappear, so most often I’m swiping on a quick neutral eyeshadow just so I have normal human features. Sometimes zit cover up.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        I’ve always done this too. I keep it in my tote bag, along with a small straightening iron, to touch up after lunch or if the weather is detrimental to my makeup or hair. A quick swipe of powder and/or lipstick can be done at my desk.

        I can also use it to transition to evening if I have a date after work—a good time to schedule first dates, since I’m already semi-dressed up and “I have to get up early for work” is a convenient way to end it if it isn’t going well.

    10. Office Lobster DJ*

      I’ve fallen out of the habit of wearing makeup since masks became a thing, but yeah, for awhile I would do my makeup at work daily. I’d get in and, once anything urgent was dealt with, then grab my bag and wander off to the bathroom for 5 minutes or so. No one commented that on my return I seemed to have grown eyebrows, so I guess it was fine.

    11. Jean*

      I touch up lipstick and freshen up powder if I’m shiny while sitting at my desk. I wouldn’t do a full face though, at least not at this office. I have worked in offices where the vibe was such that I wouldn’t have worried about it.

    12. Mortified Moron*

      I was 23 in a new role with a new boss at a company I had worked at for two years already. It was my boss’ birthday and in a meeting she said she was 42 and I said, “wow, that’s how old my dad is!”
      I didn’t mean it as horrible as it sounded… It was so bad. I quit pretty soon after that.

      Ugh I have so many bad ones from my 20s. I was an idiot.

  9. Kelche*

    Crying in a team meeting! At my first professional job I remember crying in a team meeting because I was so frustrated by someone else that I thought wasn’t doing their fair share. The meeting wasn’t about that, I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember crying for what looked like absolutely no reason to anyone else. Also giving my boss the cold shoulder for weeks when I wasn’t happy with how he handled something.

    1. hiptobesquared*

      As someone who has cried in a meeting about a personal issue… I feel this. I just sat there with tears rolling down my face in front of everyone.

    2. Suspicious Character*

      Sometimes crying happens! I tend to cry more when I’m super angry than for any other reason.

      As far as work crying goes, though – about 10 years ago when I was still working as an executive assistant, a very good friend of mine who had been sick for a long time took a very bad turn. I was at work when I got the news that she’d passed away. It was close to the end of the day and I was holding it together pretty well until my boss (C-suite) called me into her office to talk about a report I’d compiled for her.

      She gave me a couple of fairly low-level corrections to the work, things I probably should have caught, and added, “This is the kind of error I’d like you to be able to find and correct yourself in the future” – not even in a mean way, pretty much in exactly the way Allison would tell you to say something like that!

      And I burst into tears instantly – big, bawling ugly-cry tears. And I just couldn’t stop! I didn’t even feel it coming on, I felt like I was keeping my cool right up until my cool picked up and left the state. I tried to apologize multiple times while still not managing to stop crying, and SHE tried to apologize and assure me that my work overall was FINE, and she really liked me, and I was GREAT really — it’s actually kind of hilarious looking back on it.

      I finally managed to sob out what was actually going on, so she did figure out I didn’t just break into hysterical sobbing over a little constructive criticism. Then I tried to leave, and she pushed a box of tissues into my hand and practically blocked the door. I can only imagine she was thinking about the optics of having her assistant flee her office sobbing in front of all her staff… :D

      It ended well – she was really great about it, very understanding, and I continued to work for her until she left the organization. I actually still work there now. But for a few minutes there I was absolutely certain I was completely fired.

      1. allathian*

        I can relate. I pretty much always cry when I’m angry or frustrated. I can’t even remember when I last cried because I was sad. I’m not even sure I’ve ever done it as an adult, unless I did it when I was reading or watching a movie. I mean, people think I’m callous because I can’t even manage to squeeze out a tear at funerals.

        1. BawlingOverHere*

          Oh, I cried once when being castigated by my manager, who was a horrible person and probably enjoyed watching me break down. She was in the wrong, I was so pissed I cried.

          I told her my MIL died that week/month/recently. It was true, it just wasn’t the reason for the crying. I just couldn’t let her believe she made me cry.

  10. Anon for this*

    Many years ago, I worked for a staffing agency. We had an exclusive contract to provide contract workers to a large pharmaceutical company that had several locations in our area. Part of my job involved doing periodic site visits to check in with our contract workers and the customers who managed them day-to-day.
    One day I arrived at a site (this is back when everyone still wore business attire most of the time) and had to use the restroom when I arrived. Afterwards, I spent a good 30 minutes strolling around, saying hello to people I knew, etc. Finally one of my contractors took me aside and informed me that my skirt was tucked into my pantyhose so that my bare behind was exposed for all to see. Yes, I had been walking all around the site with my backside fully exposed.

    1. Artemesia*

      It is a rule of the universe that the first women who sees this HAS to rush up and correct it. I am so grateful to the women in the restroom at the Lyric Opera who prevented me from strolling out that way during intermission.

      1. 15 years older and wiser*

        Agreed! I had my skirt do something similar and a very kind coworker (who I didn’t even know well) fixed it for me in the bathroom before I walked out like that. So grateful.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        The Woman Who Mooned Atlanta. Still think of this episode when adjusting dress clothes.

    3. Super Anon*

      Ooh, I’ve done this. Except I was walking to work, and it was a school bus driver who finally leaned out the window and told me I had a wardrobe issue (and yes, the school bus was full of kids).

    4. Dust Bunny*

      I did this at a music festival. I was wearing a dress with a full skirt and waist ties, and one of the ties got caught in the waistband of my underwear. Fortunately, another woman saw it and pounced before I got very far. I tied the ties shorter after that.

    5. Nathalie*

      This happened to me earlier this year, and I was wearing a pair of bright orange TomboyX boxer briefs with an octopus print.

    6. Solidarity*

      This happened to me in high school.
      Cue upperclassman yelling “That girl’s naked!”.
      Umm, I wasn’t naked, but 30 years later does it still feel like it happened yesterday? Yup!

    7. Rogue Paginator*

      Oof, I worked at a bank, and one of the ladies had this amazing natural runway style saunter. Well, she sauntered her way out of the bathroom across the full lobby with her skirt tucked up in her pantyhose. One of the other girls tackled her with her blazer held out in an attempt to cover her, and they both collapsed in a heap just in front of the teller line. After that we put a sign on the bathroom door that was something to the effect of “check your butt for a breeze before you leave”

    8. Tuna Casserole*

      This happened to me at a conference years ago. Walking into the auditorium for the keynote address, the guest speaker took me aside and said “My dear, you are indelicate” in a beautiful British accent. She then untucked my dress.

      1. Anonym*

        Oh goodness, I love this phrasing. I might be confused if it was said to me, but I love it nonetheless.

      2. Summer*

        This happened to me while coming out of a restaurant’s bathroom when my skirt got tucked into my Spanx. I will be eternally grateful to the woman who ran up to me to tell me before I walked too far into the restaurant. Thank you, kind lady, wherever you are!

      1. saf*

        Your user name – There is a church up the street with a mostly central American congregation. Their sign says “Jesus es El Señor.” My husband insists on reading it as “Jesus is the man!”

    10. Charlotte*

      This happened to my aunt when she was in a meeting with a certain London mayor who is now PM!

  11. Elder Millennial*

    This still haunts me 15 years later… when I was 17 I worked for the summer as a nursing home aide wearing mostly scrubs, but Friday was “casual Friday”. One Friday I wore a T-shirt that said in BIG letters, “Hey Boston, there is no curse your team just sucks” (I was trying to be into baseball for a minute). My supervisor called me into her office and told me the shirt was inappropriate and I needed to turn it inside out – but it was a white shirt with red letters so you could totally still read it. I ended up having to go find a sweater from the box of unclaimed resident items from the laundry room. I was mortified.

    Maybe writing about it here will give me some closure!!

    2. Dust Bunny*

      My college used to have T-shirt that said on the front: “Where the Hell is [school]?”
      . . . and on the back: “Who the Hell cares?”

      I have never worn that one to school t-shirt day.

      2. Pam Poovey*

        Grinnell?

        I remember counselor wearing a “where the hell is Grinnell” shirt when I was at camp as a kid but he had put a piece of tape that said “heck” over it. Don’t ask me WHY something from like 1996 stuck in my brain when I barely know what I had for breakfast this morning but it did.

    3. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

      I would have asked how is it inappropriate? It’s not like it had curse words or anything. Boss was probably just a Redsox fan.

      1. Elder Millennial*

        I assumed she took issue with the word “sucks”, which was in all caps. My dad used to have an issue with us using that word when we were kids too. But I was young and too nervous to say anything except to apologize profusely and go put on an old lady’s sweater!

      3. This is a name, I guess*

        Well, I’d say that wayyyyyy back in, say, the year 2000 (when the Red Sox were still “cursed”), I remember that “sucked” was still borderline in terms of being a swear word. Back then, it wasn’t completely abstracted and was instead still assumed to mean that the Subject “sucked” something. It was in the process of changing, but it hadn’t completely made the transition.

        This is doubly true, given that OP was working at a nursing home, where clients likely had more old school views on the profanity of “suck.”

        Also, it’s kind of an antagonistic shirt. Do you want to be antagonistic to old people?

        1. Le Sigh*

          Yeah, my mom really disliked that word and would get on our case for using it. We all still use it as adults and she kind of just gave up, especially since — despite her best efforts — we all pretty regularly use four letter words at the family dinner table. Sucks probably seems tame compared to my siblings and I yelling “what the f****** f*** is wrong you, you f*****!” at a game on TV.

        2. Wisteria*

          I don’t, but it has nothing to do with them being old and everything to do with them being people. Age should not signify.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          I had an English teacher in high school that tried to get us to stop saying “sucks”, but the train had already left the station. It was just used interchangeably with “uncool” and none of us even realized it had a sexual meaning until he tried to get us to stop using it.

          1. Sal*

            THIS precisely! I remember the day in mid-elementary school when I told my mom’s boss that something sucked (which was basically the mid-elementary school, slightly-cooler-and-more-adult version of the hopelessly babyish “stinks”) and being read the riot act (I think by my mom? Possibly by one of her co-workers? It was a casually enmeshed and mildly toxic environment), who then EXPLAINED the sexual connotation, which had literally never occurred to me before.

        4. A Wall*

          I remember getting suspended from school in 1998 or so because I was working on a project in the hallway and said of my work “this sucks” to another student, which a passing teacher overheard and flipped her lid about. She was very, very adamant that this was a serious curse word I needed to be immediately taken to the office for saying on school grounds.

      4. This is a name, I guess*

        I’m also unsure of your age and/or geographic location, but as an Older Millennial and former Masshole, I can report that there was A LOT of animosity between Boston and NY fandoms around this time. Like, people would get into fistfights and shouting matches. This wasn’t a quirky, jokey graphic tee: it was part of a complicated rivalry that, for some, played out in the physical world in very serious ways.

        This podcast talks about the whole rivalry and the tshirts industry that erupted around it: https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/yankees-suck/

        1. Librarian of SHIELD*

          It was around this time that one of my coworkers insisted that his poor reputation in the organization wasn’t because he was refusing to do his assigned tasks and being rude to upper management, it was because he was a Red Sox fan and his Yankee fan coworker was spreading rumors about him.

        2. IndustriousLabRat*

          Current proud Masshole who was at UMass Amherst, AKA ZooMass, first as a student, then as a labtech, from 1997-2010. Baseball riots were a real THING. Quite violent and dangerous. Campus Police have several large and imposing horses trained in crowd work for a reason.

          The joke was that if you wanted to commit semi-passive auto insurance fraud, simply put a bunch of Yankees stickers on your unwanted vehicle and park it at the Southwest Horseshoe during a Sox-Yanks series, and wait… some ruffian would be along in due time to flip it and/or set it on fire…

          1. This is a name, I guess*

            I’m from around there. I went to college in Northern New England in the mid-2000s (right after the Sox won their first World Series) and was appalled that so many of my classmates were disgusting, horrible, no-good, very-bad Yankees fans and felt sooooo conflicted about even wanting to be friends with them for, like, 5 minutes. Then, I stopped watching sports entirely because I wasn’t trapped in a rural crap town with no peers anymore and there were ways for me to “be” in the world that actually fit my vision of myself.

            Now, I live in the midwest, and I’m like, “OMG YOU’RE AN EASTCOASTER I LOVE YOU SO MUCH WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON” whenever I meet someone from NY/NJ/CT.

          2. Lizzo*

            Thank you for the lovely trip down memory lane, and for the excellent chuckle about insurance fraud.
            You could probably pull off the same thing if you put some Michigan stickers on your car and left it outside the stadium after a Michigan State athletic event. That rivalry definitely hasn’t dwindled.

        3. Lucy Skywalker*

          I’m an Xennial (too young to be Generation X, too old to be a millennial) and a lifelong Masshole and I remember the Yankees Suck chant and T-shirts all too well!

      5. Cringing 24/7*

        Were I the manager, I would have called it inappropriate for the simple fact that it intends to demean. It just feels unprofessional. “Sucks” isn’t a curse word, but it generally has no reason to have to be read at work outside of those in the vacuum industry.

        1. Elder Millennial*

          Oh it was 100% unprofessional on more than one count, really. As a manager myself today, I would definitely not let someone wear that shirt at work. I cringe at teenage me.

          1. Cringing 24/7*

            Ugh, I cringe at my younger, less professional self literally all the time. And for the record, my comment was not at all an attempt to mansplain to you why this was unprofessional, but rather a response to “I’m Just Here For The Cats!” who asked how it’s inappropriate. I saw your response and was worried I came across as rudely directing criticism at you.

        2. allathian*

          I giggled at the vacuum industry. Way back when they first went international, Swedish vacuum/appliance manufacturer Electrolux used the slogan “Nothing sucks like Electrolux!” in their international marketing.

    4. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      This is more recent, but confusing none the less. So I work in a med records unit, and we never see patients at all. Mon through Thurs is expected to be fairly professionally business casual, but Friday was casual day – so break out the (always still work appropriate) concert Tshirts. Boss felt all of the following “were obscene” and not to be work again:

      – Chicago “Color My World” with a rose dropped in different pastel paint colors
      -Aerosmith (literally just the name of the band on a plain color shirt)
      -REO Speedwagon “Time For Me To Fly” printed in cursive and surrounded by butterflies
      – Def Leppard “Bringing on the Heartbreak” again in cursive over a cut in half purple heart
      – Paul McCartney (just a silhouette of his profile holding his guitar)

      Oh, and this was in 2020 – I was really confused how these were obscene, but the bloody, gory Wolverine V Deathpool battle scene on another coworkers T-shirt was just peachy.

      1. Lady Luck*

        I guess because some people still feel that rock and roll music is somehow inappropriate…but even that’s a stretch. I think your boss is a little nutty.

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Oh she was – the sad thing is I’m late 30’s so only Aerosmith realistically (given all their 90’s hits) was one I could have known. She was in her mid 50’s

          She moved on “to a job more in line with my multiple degrees” about a month after she vetoed the Paul McCartney shirt. Yeah, that’s a quote from her goodbye letter – I don’t miss her at all.

          1. pancakes*

            That is so weird. And confusing, yeah. These are classic rock bands at this point! And none are known for having dark imagery on album covers or t-shirts or whatnot to my recollection, even apart from the obviously not-dark imagery on your particular shirts.

          2. allathian*

            Ugh, I suspect favoritism in some way. Maybe she really liked or had a crush on the coworker who wore the Wolverine vs. Deathpool shirt, or something…

            Did you ever get the feeling that she simply disliked you, and picked on your t-shirts for that reason?

    5. BeachMum*

      I own a shirt that says “As a matter of fact, going to (My University) does make me better than you.” I wear it while working out at home, but have never worn it outdoors, even when I attended said University. (I do think it’s funny, though.)

  12. PeePee Halpert*

    More a funny story, than intentionally unprofessional, but…
    Was informed of a stain of the back of my dress which turned out to be my butt through a ripped seam. It was an older lady who pointed it out and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She actually poked me in the butt through the rip and said “it’s……..uh………uh…….your buns…..it’s your butt.”
    I’m an admin and of course everyone arrived seconds later to the meeting and I had to walk sideways with my butt to the wall around the room to get out and go sew it in my office.

    1. Industrial Tea Machine*

      This made me laugh out loud. I’m imagining the thought bubble above the older lady’s head of “Oh no I should not have poked that!”

    3. Erin*

      Lolololololl at this!!

      The awkwardness + your co-worker’s impromptu fact finding mission = awesome!

    5. Stitch in Time*

      A colleague had a small rip in her shirt. Nothing bad but she had a meeting with a client and was self-conscious about it. She asked around the office and not a single person had a little sewing kit tucked in their drawers – except me. Do people these days not plan for such emergencies any more? Having one in a drawer it was once the norm, but guess it’s my age showing. I mean… why wouldn’t you?

      1. it's-a-me*

        Saw a colleague hold her pants together with a creative amalgamation of paperclips and bulldog clips once.

      2. Nanani*

        Depends on age and location but a lot of us literally do not know how to use a sewing kit, or where to get one. Sewing is not part of schooling, thanks to relentless cuts to things like home economics classes.

        1. Kindling*

          For anyone who might fall into this category, you can put together a kit for less than $5 and learn enough to get through a minor wardrobe crisis in 5 minutes. For the kit, buy a needle (better yet, one thin and one thick one – use the thicker one for difficult fabrics like jeans). Add a few spools of thread in the colors you wear most often, and a spare button or two. Tiny scissors are handy, but there’s generally something else available to cut thread – even teeth in a pinch. You might be able to find a premade kit, but that’s really all you need!

          For the learning, a quick YouTube search for hand sewing will give you lots of good short tutorials. Unless you just split your entire seat open, most basic stitches should get you through the day. It might not look 100% professional, but it will be a big step up from a split seam, missing button, or garments that gape open a bit too much.

      3. HBJ*

        I do a ton of garment sewing as well as alterating and repairing RTW clothes of mine, but no, it never occurred to me to have one of these with me at work.

  13. Warrior Princess Xena*

    Reasonably mild example, but I still flinch while thinking about it.
    My firm had a winter party. There were still pandemic restrictions on having indoor events, so it was outside. There was an outdoor ice skating rink set up in a tent with frosted plastic walls and next to it in another tent were heaters and tables and a serving hatch where we could order food & drinks on the company tab. I decided I wanted to do some ice skating first. I didn’t realize that there was going to be a ‘thank you for all of your hard work’ speech from one of the firm’s partners until I looked up and saw everyone else standing and listening to the partner – and watching me bumble around on ice skates behind him through the transparent wall. No one said anything but I definitely felt as if I’d missed the professionalism mark.

    2. Mm*

      I once walked into our 15-ish person cubicle farm with my dress tucked into the back of my underwear. A friend grabbed me and told me immediately, but I had already walked by lots of people. It’s mortifying to this day.

    3. Meow*

      I totally get it, that is one of those things where you did absolutely nothing wrong and yet it still ends up being mortifying.

    4. quill*

      This is ludicrously funny, and also one of my recurring nightmares. (Not skating, specifically, but “everyone else knows about major event & I’m a fool”)

    5. Elizabeth West*

      Oh man, I can see me doing this because I too would have made a beeline to the rink.

    6. Jean*

      I love this. Such a funny image and I can totally see myself doing this exact thing.

  14. Anonymous for this*

    I was a reading intervention specialist, working with teachers to help them plan lessons for students in their classrooms who weren’t reading at grade level. One teacher I worked with kept insisting to me, proudly, that if a student entered her classroom unable to read in September, that student would leave the classroom unable to read in June.

    Nonetheless, I met with her on a teacher work day (no students) and went over some interventions and mini-lessons she could do, and ways she could scaffold instruction for those students.

    She looked at me in disbelief and said “You can’t really expect me to do all that.”

    I replied, “I don’t give a flying f*** what you do.”

    I heard she reported me to the superintendent, but he never mentioned the matter to me.

    1. merula*

      What the heck???

      I would hope the superintendent heard the complaint and realized from the story that she was the issue.

    2. Insert Clever Name Here*

      May she never make a night time trip to the bathroom without stepping on legos, and may her pillow never have a cool side. What a horrid person.

    3. Librarian of SHIELD*

      Imagine being proud of refusing to teach kids how to read….

      Your f bomb was 1000% warranted.

    4. She of Many Hats*

      She’s the one who should be mortified! Being proud that she won’t do her job and will sabotage her students’ success?!? Why is she even teaching?

      1. SB*

        This doesn’t surprise me at all, sadly. I also am a reading specialist, and it’s horrifying how proudly ignorant (and callous) some teachers are. I live in a country where teaching requires multiple degrees, but none of them include any mandatory classes related to teaching students to read.

        The result is, predictably, teachers like this.

    5. MigraineMonth*

      I was really hoping that was a typo, and the teacher was saying that the student would be *able* to read in June. What on earth was going through her head.

  15. River Otter*

    Not me, but my ex:
    He was still an undergrad at the time. His interviewer asked him if there was anything he would have done differently, and his answer was that he wished he had gone on more dates.

  16. Dr. Rebecca*

    Just applied for a job in the department where I already work. I did not get a confirmation email (and the system usually does send one) so I sent my colleague who is chairing the search committee a casual email to ask if he could see the application in the system.

    He replied with full formality. My title. His title. Nice little form acknowledgement of candidacy in the body of the email. *full body wince*

    1. anonymous73*

      Unless you were calling them dude and using slang in your email, there’s nothing wrong with what you did. I think your colleague needs to lighten up.

      1. Esmeralda*

        Nah, colleague was right. I’ve been the search chair, I’ve had to send polite emails to coworkers and to others I know around campus who are applying for one of our jobs.

        For one thing, the committee has to be scrupulously fair. For me: State employee, the emails live forever and can be requested by anyone with a good reason.

        For another: don’t presume on your relationship. And treat every communication as a part of the application / consideration. Because it is.

        1. Dr. Rebecca*

          Yeah, I went with “Hi Firstname” which was too casual instead of “Dear Dr. Lastname,” and I’m seriously looking at myself for signs of self-sabotage because I do know better. His reply was appropriate, it just stung.

          On the other hand–the committee meets in a month, my overall application package is very solid, and while he’s chairing, he’s not the only on on the committee and he does know me quite well, so I don’t *think* I’ve torpedoed it, just a bobble out of the starting gate. *sigh*

          1. lost academic*

            I don’t think it’s a bobble at all. Above commenters likely have it right – he needs to make sure he’s not doing anything that would suggest that an internal candidate has unfair advantage or influence on the process. If I were him I might even have some prewritten text so I could be sure for the regular kinds of questions I got I was using the same stock reply. And I don’t think you were entirely out of line to ask informally – it’s an administrative question at heart anyway. Put it behind you!

            1. Dr. Rebecca*

              Thank you for this. Truly. I am chewing my fingers because I really, really want/NEED this position.

          2. SpaceySteph*

            I responded to an email inviting me for an interview recently with Hi [firstname], and I got the job so… I don’t think its a misstep. That’s how I write emails. Shrug.

    2. Ryo Bakura*

      Eh, that could be to cover his ass in possibly showing preference to internal candidates. I don’t think he meant it as anything other than a joke or stupid bureaucratic rules. :)

      1. Dr. Rebecca*

        In my interview for the position I currently hold, he made a joke about formality/what we were to call each other, and he’s probably laughing up his sleeve at me right now, tbh.

        1. Jessica M.*

          As a search committee member, I have sent Very Formal Emails to candidates I have a friendly, informal relationship with, and felt a bit silly doing so but figured it was best for consistency with other candidates. I have never expected that formality from candidates to me, however, so I agree that if anything he is chuckling.

      2. So very anon for this*

        Oh God… you want unprofessional, here you go:

        I was 25. He was 23. He was also my student at the community college where I’d just become an adjunct. He had a crush on me. How did I find this out? I thought he was cute so I looked at his Facebook account and read “is hot for teacher” as his status, posted right after my class. Later in the semester I deliberately hung out a cafe where I knew (because of the aforementioned social media lurking) he hung out, and accidentally-on-purpose ran into him. As the semester wrapped up, we started dating.

        This is NOT a scandalous beginning to a wonderful love story. I realized very very quickly that he and I were not at all suited for each other, but waited until there was slightly more distance from him being my student to break up with him.

        Ugh. I was an absolute idiot and I’m lucky he just did a few angry drunk dials after I dumped him, nothing more.

    3. Lady Blerd*

      Nah, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m always navigating between formality and informality in my emails at work and some of us have different rules as when we one or the other and it’s sometimes on a person by person case.

    4. Karate Saw*

      Even if their reply seemed weird or chilly, I don’t feel like this was unprofessional of you at all, ftr.

  17. Ridiculous Penguin*

    I was in the final interview stages for a tenure-track teaching job at a local college. I was pretty much guaranteed the job if I didn’t screw up the last interview.

    I was asked why I wanted the job. I said, “it’s really close to my apartment, so if I’m out late drinking the night before I can drive to work when I’m hung over without too much trouble.”

    (I didn’t get the job, but I *did* get sober about six months later.)

  18. Folklorist*

    Oh dear. I was so cluelessly unprofessional in my first couple of jobs in my early 20’s. I was EXTREMELY lucky in the first job that I had a great boss with a great sense of humor! He got so many good stories from his kooky report and is very disappointed now that I’m a functioning professional. I’ve got a few from throughout my career–I’ll comment under this one with more stories as I think of them.

    I think the worst was when I got trapped into a predatory contract with Events and Adventures, an “adventure club for single people.” I was in my very early 20’s, first job out of school paying $30k/year and barely making rent but lonely. (This was 2006, so no apps then.) They exploited me and were draining my bank account; I kept overdrafting because of them. I had to take a second job waiting tables just to afford the membership dues every month and all of the little surprise extras they threw in! I tried to cancel the contract, but you’re not allowed to do that within the first year unless you move somewhere they don’t have a club (they’re all throughout the US), or if you die.
    SO! I drew up false paperwork saying that my company was sending me to China for the rest of the year to do a special project. And asked my boss to sign it. You know, just committing a little light fraud. He looked at me like I was insane and was just like, “Yeah, no. I’m not signing that.”
    I think Events and Adventures is still out there pulling this crap but goes under a different name now. Don’t buy into it!

    1. Folklorist*

      Soo, let’s see. In that same company, we had cute little foam company mascot stress relievers. To creatively relieve stress, I turned mine into a goth version with whiteout and sharpies (think Kiss makeup) and turned its hair into a Mohawk made of exacto knife blades.

      I kept a big stuffed animal lizard at my desk, and a blanket “because the office was cold” so I could use the lizard as a pillow and wrap up in the blanket and nap under my desk at lunch (at least I had an office and could close the door).

      I tried this in the next (super-toxic) company I worked at and my boss barged into my office thinking that I was out at lunch so she could go through my stuff. I was sleeping on the floor and she hit me with the door! Needless to say, neither of us were covered in glory at that point.

    2. bamcheeks*

      And asked my boss to sign it

      this combination of deceit and integrity is just *chef’s kiss* Drawing up fake work documents? Not a problem! Signing them fraudulently or faking my boss’s signature? absolutely NOT!

      1. Folklorist*

        Well, some of us have INTEGRITY, you know? We can’t be just signing stuff with our left hand to disguise the handwriting like some kind of charlatans! I had to be better than the company that scammed me. XD

      2. pancakes*

        At least it was for a good cause! Trapping young people — or anyone, really — in that kind of predatory, opaque agreement is really messed up.

    3. Folklorist*

      OK, last one I can think of. I went to grad school after the toxic job so I could hone some professional skills and get a fresh start on my career. I managed to land an extremely prestigious apprenticeship at a company that everyone dreams of working at some point in their lives. (Think, one of the famous magazines with a famously colored border.)

      One day we had a staff ice cream-and-beer social in the courtyard. My boss was kind and hilarious, but much older and surprisingly conservative for where we worked. I was eating a Magnum ice cream bar with caramel center and starting talking…at length…about the fascinating marketing practices linking ice cream with sex as they implicitly cross-promoted their large, decadent, chocolate-covered ice cream bars with the Magnum brand of condom known for…well, you know.

      Her face was frozen in half-amusement, half-mortification, and I, like, had this out-of-body experience where I was floating overhead going “STOP, Folklorist, STOP!!! CHANGE THE SUBJECT NOW! ABORT! ABORT! GET OUT OF THIS!” But no. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t stop myself. I still cringe. And laugh about how far I’ve come.

      1. Juneybug*

        OMG, I am dying. First of second hand shame from reading your stories, then from laughter. Thank you for sharing!

      2. This is a name, I guess*

        The funny thing is that Magnum ice cream bars are European, and there’s isn’t the same association there.

        1. Folklorist*

          Juneybug: I’m so happy that my lifetime of chronic cringe brightens someone else’s day! What else are these mistakes for?

          Name: I had no idea! I always thought that it was intentional and pretty clever!

          1. This is a name, I guess*

            I don’t think so! Magnum condoms exist in Europe, but they aren’t, like, the main brand of condoms in Europe, like they are in the US. So, people don’t associate Magnum with…you know.

            However, in Europe, they use sexy ladies to sell EVERYTHING. I mean, they do it in the US, too, but it’s different because of our weird hypocritical puritanical values. Like, there are sexy women in lingerie on sports talks shows in Italy. When I lived there in 2007-2008, Eva Longoria was the spokesperson for Magnum Bars, and she was styled like a Maxim cover. So, there’s a history of using sexy advertising to sell Magnums in Europe, which probably translated over to the US in 2011 (when they debuted) that’s creating some of the sexual innuendo.

            Also, let’s be real, when Nestle introduced Magnums in the US, they could have changed the name, so I’m sure it was intentional to some degree. However, there’s still a longer history!

            1. Bluesboy*

              I remember when I first came to Italy 2002 I saw advertising for shower gels and shampoos with naked women and I thought “makes sense, I guess we’re quite puritanical back home”.

              Then I saw naked women in the adverts for water…and yogurt…and I realised “Nope, they just like naked ladies”.

              Years later I chatted to the Head of Marketing at the company I was working for and the subject came up, and he was so frustrated! Because he could spend months working on an imaginative, intelligent campaign and see a 20% rise in sales…or put a naked woman on a poster and see +50%. Imagine the professional frustration!

        2. Tamarak on a phone*

          Uh. I’m European and have eaten my share of Magnum bars since they came out. My friends and I were well aware of the erotic allusions in the commercials, and referring to their marketing strategy that highlighted the oral satisfaction aspect if eating chocolate covered ice cream was pretty commonplace.

          1. This is a name, I guess*

            Yes, agree, but it’s not specifically about very large size condoms, which is the weirdly specific image that it conjures in the US because Magnums are a well-advertised condom brand here. It’s like the sexual origins of Magnum ice cream marketing have consistent tones across the Atlantic, but from 2 different sources.

    4. Sad Desk Salad*

      I had no idea it was such a huge scam! It sounded so appealing back when I was single, but fortunately for me it was during the recession and I was working in retail making next to nothing, and when they explained their dues process (plus the fees for doing, you know, the actual events and adventures), I couldn’t afford it even if I didn’t have to pay rent and other bills. Dodged a bullet there!

      1. Folklorist*

        OMG, yes! And it had barely anyone my age in it (probably because of the cost). So most of the people going to the events were divorcees in their 50’s trying to get back into the dating scene. No offense to them–they deserve good dates! Just not what I was looking for.

        So I would go to these events where they were like, “Oh yeah, we’re meeting at XYZ restaurant; we’ve reserved the patio!” And there would be a bunch of hot guys at the restaurant! I’d go up to them at the table and start chatting with them, asking how long they’d been members, what they were looking for, and they’d stare at me like I had three heads. That was when I realized that they got a table of the patio and I was interrupting other random peoples’ happy hour. And yeah, there was no one I wanted to talk to at the table they reserved. I think I did that at, like, three events before I was finally disillusioned enough to realize what a scam the whole thing was.

        1. David*

          Thank you for sharing that story!

          I thought about signing up for E&A once, but it was impossible to get important details like how much it costs from their website so I just gave up… now I know why! I always kind of wondered if I had missed out on a good opportunity to meet people (I really don’t get a lot of those opportunities), so it’s a relief to I know I didn’t.

          1. Slow Gin Lizz*

            Seems like they are still around with the same name. Here in the Boston area I’m finding dues are $2000 (yup, that’s $2k) a year. That seems criminal to me.

  19. Cold and Tired*

    Sooooo many examples, but one that comes to mind:

    My first job out of college hired a lot of fresh college grads and then sent them in big teams paired with more experienced people to travel to clients several weeks a month for a year or two. All of us who were too young to know better would drink/hook up within the team on our first projects, which in hindsight is just the biggest no no. Luckily for me, my partner in crime was already on the way to quitting the job so I was in a better spot than most, but it led to some reaaaaaaallll messy professional dynamics for some of the others. We also were a rare international team that traveled overseas together for 2 weeks at a time, which made it even worse since we had weekends together to travel or party which didn’t help any of this. So much drama – never again.

    Definitely learned a huge lesson about how to keep personal and professional separate when every boundary is blurred by work travel that has kept me in a much better spot since.

  20. CakeDonut*

    When I was in high school, I applied for a job as a in-between-theater-classes supervisor for a kids theater program for 6-8 year olds. In the interview, the manager asked if I had worked with children before. “No, I don’t really like kids,” I said. It was true. But I didn’t get the job. :)

    My first year of teaching* I decided a fun end-of-semester December activity would be to have a snowball fight as the middle schoolers cleaned out their binders/backpacks/lockers. We’d turn tables over, ball up papers, and throw them, then clean everything up into big trash cans. What a great last day! Unfortunately my classroom was next to the principal’s office (pure coincidence! not because I was bad!) but the principal was in a meeting with an upset parent who said there was ‘no order’ and ‘too much chaos’ at the school. The snowball fight ended early. For what it’s worth, the parent had a child in a DIFFERENT grade–but the timing was clearly terrible.

    *middle schoolers are VERY different from the first/second graders I would have been supervising then. Children vs young adults, if you will.

    3. Astrid*

      You’re Bridget Jones (2001)!
      Interviewer: So why do you want to work in television?
      Bridget: Because I’m passionately committed to communicating with children. They are the future.
      Interviewer: Do you have any children of your own?
      Bridget: Oh, Christ, no. Yech!

      1. MigraineMonth*

        This is me. I love my niece and nephew to bits and regularly babysit, I crochet toys for the neighbor’s kids and I wave at every small child I see on my walk. But actually having kids myself? Yech indeed.

        1. Lucy Skywalker*

          I love my nieces and nephew, but the more time I spend with them, the more I realize I made the right choice by not having kids.

      2. GammaGirl1908*

        Closely followed by “I’ve got to leave my job because I’ve shagged my boss.” So, yeah.

  21. kittymommy*

    I was part of an interview panel for a position in out org that had only two people (boss and them) in the office and maybe 10 – 12 field workers. One of the questions was something like how do you handle conflict. The answer: oh I don’t I just ignore the person until they quit. Not just ignore for anything outside of work issues, nope, just ignore that there was another human being 10 feet away.

  22. the one who got away*

    The time I was mad about something and stomped my foot in my boss’s office and…sprained my ankle.

    Or the time (different job) where I was mad about something and did this half-joking air kick and launched my shoe off my foot into the giant plate glass window at the end of the cube farm. Then I had to go retrieve it.

    3. FrogGirl*

      First big meeting at my internship, my boss and I had arrived with his moped. I was carrying the helmet in my hand, got flustered by the number of people in the conference room as I was entering it, and absolutely smashed the helmet against the glass door. It left a giant mark. Everyone looked at me. I’m still mortified.

    4. Lucy P*

      My boss asked me to look for something once, which required me to crouch down on the floor. Boss literally crowded me by looking over my back while I searched the space between the file cabinet and the wall for a box. After a few minutes, I needed to stand. Not realizing boss was so close, I stood up, backed up into boss and sprained boss’ ankle.

  23. Bloop*

    I absolutely wore going out clothes to my first professional job out of college. My salary was low and I didn’t have a budget for new, more professional clothes. I’d pair my mom’s old blazers and button downs with, for example, a way-too-short sequin skirt and going out wedges or heels. I’m not so embarrassed now because it’s bananas to think a 22 year old could afford a whole new professional wardrobe, and I did put those outfits together in earnest. Kinda makes me want to give little me a big hug and say, ‘you did the best with the situation you had at the time.’

    1. ferrina*

      I’m right there with you! I wore vintage skirts and not-quite-matching blouses from Goodwill, things that didn’t quite fit very well but were all I could afford.

    2. kiki*

      I do really wish more entry level roles came with a signing bonus. It wouldn’t even have to be huge– even a couple hundred bucks to help candidates afford more professional clothing for the first week would be huge for so many people.

      1. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

        The thing is signing bonuses don’t pay out right away. It’s going to be at least 2 weeks until you get your first paycheck. And many places have contingencies such as you have to work for 3 months with no problems.

        But I agree that its wrong to expect entry-level, especially straight out of college, people to have an entire professional wardrobe. I was so glad that my mom happened to work at Macy’s and so I was able to borrow some of her stuff. Also in my area, the colleges have started a thrift store type of thing for students and you don’t even have to pay anything if you can’t. So you can go and get 1 outfit for free.

        1. kiki*

          I’ve only had one signing bonus so far, but it was actually paid before I started working with a contingency that I would have to return the amount if chose to leave the company before serving my first 30 days, which seemed pretty reasonable. But I understand that’s not the case everywhere.

        2. Usagi*

          That’s fantastic that the colleges in your area are doing that! I used to run workshop series for an ExJob where we partnered with local high schools, colleges, and homeless shelters (not mixing the groups, of course) to go through things like basic office suite skills, resume building, mock interviews, etc., and at the end we had partnered with a local consignment group to gift each person a professional outfit and haircut (the haircut was optional, only if they wanted it). It was pretty great! I think stuff like that is the single thing I miss about working at big corporations with money to throw around. I now work at a local business, and while we’re comparatively large for our area, we don’t really have the money to be doing things at that level.

    3. Pickles*

      For those reading this who are in this situation, check thrift stores. I used to be the person who went through the donations, and women’s professional clothing tended to come in all the time brand new, tags still on. This is how I funded suits as an intern who didn’t get paid until six weeks into the next job. It wasn’t my style, but I made fewer mistakes in the business world thanks to resale.

    4. Forkeater*

      Oh yes, when I think of the shortness of some of the skirts I wore to work! Ugh.

      I was so very poor starting out with no parent money to help either (and my mom was a nurse, and a much different size than me, so no taking her clothes). I would buy whatever was cheapest on sale regardless of size. My clothes were literally held up with safety pins and I still recall my coworker shouting “Her skirt is PINNED” across the cube farm when she noticed. Sigh.

      1. Observer*

        My clothes were literally held up with safety pins and I still recall my coworker shouting “Her skirt is PINNED” across the cube farm when she noticed. Sigh.

        Maybe your clothes were unfortunate. But her behavior was GROSS.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Seriously, who says that? Some of my nicest shirts have a (hopefully subtle) safety pin to keep the necklines from getting too risqué.

    5. Interview Coming Up*

      Yes! I was not even a party girl (or, I guess, not an outside of the house party girl) because I wore a red, mesh, completely see through lingerie top under a mostly fully buttoned jacket. The only thing peaking out up top was a bit of red lace and it was peaking out with no cleavage. But still…

      It seemed to me, at the time, that it was a bit of flair. Like those magazine photos/ red carpet events with women in blazers, who are basically wearing just a blazer.

      2. EmKay*

        Oh, lord. I did the same exact thing with a burgundy & black lace up bustier. I thought I looked so sharp.

        At least it was retail and not in a stuffy office.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          My friend worked in retail at a clothing store and was written up for *not* having her bra showing at work. They were really pushing for her to buy the lacy bras and camisoles and have them peek over her jacket.

    6. not just you*

      I largely blame all the “transition this piece from day to night” magazine articles for my own early blunders in this area. You are not alone!

    7. pancakes*

      I think lots and lots of people do this, and with the benefit of hindsight it’s sort of adorable. It’s a young people thing, it can be funny, and it’s generally harmless, I think, unless there’s some high-stakes outside client situation. Even then they should probably be given lots of good will. Most young people are hardly well-positioned to invest in a new wardrobe all at once.

    8. Snoozing not schmoozing*

      At one point when our son was little and I was starting to apply for jobs, I had ONE decent dress and jacket outfit for interviews. When I was asked back for a second interview at the job I really wanted, I was thrilled, but then panicked and called my badly underpaid husband at work and said we’d have to stretch the budget for a few clothes right away. Luckily, one of the early chain outlet stores was in our area, so I could expand my job-hunting clothes for a few dollars. Then I got the job, so it was back to that store for work outfits until I got my first paycheck – at about double what I thought I’d earn. For me, it was like winning the lottery, a dream job that paid well!

    9. MdmeAlbertine*

      My local university has a clothing closet specifically for new and used professional/business casual clothing that is free to students.

  24. 15 years older and wiser*

    Ugh, the shame.

    I was a 22 year old summer intern. (I will say, just as background that the person who was originally going to supervise me quit a few days before I started, throwing the department into a bit of chaos and I got assigned to someone who really didn’t want to deal with me. But my behavior was still wrong.) It was a consulting firm and there were staff from Client Company on site observing the company’s activities. I’d been asked a few times to go pick up lunch for the clients. I did it, but was privately annoyed that the client services staff member wasn’t doing it. (I know, I know.) One morning I arrived to an email sent much earlier than I usually come in asking me to go buy breakfast for the clients. I was flustered at feeling rushed, but I did it.

    But later that day, I sent A Long Email to my supervisor saying that I thought I had more to contribute to the company than buying clients food and I really wanted to do more. Me, the summer intern working at a small company of professionals. What an idiot.

    1. Retail Dalliance*

      Okay wait. Did they always promise to reimburse you for these lunches and then actually follow up with that? If that’s the case, then yeah, your behavior seems a little green, but not the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

      However, if they were asking you to foot the bill, as the intern–that’s unconscionable and I fully support you!

      (My idiot moment is also from being 22. What an age haha.)

      1. 15 years older and wiser*

        No! I was always given the corporate card, so I was never expected to pay. I had to take orders, and then drive to the restaurant and bring the food back. (This is before online ordering was a thing.)

  25. Campfire Raccoon*

    Once I took an entire chafing dish of leftover bacon (with catering’s permission) from a company breakfast. It was several pounds of cooked bacon. Everyone saw.

    1. Susan Calvin*

      Amazing

      Like, including the actual dish? How did you get catering to sign off on that?

      1. Campfire Raccoon*

        OK- So I’ve since learned I have food-security issues which explains why I asked for it in the first place. But it’s been my experience hotels/caterers/etc have to throw the leftover food out at the end of the shift anyway. They might be allowed to take it home, but the sheer volume means many don’t. The hosting company paid for the food so if an employee asks for the leftovers, catering will wrap it up to go. And they did. In several gallon-sized ziplocks smeared with smelly, cooling, congealed bacon grease. I put it in my freezer and we ate it for months.

        I also used to take home all the food-trash from a (different) company’s work functions to feed to my chickens. They were a very “green” company so they were supportive- but I imagine there were a few partners who thought I was eating all the garbage.

        1. quill*

          I wonder what chickens think of club sandwiches and tiny bags of chips? (The menu of every lunch and learn I have ever attended…)

          1. Mek*

            They love them!! I was on the Board of an eco-rights nonprofit, and so of course everyone was super excited that I had chickens to feed the leftovers to. Every single meeting would end with someone presenting me a “lunchbox” for my hens.

          2. Campfire Raccoon*

            They LOVE THEM. The only thing they can’t really eat is avocados (it’s actually a fungus on the skin that’s the issue, and I’m always concerned it transfers to the fruit during food prep.)

    2. TechWriter*

      Ha! Username checks out.

      Also sounds like something I would have done. I was 100% That Intern who swooped in as soon as leftover goodies were put in the break room, ate one immediately, and brought one (or more) back to my desk in a napkin for later.

      (To be fair, my non-intern teammates encouraged me, and the food was rarely all eaten anyway. I’d often get another serving at the end of the day. I don’t *think* I ever brought anything home though.)

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I grew up on the east coast and got a job in the Midwest. I provided my company the valuable service of eating the last donut/bagel/cookie on the tray. Real midwesterners would only ever take half of the cookie, and the next person would take half of the remaining half, and so on.

    3. Farm Girl*

      One young coworker started showing up with Tupperware. I think someone finally told him not to take second helpings before everyone had lunch. He asked people to call him whenever there was leftover food. He actually said he didn’t want to move to another building because they didn’t have much food.
      And he shouldn’t have been food insecure-he had a good paying IT job (and some expensive hobbies).

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Once you’ve been there, though, it sticks with you. I still start to feel anxious when I can see the back of my cupboard.

        1. Campfire Raccoon*

          It never goes away, really. Even now, I have a 5-gallon bucket of dried beans in the cupboard. Side note: I was starting to make progress with this just as my boys hit teenagerhood – and then COVID hit. Four teenage boys home all the time can really plow through your reserves.

          Yes, I actually need these five racks of Ramen, Karen.

          1. anonynonnon*

            oof – I have one teenaged son and it wreaks havoc on the grocery budget. I don’t know what I would do with more than one! :)

      2. Maseca*

        Oof, this reminds me of one of mine. I had a pretty prestigious (paid) internship but was still a poor college kid. The company brought in a catered meal once a week. There was always enough food overall, but not always one of every discrete item for everyone — in particular, I was deeply aggrieved when we got Indian food but there were no samosas left by the time I made it through the line. My department was also farthest from the break room where the buffet was set up. So a fellow intern and I started basically stalking the catering: A little before we expected the buffet line to open, we’d go lurk outside the break room like it was Black Friday at Walmart. Just casually standing around, trying to be first in line for food. It was a pretty chill office, but looking back, the optics were still pretty cringe.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Eh, I think that’s pretty expected of college students and interns. I once had to defend the pizza budget for a graduate student event and basically said, “Without the pizza no one will come.”

    4. Zephy*

      I did this with a leftover tray of rice from Pollo Tropical, but the org specifically told the project coordinators we could do that after lunch was served at the community-engagement event we were coordinating projects for. And that job was, legally speaking, a volunteer gig with a stipend, not a wage-earning position, so management knew we were all struggling.

    5. KN*

      do you mind if I ask what earthly plan you may have had for several pounds of already cooked bacon? I just can’t imagine it being useful for anyone that doesn’t live with about a dozen other people and/or animals to eat it fairly quickly…

      1. Campfire Raccoon*

        I froze it. One or two pieces a day for me/the hubs and it lasted forever.

        Now I have teenage boys and we go through a Costco-sized bag of bacon bits every two weeks. That bag also stays in the freezer.

    6. DrRat*

      Honestly, I can’t stand food waste and would have been totally supportive of you!

      I used to speak at educational presentations sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and there was always SO MUCH EXTRA FOOD that would get thrown away. I finally told them I was taking it to our poorer patients and would pack it up and take it to an apartment complex where many of them lived and give it away afterwards. It was a big hit…when you’re broke and sick, gourmet sandwiches, chips, and big cookies make a big difference.

    7. pancakes*

      This is iconic! And yeah, user name checks out. It would’ve been silly for all that to go to waste, it might as well have gone to a loving home.

  26. CW*

    While I was on a phone interview about 4 years ago, I mistakenly left a basketball game on even though my TV was on mute. I thought I could contain myself, but during the last 5 minutes of the interview, something happened during the game that made me shout “WOOOOO!” into the phone. The interviewer made no remark, but I caught myself almost immediately and was mortified.

    Lesson learned. Never watch sports during an interview, even with the TV on mute. Even thought I should have known better.

      1. CW*

        No I didn’t. I am pretty sure that was a factor, but I was unemployed at the time and had many other rejections that I can’t judge why I was rejected based on that incident alone.

    2. Hats Are Great*

      I recently had a zoom interview where the interviewer and I happened to live in the same city (though the job was not in our city), and he had the local news on mute in the background, with the captions on, and it was about a very salacious local murder story. It was soooooooo distracting. I really wanted to know the latest developments, and with the screen right behind his shoulder popping up words ….

      1. As per Elaine*

        Oh gosh. I would’ve had to ask the interviewer to turn the TV off. I have a hard time even in restaurants with TVs — I would much rather pay attention to my family/friends than whatever random show is going, but the words and moving pictures will catch my attention regardless.

    3. Employee of the Bearimy*

      Oh, this reminds me of recently (!!!) when I was taking a conference call in my car on speaker during my commute, and another driver almost hit me while merging unsafely. I’m so embarrassed to admit that I yelled “COME ON!” at the other driver while my boss was talking.

  27. Sonic*

    In college when a coworker shared in a group setting that his sister was pregnant. My knee-jerk reaction was asking in front of the group if she was married. I could immediately feel that this was the wrong question to ask. My boss later pulled me aside in private and explained that I needed to work on being respectful to all of my coworkers.

    1. This is a name, I guess*

      Awww. This is such a typical college foot-in-mouth. Between the vestiges of (likely abstinence-only) high school sex, the completely diferrent context of a pregnancy to a college student, and the lack of experience with pregnant peers, this is so totally understandable…and still embarrassing.

      Stuff like this is exactly why we really can’t act like 19 year olds are fully formed adults, even though they legally are.

    2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      My boss announced her sister was pregnant in a staff meeting. “Im going to be an aunt.”
      My coworker, (also under this boss) is she married?
      It was pretty shocking first thing to ask.
      But you are not alone and people get over it.

    3. Mek*

      I was at a work party, one coworker conspicuously not drinking a beer. Someone asked her if she was pregnant, she confirmed, and they said “what are you going to do?!”

      Umm, have a baby? She was married and got pregnant on purpose (and told them so!)

      1. Hats Are Great*

        I was 35, married, and pregnant on purpose and obviously delighted about it, and multiple people asked me, “Are you going to keep it?” or “Was this planned?” I think people’s brains just kind-of turn off sometimes.

        1. Emmy Noether*

          I also got the “was it planned?” question when i was 33 and married. I laughed, said that that was kind of a personal question, no? But that yes, I got pregnant on purpose. I don’t hold it against the guy who asked, but I hope he learned from it.

      2. This is a name, I guess*

        It’s rude to ask, but it’s also rude to assume that all pregnancies are wanted and planned.

      3. Galadriel's Garden*

        Ha, I’m finally transitioning out of the time of my life where someone announcing they’re pregnant is a minefield fraught with social complications – most of the women I know who are or have recently been pregnant did so intentionally, which is a relief following that late-20s/early-3os situation where you would have to do quick mental calculus with what you knew about that person to gauge how to react, because “Oh!” and “Ohhhhh” are two *very* different things.

    4. Nameless in Customer Service*

      Oh huh. I once saw that happen at work — coworker #1 said “I’m going to be an aunt!” coworker #2 said, “is your sister married?” — and I thought #2 was being rude for demographic reasons. It’s a bit of a relief to think he was maybe just clueless.

      1. Lucy Skywalker*

        Let me guess: coworker #1 is a woman of color and coworker #2 is a white man.

    5. Chilipepper Attitude*

      In college, a pretty conservative college, everyone was sharing how long their parents had been married. Most were in the 25 to 35-year range. My parents had not been married as long as most of them but I could not remember the exact number so I did the math out loud: let’s see, my parents were married one year off from my age, I’m 18, so that means they have been married just 17 years. Dead silence. I was like, wow, everyone is so shocked that my parents have not been married that long!

      I did not realize until a year or more later that I did the math backward for some reason. They were married one year BEFORE I was born, not one year AFTER.

    6. DrRat*

      Ugh, I remember being in college and working at a restaurant many years ago. A coworker asked if I had kids and I automatically said, “No! I’m not even married!” I had no understanding at the time that in his culture, having a child without being married was common so I’m sure I absolutely came off as Snotty White Girl without intending to.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        Not work related, but this reminds me of a cultural misunderstanding I experienced: my BIL’s wife is Korean, and she once excitedly told us she had a new nephew. We expressed surprise, as we hadn’t known her brother was going to be a father! She, confused, answered “no, no, he isn’t even married!”. Made us laugh*. Turns out “nephew” has a larger definition in Korean and it’s her (married) cousin’s child, not her brother’s.

        *both my husband and I were born to unwed parents. It’s not a novel concept in our world, and carries no stigma. I was very tempted to tease her about how conception worked, but refrained.

  28. SO anon for this*

    Once upon a time not that long ago I was a consultant at an IT vendor solving a specific kind of problem for large enterprise customers. Deploying our product was a bit of an ordeal because it was highly customizable, but also much more powerful than the out-of-the-box solution for this problem some other vendors provided.

    Given this background, you might see why I have occasionally referred to us as “the Mercedes of [niche] software” which is normally not a controversial thing to say – except that one time, in a project kick-off with one of Mercedes’ biggest competitors. Oops.

    1. Filosofickle*

      Decades ago I read about a sales person who described his wares as “the Cadillac of parts”…to a Lincoln dealer. Did not get the deal. Always stuck with me!

      1. SO anon for this*

        There’s a reason I only work in post-sales… (there’s also the fact that personally I’d pick a Mercedes over a BMW any day of the week)

        1. BMW fan*

          It’s good that Mercedes has people who feel the way you do or they wouldn’t have any customers!

  29. Leah*

    Late 90s. Nine months pregnant in a good old boys company where I did most of the work but got overlooked for promotion because I was female. They hired a man to take the job I wanted but I had to train him. And he was dumb. Dumb, dumb. Dumb. We sat in cubicles and he would constantly yell for me when he got stuck and I’d have to heave my pregnant self up and go over to see what he needed. One day I’d had enough and yelled, “If you need me, get your ass up and come to my cubicle and address me respectfully.” Cue the applause from surrounding cubicles. I was embarrassed but it felt great at the time.

      1. Jenna*

        First job out of college was for the corporate HQ of a manufacturing plant. First 6weeks required shadowing in the plant, but for safety we couldn’t do a whole lot. I would learn the processes, help label inventory, etc. Guys on the steel spitters would smoke as they worked (it was legal then) and I was rude and a little standoffish. I hated cigarette smoke.

        Looking back I’m mortified that I looked down on these dedicated workers who were experts at their job, especially when I was the visitor in their space.

    3. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      Mid may 2022, my niece is currently training a young man who took her old position. Box of rocks dumb about their job, genius level at playing politics.
      After ignoring her instructions, provides a completely wrong final product at the end of the day.
      She goes over everything wrong with it and redoes it with him.
      Next morning, he she gives him his next assignment. She starts explaining what he needs to do. He tells her, “now that you’ve had some time to reflect, I’m sure you want to put the past behind us and start fresh.”
      Wtf?

  30. Hills to Die On*

    Well I worked for a drycleaners when I was about age 20 or so and I messed something up. My boss was laying into me about it and I got mad. Told him ‘Don’t patronize me, you are not my father.’ Also, he was not actually patronizing me in the first place. Regardless, I was fired on the spot. Mortifying.

  31. Night Owl*

    Oof, I’ve got some good ones that serve as good reasons to think twice before promoting someone into management when they only have a year or two of professional experience. I was way too into trying to be friends with my subordinates, which led to a) getting high with them and b) getting super drunk at a work event and sharing details of my (somewhat unconventional) sex life. Everyone thought it was hilarious and nothing came of it, but in retrospect I was an HR nightmare and I still cringe about it years later.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      AAM got a letter from someone writing that new person, maybe manager level was the manager at an old company. They would drink in oarking lit and bitch about the place. OP was worried new hire would recognize her and thinks shes unprofessional. AAM and commentariat agreed manager was probably more mortified by the past. And probably wouldn’t remember her specifically!

  32. learnedthehardway*

    It may not have been the most professional thing, but it was mildly amusing – I wrote my project update in the style of a cliffhanger story, along the lines of “In our latest episode, our heroes bravely sallied forth…” and ending with, “What will happen to our heroes next? Stay tuned to find out if Bob survives the project implementation!”

    1. Lab Boss*

      Depending on how high up the chain that report was going, and what kind of relationship you have with the target audience, I think that’s absolutely appropriate and hilarious.

        1. Poodle hair*

          My mom was formerly a VP at a major telecomms company. One of her teams in another city hit some major milestones, so she flew there and recited to them an epic poem in the style of Gilgamesh which she had written to celebrate their success.

    3. Nannerdoodle*

      If I read a project update like that, I’d wish the rest would continue the story the same way.

    4. ferrina*

      Ooh, I did some interesting communications like this in my early 20s. Greatest highlight was when I was tasked with getting employees to take the Employee Satisfaction Survey. I could see how many people had taken the survey, but not who. So I’d blast all staff emails…..with poems. I started with haikus and couplets, and threatened to move into limericks if we didn’t have 90% of the staff take the survey by Friday.

      Amazingly enough, we hit 90% participation and some people still requested the limerick!

    6. Esmae*

      I used to write all my program recaps as directed, passive voice and all, but include things like “several crayons were eaten” and “a naked crayon was discovered.” I had to entertain myself somehow!

    7. Purple Cat*

      I actually love this. And you probably got more people to read them than you otherwise would have.

    8. Raven*

      Honestly, this would be totally fine in some offices. I hope people responded to it well!

    9. Gumby*

      I would love that. As long as it is only for internal use.

      I am, from time to time, put in charge of meeting minutes for our projects. The technical content of the meetings is usually way over my head. So I write the notes and run them past other people who were in the meeting before sending them to the government customer.

      I occasionally note things like “[outside consultant] thinks the kick-off slide deck contains a ‘horribly stupid’ illustration… [Gumby] is in awe at the sheer tact on display.” I add them because they amuse me and keep me paying attention in a meeting. However, I always intend to re-word or remove them before submitting the minutes officially. I also kind of expect the co-workers who review the minutes before I send them to say something if anything inappropriate is about to slip through! But one of my side comments (not the tact one) once made it into the draft we submitted and the customer sent it back for fixing which was a bit cringe-inducing.

      1. F.M.*

        Ha! This is like when my meticulously polished prospectus was finally sent out to the committee that I would be defending it to, in grad school, after several rounds of edits, review, and so forth, from both of my advisors, peers, et cetera.

        …and the very first footnote was somehow still one that basically said “Do I actually need to cite evidence of , or can I just leave it be because we all know it’s true?”

        No one even called me out on it during the defense.

    10. Little Miss Sunshine*

      I love this idea. Great way to see if anyone is actually reading the updates you publish. :)

  33. desk platypus*

    A coworker and I were pretty close friends since we were closer in age range, mid 20s compared to our mostly middle aged and up coworkers, and had similar hobbies so we often ended up chatting much more casually around each other. Part of that was often teasing and casually roasting each other. One day he gave me a joking reprimand while I stood in front on his desk (in a very visual area) and without thinking I flipped him the double bird. I turned to walk away in a fake huff and see one of the older managers walking my way looking very much like she was trying to look like she hadn’t just seen what I did. I think I looked so shamed she never brought it up and I was never disciplined for it but I sure never did it again.

  34. ThatGirl*

    I had a brief 8-month stint working at an in-store Starbucks, and mostly I think I was a good, cheerful, friendly employee. But there was one customer who requested a caramel macchiato. And I think the store standard was for 1/2″ of foam on top, but my dumb brain misinterpreted how big 1/2″ is. So I gave her like, 1 1/2″ of foam. She rightfully asked for more steamed milk, and I gave her some but also said something like “well if you want more milk you should really just order a latte” or something snide like that.

    And she left, but apparently complained about me, so my manager had to “re-train” me on how to make a macchiato. And it STILL took me awhile to realize my dumb brain had confused how big 1/2″ is.

    I should note that I was 27 and between professional jobs at that point, not a teenager.

    1. GythaOgden*

      I did a stint behind a bar for a wedding with zero training in mixing drinks. It was an awful night, I was pulled off the bar an hour in and cleared tables for the rest of the night and unsurprisingly I didn’t get asked back. I got paid, obviously, but it was embarrassing even going back to pick up the wage packet.

      Ten years later my husband and I were at a works do and I bought a cocktail. It was undrinkable. I totally understood and made no complaint — It was definitely one of those ‘what goes around, comes around’ moments. I mean, it was the restaurant’s fault for not training me, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to complain about my own drink.

  35. Lab Boss*

    Mortifying and totally my fault: When I was fairly new as a lab tech we were doing some testing on raw eggs. When we were all done we still had a dozen or so unused eggs and in a flash of brilliance decided to make science Easter eggs- boil them on a hot plate and use some of the various SUPER HAZARDOUS chemical stains we had sitting around to color them. We even went to other departments to ask to borrow a few stains we didn’t have in stock, who absolutely correctly reported what we were doing to our management. There weren’t any real consequences beyond a firm talking-to, but I still cringe and wonder what the heck we were thinking.

          1. Lab Boss*

            No, we were going to make them, take some pictures, and throw them out with the rest of the egg waste. They were in the lab so there was zero chance of someone coming along and thinking they were for eating- we were just being childish and planning to waste expensive chemicals.

  36. BeeBoo*

    At my first office job, one winter I decided to wear ugg-like boots every day. My supervisor gently pulled me aside and told me those weren’t appropriate shoes for our business-attire office. I responded “I have to stand sometimes and these are comfortable. Either I wear the shoes I want, or I don’t do any work that involves standing.” I then sat down and refused to do any work that required me to move for rest of the day.

    To this day I can’t believe I wasn’t fired on the spot. Luckily other coworkers took me out that evening and explained why my response was not ok!

    1. Ryo Bakura*

      TBF, why the hell should anyone have to wear “nice” shoes if it’s winter and you work in an office? Business casual dress codes are so dumb.

      1. KateM*

        You would just want shoes, I think. Wear winter boots all day and you’ll feel like you have cooked feet.

    2. Ali + Nino*

      OMG! All us first-time employees choosing our hills to die on, smh.
      The solution to this, which you’ve probably already figured out, is to wear your Uggs to the office, and change into more “office-y” shoes that you keep in a drawer or something once you arrive.

    4. T. Boone Pickens*

      I did this as well with Ugg slippers. When called out for it, I said they were European driving loafers. Amazingly, that worked haha.

  37. FormerAmazonian*

    First salaried job out of college and I lived close (5-7 minute drive) to the office, in an apartment complex thay had a pool and a small gym. I got in the habit of going home to work out over lunch – in itself not a problem, but 1) I wouldn’t shower before going back to the office so I’d show back up with obviously sweaty hair and who knows how I smelled, and 2) I stretched my workouts longer and longer leading to my sometimes taking 2(!!) Hour lunch breaks (I thought this was okay since I was coming in very early, but a lot of my team didn’t come in until 8 or 9 and didn’t realize I was in at 6). Sometimes in the summer I’d go home to lay out by the pool and swim, and come back chlorinated.

    I’m mortified thinking about it! Post covid I would still sometimes work out over lunch but 1) I cleared any longer breaks with my boss and made sure it was okay, and 2) I left time to shower afterwards!!

  38. Chocoholic*

    Back when I was first out of school I had an interview with an insurance company. It would have been a great job. The interviewer asked me something about how did I handle stress, and my answer…”heavy drinking.” I don’t even know why I said that, I’ve never been a huge drinker. I was trying to be funny I guess. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

    1. quill*

      Had a job interview when they asked me what my greatest weakness was and I said stubbornness.

      I still got the job, but…

      1. Thunderingly*

        Hah! I once said my greatest weakness was being disorganized and still got the job!

    2. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

      In my first interview after college I answered “what is your biggest weakness?” with “I have difficulty following directions”.

      Needless to say, I didn’t get a call back.

    3. DrRat*

      During an interview for a part time in college, I was asked what my top 3 priorities were. I said, quite honestly: 1. Family 2. School and 3. Work. SMH at how clueless I was. The bright side is that I didn’t get hired, as I found out later the manager was a bully and everyone quit pretty quickly at that place.

    4. Be kind, rewind*

      These are my favorite kind of embarrassing stories! Someone says something completely inappropriate and not even true to their own thoughts in an attempt at humor or social lubricant.

  39. ChemistryChick*

    Oh lord. Ok. Here goes. I’ll preface this by saying I was in my early 2os and never had anyone to mentor me about professionalism until I found this site. Which was obviously well after this incident.

    Landed my “dream job” and I knew a fair amount of the people I’d be working with in a relaxed environment. It was my first day and my first team meeting. Boss introduces me to the team and mentions my connection to two of my male co-workers. For reasons I still don’t understand, I blurted out “Nah, I don’t know these ugly bastards.” Cue the crickets and awkward silence.

    Pretty sure my face is beet red just typing this. Ugggghhhh so cringe, so terrible, so bad.

      1. ChemistryChick*

        I knooooooow. I just want to curl into a ball and hide just thinking about it. Believe it or not, I’m now a rockstar at this job with constant praise from my supervisors and upper management.

        1. Hills to Die On*

          I do believe it! I only shared one story but I have SO many and I have managed to succeed. Good thing we are not our mistakes. :)

          1. Zelda*

            “Good thing we are not our mistakes. ”

            This deserves to be the headline for Mortification Week.

  40. This sounds familiar. . .*

    25 years ago I worked for a non-profit. I was the IT person back then when internet and e-mail was a much simpler affair. There was one lady in the organization (think 10 people) that no one, and I mean NO ONE, liked. She was rude and obnoxious and had no inner filter at all. She was completely oblivious as to how much people disliked her. She left her paystub on the copier once and someone saw it. That made the situation even worse because all she did was surf the internet and e-mail her kids all day. Her department had three people and they were all trying to “out lazy” each other because one got sick of picking up the slack and refused, etc. When word of her paystub spread people were furious, so I installed Net Nanny on her computer and blocked EVERYTHING. Remember, this was 25 years ago, this department didn’t need internet to function. When she came to me to complain, I told her it was a new policy within the organization. Not one of my proudest moments, but we all loved watching her try to entertain herself all day. She may have actually gotten some work done.

      1. This sounds familiar. . .*

        LOL!!! Even my boss knew that I did it, so everyone played the game. In fact, he thought it was brilliant. We all got such a kick out of her behavior afterward.

  41. CatCat*

    I was 18 and trying to get any job. I had an interview at Giant Office Supply Store. The manager asked, “Why do you want to work at Giant Office Supply Store?” I totally blanked. I mean, why? I felt like “money” was not the right answer, but I had no answer otherwise. I couldn’t think of anything and then just awkwardly said, “I… just… like… office supplies.” Then commented about various supplies I liked including pens and fancy notepads.

    Didn’t get the job.

    1. Susan Calvin*

      I legit don’t understand how that wasn’t the best possible answer, some people can’t be pleased

    2. t-vex*

      I mean, that’s a pretty dumb question to ask a teenager. There’s no other possible reason than “needs money,” what answer could they possibly be expecting?

      1. quill*

        It’s either needs money or needs job experience.

        Why here? Well, you were hiring and the job didn’t involve working with superheated oil…

        1. Luna*

          Isn’t that one of the main reasons most people work any job? You are willing to pay money based on work performed over the course of a day.

    3. JSN*

      Really tho, that’s not unprofessional on your end. Even at my age now (40s) I would probably say something very similar lol. I truly don’t understand why hiring managers ask those types of questions to teens who are obviously going for their first job. Most likely, this place won’t be your career and I don’t know what answer they’re looking for besides “money”. Why else do we all go to work?

    4. Jellyfish*

      Ha, I had a very similar experience at Giant Pet Supply Store. I needed a job, and it seemed better to run a cash register at a place where I could occasionally pet dogs than one where I couldn’t.
      The interviewer asked why I wanted to work there and I said, “Because I love pets!” She stared at me, obviously waiting for more, but that was all I had. It was a minimum wage job and I was 17 years old. What did she expect?

      Anyway, I got a job at a sandwich shop where there were no dogs to pet.

      1. D. B.*

        Truly, one thing I always love about going to pet supply stores is how the kids behind the cash register are usually obvious pet lovers and seem so happy to be there, cooing over random people’s dogs.

        1. Lady Luck*

          One of my school friends ended up working in a pet store years later, and of course she was always playing with and showing off the animals. Well, one day I went in and she had one of the snakes wrapped around her ponytail and sitting on her head. That was probably the funniest sight I saw there lol.

      2. Tina Belcher's Less Cool Sister*

        I feel like that’s the best answer you possibly could have given! What did they want to hear, “I love pets AND it’s my life dream to spend all day stocking shelves and running the cash register”???

    5. Ana Gram*

      I think that’s a really good answer, actually. But I genuinely love office supplies!

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Ha, me too. I had to cull a bunch when I moved and it was physically painful to give up some of my office supplies.

        1. KayDeeAye*

          I – genuinely and sincerely – have a passion for pens and sticky notes. I don’t indulge that passion that often because how many pens and different sizes of sticky notes does one person need? But if I worked at an office supply store where I got a nice employee discount, I would be *awash* in pens and sticky notes.

    6. Here we go again*

      Don’t feel bad. It’s a stupid question. Doesn’t everyone work for money?

    7. Shira VonDoom*

      I mean, when my current job, a law firm, asked me that, I told them I wanted to keep my cats in the style to which they’re accustomed. In those exact words.

      luckily they’re all animal lovers, LOL

    8. Interviewing memories*

      This reminds me of my most embarrassing interview EVER, at 16 years old. The question: What’s you’re biggest weakness?

      What 16yr old thinks they have a weakness? I sat in silence for what felt like 10 minutes, probably only 1 or 2 before the interviewer moved on. Did not get the job.

      1. DrRat*

        Yeah, when I think about nightmare colleagues and managers I have had, I am pretty sure none of them answered the question with the truth. “I’m an alcoholic”, “I’m incredibly lazy”, “I will take offense at anything anyone ever says and spend 90% of my work time waging war over complete nonsense”. They probably gave answers like “Well, sometimes I work too hard.”

      2. Wee wee wee*

        You handled it better than I did when I was in my late 20s. I was being interviewed to work as a creative with a public relations firm.

        When one of the interviewers asked my greatest weakness, I laughed. I thought it was ridiculous that employers were still asking that question, as everyone knew no one would answer it truthfully! Then I just sat and looked at them and finally said “I don’t know what to say.”

        After I got home, I phoned to withdraw my application. This happened decades ago and employers are still asking this ridiculous question.

    9. Observer*

      I keep on saying this – you weren’t unprofessional, the interviewer. And in a way that actually matters. Because the point of asking questions is to get answers that might have a chance of giving insight to whether you would be a fit for the job. What were they expecting you to say? What could have said that would have helped them figure out whether you were any good?

    10. Macaroni Penguin*

      Well, I would have been impressed as a hiring manager.

      As a teenager, I once gave money as the reason that I wanted to work at a Giant Pet Store. I think my actual answer was, “Money. I am passionate about affording food. Plus I like animals. ” I did not get the job. So, your answer was better than mine.

    12. LadyA*

      Agree with so many other commenters–what the hell else are you supposed to say? That’s like in The Santaland Diaries where David Sedaris loses out on a job at UPS because all he could think to say about why he wanted to work there was “I like the brown uniforms.”
      I legit love office supplies, but know that working at a store like that would be problematic for me!

  42. Anonosaur for this one*

    I worked at a sex store. Our busiest day was Valentines Day. We only had 6 employees, including the manager, and our tiny store could easily break $30K in sales on V Day. My store manager at the time sucked. Didn’t care, wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t answer her phone, would just not show up randomly. Thankfully we had a good assistant manager who helped keep things running, but the main manager’s laziness made our lives hard.

    Valentine’s Day rolls around. No one is allowed to take time off and everyone is working their rear end’s off. Around 1:30, no one can find the manager. We needed overrides and approvals and just another set of hands, and she’s nowhere to be found. Finally, at 5:30 she shows up. Turns out she wanted to have a romantic lunch with her partner so she left us to drown. I waited until I got to the back room, then looked her straight in the eye and told her that she was a C U next tuesday for what she did, and would never have any credibility with me for as long as I still worked there.

    I somehow managed not to be fired or even written up for what I said, since she’d have to explain the situation and another employee witnessed it who was also pissed about her not pulling her weight. The store manager left 4 months later after upper management finally noticed she wasn’t doing any of her job duties.

  43. LT*

    Last job, part of my responsibility was responding to emergency events (in a nonmedical capacity). I had to log our contractors into a system, but we were also so far behind on checking in with contractors that we had assigned to various offsite locations, so a team member was asking me to pick up the phone and check in with people. However my team lead had tasked me with logging people and their assigned locations into the system, so I said to the teammate over and over “sorry I can’t right now” and he kept egging me on asking “why not?” “pick up the phone” “you need to call the list” until finally I shouted “I CAN’T. I’M BUSY MAKING SURE WE DON’T LOSE TRACK OF ASSIGNMENTS”
    Of course he didn’t take it well and yet I was the one who ended up in tears. Anyways that job is behind me now and now when I look at job opportunities within my industry, I pay attention to whether emergency response is part of the duties.

    1. LT*

      Another instance was for my first job out of college. I was in a cafeteria with a manager who’s 2 levels above me, and I offer to pay for lunch. Cue the awkwardness at her being treated by someone two levels below her, and me thinking “what’s wrong? I thought I was doing a nice thing”

      As if it weren’t bad enough I think I later on apologized to her and said I wouldn’t do it again. Yes, I was young, and this was before I was introduced to AAM.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Honestly, the awkwardness was on her there! That’s definitely something that a senior person should feel OK about smoothing out for a junior person.

        1. Not a Dr*

          Agreed! If someone new to the workforce offered that to me I would just say something like “Thank you but I am happy to treat you.” Or if I couldn’t afford that maybe an offer of going splitz. But really – I supervise college kids. You have to expect to have conversations about things like that.

    2. Meganly*

      I’d be pretty annoyed too! All that time he spent pestering you could have been spent on check-in calls.

  44. Sarah in CA*

    After HS graduation, I got a job at a pizza place. It was a great place, owners worked there, everyone close friends, etc…

    Fast foward to a couple years later, I was not 21 quite yet so I couldn’t do anything with alcohol and that was the only thing holding me back from officially being made and paid as shift manager.

    Well, I guess they couldn’t wait anymore and hired someone new who rubbed me all the wrong ways. After a few months, I got upset over something trivial and complained to one of the owners, I was just so mad and jealous she had the job I wanted. It was not a good scene in the back room.

    I quit shortly after that to go to Taco Bell as assistant manager, and the two months there are a whole other adventure!

  45. Jackalope*

    I was working for a conservative religious nonprofit training a bunch of short-term volunteers and wore a t-shirt with a deliberately provocative feminist slogan. In retrospect it may have been at least partly a subconscious rebellion against the conservative culture of the organization which I was NOT a good fit for (in that way; my actual work was good), but now I cringe to imagine the fact that I wore that to the training instead of a plain t-shirt or something with the company logo.

    I was also introverted and had a hard time starting off with a new group of volunteers (by the time they finished I was fine, but I HATED having to meet so many new people). At the beginning of working with one group I was emotionally exhausted, having just finished up with another group (and this involved living in an apartment with the short-term group for a month with no breaks from them so it was emotionally intense), and was downright surly when they tried to ask basic getting to know me questions. At the end of the month with that second group, one of them shared with me, “I really grew to like you. It just goes to show that first impressions aren’t everything!” Which sounds harsh, but given how I started off working with them was very fair. (Realizing that more of my required job was working with short-term volunteers than I’d thought was one reason I chose to leave; not my best skill set.)

  46. Adam V*

    I got an email from a recruiter – at my corporate email address. I responded very curtly with something along the lines of “not only am I not looking for a job, but I would never use a recruiter who’s so oblivious that they’d email me *at my current job* to ask me if I was looking for a new one.”

    I sent it and felt great for about 15 minutes. Then I realized that if I ever *was* looking for a new job, this recruiting agency probably had me in their books as “difficult to work with”, if not blacklisted altogether.

    Fortunately I’m still at the same company and very happy here :)

    1. ScruffyInternHerder*

      I don’t see a lot wrong with this though, I’ve responded similarly in kind with “….and I’d appreciate you not contacting me via my corporate email account to inquire as to whether I’d be open to a new company. IT sees everything.”

      1. Adam V*

        Oh, definitely, telling them not to contact me via my corporate email was okay. It’s when I called them names that I think I crossed the line into “unprofessional”, mainly because I think I went a bit further than “oblivious” in my response.

    2. Observer*

      Actually, if the agency is any good, it would be the RECRUITER that would be in trouble. Because you are right – that was a ridiculous thing for any recruiter to do. Like beyond rookie mistake.

    3. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

      For what it’s worth, there are at least 8,476 different agencies in the US. Heck, there might be that many in each state. There are even agencies that seem to specialize in finding people for other agencies. (I’m currently employed by one of those and I advise everyone I know to avoid the situation. It’s just a logistical nightmare.)

  47. Eggplant emoji*

    I used to work for a big company that sells firewalls and software for managing firewalls, among other things. Once spent all morning setting up a new firewall in our test environment (not actually protecting anything, just as a sample to test out the management software). I’m not sure why I was assigned to do that, I’d never actually worked with a physical device before, but I guess it was good experience. This particular model is notoriously difficult to configure. When I took a break for lunch, a teammate asked me how it was going in the server room. I was very frustrated at that point, so I answered with a joke: “Instructions unclear, got dick stuck in firewall.”

    I got a very startled laugh in response. The office culture was very laid back and a little crass already (Which is its own problem) so I guess I thought it was in line with the humor already? As added context, I’m a cis woman, this was my first job out of college, and I definitely projected an air of sheltered innocence, so this joke was quite out of the blue for me.

    The person I told it to thought it was hilarious, but in hindsight I’m mortified that I thought that was okay.

    1. Hills to Die On*

      and now my coworkers are wondering what I am giggling at while I duck down in my cubicle…

    2. Meow*

      As another woman who has worked in tech with a culture like this before… you can’t win. If you don’t participate in the tech bro dick jokes, then you get labeled as having a stick up your butt and no one wants to work with you. But if you participate, you’re the one being unprofessional and out of character. It’s so hard to find the right balance.

      1. Eggplant emoji*

        Oh big mood. I alternated between trying to be “one of the guys” and leaning into the uptightness, like, “Yep you’re right I’m no fun, now can you please stop that?” Heh

  48. the+cat's+ass*

    I worked in a bakery in HS and got into a lemon pie filling slinging match with another worker when we were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen. There was LPF on the ceiling. Never really got that cleaned up. Boss just sighed.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      Omg. I just flashed back to whipped cream fights at the ice cream shop I worked at in college! (We did clean it all up.)

    2. IndustriousLabRat*

      Ahhhh this reminds me of Dough Ball Baseball… Picture this:

      Restaurant job during college, Italian brick oven, semi-open kitchen, small Northeast regional chain. Quite respectable food, actually. One of my line duties was baking rolls. They weren’t par-baked at all; just trays of dough balls. The oven was at one end of a long corridor that led to the dish pit. Dishie and I had a game where if I dropped one of the raw balls, I’d call out “INCOMING!”, launch it down the corridor, and he’d grab the nearest large utensil and take a swing at it. Until the day he grabbed a giant wire whisk. And connected with enough force to hit it out of the park- except that it was raw dough. And a whisk- imagine dozens of tiny, sticky shards of dough exploding everywhere, and sticking to every surface in their path.

      Including the BOH manager, who had just come around the corner. The look on his face. Indescribable mix of horror, despair, anger, and honestly just trying not to laugh at us idiots.

      I can’t believe that neither of us were fired; but then again, the only person I ever saw fired from that place was the guy who no call no showed because he was in lockup for punching a police horse at a baseball riot. And it took them multiple missed shifts before they pulled the plug. Sox/Yanks series were EXPLOSIVE in their potential for violence back then.

      But not, apparently, as explosive as high-velocity bread dough hitting an industrial sized wire whisk.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        This sentence just got better and better:

        “because he was in lockup (okay) for punching (okay) a police horse (wtf??) at a baseball riot (WTF??!!)”

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I’ve heard of punching police officers before, but I can’t even picture how one would punch a horse (at least without getting bitten or kicked).

    3. GammaGirl1908*

      I love this because I often send friends a text that says LFP, but it means that we’re supposed to meet shortly, and I’m looking for parking.

      Also HEEEEEE at the police horse. I mean, wow.

    4. Bagpuss*

      Not me, but my uncle had a jb in a bakery when he was student, in the early 1960s, and got fired after the boss walked in on a jam-duel between him and a coworker. Apparently you put the jam into jam doughnuts with a large syringe, and warm, syringe -propelled jam can be fired quite a long distance. And then gets eveywhere…

    5. Iroqdemic*

      OK this is the most delightful thread of teenage part time food service job shenanigans. LPF to the baseball riot- it has it ALL!

  49. Karak*

    I said “fuck” in the interview for a semi-professional customer facing role.

    I got hired!! When my boss brought this up I was HORRIFIED. He said, “well, you seemed fun, so I thought why not?”

  50. Ingrid*

    My first professional job out of college, I worked at a truly terrible place that was so soul-sucking and horrific I really believe I could write a book about it. I hated working there and was desperate to find anything that would give me even a small amount of joy. Almost everyone else working there was also a fresh grad (because they couldn’t retain employees). My team concocted an idea to bring my bread machine into work and bake fresh bread every day. I don’t know why we thought this was ok. But there we were, with my bread machine plugged in in its own cubicle. We’d mix up the ingredients and the bread would bake, but because it was an open office floor plan, the entire building would smell like fresh baked bread. We didn’t share. We’d just pull the bread out, slice it, slather it with butter and chomp away in full view of everyone. One time, the bread machine caused a shortage along the entire row of outlets and caused everyone’s computers to die. These were all graphic designers. Anything unsaved was totally lost and we were NOT popular.

    We never used the bread machine again.

    1. Spreadsheets and Books*

      This story is amazing, and I truly wish I had the balls to bring a bread machine to work. I’d also have to carry it on the bus and the subway to get it there, so it would be quite an adventure.

    2. wheeeee*

      In the late 90s I worked for a place with notably similar dynamics (I was the oldest. At 29. I lasted less than a year) and if we had thought of this we would totally have done it. Management (hah!) would have thought it added to their “street cred” – which some industry rag had described the company as having and which they referred to frequently. We were all super unprofessional (the hook-ups! the after-hours absinthe in the office! the dramatic readings of the terrible content we were formatting!) but man that place sucked. I salute your genius bread-making brainstorm.

    4. Ina Lummick*

      A good benefit of working for a company in food r&do, we have a pilot bakery and we get to take home fresh baked bread when it’s flour testing season!!!(Sometimes pastries too!)

    5. Gumby*

      I once worked someplace where we did the same. Except the bread machine was in the kitchen, the bread was shared with anyone who wanted any (small 15-person office), and the main ‘baker’ was the director (highest ranked person in that office). Mid-afternoon snacks of fresh-baked bread are glorious.

  51. Meow*

    That makeup one didn’t really sound so bad to me until they mentioned the hair straightener!

    Mine probably isn’t that bad, but I’ve been embarrassed about this my entire career, so maybe this is my opportunity to confess and forget.

    I was an intern at a financial firm that was pretty prestigious for our small town. One day I received an invitation to a meeting from someone I didn’t know, “on behalf of” someone else I didn’t know. Now, anyone with a shred of business sense would immediately understand that this must be the executive assistant for someone important, likely a C-level executive. Even I had a small inkling that must be the case… and yet, I emailed the exec himself, not his assistant, with a curt, “What is this meeting for?”

    He responded kindly that he was inviting all the interns to lunch to get feedback about the intern program, but every time I see a letter here complaining about interns being rude or not following business etiquette, I think about my younger self and cringe.

    1. Re*

      Hopefully next time his assistant put the purpose of the meeting in the invite … you know, like professionals do.

      1. Meow*

        Yeah there was that. It’s probably a good thing I was a clueless intern, because if the CXO’s assistant sent me a mystery meeting invite now, I’d probably be terrified!

        1. pandop*

          I was so glad the other day that the message on my voicemail from the GP surgery asking me to call them also included the phrase ‘it’s nothing to worry about’

    2. Spicy Tuna*

      I had a job once where I was part of a very small team. Our work area was adjacent to a larger team, so we had a lot of opportunity to interact / socialize / share copier time with the other team. The other team was very insular and not particularly friendly towards me. There was a big storm in the forecast and all of us on the floor were talking about it. One woman on the other team seemed particularly concerned. I had found a good article on weather.com about the forecast and I forwarded it to her. She seemed really confused and actually came to my office to say, “did you mean to send this to me”. I mean, she was totally offended! I was baffled at how that could have caused offense!

  52. anonymous73*

    A few jobs ago I was working as a Business Analyst. I had written the requirements for a new training application we had built and was very involved in the entire process from start to finish, so I knew the application like the back of my hand. I was offered an Application Support Specialist role and not really given a choice in the matter (I didn’t want to change roles). Anyway, once we launched the application, I had 1 help desk analyst and myself working from the queue of tickets. We consistently had 200 + tickets in there and I was working a ton of extra hours to keep it from getting worse. Nobody asked me to do it, but I felt like if I didn’t, we would drown and never get through them all. One of the managers wanted to make some sort of changes (I can’t remember the details) which made no logical sense and would make my job harder but they wouldn’t listen to reason. So I lost it. I was yelling and crying and it wasn’t pretty. I had been pushed past the brink and I couldn’t take it anymore. I did get 3 contractors hired to help with the tickets after that though. Not my finest moment, but I learned to ask for help when I needed it, instead of thinking I needed to handle it all myself.

    1. Wee wee wee*

      I really don’t understand companies that get employees who are good at working with information to move into jobs that involve working with people. Outcomes like the one you experienced are really common.

      Another comment above is from someone who was working with emergency services information about contractors and was being harassed by a co-worker to start phoning the contractors to check-in (a completely different task than what her boss had asked her to do) until she finally lost it.

      Being expected to solve people’s problems is a way to lose good employees who are stars at dealing with information.

  53. Cthulhu's Librarian*

    the first summer I ever worked, I was working two jobs, one as a lifeguard, and one in a warehouse. The warehouse position did not have a dress code, and the lifeguard position specified that we had to be in visible swimwear at all times. As I got more comfortable in commuting between the two, I started picking up extra time at one or the other – letting a shift run late, etc.

    Eventually (like 8 days in), I came to the conclusion that I could earn an extra $8.75 each day by not having to change outfits between the jobs, so I started wearing the swimsuit while working in the warehouse in the mornings, before going and working afternoons as a lifeguard. Initially, I did so under sweats, but as the summer got hotter, and the heat waves started rolling in, and I began shedding my layers, one article of clothing each day. By the end of the week, I was doing the warehouse job entirely and only in my swimwear, and continued to do so for the rest of the summer.

    None of the other warehouse workers, or management, ever said a word to me, but I look back and cringe – especially when I remember how the swimwear we were required to wear for that lifeguarding position was essentially a red and white version of the blue and black trunks Daniel Craig would later wear as James Bond.

    1. DrRat*

      You do realize that you are now a legend there, right? That sometimes they all sit around in the break room and someone says, hey, remember Swimsuit Guy?

      I kinda love this, actually.

    2. Hrodvitnir*

      Oh man, I also support this. So long as you wear closed toe shoes I guess? I would think you’re awesome if I worked with you.

  54. bee*

    I tutored math right out of college, and our shifts were weekday afternoons and weekend mornings. I lived in kind of a party house at the time, and I only occasionally participated, but one Friday a friend and I had a small charcuterie board and a whole bottle of rosé for dinner, and then suddenly more roommates came home and there was tequila and well… long story short, I was suddenly the drunkest I have ever been in my life. After that it gets fuzzy, but I remember a lot of pink vomit, forcing myself into a shower, and not much else. But I guess Drunk Me was responsible enough to set an alarm for my shift the next morning, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to call out, so I dragged myself out of bed and on the 45 minute subway ride to the tutoring center.
    I felt okay but bleary, and then my first student of the day comes in, and the first thing out of this poor third grader’s mouth is “What’s that smell?” I lied through my teeth that I didn’t smell anything, and it must have been something from outside (thank u NYC for your stench) and we made it through the lesson about fractions, but I’m still shocked that I didn’t get in trouble. It helped that the managers were barely older than the staff, and no one was trying to do it as a career, but still. It was a low point for me.

  55. JTG*

    I was about to leave a teaching position at one school before a cross-country move. The year had been overwhelming and I hadn’t given a required district-wide assessment–but no one had talked to me about it. I had also been promised a vote in the selection of my replacement.

    After finding out who my replacement would be–unilaterally chosen by the school principal, who had not been at the interviews–I went crying to my department chair about “betrayal.” She came right back and said, “You want to talk about betrayal? What about not giving your district assessments?!”

    It was a shitty way to end the year. She’s given me positive references since, but I’m mortified about how naive I was about the whole situation, and that it didn’t occur to me to ask for help getting everything done.

  56. Marketer*

    My first job. I hated it, I hated my boss, and I did not do a very good job. Not a terrible one, mind you, but I did what I had to do, as quick as possible.
    I have some pretty unprofessional recollections :
    – My boss was a micromanager, who spent hours goind through every detail of my deliverables with me sat near her, taking notes. So I just stopped proofreading them. Don’t know what I was excepting there, but of course the sessions became longer…
    – Going in the street to take personal calls, sometimes for half an hour.
    – In a meeting where my manager’s manager who decided to tear through a presentation I had done for a colleague’s client in her absence, I just decided to say nothing except “okay”. Not even “okay”, just ” ‘kay” after each reproach. And after a while I just stopped responding.

    I can’t even really regret it. They sucked.

    1. Emmy Noether*

      I also once had a micromanager boss who would nitpick everything. At first I reacted by proofreading obsessively, trying to catch everything. Did not help. I then discovered that if I purposely left some easily-corrected errors in, it went better for me, because she would often just find those. If there were no easy errors to find, she would make me restructure the entire thing, because she had to criticize *something*.

      I also once copied a paragraph she had written herself a year before, verbatim, as a test. Sure enough, she ripped it apart. Sentence structure, grammar, she actually told me she “would not have written it like that” while I sat there trying not to scream. Not super professional of me, but at least then I knew it wasn’t me, it was her.

      1. Bagpuss*

        I would have been so tempted to say (all big-eyed and innocent) “Actually, you did write it. I took it from [document] as I wanted to ensurethat I was using approrpaite sytle and structure, and following your example”

        I mena, maybe only at the point I was already planning to leave, but it would have been so temepting!

      2. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

        This is actually a really good trick used by design professionals (and by me, a writer): leave something for the client to find, so they don’t nitpick things that are fine. Because they want to feel involved in the process.

  57. JayS*

    At the job before my current job, I got on the elevator with a coworker that I was really cool with and we started trash talking our management and team leads……our managers/leads weren’t on that elevator, but other managers were, and it got back to those we were talking about. After it got back to them, people started talking about me and my coworker, saying how unprofessional we are and how we just started talking bad about managers in front of a bunch of other people on an elevator.

    I don’t know why I did it and I don’t know what I was thinking at that time. I wasn’t young (I was in mid 30s). I guess you can say I got caught up and did something really stupid. Oh, and I was new at the time so of course I made a really good impression on everyone. /s

  58. ceiswyn*

    My first workplace had a casual dress code, and in the summer I used to turn up wearing a swimming costume as though it was a body, with a matching skirt. So far, so reasonable; it was the sort of place where one of the developers liked to wander around in bunny slippers.

    I was in a small sunny office with big windows and no aircon; in the summer it got unbearably hot. So I took off the skirt and carried on working, wearing just a swimming costume.

    Yeah, apparently the dress code wasn’t quite *that* casual.

    1. Delta Delta*

      We had an intern at a law firm where I worked once who would periodically take off her shirt to reveal a bikini top and do yoga in her bikini top and shorts in her work space. And this was not like a sports bra style top – this was a tiny triangle top that tied in the back.

  59. Why M&E?*

    Hoo boy, these are bad. I’m better now.

    • I overshared way too much about my BDS&M life with colleagues at multiple jobs. (I learned that morbid curiosity on their part doesn’t require satisfaction on mine.) I now keep that aspect of my life to myself.

    • This is the one that got me to screw my head on straight. It was the anniversary of my first date with my partner, so I wore the same dress to work. (It was NOT work appropriate.) As I walked off the elevator, I yelled from a full office away for a colleague I knew to help me with my makeup. The colleague was also a chill client. -.-” My boss sent me home to change, as she should have. We later had a conversation about professionalism in the office. Both in word and in dress.

    • I didn’t really get that government colleagues aren’t the same as contracting coworkers. They’re still the client, at the end of the day. I told a government employee on my same team level (eg, analyst to analyst) that I was looking for another job. He mentioned it to our client, his boss, and the contracting company had to do damage control. I kept my work search to myself after that.

  60. mlem*

    Back in the 90s, at age 25, I landed my first salaried office job. After three months, I had my first-ever performance review. My supervisor took me into an office and presented the document for me to read while she watched me. It was riddled with typos and misspellings, so I … noted and corrected them. We wrapped up the meeting, we left the office, and she dropped her pleasant facade and ripped into me for having been so very inappropriate. (Frankly, I think she was more unprofessional than I was, at that point; I didn’t have the experience to know better.)

    1. Elle*

      I don’t understand what you did wrong here! Were you not supposed to correct the document? Even if that wasn’t the intention, I think she should be more embarrassed for having all those errors! (I edit stuff as part of my job so my stance on this may be… skewed)

      1. Wisteria*

        No, you are definitely not supposed to edit the performance review your supervisor wrote of you, even if it is riddled with errors, and even if you are an editor.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Correct factual errors in a performance review? Yes. Correct typos? No no no no.

  61. coffeeandpearls*

    I openly worked on my lifestyle blog (early 2010s) at my first job at a law firm right out of college. I worked the front desk and often didn’t have much to do! Instead of finding something in the office to do, I did my own thing! I think I even posted in my blog that I pretty much spent my work time researching for posts. WHY did I think that was the thing to do?! I can’t imagine what the owners thought of me. And no- I did not become an influencer in the end.

    1. Galadriel's Garden*

      Ha, I can’t really fault you for that one to be quite honest – there’s only so much you can do at the front desk of an office after a certain point. I used to work reception as an admin at a civil engineering firm and did all kinds of things once my list of “useful office tasks” ran out, to say nothing of the “less than useful office tasks,” like reorganizing the filing folders into rainbow colors, trying different methodologies to descale the coffee pots (one week was a stalemate between lemon juice and vinegar), etc. I wrote some blogs for a hobby website, got really good at crosswords using the prior day’s paper, started doing online Excel training, used company resources to print and bind sheet music with the comb binder…

      I would have felt bad but I had already taken on way more than the initial job (and pay!) entailed because I was bored, and they just didn’t have enough work to keep me occupied for a full 8 hours, even with the “expanded” role of proofreader. My favorite days were when I had to go drive a contract somewhere to get a signature, so I could spend a few hours in the car and not at my desk.

  62. Delta Delta*

    Babysitting – I was about 16 or 17. I annoyed with the kids I was watching and I made them watch Richard Nixon’s funeral on TV (to be fair, it was the state funeral and it was on then; it wasn’t like I taped it). I was not invited back to watch these kids.

  63. ProducerNYC*

    I was a 20-something producer and interim manager- our manager had quit and they put me in the role. NO training or guidance. A producer told me a disparaging comment an editor had made about our department ‘being a joke,’ and I put that in the handover note that went to my supervisors and the overnight crew. He got hauled in to his boss’s office and I thought he might get fired! He is also a Black man and I’m a white woman, and I was ignorant of the racial dynamic as well. I learned IMMEDIATELY never send an email when angry, and also that I should not have taken a comment (likely said in a moment of frustration) so personally. They offered me the manager role full time later that month but I didn’t feel I was ready for it or a good fit. I knew I was bitter and burnt out at that job (super toxic news environment that remains toxic to this day) and it was best for everyone when I left 6 months later. That was 20 years ago and I still cringe when I think about my unprofessional behavior as I typed (AND SENT) that email. Thankfully, he didn’t lose his job, and he accepted my apology, but I’m pretty sure he dislikes me to this day, and I don’t blame him ONE BIT.
    I’m very thankful for this site which has helped me grow professionally and I have never made that mistake again in 20-plus years.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Was the man the producer and the editor? And can you clarify how did played into this? I couldn’t tell if you meant that he could be more at risk than a white man of being penalized for the comment, or something else.

      1. ProducerNYC*

        The man was the editor, and I was supervising the producer who worked with him. I was referring to the long history of white women’s words always being believed, and Black men not getting benefit of the doubt. I shouldn’t have put in writing something I didn’t hear for myself- I was repeating what another producer told me. what if she misheard? Or just lied? It was a decision made when I was feeling frustrated and defensive, and it had no relevance to the info that normally goes in a handover note. I instantly believed her and then took unprofessional action at something that really didn’t matter overall.

  64. Respectfully, Pumat Sol*

    During an internship that I wanted DESPERATELY to turn into a job at the end, I thought for some reason it was a good idea to remind people *all the time* that I was leaving at the end of September (when the internship ended). Maybe I thought that people would be so disappointed that I was leaving that they’d beg my manger to make me stay?? I don’t remember the logic, but in hindsight I find myself VERY ANNOYING and can’t believe I did that.

  65. Minimal Pear*

    I had a fairly loud, public conversation with another coworker (in my defense, she started it) about yeast infections. She gave me some useful advice!

    1. Minimal Pear*

      At the same job, my boss once asked me to stay late to help with something and I declined. (Totally fine, good for me.) I then went on to say that it was because I wanted to go home and eat. (A little weird, but sure, let’s remind her that work-life balance is important.) I then found an old granola bar in my bag and decided I could just eat that and stay late after all to help out. I decided that I had to inform my boss of the reason I had decided to stay late after all. Ohhh I still cringe thinking of the “why are you telling me this you weirdo” face she made.

  66. alienor*

    Years ago at my college retail job, a colleague who had started at the same time as me was promoted to be a supervisor. I was about 19 or 20, and I deeply resented what I perceived as being bossed around by a peer who didn’t know any more than I did. Anyway, at some point it was slow and she ordered me to clean, so I went to do it, but as I did I said something along the lines of “You’re not the boss of me, JESSICA (not her real name).” One of the other supervisors happened to overhear this, flipped her lid, and dragged me out of the store to remind me that Jessica was in fact the boss of me, and to lecture me for being disrespectful. I probably should have felt bad, but the only effect it had at the time was to make me mad at both of them.

  67. Cendol*

    First job. I told my wonderful boss at a very staid law firm that I was looking forward to dressing up for Halloween. She looked at me in horror and said, “Good God, no.”

    1. The Original K.*

      At least you knew not to do it in advance! There was a letter here from someone whose employee dressed up for Halloween in a similar environment- it may actually have been a law firm. Dressing up for Halloween was Not Done there and everyone except the employee was mortified by it.

        1. Cendol*

          Hah, thanks for that! I remember reading it when it was posted on AAM and cringing so hard. Thank God my boss stopped me.

  68. soontoberetired*

    in my first tech job, my team was putting 70 hours week to hit a deadline during the winter olympics. So we decided to have our own olympics late one Saturday racing chairs up and down the hallway. someone from management came in to check on us. We didn’t realize he was watching for 20 minutes.

    Thankfully, he was cool with it.

  69. AlarmClock*

    For one semester in college I interned for my congressperson. It was extremely part time, just one and a half days a week, and they barely had any work for me so it was extremely slow and boring. But I worked at the House of Representatives and had to wear formal clothes and it felt like a pretty big deal!

    And I just completely overslept my last day of work. I was supposed to be in from 9 to 12 and I woke up at 11. I called my manager and we agreed that I shouldn’t come in that day. So my internship just… ended. I never used them as a reference. This was probably 15 years ago and I still cringe thinking about it.

    1. Luna*

      This reminds me of the time I was supposed to do a test day of work at a sandwich store. The interview had been about two weeks ago and I originally was supposed to do the day the week after it, but I had come down with some weird throat thing that made talking, swallowing, and even breathing unpleasant, so we agreed on postponing.

      I had my alarm set to wake me in time, and I was supposed to work something like 9AM to 2PM. But I realized I had gotten a relapse of the throat thing, was feeling tired and exhausted, and ended up immediately falling back asleep instead of grabbing my phone and calling to inform them. I woke up about 30 minutes before my ‘shift’ was supposed to be done… I don’t even dare to apply to that store again because I must have left a really bad professional impression.

  70. Nannerdoodle*

    I need to clarify that all these examples make me cringe whenever I think about them. My first job out of college was in research, which means that while we were all very professional when it came to actually doing things, we were less than professional in our interactions as coworkers. These are just the worst ones.
    1. We played the Game of Things at a team happy hour (with our boss). The prompts were suggestive and our written in answers were worse.
    2. There was a certain research activity that always involves 3 people (not the same 3 people, it changed all the time), and got really repetitive after about 5 minutes. So we’d play F/M/K…one person would name 3 coworkers in our department of over 100, and the others would have to answer.

    This also reminds me of my time in a research lab in college. The other undergrad and I had a rule that whoever made it into lab first got to pick the pandora station (10 years ago). It led to a lot of less than professional music choices in the lab, such as rap and very explicit R&B. During the summers it got really slow, so if we had nothing to do because we’d already completed tasks for the day, we’d just talk about whatever. Cue the lab manager walking in one day to the other student teaching me how to dance to R&B music. How we weren’t fired for that, I’ll never know.

    1. Lab Boss*

      Ugh, buried memory recovered… my whole company’s employee photos used to be stored on a network folder. We’d get bored and use a random number generator to pick photos for either f/m/k or “who would you do?”

      1. Nannerdoodle*

        Oh nooooooooooo. We didn’t do that with the photos, but we did find the folder all the department photos were on and did horribly unflattering photoshops of everyone. We took extra care with the bosses we disliked; we made them look grotesque. But we did such a good job on their photoshop that it looked realistic.

    2. quill*

      Okay so I was the only person in my lab during summer research. I discovered via a friend that the physics students were headed to fermilab the week that the Higgs Boson was discovered, and I wanted in.

      Not only did I cheerfully inform my professor that I was going to “hitch a ride to fermilab with [physics student]” and not come to the lab tomorrow, I followed up by asking a fermilab scientist giving us the tour if they still had a ferret for the particle accelerator.

      Worse: looking back this was CLEARLY supposed to be a networking event specifically for the friend who let me in on it, as he was a bit of a star within the department and had expressed interest in particle physics. We were rising juniors though, and he did his thesis on astrophysics, so I guess I didn’t tank his chances too badly.

      1. Nannerdoodle*

        Students in lab are just different. I distinctly remember coming into work one day and the lab manager looked at me and said “Do you need to go home? You look sick.” I burst into tears and said that my boyfriend had broken up with me the day prior (he had). She immediately sent me home for the day. Definitely not the most professional thing.

  71. many bells down*

    I spent a loooottt of time at one admin job hanging out in AOL chat rooms. This was maybe … 2000? And my boss was very not-tech-savvy but he had an AOL account for some reason, so I made myself a login and spent free time chatting away. I was getting my work done and all, but still. Not a good use of company time!

  72. Spicy Tuna*

    That second story reminded me of a former workplace….. the company I worked for rented an office in a building that housed lots of other companies. Each floor had a shared restroom. There was a company on our floor that had something to do with entertainment. Their employees had work obligations at concerts / bars / nightclubs, etc. So towards the end of the day, the women’s bathroom always had people primping in it, getting ready to go out. They generally left behind lots of stray hair, makeup detritus, etc. I guess they figured it didn’t matter because it was the end of the day and the janitorial staff would be cleaning up soon anyway, but it always struck me as a little rude.

    1. Wolf*

      Also, the job description for the janitorial staff in an office building usually doesn’t involve cleaning up makeup etc. Just because a building has janitors doesn’t mean everyone can just leave a mess.

  73. CJ Cregg*

    The summer after my junior year of college, I interned at a science-y, research-y nonprofit. They had a great mission and did great work. When I arrived I was introduced to my two supervisors, A and B. Supervisor B assigned me a summer-long project in addition to other more general, intern-level tasks. Right off the bat a big part of the summer-long assignment seemed over my head. Not that I couldn’t do it, per se, but it just seemed like a big deal and something that Supervisor A would be doing anyway, as like a major and regular and ongoing part of her job. I was able to confirm that this was the case. Instead of, you know, pointing this out to both of them, I just didn’t work on it. I didn’t ask clarifying questions or ask if maybe there was like a small part they wanted me to work on. Or, you know, ask if I was assigned this in error. I just assumed that Supervisor B clearly wasn’t up on what Supervisor A was doing. I did everything else I was supposed to do but not this. I spent a lot of the extra time on the newfangled internet (I am not young) and while I volunteered to take on some extra things throughout the summer, I just never touched this major part of the project at any point. When it came time for me to present my summer-long assignment at the end of my internship, I just pulled from Supervisor A’s work. I didn’t pass it off as my own (thank goodness), I credited / cited Supervisor A’s memos and documents and presented it that way. “Supervisor A’s research tells us…” If they were surprised I didn’t say anything at the start, they didn’t show it. I was on my way out anyway, but it wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Oh god, this reminds me of a paid internship I did. Unfortunately, the project they gave me was way over my head and the only person who could teach me was frequently out of the office, so instead of doing any work I just sat there and played Spider Solitaire. For the entire work day. For weeks.

      I think it was a month before they gave up on the project and gave me small tasks to do, and I was over the moon about being able to do something.

  74. Coenobita*

    When I was in my early 20s, about a year and a half into my first full-time post-college office job, I was injured in a serious car accident. This was pre-smartphone so I was overjoyed when someone fished my somehow-undamaged laptop from my car so that I could, from my hospital bed, write an EXTREMELY over-share-y email to the entire office. I believe I described not only the circumstances of the crash but my physical condition (the phrase “minor internal bleeding” was definitely involved), my observations of the CT-scan-with-contrast experience, and how I was super bored so would somebody please send me some work to do. I want to blame the painkillers but the cringiest part is that, honestly, I think I would’ve done it even if I wasn’t taking them.

  75. londonedit*

    I hadn’t thought about this for YEARS but my brain recently decided to present the memory to me (such fun). In my very first professional job, I worked in a small department of a larger publishing company as an editorial assistant. It mainly involved doing admin and general support stuff, but I was occasionally allowed to do some basic editorial work. Anyway, a couple of months in one of my more senior colleagues was off on holiday for two weeks, and I was given a list of things to ‘keep an eye on’ while she was away. All quite straightforward, and – this was where my stupid brain tripped up, I think – all presented in a sort of ‘It’d be great if you could keep an eye on this for me, shouldn’t be anything urgent there, if you wouldn’t mind just keeping on top of things’ way. Of course, any keen editorial assistant should have seized on this as a moment to step up and demonstrate excellent organisational skills and an ability to take on higher-level work when required. Did I? I did not. I pretty much kept the list on my desk and occasionally referred to it in a sort of ‘Hmm, yeah, don’t think I’ve heard anything about that, it’s probably fine’ manner. I’ll admit, by the end of the first week I’d sort of forgotten I was meant to be actively doing anything with the list. And so it came to pass that when my colleague returned from her lovely relaxing holiday and we went through the list…very little had been done, apart from the things people had followed up with me on. And it also became clear that one of the things I was meant to have done was actually quite time-sensitive and really quite important. I was meant to have sent a cover brief to an external designer, and I was meant to have followed up to make sure that the draft designs would be ready and waiting for my colleague on her return. Regardless of how the information was initially presented to me, firstly I absolutely should have known this, and secondly if I’d actually bothered to look at the list properly I’d have worked out that it was important. Instead I just…didn’t do it. Ended up being called into a meeting with my senior colleague and my boss, where it was impressed on me in no uncertain terms that if I’m asked to mind a colleague’s work while they’re away, they’re expecting *things to get done*.

  76. Suddenly_Seymour*

    Early in my first salaried job, staffing was cut and my role absorbed a lot of highly visible, manual, and customer-focused tasks in the office. I spent several months trying to corral responsibilities and make things more manageable, but didn’t have the professional experience, support, or guidance to figure out better processes or push back on the workload appropriately. My anxiety skyrocketed, and I was barely eating or sleeping. I finally met with my boss on the verge of tears and tried to explain how overwhelmed I was. My boss, who had previously worked in law, stated that they really didn’t understand WHY it was so much work, and that in previous roles they had tracked their time in 6 minute increments to demonstrate workload. Shocked, frustrated, and not totally understanding the concept of billable hours at the time, I proceeded to TRACK MY TIME IN SIX MINUTE INCREMENTS, color coded by portfolio and spanning hours from 8am to 1am, to send to them weekly. Why on earth I wasn’t called back a couple of weeks later to explain that what he wanted was a concrete problem and a solution or two offered, NOT multiple color coded time-tracking sheets, I’ll never know, but I cringe so hard thinking back on it.

    1. Warrior Princess Xena*

      While it may have not been the most constructive response, your boss didn’t do great with this. If someone you’re managing comes to you and says ‘I’m feeling really overwhelmed’, responding with ‘I don’t understand why it’s so much work’ is a poor response when you have the opportunity to take even a few minutes to walk them through problem-solving steps.

      1. quill*

        I know, also I think working overtime and high stress jobs really rots people’s brains about what a sustainable workload is. Boss had experience and help. Seymour did not.

      2. Luna*

        And I would expect the boss to figure out a solution or two to make sure their employee isn’t overwhelmed, not add *more work* for the already overwhelmed employee to take care of.

    2. Observer*

      Your response was a lot more reasonable than your boss’. You told your boss that there was too much going on. Instead of asking a few big picture or even reasonably detailed questions, he told you it couldn’t be “that bad” and also you need to trace every minute to prove your workload.

      I suspect that he never told that he wanted “a concrete problem and a solution or two offered” because he never was interested in that – he was just fluffing you off. Or maybe the spreadsheet made him (or someone else) realize what an idiot he’d been.

  77. WavyGravy*

    One time in court I said, “yeah that’s my bad your honor.” And then realized and just slinked back to my seat. Luckily everyone was cool with it, but reading that line in in the transcript later was rough.

    2. DrRat*

      The dangers of forgetting there is a transcription!

      I feel so bad for you but at the same time this is up there with “I’m not a cat” and “Objection, that question should be taken out and shot.”

  78. Bummer School*

    I got myself canned from running a summer school program because I had complained that the program was a mess in a facebook group for teachers of our district.

  79. Sabina*

    In my early 20s I had a habit of just walking out of bad jobs with no notice or just ghosting completely (in my defense they were really BAD jobs with borderline criminal or abusive bosses ). One job I ghosted after a few weeks I swear was a front for some kind of organized crime. I mean I was told the bosses’ names were not their REAL names and I was not allowed to know their actual names. I was already planning to move to another city, so the day before my move I just didn’t go to work. Literally an hour before my phone was disconnected I got a call from mystery boss. I pretended not to be Sabina and told him Sabina had gone missing…cringe..Never picked up my last check…

    1. Wolf*

      They were really shady… nothing lost here, it’s not like you would have used them as a reference anyway.

  80. Oxford Comma*

    I was badly informed by many, many workplace sitcoms and modeled the behavior I saw there. I may have also sung a lot in the office. It did not go well.

  81. ZSD*

    My first office job involved cajoling members of a profession where you don’t use computers often to log in to the computer long enough to e-sign a certain form. After several polite reminders to one person, I wrote him an email that just said, “Dude. Seriously. Sign your form.”

    1. Minimal Pear*

      I had a volunteer job in college that was basically this and I am relating so hard right now. I think a few people I had to physically go track down, walk with them to the classroom we met in, and hand them a computer to make them fill out this very quick electronic form.

      1. ZSD*

        At least your people were within walking distance and not in the middle of the ocean!

    3. Higher Ed Kitten Party*

      I email students all of the time and … this feels extremely reasonable to me.

    4. Hills to Die On*

      The president of the company I used to work for asked multiple times to get my email address set up and finally sent a blast out to all 15 of the people in the local branch asking, ‘Who do I need to know to get this done?’
      Request was processed moments later.

  82. The Other Evil HR Lady*

    Oh, goodness…. so many! I have to preface this with: I’m the head of HR at my company, so I *should* show some semblance of decorum.

    A few months ago, one of our top execs – who I worked closely with – felt ill during a meeting. My boss was his boss too. She was in the same meeting and noticed he was massaging his chest. She asked him what was wrong, he blamed it on heartburn. She pointed out that heart attacks often present as heartburn. He took it to heart [I’m not sorry for the pun] and drove himself to the hospital. I wasn’t in the meeting, but as HR, my boss kept me in the loop.

    The next morning, my boss stopped by my office and the first thing out of my mouth was, “How’s [Top Exec] doing?” She paused and said, “[Top Exec] died last night in the hospital.”

    My response? “Are you [LOUD EXPLETIVE] kidding me?!”

    I’m still shocked at myself.

    2. Insert Clever Name Here*

      Oh goodness, I think that’s a completely reasonable response in that situation!

    3. Legal Beagle*

      I wouldn’t even count this as unprofessional, honestly. I don’t think there’s a “professional” way to react to the death of someone you work closely with, and presumably cared about.

    4. Elizabeth West*

      Not unprofessional. :(

      I did something similar when a well-loved employee at OldExjob passed away over the weekend. The GM came up to my desk to tell me and I just started crying in front of the entire office.

  83. Anonymous Pygmy Possum*

    At my university, everyone does one or more 6-month co-op work experiences. It’s a big draw for the school, since they have a ton of connections to companies in the big city where they’re located, as well as connections to companies all over the country and the world. Generally, people either do 4 years with 2 co-ops or 5 years with 3 co-ops. I had chosen to do the 5-year program, and had already had a year of co-op experience.

    In my fourth year of college (Fall 2017), I was going through some big stuff. I had just broken up with my then-partner of 3 years (we were in a heading-towards-marriage relationship) and the post-breakup emotions were Extremely present. I was living by myself in a terrible studio apartment, and I had never lived on my own before. I was planning my top surgery for the beginning of 2018 – so I would have had to start my co-op later than most other students. And to top it all off, I was at the start of a mental breakdown where I was starting to think I had chosen the wrong major/field of study but I had already done 3 years of coursework for it.

    I had an interview with a small startup in the city. They were doing really cool work in a sector that I thought I wanted to work in. When they asked me to tell them where I saw myself in 5 years, I talked for 5 whole minutes about the fact that I wanted to get married to a nice guy, live in a nice house with a couple of cats, and have kids someday. Eventually, they said, “Okay, but what about professional goals?” to try to get me to, you know, actually take the interview seriously, and I said “Uh, I’m not sure!” and then left it at that. That’s the only part of the co-op interview cycle I remember to this day, and it continues to haunt me. I’m sure I said similar things at the other interviews I had.

    I never got to do my third co-op because I didn’t pass any of the interviews. So, I graduated in 5 years with only two co-ops under my belt. And I didn’t fully realize why I didn’t pass any of the interviews until I started reading AAM. I look back in that point of my life and cringe SO hard. Though, I made it out okay – I did graduate on time with that major, spent two and a half years doing the thing I didn’t like, and found a different job in the industry that I do like.

  84. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    I could probably have an article to myself… I remember and would admit to these.

    Working in the mailing industry and answering in-house calls after hours with “No one goes Postal like we do!”

    Paging coworkers to extension Eighty-Four Eleven. Eight gets you an outside line.
    Paging coworkers to a phone number served a facsimile machine.

    Comments embedded in code like:
    “Sanity check — don’t worry, you won’t miss it.”
    “If this next block makes any sense to you whatsoever, you have my deepest condolences.”
    “I replaced good code with this due to coding standards.”
    “If we pad the walls, this place could moonlight as an asylum.”

    Telling a peer they’re welcome to disagree with me; it won’t make me wrong. (Really know how to make friends and influence people, don’t you, Latinophone?)

    Rotating my display 180 degrees.

    Loading my desk via VNC/RDP & VPN during mandatory non-sequitur training and working tickets.

    BSoD screensaver on a PowerPC Mac.

    Mispronouncing, rephrasing, or otherwise altering a client company’s name or vendor’s name to express frustration (to the point where I was referring a client as F. A. I. L. and was getting requests to be more specific).
    Incorporating the mark of the beast into internal proposals for difficult clients (e.g. client number, processing interval, etc).

    Taking my lunch break during happy hour.

    Being inadvertently late for work due to traffic after meeting a friend & former coworker on the other side of town for lunch during March Madness the day after my supervisor told me that I’m too buttoned down and needed to live a little.

    Bringing my personal notebook into the office, logging onto the guest network WiFi, and listening to sports events or music streaming for 12+ hours per day when I had to work weekends unsupervised.

    Over 3 years, I probably violated the maximum shift duration (12 hours) by up to 59 minutes at least 500 times due to being shorthanded and an overwhelming workload. I always promised I’d leave “before I hit 13 hours” and did renege on that promise once to meet SLA.

    Nominated a coworker as Employee of the Month for a competitor.

    QC signoffs in Latin, Spanish, and French on April 1st.
    Desk sign on April 1st saying “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”
    Error messages using randomize timer to populate the language field on April 1st.

    I’ve been banned from the coffee pot for a week at least thrice (no, not for contamination, damage, or misuse).

      1. ferrina*

        +1

        Nominated a coworker as Employee of the Month for a competitor.
        I really want to know this story!

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          I think the story is more mundane than the summary.

          The guy was hired a week before I was. Very charismatic and personable, but we noticed his work ethic start to wane after 6 months. We had 3 shifts–8a-5p, 10a-7p, 3p-12a (all were plus-overtime). Those first 6 months, we were required to work 8a-5p; after 6 months, he immediately volunteered for 3p-12a. We kept coming in at 8a to Production issues that had waited overnight, jobs that were never touched, etc, but the work that was directly assigned to him would usually show progress.

          Well, the supervisor had a policy of rotating personnel through the 3p shift, since it carried a 10% shift differential and was brutal on someone’s social life, so after 3 months he went to the 10a-7p shift for a year, then back to the 3p shift. Then he started trading spots on the 8a shift for the 3p shift.

          Eventually, it was my turn on the 3p shift. He was on the 10a shift at the time (though had permission to come in at 11a and leave at 8p). The office generally cleared out between 5p and 6p, and when it did… off came his shoes, his girlfriend arrived with his dinner and hung out until his shift ended, they watched Youtube and he browsed a 4chan site… basically, anything and everything except productivity. After a week of it (I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt), it sunk in that’s what he was doing for half of his 3p-12a shifts.

          I did report it to our supervisor, who had IT block Youtube and the fora, but that pretty much was the whole of the response. Eventually I ended up the informal, impromptu leader of the rest of the team who resented having their workloads increased to subsidize his shirking (I especially resented it, as the extra hours lead to my relationship failing), so I nominated him for Employee of the Month and put “Programming – Local competitor” for his department/team. (It wasn’t the only unprofessional retaliation).

          You had to be there to see the dynamic; that competitor would poach my employer’s employees and directly target their business contacts to undercut pricing. It was close to Coca-Cola/Pepsi level animosity. Eventually, he did go to that competitor for about a month, then took a job in another state.

          1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

            Eventually I ended up the informal, impromptu leader of the rest of the team who resented having their workloads increased to subsidize his shirking (I especially resented it, as the extra hours lead to my relationship failing), so I nominated him for Employee of the Month and put “Programming – Local competitor” for his department/team. (It wasn’t the only unprofessional retaliation).

            The rest of the team voted up the nomination.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        I’ve never heard of Skippy’s List, but if Google & Wikipedia are accurate, that fits. I used to joke that you can tell I’ve worked somewhere because there will be a rule with my name on it forbidding an action.

        The older I get, the harder that is to laugh about, though. Looking back, that place was full of bees and I wasn’t part of the solution. Yea, some of these still make me smile, but if a young new hire tried any of them, I’d pull them aside quietly and explain they’re career-limiting actions–maybe not each one in isolation, but absolutely when they start bunching up.

    3. quill*

      “If this next block makes any sense to you whatsoever, you have my deepest condolences.”

      Don’t mind me, laughing.

    4. Sam Yao*

      I’d give yourself a pass for April 1st as long as you were grammatically correct, and:

      Desk sign on April 1st saying “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”
      this is legitimately funny, especially if nobody around you speaks Italian.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        My peers and Management were all monolingual Anglophones, to the point where they considered speaking other languages to be inherently hostile. Spanish & French were only tolerated because we had clients mailing in them, and were tolerated in blatantly xenophobic ways (e.g. complaining about “waves of brown people” literally while eating sopapillas).

        Like I said above, the April 1st stuff wouldn’t be as bad if it weren’t part of a long sequence pushing the boundaries of eccentricism.

  85. Frank Bookman*

    I have a stupid amount of shame around both of these incidents.

    1) I wore sandals (leather thong style) to my first office job early in my brief time there. I had looked around and seen a lot of women wearing sandals. I thought I’d remembered men doing it too, but apparently not. It was a very relaxed “chill” environment with a barista in the morning, a fully stocked kitchen, and kegs at 5pm. I DID think about the sandals, but I concluded it would be fine. I was not right. My manager took me aside and I’ll never forget her tone of voice when she said “The sandals? Never. Ever. Again.” before moving on. The clarity and brevity were for my benefit I’m sure, but it felt cold as ice at the time.

    2) To prove I hadn’t yet learned my lesson about making assumptions about company culture, I put up a BUNCH of perler bead art (those plastic melting beads for kids that creat a pixelized effect) around my desk. This was during my first week at my current employer and I had been given the office tour the day before. I’d noticed highly decorated desks all over the place. Funko pops just everywhere, especially in the IT department whole collections stacked nearly to the ceiling. I thought my little display would be a fun talking point with my new coworkers. What I hadn’t clocked was that my desk was right along one of the main walkways and very close to the front entrance. That one earned me some fun feedback from the grandboss.

    On the bright side, neither incident had any impact on my career whatsoever and now I’ve lucked into a big ‘ol office off the beaten path where I’ve been able to curate some appropriate personal touches. And only 10% of our employee base come to the office anymore anyway, so nobody cares.

    1. Luna*

      I looked up perler bead art. As long as the stuff you displayed wasn’t gross or inappropriate, I would see no wrong with it. That stuff looks really cool!

  86. elizelizeliz*

    i used to work at a job where i had to drive clients in large vans for work. a coworker friend and i decided to stop on our way back to work from drop-offs for a quick errand, because we knew no one would be at the workplace anymore so what was the difference? for doing the drop-offs, we got comp time.

    the quick, urgent errand was: shop at old navy, get an early dinner at the mall, walk around to see what else we may want to do.

    we returned 2 hours late, and the next day my supervisor called me in because someone had seen us there and we were using company vans to just hang out and leave them at risk in a parking lot, while we were sort of on the clock.

    my proudest (…) moment was that then i ARGUED ABOUT IT, saying that it was no different than running in to use the bathroom at a gas station after filling up and no one gets in trouble for that!

    it took me years to realize how in the wrong i was, at each point in the process!

  87. catwhisperer*

    When I was in my early – mid 20s, I worked for a non-profit and reported directly to a VP. Her boss, in the C-Suite, was in a different city so if the three of us had conference calls I usually joined my boss in her office. During one of the conference calls my grand-boss kept interrupting me and I got really frustrated, so without thinking about it I threw the pen I was holding across the room. The moment my brain caught up with my actions I was MORTIFIED and apologised profusely to my boss as soon as the meeting ended. I still don’t know why I had such a childish reaction and cringe every time I remember it.

  88. Esmeralda*

    I was still a grad student, so this was an on-campus, single first year course. There was another class right after mine. I regularly ran ten minutes over. Right there I am a self-absorbed ass. The grad student instructor finally comes up to me and says, please, you have to finish on time so my students can get seated. I looked right at him, and said, Don’t be such an asshole, I’m not DONE.

    OMG.

    Yeah, I found him after class and apologized. A lot. And stopped my class scrupulously on time from then on.

      1. Esmeralda*

        What’s worse is that I didn’t go look for him to apologize because I realized I was the asshole. No. One of my professors was in the hall (thank god, the young cool one), asked what was up since I looked angry. I told her, making it clear just how put upon I was. Hahahahaha, yeah, she looked horrified and told me that I was the actual asshole and needed to make it right.

  89. Anne of Green Gables*

    I was a relatively new manager of a department in a public library. Our area included the public computers. My employee (male, mid-twenties) came to me (female, mid-thirties) not sure what to do about something a patron wanted to print: biographical information about a porn star. Without thinking about what I was really asking, I asked the employee how he knew the subject of the patron’s search was a porn star. I still want to die every time I think about it now.

    (I was really just curious, because I could only name one porn star at the time, and maybe two now? And I was thinking that perhaps I had been asked to help someone look up a porn star and not realized it, so in my head, the question was about how to know when asked by a patron if that person was someone I should not be looking up based on our policies, which had pretty strict no-porn rules. But yeah, totally not an ok question to have asked my employee.)

  90. kiki*

    One of my former companies was located in a historic building. The building threw a little festival to celebrate 100 years. A lot of local vendors were serving food. I was young and entry level and genuinely underpaid for my role, so the free food was a tremendous draw for me. Most employees went down once to see what was going on, mingle with folks in the building, and then continue doing their work for the day. I went down about 8 times throughout the day, taking free food each time. I participated in a building history scavenger hunt so I would be entered to win prizes. I was as close to MIA from work as I could be while still technically in the building. Nobody said anything and I did win a $100 gift card, but looking back I’m sure more senior folks were not the most impressed with me that day.

    1. Jean*

      You get what you pay for, honestly. If they wanted unwavering professionalism, they should have considered paying you fairly.

  91. Art3mis*

    One time I was in a large company meeting lead by some Chief Muckety Muck of the company where they standing in front of rows and rows of employees and are basically telling you all about how the company is doing and where we’re going, you know the kind. So there’s a PowerPoint going on behind him showing sales and revenue and stock numbers and how everything is going up. He says, “So as you can see, all these numbers are going up, so what isn’t going up?” And I say “Raises?” EVERY ONE in the room whips their head around to look at me. I thought I’d said it under my breath. Nope. Apparently not. He didn’t acknowledge it though I’m sure he heard it and he kept on with whatever it was he was going to say. His point wasn’t raises, whatever it was. The lady sitting next to me leaned over and said, “Don’t worry, we were all thinking it.” One of my coworkers was sitting on my other side and she could barely contain her laughter.

    2. Murphy*

      I would have silently applauded you. (But silently.)

      We had one of these in December (over Zoom though) and they said “we’re in better financial shape than we’ve ever been” so I texted my friend who also was at this meeting and said “SO WHERE’S OUR MONEY?”

      1. howler-monkey-screaming.wav*

        This is the best part about not working alone. We had a meeting a few weeks ago where the president of the company told us that 1: the next few months were going to be extremely grueling because of a full transition from one system to another and that we were going to have to have 2-4 weeks where we were totally down as a company and unable to help clients and nobody is allowed to take more than 1 PTO day per month AND ALSO 2: self care is SOOOO important guys!!! DON’T FORGET TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!!!!!!!! SELF CARE SELF CARE!!!!!!

        My phone buzzed with a coworker’s text simply stating: howler-monkey-screaming.wav

        2. PotatoEngineer*

          I can’t remember where I heard this, but there was another out-of-touch executive that introduced two things at the same meeting:

          An Employee Dignity Program… and random drug testing.

  92. Nope, no name for this one*

    About half my life ago, I was a retail manager who really needed a good mentor. One of my employees was very attractive and charming and I ended up dating him. OK, bad enough, but one night, after closing, he stayed behind and we had sex on my desk. I never got caught, and there were no consequences. I’ve grown and matured a bit since then but OMG, what on earth was I thinking.

      1. Nope, no name for this one*

        LOL No. And I have to say, desks are not very comfortable. It wasn’t even worth it.

  93. CW*

    When I was in high school, I was interviewing for my first “real” job (waiting tables at a retirement community). The interviewer asked if I’d ever had a job before. I said “Not officially!” I meant this to indicate that I’d done work like babysitting/pet sitting, but she did a double take. And that’s how I learned that employment laws are a thing and you shouldn’t joke about them in interviews…

  94. Moufaletta Jones*

    My CEO walked around looking for me so he could rope me into an “Ideas Committee” which was a toothless waste of time – anyone who actually tried to suggest changes would get retaliated against by management. So I hid under my desk. For an hour. With my laptop, because I had work that needed doing. He kept asking people in adjacent cubes if they knew where I was. He never found me, and I escaped the committee. I regret nothing.

  95. quill*

    Worked in biosamples, so warning: some samples were of human origin. Skip NOW because that’s relevant.

    *
    *
    *
    Somehow I became in charge of calling our supplier of human skin samples when they sent us unuseable bits. While inventorying one shipment, I discovered that a sample was clearly jaundiced and therefore unuseable. The supplier decided to dispute the claim that jaundice was outside of the parameters for our sample, by suggesting that we had bad light or that the preservation fluid just looked yellowy. I’d been on my feet for about 7.5 to 8 hours of every workday that week and for various work sucked reasons I was in a mood.

    So there, in the lab, in front of everyone, on the phone, I told our only source of samples that unless they ffing sampled from Homer Simpson, they had no excuse for pretending the photos I sent of their sample were not jaundiced.

    … My boss, not a paragon of professionalism, laughed, but we got our refund. And I didn’t have to call the sample place to dispute their claim that they didn’t owe us a refund again.

    1. Warrior Princess Xena*

      This is glorious.
      Also, even if they were the only place that you got those samples from, if they were sending you poor quality items then you shouldn’t be worried about calling them out on it. Vendors should also be included in the ‘what if X got hit by a bus’ calculation

      1. quill*

        Oh that was not the only supplier problem I had in that job, let’s see…

        1) Small lab, looking for chemicals usually ordered in large batches: I had a month where I was told that I had to find someone to sell us 2 gallons of nitrocellulose. Sample phone conversations with sales reps include “well, couldn’t you put some in a 2 gallon bottle and sell it to us?” “No.” “Uh… could we obtain a sample then?” and “what’s the protocol for recieving chemical samples?”

        It could not be done. I kept at it. I discovered after some research that we were not going to get any partially because of regulatory reasons, as nitrocellulose, aka gun cotton, is a component in explosives.

        My not-pleased boss asked why I had failed to achieve the impossible. I responded “Dude, we can’t legally have any because you can make bombs with it.”

        2. Was training another fresh grad. Very tired. Called the centrifuge the “tilt-o-hurl for samples.”

        3. Job duties at one point involved moving our entire setup across the building and borrowing the vaccum from maitenance to clean up the area we vacated. Vaccum was utterly destroyed because apparently if you ran it too long the motor blew out? Opened vaccum, saw the carnage within, closed vaccum, returned it to maitenance without saying anything.

        4. After everything had gone south at this job because boss expected the impossible, ended up disclosing my mental health issues because I was at the end of my rope. Fresh grad had run off to pharmacy school, showing much better sense than me, so suddenly anything wrong was blamed upon me. Got a yelly lecture from my boss, started crying, he demanded to know why, I yelled back “what part of ‘I have an anxiety disorder do you not understand?'” Took me another six months to get fired.

  96. KG*

    Interviewing at the end of my MBA. (Yes, my mid-30s… makes it more cringeworthy). I walked into the interview room and saw some bottles of water on the table. Thinking that the Career Center had provided them, I grabbed one and sat down. Only to realize that there were now no longer enough water bottles for the interview panel, and I’d swiped my interviewer’s water from right under his nose.

    What makes it worse is that it took me a few hours to realize what I’d done, after wondering why my interviewers seemed so uncomfortable during our initial introductions.

      1. KG*

        I think it was the interviewer’s own bottle of water, that he bought outside. There were several people around a smallish table, so it wasn’t as clear as it might have been in a larger space.

    2. KG*

      Another interview one, this one *for* grad school (again, mid-30s). After asking my last question about the program, when the interviewer asked me if I had any more questions, I said, “No, that’s it,” stood up, shook his hand, thanked him for his time, said I looked forward to hearing from them, and walked out the door.

      Surprisingly, I was actually accepted to that program (consistently ranked among the top 5 US MBA programs).

  97. Billabong*

    Once, a coworker sent me an email that I deemed to be…irritating and dumb. So, thinking that I was forwarding it to a friend/coworker with the note, “This [person] is some kind of stupid,” I instead replied to said “stupid” person. Not my finest moment. Yes, I was embarrassed and yes, I did get a verbal warning from my boss after said person (rightfully) complained.

  98. Catcher in the Rye*

    Y’all, I poked a child in the eye. In the eye! I was working at a summer camp during check in, and a parent asked me which way something was (the bathroom? I don’t remember anymore). I pointed in the direction of the location just as a kid (early teens) walked up to me and straight into my pointing finger. It wasn’t completely my fault, but I was mortified and my boss told me I should point with multiple fingers from then on instead of just one.

    On a less funny note, I’ve had other instances of unprofessionalism caused by mental illness that mostly include me sobbing at inappropriate times and making off color comments to supervisors, like the time I told a previous boss that I knew I’d end up homeless someday (???) or asking if a different boss wanted me to resign when there was no reason for that to even be a topic of conversation. No one’s perfect, especially not me.

    1. quill*

      Oooh, working at art camp when I was 17. Grabbed child out of the way from hot glue gun, got burnt instead of kid, swore very loudly. In the only class of 5-6 year olds. Spent the entire rest of the day for some reason trying to convince them that I had said “ship” instead of the alternative.

      Also didn’t think to do much for the burn besides immediately dunking it in water to harden the hot glue… so I have a tiny round scar to this day.

  99. KateDee*

    I’m chronically ill and always tired. I was also an admin several years ago, when I was pregnant. Pregnant was a whole new level of tired for me, so I used my role as an admin to commandeer an empty office, a couch, and darkening blinds. I used that room to take naps multiple times a week on my lunch break for my entire pregnancy. No one ever confronted me because I was apparently terrifying while pregnant (I told a coworker once that he was the villain in my story because he microwaved fish).

    3. MansplainerHater*

      I once told a coworker not to microwave fish, and he said “this is salmon, so it’s not as bad” and I responded “a great dane’s shit smells as bad as a chihuahua’s.”

  100. coldsassy*

    I was working at a retail job and was scanning product in the stockroom one evening when I was suddenly overcome by a WAVE of exhaustion so strong that I felt I couldn’t continue scanning. And… I laid on the floor in between the shelves, because I was alone in the stockroom and I knew I was out of sight of the cameras and I’d be able to hear if anyone came in, and I’d get back up in a few minutes to finish the job. Realized after several minutes that this was not a great plan, as I was starting to feel worse instead of better, and that I was most likely coming down with something, so I dragged myself up off the floor, went to find my manager, and told her that I needed to go home early because I was sick. Within an hour of getting home, I became VIOLENTLY ill and knew immediately that I had norovirus, since I had been around some people earlier that day who I knew had been sick with the virus recently. I was out of work the next three days.

    I give myself some grace for my addled decision to just chill on the stockroom floor since I was clearly in the early stages of a serious illness, but good lord.

  101. EmKay*

    I proudly hung up the Calvin & Hobbes “it’s Miller time” strip prominently in my cubicle.

    I worked at a BANK.

  102. Nene Poppy*

    Unprofessional…probably; but no mortification

    A longgggg time ago, dodgy boss (later booted out of company) asked me mail a particular letter for him. It had to get the recipient within 2 days. He was too lazy to walk it across the street and put it through the door.
    It was his membership forms and dues for a group that had originally be set up as a charity.
    The members were going to get a big dividend from a long term investment which had been paid for by members when it was still a charity.
    Applications for new members had mysteriously closed before the announcement of the coming dividend was made.
    But he had even dodgier friends in the group who had backdated his application/nomination and approved it.
    He bragged and bragged about how much money he was going to make.
    I did mail it, on my way through a small village in Cornwall, after last pick up and I sorta forgot to put a stamp on it.

    He asked me about a week later did I mail it. I could honestly put my hand on my heart and say that I did.

    And he never knew that I spent my weekend away.

    Little post script – it felt even better when I got to testify against him for fraud.

  103. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    First job out of college, one of the few female engineers in the building. Coworker offered to share his game of tetris with me (this was 1991, very advanced!). The job involved some extended hours with waiting for lab results so nobody really cared if you played games during the wait.

    On the same floppy disk as tetris was a game that was very x-rated. I was too naïve to realize it was intentional to get a reaction. Mostly ignored it and played tetris from time to time and left the disk in the drive when I wasn’t playing. Never thought about deleting the x-rated game until the department secretary was looking for something to keep an intern out of her hair for a couple hours and took the disk and gave it to the 19 year old college kid.

    I don’t think they bought the “I had no idea that was on there, I just play tetris” but they didn’t do anything either. Fortunately for me computer literacy was just really getting going.

  104. Al who is that Al*

    First real job on the oil rigs, one of my colleagues came into the mess after having talking on the satellite phone and announced to everyone that his wife was pregnant, I burst out with “Oh no! Was it planned?!”

  105. BigSigh*

    I still cringe. There are so many. But my first office job messed with my idea of professionalism!

    The time I asked a co-worked, loudly, “Are you HIGH?” while standing outside the open door of the CEO’s office. (She was, in fact, high, having mixed two medications accidently.)

    Checking my personal cell phone in a meeting to verify something on our social media account (long enough ago that none of us had laptops, only desktops), completely forgetting my phone case had a woman making a graphic, sexual gesture. Of course picking up my phone meant everyone else at the table had full view of the case.

    Several colleagues were standing on the sidewalk organizing to catch Ubers together to a local conference. When the first arrived, I let my favorite colleagues on and then I barred the door with my arm after getting in, telling the next man that he couldn’t join the Uber even though there was room because I didn’t want to be around him. (He was horribly rude, had been acting out the minute before, but everyone was still dead silent after hearing me say that.)

    FINALLY at my new job, which did have a professional and well put together atmosphere, I joined a conference room where there wasn’t enough space at the table for everyone to put their laptops on it. I fidgeted horrible for a few minutes before PROPPING MY FEET UP on a side table and balancing the laptop on my extended legs.

  106. BuyingBunny*

    My (very large) company created a huge, expensive internal PR campaign about our wonderful corporate values (integrity, trust, etc.) and I created a fake of their splashy poster, with mocking phrases and examples of how we are NOT about integrity, trust, etc. Then I sent it to MY BOSS’S BOSS. My poor boss, a very decent man, got called on the carpet and was in some serious trouble for a good while, and of course so was I. I didn’t get fired but it was a close thing. We stayed in our work relationship for another ten years, so I think he eventually forgave me, but he never forgot. (In my defense, the company was in a real morale slump and people were leaving constantly. I wasn’t actually WRONG, in other words.)

  107. The Prettiest Curse*

    I worked in a betting shop (off-track betting) during one of the summers that I was at university. They arranged a staff day out to Goodwood races, and I decided to go and dragged my sister along too. As it turned out, most of the staff who attended were from different stores in the chain.

    During the coach trip to the racecourse, the older bloke sitting next to me (who I hadn’t previously met, and who’d already been drinking before he got on the bus) was chatting and flirting with me the entire time. Being young and having attended an all-girls high school, I was pretty amazed to be chatted up in the wild, so I didn’t mind the attention.

    Before we got to the racecourse, we stopped at a pub for food. At this point, one of the chatty bloke’s friends told me that the chatty bloke was married. I was pretty annoyed with this revelation, so I waited a while, had a couple of drinks, then bought a pint of beer with the intention of pouring it over the chatty bloke’s head (from behind, so he couldn’t see me coming.) Only he moved at the very last second, so most of the beer missed him … and instead, a wave of beer washed all over a plate of full English breakfast that another of his friends had just started eating. (This was not the same friend that tipped me off.)

    I ran off back to the coach, leaving my sister to deal with the aftermath of the beer-related carnage. The chatty bloke (to his credit) later tracked me down at the the racecourse to apologise. I have no idea what I was thinking, or why I didn’t get fired! I think the fact that I was a summer temp and that most of the people on the trip didn’t know me probably helped…

  108. High Score!*

    I worked in a job shop where we put custom software on these PLC type controllers with very simple LCD displays. I didn’t have a Error graphic so I put in a temporary skull & crossbones and left for the weekend.
    The following Monday, I learned that there was a customer demo and my skull & crossbones popped up. Oops… But fortunately the customers loved it and we had to leave it in.

    1. Migraine Month*

      Better than the old Apple “bomb” icon when it performed an “illegal operation”. I don’t know if it’s an urban legend that some customers panicked that their computer was going to explode or get them in trouble with the authorities, but it’s a good example of why error messages should be useful, not just technically correct.

  109. ripvancringeful*

    I was a student teacher at a high school that realized too late that teaching was not for me. Depression affected me the whole semester, which in turn gave me terrible insomnia. I fell asleep in front of students. It took years before I could forgive myself for doing that.

    1. Just Me*

      If it helps, I work as a school admin and at OldJob some students sent me photos of a teacher asleep at her desk. Teacher did not have a medical reason to be asleep at her desk. Teacher did not apologize for falling asleep at said desk.

    2. Dark Macadamia*

      Oh no, I’m so sorry. Once when I was subbing another teacher used the classroom during my off period. He did some huge rant about a kid sitting with their head on the desk and then confiscated the kid’s chair so they’d have to stand the rest of class as punishment… and then the TEACHER fell asleep. So you’re better than that teacher, lol. The kids kept dropping books trying to get the teacher to wake up and I pretended I didn’t notice and needed to use the bathroom because I felt so awkward being the other adult in the room. He was awake when I came back and funnily enough did NOT confiscate his own chair…

  110. TheNordicAlien*

    I got hired as a teaching assistant by a former teacher of mine. I’d taken two 2-week courses from him (as an adult) over the previous two summers, and then he asked me to come back to work with him, so we were sort of familiar with each other but didn’t know each other that well, and adjusting to being colleagues was…interesting.

    On my first day, leaving work, one of the building security guards asked me out. The employee handbook said no dating colleagues, but our company was only renting space in the building and I wasn’t sure if security guards – who belonged to the building, not our company – counted as colleagues, so after students went home I checked it out with my boss, as well as his mentor, who was keeping an eye on us for the first week.

    His mentor said it’s fine, security guards aren’t our colleagues and are fair game for dating. Boss jokingly (I think?) said, “you’ve been here one day and already have a date? You tart!” Forgetting who I was talking to. I replied, “excuse you, that’s a really twatty thing to say”. We both looked horrified for a moment, probably both wondering if the other one was going to report us and get us fired. Then he apologised, and took me to the pub and bought me a pint of Guinness. It was the beginning of a frequently delightful, occasionally tense, British-American working relationship.

    After three decades in the UK I still don’t quite understand British humour, or when I should take people seriously. I appreciate the pubs though.

    (Security guard stood me up on our date, and I never got to go out with him, nor did I ever see him at work again. Oh well, he smelled a bit funky anyway.)

  111. Avocado lover*

    I was finish up an interview that went rather well, saying my goodbyes, when the interviewer complimented my purse shaped like an avocado. I thanked them and jokingly responded by saying I was a “basic white bitch who would do backflips for avocado.” Regretted it instantly. Never got a call back.

  112. annoymethis*

    Got so frustrated at a job once that I threw my stapler into the hallway without really knowing if it would hit anyone. I was the last office in the row but the possibility wasn’t zero.

    1. gmg22*

      I threw an empty can at, or at best in the direction of, a colleague once when I got mad that he laughed at me for not knowing how to pronounce the name of a city in a story I was reporting. (The city was La Jolla, California, and sheltered small-town New England girl here pronounced it the gringo way, lol.)

      Of course this was at my college newspaper, not quite in the “real world,” which is my only lame excuse!

  113. Princex Of Hyrule*

    I used to walk about five miles to work at a blue discount department store, where I started work at 4 AM. (I worked in the fresh bakery section.) Our dress code was nothing fancy but called for our clothes in good condition with no stains or tears. Well, one day I was three miles in to this five-mile commute when I tripped and fell into a wash. At 3AM. I dragged myself back out and tried to dust myself off, but my pants had torn open at both knees, my hair was tangled and dirty, and there was a significant gash in my shirt along the back hem. It was less than two hours before the beginning of my shift, and walking back home and then walking to work would make me more than two hours late, so I just… walked to work like that. I redid my hair as I walked, but god was I a sight to behold when I got to work. I cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom, but I still looked like I lost a fight with a bear.

    I tried to hide from customers until my lunch break when I could buy replacement clothes. I was not very successful.

  114. Emby*

    My first post-college office job had no dress code and people dressed incredibly casually (you kept a suit in the office in case it was necessary for an event). T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, all were fine. But my boss had to pull me aside and explain that my underwear should not be showing at work.

  115. gmg22*

    This is one that I think probably could only become a big issue in an open-plan office, though interested to hear otherwise! On quiet nights in the newsroom at my first copy-desk job out of school, I would occasionally call my friends late in the evening after deadline, or they would call me, for a bit of casual chit-chat (back in the turn-of-century days when people still talked on the phone!). This would happen even if I wasn’t officially “on break,” but just if there was nothing urgent to do. No one ever said anything about it, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for older colleagues with families to take quick calls from their spouses, kids before bed, etc — so I assumed it was fine as long as I waited until after deadline. I saw it as a chance to catch up with people who, unlike me, worked 9-5 gigs. Except then this practice started to creep into the before-deadline time, and my friends would occasionally ring up just, like, whenever. (And we’re not talking my cellphone — several of them I’d just given the copy desk number and they’d ring up and ask for me, to which now I’m like LOL WUT? to my 25-year-old self.) Anyway, one night my supervisor pulled me into his office at the end of the night and raked me over the coals. It turned out he had just given an identical lecture to a different colleague who was struggling to meet deadlines in part because she was taking personal calls, and she happened to be sitting next to me that night, and I was serving in a supervisory role that shift and needed to set a better example.

    I still feel the cringe 20-plus years later. But it was an important wake-up call about working in a shared space and respecting colleagues’ need to concentrate — just because deadline has passed doesn’t necessarily mean that someone else next to you isn’t still working on something. From then on I had a strict rule about stepping away from my desk to take any personal calls — mobile phones were quickly becoming the norm at this time, and there were plenty of quiet spaces to go in the building during our shift if I had personal stuff to attend to or wanted to do a quick catch-up with someone while I was on break time. (Thinking back now, it feels laughably strange that I would just sit there and rattle away on the phone to my friends about whatever, in full hearing of my supervisor and colleagues!)

  116. Canonical23*

    I worked at a college as an adjunct during the pandemic. Most of my job was going from English class to English class to teach students how to use databases. A small part of my job was to train new staff from various departments on how to use this scheduling app that the campus used to post different professional development opportunities. Well, when COVID hit, we all got sent to work from home with very little direction and the assumption that if we had our own computer, we would use it so that there would be enough equipment for the staff that didn’t have a home computer/laptop. Everyone adapted pretty well and my classes and training sessions transitioned to Zoom easily. However. I didn’t think to use a different browser or clean my cache or anything before presenting and the first presentation on the scheduling app that I did, when I was showing folks how to fill out the form to register, all of my previous form responses – including ones that I had put in OTHER forms – showed up “helpfully” as suggestions. I had taken a personality quiz a few months back where I’d put my name in as “Angry B****” and sure enough, that was the first suggestion to type in the app’s name field. I was MORTIFIED, but the new employees didn’t seem fazed by it, so I kept going. No one ever brought it up, but I mentioned it to my unofficial supervisor during one of the “how is work from home going” check-ins and he thought it was hilarious.

  117. Mail Truck*

    I worked for a summer in college delivering the mail. I got overly confident in my driving skills since I was puttering around all day in the little, zippy mail truck. It was fun since I was driving from the left seat and usually kept the door open and a leg hanging out the door to cool off with my music blasting. I got wayyy too confident and was driving fast and ended up hitting a mailbox–completely taking it out. I had to call my supervisor and they ended up replacing it. I seriously considered not telling anyone but ultimately decided to own up to it. Probably the only professional decision I made that whole summer.

  118. Delynn MacKenzie*

    As a private therapist I once blurted out “You have weird thoughts!” in session with a client. Then I scrambled to recover.

  119. Anonforthursday*

    Me, twenty-one years old so it was 2003, in my first ever office job straight out of uni. Basic admin tasks including copying and filing. I had been told that was literally my job, nothing else.

    I’d been at the job a while so I’d made a system for the copying and filing that was different to the way I’d been shown, but was more efficient. My manager lost her mind when she found out I was doing things different to how she’d shown me and demanded that I went back to doing them the old way, despite the fact that my way was faster and more was getting done, and this had been noticed.

    When I went back to doing things the old, slower way, my manager commented on how my productivity had dropped. I snapped back and said ‘I thought I wasn’t allowed to do things a different way.’

    Manager, no word of a lie, said ‘You’re not here to think.’

    So we were both unprofessional, I guess.

    I was paid £9,000 a year for that job. They treated their entry level staff so badly, I was once written up for daring to wear hiking boots into the office because it was freaking snowing. Ugh. Noped out the moment a job in my field came up, but I had to eat so you take what you can sometimes, right?

    1. Nameless in Customer Service*

      Manager, no word of a lie, said ‘You’re not here to think.’

      I’ve heard that too. Charming, isn’t it? That manager sounds like the bad side of one of the letters revisited this week (it certainly reminded me of a few of my bad ones)

  120. JMA*

    It’s May 5th, 2000, I’m 20 years old and working in my first professional job for a large retail bookseller, doing .com and bibliographical research. That day, the Love Bug virus crippled large swaths of the internet, including all of the computers in my office. It being a lovely spring day at the time, I decided to go outside and fetch the kite I had in my trunk. I was thoroughly enjoying my kite flying in the open space outside when the department director pulled up next to me in her car and asked what I was doing. “Flying a kite!” was my obvious, enthusiastic reply. She then went inside and had a few unkind things to say to my manager (who had signed off on my kite flying because they knew that with our system down, nothing could be done). Soon after, a no kite flying policy was introduced.

    3. BradC*

      Amazing. No additional clarification offered to the (implied but clearly obvious) *actual* question: yes, I can SEE you are flying a kite, the question is WHY are you flying a kite??

      1. JMA*

        She just rolled her window up and parked to go inside. I gave it another half hour before packing the kite up and heading in to see how things were going.

  121. Triplestep*

    I have a problem hearing “yes” or “no” in vague answers to questions. If I ask a “yes or no” question, I wait patiently through the response, but if I don’t hear a “yes” or a “no” I might genuinely be confused. (I attribute this to my straightforward communication style and having grown up in NYC.)

    I once showed up to a training at work for which apparently my electronic registration did not go through. I sat in the room with many of my closest co-workers to wait to speak to the coordinator; I wanted to ask if I could stay considering there were so many no-shows and empty seats. Looking back, she was one of those people who don’t like to use the word “no”. So her answers were things like “There were lots of people who wanted to attend”. I truly did not understand she was telling me “no”, and to all of my colleagues I must have looked like I was badgering her by asking the same thing in different ways. Confused, I finally asked “I don’t understand, can I stay?” This was answered by a chorus of my closest colleagues yelling “NO!” I was so mortified, I just gathered my things and left as quickly as possible. How could everyone else have understood this young woman except me? I’m sure this does not seem super embarrassing in the grand scheme of things, but anyone who has ever been “coached” about their “tone” knows how I felt in that moment.

    1. ferrina*

      Nah, she should have been clear. Lot of people have trouble reading between the lines (and it’s common in certain neurodivergent conditions). That’s not on you, she should have clearly said “You can’t stay, but we encourage you to sign up for the next one.” It’s not that hard to say!

      1. Triplestep*

        I agree she should have been more clear, but for whatever reason, she couldn’t be. Some people are conflict-avoidant to the point where they cannot say “no.” As someone who has been coached about my tone, I know that to those people, I am like a bulldozer. That’s part of what was embarrassing here.

    2. CommanderBanana*

      You weren’t in the wrong! “There are lots of people who wanted to attend” is not an answer to your question.

      1. Triplestep*

        Tell me about it! Heaven help my husband if he should dare ever answer a “yes or no” question with a reply that doesn’t include the words “yes” or “no”. I’ll just stare blankly at him and say “I didn’t hear a ‘yes’ or ‘no'”. We end up laughing about it (it’s an ongoing 0n-joke) but it would not have gone over well in the scenario I describe, with this sweet young woman half my age and new in the working world. (And me, having been told I have a strong personality.)

    3. NeutralJanet*

      Ehh, that was at least partially her fault, though I can imagine that it was super embarrassing for you. After she gave you one or two soft “no”s and you didn’t understand them, she should have straight-up said “no”. It’s not really fair for her to expect you to get the hint that the answer was no while not taking the hint that she needed to be more blunt.

      1. Triplestep*

        I agree with you, but I think she was doing the best she could. She was so young, and I think women are socialized to “be nice”. Saying “no” is not nice I guess.

    4. Luna*

      “NO!”
      *Thank* you! Was that so hard to say?
      I am on the spectrum and I really do not understand vague or subtle things, in speech or body language. My questions are to the point, I much prefer to the point, if not blunt, answers. Makes it so much easier to avoid misunderstandings in the long run.

      1. Triplestep*

        I am not on the spectrum, and I still agree with you. I am a New York Jew and just super direct which I find that the easiest way to be. I have had to learn to be less sharp in my tone, and I still get called out on it.

        The worst part is that for most people, they can’t really point to what it is about my communication style they don’t like, and they can’t give me examples. No one tells me in the moment, but I have heard it in reviews. Still there are other people who – when I tell them I have been talked to about my “tone” – will say “What? That’s crazy! I love the way you talk! You’re so up front, I never have to guess what you mean.” So … go figure.

  122. I'm Better Now*

    Probably relatively minor in comparison, but my first post high school, non-fast food job, I had nothing to do so I started balancing my checkbook at work. I was so used to someone coming and giving me work, not looking for it myself, that I thought the office setting was the same. You just sat at your desk and waited for someone to come give you work. My manager saw me and asked what I was doing, and to his credit, didn’t lose it when I told him matter of factly “just balancing my checkbook while I wait for work.” He was actually pretty understanding and patient in explaining that if I had nothing to do, I needed to ask.

  123. Mrs. Burt Wonderstone*

    I once very aggressively pursued someone in another department romantically to the point of harassment when they were politely trying to put me down gently. They never complained to anyone but it wasn’t until much later I realized how inappropriate that was.

  124. Anxious Small Talk*

    I have horrible social anxiety, like, constantly thinking that everyone secretly hates me or is judging me. So, when I first started out in the working world, I had trouble coming up with small talk to bond with my coworkers. This was a very creative office, and I didn’t want to ask the same boring old questions, and it was near Halloween, so I decided to ask the ~spooky~ question of “Have you ever seen a ghost?” to one of my coworkers… except I panicked. HARD. I’m talking thoughts going 300 mph while I’m in the middle of the sentence. So, instead of asking “Have you ever seen a ghost,” I went (internally), “Oh gosh, did I already ask this the other day? What if she thinks it’s a weird question? It is kind of a weird question, isn’t it? I should ask something else, but I’m already halfway through this sentence. What can I replace ghost with? Ghosts are dead… dead people… zombies… zombies died… zombies are people who died – uh-”

    And then, as casually as I had started the sentence, asked this poor, unsuspecting coworker… “Have you ever seen someone die?”

    Cue a completely warranted incredulous reaction and a lifetime of cringing to myself. Thankfully I no longer work there or live near her.

    1. Awkward*

      I’m screaming!!!! That obviously wasn’t funny that but it is gold the way you tell it now.

  125. DisneyChannelThis*

    The most unprofessional I’ve ever been was during my first time supervising summer interns (college undergrads 18-21 age range, they were paid), I had a intern who kept napping on the job. He wasn’t discreet, napped in the hallway table chairs (popular lunch spot), he napped in the random chair by the elevator, he napped in the chairs in the waiting room area. In conversations it came up that he played video games to 2am and that’s why he was so tired at his 8am job. Talking to him about better sleep habits didn’t work, talking about how even if it’s his lunch break he still can’t sleep in the public hallway (especially since he slept well through lunch into the afternoon missing tasks), I offered to send him home if he’s that tired. I was getting crap from my boss because he was hearing from the director about how bad of optics this napfest was. Finally, I lost my temper after finding he failed to come back from lunch yet again and when I found him napping in public view, I threw a plush beanie star wars droid (office mascot) hard, slamming into the glass just above his head. Woke him right up. We didn’t have nap issues after that but I had a lot of talks with my boss though.

    1. Esmeralda*

      When I’ve had students fall sleep in class, I first try raising my voice. If that doesn’t work, I head over to the sleeping student, stand behind their chair, and teach from there, loudly.

      And if THAT doesn’t work, I keep teaching from there, loudly, rap them on the head with my knuckles, and never say a word about it.

      No one sleeps in my classes any more…

      1. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

        I am hoping you are telling us the unprofessionalism is you hitting a student on the head, not the student sleeping in class.

      2. Gabrielle*

        Don’t do that! Are your students children?
        It might be fine for many of them assuming this “rapping” is enough to get someone’s attention, not to hurt. But even then, chances are some of the kids you’ve done this to were missing sleep because of not being safe at home, and for you to scare them is cruel.

  126. GythaOgden*

    This is gonna sound a bit Not Always Right, but here goes. I work on reception in an NHS office. I’ve been here 8 years now and I enjoy the phone work I do because, for someone who is introverted to the point of hermit at home, I’m surprisingly sociable at work.

    We’re not a public facing office but we do get calls from the public because a service user helpline (complaints and signposting people) is based out the building. But mostly we’re admin/IT focused, so the calls are boring stuff.

    We do have a few ‘frequent flyer’ (FF) callers who are disgruntled service users and who will stop at nothing to speak to someone in the adminstration office, who are distinctly not public facing.

    Given the nature of what we actually do, quite often, the callers are under a lot of personal stress, so we try to deal with them as compassionately as possible and 99% of the time we can get them on to the helpline and not have them directly going through to the staff who don’t directly liaise with patients.

    But a few FFs know who they think they need to speak to, as if their case is super special and therefore they get to badger a team lead whose responsibility is not to directly administer their treatment. It gets exhausting, because inevitably they won’t take no for an answer and we’re stuck telling them they need to go through their actual service providers rather than the management who don’t deal with the public at all.

    Think of it in the teapot paradigm: guy goes and buys a teapot from Whittards, purveyors of fine hot beverages and accessories for making them. It breaks the first time he uses it, so he asks the local branch of Whittards to fix it for them. Then when they suggest he buys some glue or a new teapot, he gets angry and demands to speak not to the manager, nor the head of teapot production…but to the woman who purchased the clay from which they are made at the factory from whom Whittards buys their pottery goods. (Fun fact, my mum’s cousin worked in real pottery manufacturing. So I know how it is in that biz.)

    So they think they can get the clay purchaser to speak to them about the clay that their teapot was made out of and demand … I don’t know what exactly but something to do with their broken teapot. I’m on the phone to them trying to get them to listen when I say Clay Lady is WFH and in any event I can’t make her pick up her phone and the only way to reach her is through the Teapot Repair Helpline and…

    It’s the first cold day of autumn. The fire alarm is busted. There is a loud screech going off behind me, maintenance is running all over the building. Because our system is ‘fail to safety’, the automatic front door is wide open, and I’m sitting in my parka because it’s freezing. And FF is begging to be put through to Clay Lady.

    I grit my teeth and actually say: ‘Look. You can probably hear a siren in the background. That’s our building’s alarm. I’m sitting here really cold because the door is locked open and we’re trying to find a way to shut it that doesn’t end up simply trapping people inside. My head feels like it’s going to explode and my foot feels like an elephant has sat on it because I broke my ankle last March. I can put you through to the Teapot Repair Helpline, or I can simply put the phone down. I cannot get Clay Lady to help you, but if you want us to help mend your teapot, then there is no other option.’

    From the other end of the phone came a big gulp and a small voice. ‘OK. Put me through then.’

    I felt both good and bad. My colleague and I bust a gut for the few members of the public who phone us. I hope I wouldn’t behave like that if it really was my job to help FFs get the care they need. At this point everyone was wondering about another lockdown and there’s still a huge ‘teapot’ backlog that providers are working through.

    But at the same time I feel like I was honest, there was no comeback and he hasn’t rung back, so while what I said wasn’t totally professional, it was decisive.

    1. Nameless in Customer Service*

      This is pretty awesome. Not precisely professional, but awesome.

  127. TRC*

    I got promoted into a full accounting position. This put me squarely in the sights of the accounting manager. She scheduled a 15 minute check in (on the day the CFO was out) and completely tore into me. To set the stage, the last person who had the job got up and walked out one day because of this type of abuse. Accounting manager was SPECIFICALLY told she could not do ambush meetings like this. Yes, I cried and left a wildly unprofessional message to the CFO. It was kind of the last straw and I told them the next day I was moving back to my home state. I was supposed to stay on two or three weeks to train my replacement. On the Friday of the first week, I was told it was my last day, since I had finished training. I hadn’t spoken to the accounting manager all week so she had no idea where we were at with training. I spent the rest of the day trying to cram as much in as I could. At the end of the day, I was saying goodbye to a coworker in the remote corner my office was in. We were both crying. The CEO comes around the corner handing out cookies (something he’s never done) and come upon us and has no idea what is going on. He excuses himself awkwardly. I leave, coworker explains to him it was my last day, he gets it. But despite crying a river over multiple days in an unprofessional manner, I gave one hell of an exit interview to HR. Crying unprofessionally was NOTHING compared to many, many unprofessional things the manager said or did over two years. One highlight was that she said to two of us that when she hears a phone vibrating during a meeting she wants to grab it and stick it between her legs. My replacement only lasted a few months.

  128. anon e mouse*

    1) Showed up to an interview not having read a document I was asked to read, at all, bombing the interview with the senior manager because I knew none of what they expected.
    2) Showed up on a client meeting day I’d forgotten about in jeans and a polo. The jeans had a semi-busted fly, for good measure. Dressy business casual to formal business was expected for these kinds of meetings.
    3) Got deep, like 20+ minutes, into a phone interview before realizing it was with a completely different organization than I’d thought, one with a similar name but only a loose relationship, and gave a lot of answers that were targeted to the other place/position. (This was back 10+ years ago where sometimes interviews were still arranged entirely by phone; much harder for something like this to happen now.)

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      While not work related, I can sympathize about #3. I once had a conversation about some single activities before I picked up on exactly whom I was talking to. (He was a member of the group)

    1. Wisteria*

      Are you the one who bit that guy’s arm when he blocked the door? He was an ass, and you are my hero.

      1. Awkward*

        Yeaaah. I quit a few years back, but see him at brunch with others once or twice a year. We have never mentioned it and the overall vibe is much better. We were all going a little crazy there.

  130. Maltypass*

    This doesn’t really count as I’m not mortified by the fact I personally did this, more by the fact I worked somewhere where this was normal behaviour; my manager had the idea to have a cheese and wine night on the clock. I work retail. On the late shift we put (fairly nice) platters of crackers and cheese behind the tills along with cups of wine, and everyone was allowed, nay encouraged, to partake. The manager would even cover for you if your placement that night didn’t take you near the till area. There was no fear it was a trick or would blowback as she was also taking part and far, far more illicit things took place in that chain. If the head of the company found out he’d probably congratulate us. We proceeded to go out after the shift and I got the most drunk I’d ever been. I dread to think of the service anyone received in store that night

  131. beanie*

    The ones to get us started are amazing!

    I once sent an SNL video to a coworker would respond to everything I said with “ok.” It started to feel like the skits with Pete Davidson where he responds to everything with “ok.” Which I sent without actually watching the video and it definitely had some NSFW content in it (as I definitely should have known). He responded with “Ummmm?”

  132. Alexis Rosay*

    I sent an email to an external partner with the salutation “Dear XXX”. I couldn’t remember the guy’s name when I was writing the email so I had put a placeholder and saved it in drafts. Later, I couldn’t remember why the email was in drafts and I sent it without reading.

    Thankfully, he was nice about it.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      This is why I have a 2-minute delay on sending emails. The number of times I’ve hit “send” and then “oh no” is in the high double digits.

  133. Elle Woods*

    For some reason, t-shirts with your dorm name were a big darn deal when I was in college. Each dorm would come up with a design and residents would wear them to show pride about their dorm.

    My alma mater also had a gigantic end of the year celebration. One year, I was on the board that helped organize the festivities and was assigned to order the t-shirts for it. I got quotes and chose a vendor. The day the t-shirts arrived, I met with the vendor to inspect things and said they looked great. Then I said, “I sure am glad that these look better than the (dorm name) t-shirts that have a picture of broccoli on them. Those shirts look awful.” Turns out the same vendor had done those shirts. Oops!

  134. PerplexedPigeon*

    I wore those Vibram tow shoes back when those were a thing. They were grey and neon. I was working as a journalist at the time and I totally got called into my (female boss’ office) and told in no uncertain terms to never wear them again because the freaked people out. Womp womp.

  135. Critical Rolls*

    I work with the public. Anyone who does has had moments when their patience fails. There may have been a time when someone was banging on our door before we opened and I walked down and said through the glass, “As you can SEE [pointing to sign] from our POSTED HOURS, we are NOT YET OPEN. We will assist you once we are OPEN.” In a tone that was not what I’d advise.

  136. Kaworal*

    The tea example brought this rushing back: right after college, I had an unpaid internship at a small NGO. They honestly didn’t have enough work for one intern, let alone the three that they had, but they were super flexible around the restaurant job I had that actually paid (some of my) bills and it was something to put on my resume. Because it was so slow, I was constantly doing interviews and applications for other gigs while I was “on the clock;” once, however, I stupidly scheduled a two-hour TIMED writing test, which of course ended up being the only time that the executive director EVER wandered back to the intern office to chat. I was flat-out researching and writing for this test while he tried to make small talk and I kept responding with monosyllables and “uh-huh,” clearly preoccupied, until he – who was a really nice man and a former Congressman, who it would have behooved me to make a good impression on – said, “well, you’re clearly too busy to talk” and I said “yes, sorry.” He had to have known what I was doing or thought I was brushing him off, because I had zero time sensitive work at this org. All’s well that ends well, though, because I ended up getting the other internship, which was a great stepping stone and actually paid me!

  137. JJ*

    Early 20s and my only job experience was at a very casual office. During an interview at a new company I told the interviewer “sometimes I feel silly on Friday afternoons and sit under my desk.” Not sure what compelled me to share that tidbit. That company was Uber before they were huge.

  138. East of Nowhere South of Lost*

    I was in my 20’s, first job. My boss came in dressed in all black. I looked up at him and asked point blank ‘Who Died?’

      1. East of Nowhere South of Lost*

        No, he just liked to dress in all black. He thought he looked ‘dressed up’. Guy had zero fashion sense FWIW.

  139. Janet Snakehole*

    I had a coworker that was the most unpleasant person I’d ever met. She was always negative, nasty, mean, unhelpful, etc. Everyone, including our manager, went out of their way to avoid interacting with her, but I, unfortunately, had to work very closely with her every day, and it was stressful and draining. I approached my manager about her several times but he would just listen and nod and then not do anything about her attitude.

    One Friday night there was a work happy hour and my unpleasant coworker didn’t attend. I ended up getting VERY drunk and was having a conversation with my manager when he mentioned something about her. I ended up saying, “You know what? F*** that c*** and her b****y attitude. I’m SO glad she’s not here tonight to ruin this happy hour!” My boss’s eyes widened and another coworker I was friends with (thankfully) dragged me away.

    The following Monday morning, I went into his office, mortified, to apologize, and he just said, “Hey, what happens between 5pm Friday and 9am Monday is none of my business.” It was nice of him to give me a pass, but he never ended up doing anything about my horrible coworker and I ended up quitting because of her a few months later.

  140. Mockingdragon*

    Ooooh get ready.

    I went to an interview for a publishing house in New York, looking for an internship. My parents had set the interview up for me and didn’t adequately explain to me what was happening – I wanted an internship for the upcoming fall semester, and it was June. They were hiring for a summer intern. My mother insisted that I wear a pencil skirt and shoes I couldn’t walk in, it was some 90+ degrees in the middle of the city, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I’d only been offered the interview the day before, and I now know that I was dealing with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. I was too young and dumb to insist on knowing what I would have needed to know.

    I showed up at the interview and when they asked me for a copy of my resume, I burst into tears because I didn’t know I was supposed to have brought one. I still hadn’t quite caught on that they were hiring for an immediate need, and that when I clarified “Oh, I was looking to start in September,” I had basically taken myself out of the running already. I just sat there humiliated watching my interviewers give each other side-eyes at this poor kid crying in front of them at the start of the process.

    I. did not get the internship.

    1. Meeeeeeeee*

      My teenage son was just diagnosed as well, these are the things I really think about for him. I hope you don’t beat yourself up and have had better experiences since then. <3

  141. Potty humor*

    Being a male in his early 20s at the time, even the mildest potty humor was of course cause for full-on hyena laughing. At one of our company gatherings, our CEO wheeled in a large sheet cake to commemorate a great quarter. As the CEO gave his speech, one of my colleagues leaned over to me and whispered, “I dare you to pull down your pants and sit in the cake.”

    This might as well have been the funniest thing I’d ever heard. I literally could not control myself. I turned bright red, had tears streaming down my face and made all kinds of bizarre noises to stifle my laughter. I even had to bend over and pretend to tie my shoes at one point to try and be less noticeable. It was no use. I finally pretended to have a coughing fit, at which point all 50 or so in attendance were now staring at me, and went to the bathroom, where I collapsed on the floor in the throes of hysterical laughter.

    My boss did later ask (rightfully so) what the hell happened. I told him the truth, and he said, “Well, I guess at least you didn’t actually sit in the cake.”

  142. Soprani*

    During my college years I worked summers as a switchboard operator. One day an anxious customer called to speak with their favorite account rep. Account rep was not at his desk so the procedure was to put the line on hold and page the account rep. I must have been an off day for me because I, somehow, transferred the customer to the page function. The entire building, several hundreds of employees, were treated to anxious customer’s “Hello? Anybody? What’s going on? Hello?” There was no way to recall the line and anxious customer stayed on the phone for a good 3 minutes querying the Universe. For the rest of my tenure at that company I was regularly teased about sending calls to page.

  143. The Other Katie*

    In my second to last IT job, I worked for a guy who truly believed I should be available and on-call at any and all hours. At one point the night shift called me at about 2AM to ask about a process. I didn’t answer, because it was 2AM, and he followed up with a rather sarcastic email at 7AM the next morning about how I was on call (I was not on call) and I had to answer emails at any point.

    This didn’t really excuse my CCing his manager on my response, in which I told him I was not on call, as he neither paid me nor scheduled me for it, and he had no excuse to be sending me shitograms at 7 in the morning about something the night shift should have been able to handle easily.

    (This didn’t make it any less satisfying, but older and more temperate me recognises that was incredibly unprofessional.)

        1. Murphy*

          To be fair, if there was a textbook definition of “shitograms” that would definitely be it.

  144. Ms. Yvonne*

    At ~28 yo I used to wear a tee-shirt with “Petit dejeuner” across my tits. To an office – a weird offshoot of a major university. I just thought it was cute, not a signal that I was lactating.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I also would not have thought anything of it and wouldn’t have jumped to “lactating”.

  145. TransmascJourno*

    The summer after I graduated college in Medium Size City, I was temping for the summer before making my big move for grad school to Major Metropolitan City. My temp assignment was at a hospital, where I essentially scanned charts and patient documentation to input them into the hospital database. (I used to joke with friends that my job was looking at lung nodules all day.) I was…not the best employee.

    – I’m a writer, and I spent what I considered downtime (emphasis on “what I considered”) to essentially use the office printer to print off — and I kid you not — twenty copies of any given completed short story to send off and submit to literary journals. This means I probably went through hundreds of printed pages. (This was around 2010, so not all literary pubs had switched over to electronic submissions.) I would use office envelopes and office stamps to send those submissions. In front of my coworkers. Openly. (Did I mention that it was an open floor plan in our small, semi-basement office? And that I was one of four people who worked in that office?) For some reason, I was never reprimanded. I have no idea why.

    – Because so many of my college friends were moved away that summer — either back to their hometowns, to grad school, or to start new jobs — it seemed like there was a big farewell party once or twice a week. While it was never at the level of obnoxious, black-out drinking, it certainly made for some very late nights. To that effect, it also led to some less-than-stellar decision-making on my part when it came to getting to work on time. Most of the time I’d wake up very late, sometimes too late to shower (or do anything but throw on a work outfit and brush my teeth). Half the time I was hungover, and my vibes were something akin to “lugubrious Roman post-bacchanal.” One of those mornings, I walked into the office and smelled something sharply antiseptic and alcohol-like. (I still don’t know entirely what it was, but then again, my office was in a hospital.) I then turned to two of my coworkers and joked, “Hey, something smells like gin, and for once it isn’t me.”

    I lasted in that temp job until about two weeks before I was due to move. In retrospect is honestly shocking. Now that I’m older, a stickler for professional norms, and drink a lot less, I want to find a TARDIS, go back in time, and unleash a sense-shaking for the ages upon my younger self. Even typing this out has made my insides disintegrate with cringe.

    P.S. I promise I am not anything like Ryan from The Office in real life.

    1. TransmascJourno*

      *moved away. I promise, none of my college friends were picked up and relocated by a large giant against their will. (Also, this is what I get from typing such a long post on my phone.)

  146. hiptobesquared*

    Not unprofessional, just mortifying.

    I was interviewing for a new job and got disconnected. I went to call them back and instead accidentally called an employee.

    “This is hiptobesquared calling for Mr. so and so. We were in an interview and I got disconnected.”

    Employee: What?!

    I made up this story about how I was interviewing to do some volunteer work. Thank god I got the job.

  147. cleo*

    I gasped and said “oh no” when my boss announced that she was pregnant at a team meeting. (Her previous maternity leave had been a freaking nightmare for a lot of reasons and that’s what I was responding to, but yeah, really not cool).

    I still cringe thinking about it, even though I apologized many years ago and we were able to laugh about it. She said everyone at the table looked stunned – her first maternity leave had really been that bad (the 2nd went much better). We did pull it together and threw her a really nice baby shower.

  148. Damn it, Hardison!*

    I was working in an archive, and one of my projects was to deal with hundreds of boxes of old student theses. I was to put them into protective envelopes, make sure they were in the catalog, re-box them, and send them to storage. I was almost done, so my colleagues pitched in on Friday afternoon to help me finish the last twenty or so boxes. We finished just before the end of the day, and to express our exhilaration, decided to take the empty boxes and build a triumphal arch in the reading room, taking as our model the Arc de Triomphe. It was a thing of beauty, and surprisingly sound. We may have done a victory March through it on our way out.

    We came in on Monday morning to a scathing letter from the janitorial staff, and rightly so. This was a university with a student population given to pranks, but apparently our misguided creation was an arch too far.

  149. El_steena*

    First professional job out of school, I was hired as a copywriter at a small (~100) person marketing firm. The firm did a fairly specialized thing, so when we were busy, we were VERY busy … and when we were not busy, say, at the end of Q4, the creative team was beyond dead. Every single campaign was on hold until January.

    Three days to go until Christmas Eve. I’ve copyedited a library of 500+ articles; I’ve organized the shared drives; I’ve written 30+ new articles; I’ve attended trainings; I’ve assisted other teams with tasks; I’ve written style guides and onboarding documentation; I have asked around until I’ve been told there is literally nothing left for me to do until January. Most people who have accrued vacation have smartly used it, as this happens every year. But I’m pretty new, no vacation yet, still have to come in.

    I resign myself to three days of reading style manuals and other guides (think Bill Walsh’s Lapsing Into a Comma). Which would have probably been … ok, maybe, had they not just looked like novels. And had I not done this with my feet propped up on the desk of my cubicle. While wearing torn Chuck Taylors from grad school. In full view of the CEO. For three entire 8-hours days. On the third day, as I was getting ready to leave, there was A Discussion.

    I’ve since left marketing, but one piece of advice I always give to students and new grads is to perfect the art of looking busy, even if you are actually bored out of your skull.

  150. HugeTractsofLand*

    In my first job out of college, I helped plan and lead overnight service learning trips for teenagers. Our building was very informal, just a school/church/office setup without a security guard. Kids and their chaperones would sleep in the church in sleeping bags, and as a trip leader you’d sleep in the church in YOUR sleeping bag, then wake up around 7:30am to prepare breakfast and wake up the kids for their day of service.

    In my personal life, I spent a lot of time hanging out with my friend who was a bartender. As some of you might know, “hanging out” with a bartender means you chill out at the bar, drinking comped drinks and chatting until they actually close…and in my city, the bars didn’t close until 4am. So there came a night when I didn’t have to be in at the office until 8am the following day. There was a (weeknight) service trip, but a different camp leader was handling it. On that night, I enjoyed quite a few variations of free drinks, and stayed with my friend until closing. We then stayed out for another hour after THAT at the one bar that (unofficially) stayed open even later. So 5am rolls around , and I have to be at work at 8am. I was 1.5 hours away from my apartment by train, and work was an hour away from my apartment. I was sober enough to calculate that travelling home was a waste of time. And I was drunk enough to think that it was smart to go right to work. As in, right then. At 5am. About 6+ drinks in.

    Work was only 30 minutes away, so I got there at 5:30 and figured I could get a couple hours of sleep. I used my key to get in and crept up to the office. The trip leader was downstairs sleeping in the church, but it there was a slight chance that she might come upstairs for bandaids or something. So I went to the very back of our L shaped office, and, to make sure that I was absolutely hidden…I curled up under a desk. The company owner’s desk.

    Yes, I still shudder to think about how unprofessional this all was. No, I didn’t *exactly* get caught. My alarm went off at 7 and I crept back downstairs to the bathroom to change my shirt. As I exited the bathroom, the trip leader was running by with hot coffee. She looked surprised to see me, but hurried on. I found out later that she’d figured I was just there early to help out, since it wasn’t unheard of. Ugh. Never again!

  151. no name*

    In college, I worked a summer job where we’d meet at the office at 6am. From there we would split up into work crews and head out to our sites in work trucks, usually a 20-40 minute drive. The crews consisted of fellow college students working seasonally like me, the supervisor stayed at the office. Almost every day I’d fall asleep in the work truck on the way to site. My coworkers thought it was amusing at first, but by the end of summer they were very much over my naps.

  152. Anonymousse*

    I was a wee public interest lawyer starting out at my fellowship which turned out to be a toxic hellfire. The ED made us all non-exempt bc he didn’t want to pay the legal minimum for exempt in NYC but we weren’t authorized for any OT, of which there were many. He also required standing weekly meetings (a euphemistic way of saying his weekly therapy session) which never started on time and usually went on for about 2-3 hrs. Mind you this was a small team of ~5-6 people. On a particular Monday, I had a urgent reply due at COB and he started the standing meeting 1.5 hr late. Two and a half hours into this meeting, I finally broke down and I swiveled my chair around and went back to working on my reply in the middle of him talking about how underappreciated he was as an ED. I got an email from him later that day fuming that I would do such a thing and he disinvited me from all future meetings. I maliciously complied. Yes I was unprofessional and I would never do this again at any other job but he deserved it.

  153. TJ*

    My department had an annual “pub games” team building offsite. Each manager (of which I was one) headed up a team and we competed in snooker, darts etc. There was some money behind the bar so everyone was drinking.

    One year it fell the day after my last accountancy exam which I felt I’d bombed. I preceded to get hideously drunk along with the rest of my team.

    My boss spoke to me about my professionalism the next day

  154. Demelza*

    In the early 00s while on break from college, I applied for an administrative position at the local jail (it was for inmate intake). Being young and dumb, when the interviewing sheriff asked if I could pass a drug test, my response was “hmmm…. I don’t know.” It wasn’t until he asked me to clarify my reply that I realized my mistake. I stuttered out a “well, I was at a party…2nd hand smoke….you know…”, but that interview was definitely over.

  155. Jamboree*

    I had recently taken on my first supervisor role, and my team of three include one verrrry long term employee with a reputation for being difficult to manage, to the point that I’m pretty sure I was only given the job to our distance between her and our mutual manager. She, for example, alphabetized some (this was a long time ago, around 1990) index cards at my behest, giving me back the cards with Z in the front and A in the back. When computers came into the department she did not always put spaces between words. We were the technology group, which pre-computers included typewriters, for Pete’s sake! I could stand supervising her for approximately 33 hours a week, but I ended up in tears in my boss’s office so regularly by Friday afternoons he eventually bought a box of Kleenex for his desk. I’m still mortified.

  156. Completely Catty*

    As I prepared to move from one city to another for a new job, I had painters and other people in and out of my apartment, and I moved out all my furniture a few days before I left. I was concerned about the impact of all this activity and the paint fumes on my cats, but didn’t have the money for an apartment and didn’t want to impose on my friends. So I packed up my three cats and my sleeping bag and moved into my office at my outgoing job. For two days. I literally slept on the floor of my tiny office, with my 3 cats, and just put a sign on my office door that said ‘Don’t open! Cats inside’ so that anyone who needed access to anything in my office didn’t accidentally let them out while I wasn’t there. I was almost thirty. I still can’t believe I did this.

  157. I had a lot of feelings*

    First job out of college…Executive Assistant at a small professional association that worked out of a converted historic home at a prestigious college in The South. High degree of polish & professionalism expected, and I was the first person you saw when you came in the fancy front door.

    My boyfriend of 2 years and I broke up and I brought that mess to work in the cringiest way. I had purchased a special journal just to process the break up and I would have it out on my desk all day, just writing in it every time I felt my feelings, and when I had breaks/lunch I would CURL UP on the couch in the sitting room just behind the foyer (my desk was in the foyer) and OPENLY CRY while I, again, wrote in my journal. I did this for a week, at least.

    God bless the patience of my boss, who still wrote me a great recommendation when I left for grad school.

  158. No Dumb Blonde*

    Not something I did, but something I witnessed. A couple decades ago, when email was not new but company policies on appropriate use weren’t quite what they are today, I worked for a very large defense contractor that had offices all across the country, including an outpost in our rural Western state. Some local staff had only a glimmer of an idea how large our parent company actually was; I recall traveling to D.C. for a conference and being amazed at how many tall buildings had our company’s logo on them. Anyway, our rural office was part of a large sector doing mostly IT work, not building planes or anything. One of our coworkers was even more… um… “rural” than most and he decided to share an off-color joke (mistake #1) by selecting the email distribution list for the entire sector (mistake #2), which must have included 10,000 or more employees. Several used Reply to All to express their displeasure, and this was back in the day when mass distribution lists combined with employees’ automated Out of Office messages could create an email-storm sh*tshow. The employee was let go.

  159. Do YOU want a job here?*

    I worked for a popular fast-casual restaurant chain as a manager. It was a particularly hard week of consecutive closes where I was short 1-2 people every day. A customer called to put in an order for some chicken. I told her it would be 30 mins as I had a lot of orders and a line in the cafe. Of course, the person picking up arrived as I hung up the phone. In due time, we got the order together and as soon as they left, the phone rang again. The customer complained about how long it took, about how we seemed to be always short staffed lately. I was exasperated. So, I told her we were hiring and asked, “Would you like to apply for a job?” Her response? “I am a wife and mother, I do not need a job.” I fessed up to my boss the following day and she had a laugh over it. The customer had already called back to speak to someone else…to get a free sandwich next time she visited.

  160. Brienne the Blue*

    So many.

    * In my first job after college, I changed the desktop background on my computer to a giant headshot of Tom Selleck as Magnum, P.I. So every time I closed a window, his giant face would stare back at everyone. I thought it was hilarious but most of my very serious coworkers did not.
    * At that same job, I would regularly kick my shoes off under my desk and proceed to walk around the office barefoot.
    * A few years later but also in my twenties, I worked with a bunch of young, snarky people who drank way too much. We all routinely got wasted together and knew absolutely everything about each other’s personal lives. More than one of us had a morning where we barfed into a trash can on the way in to work and kept on truckin’.
    * I once went to a job interview straight from the gym. I had showered, but I had wet hair, no makeup, and was packing a huge gym bag. I had mostly decided I didn’t want the job already, but I definitely didn’t get the chance to turn them down.

  161. Retail Dalliance*

    When I was 22, I was working 2 jobs: substitute teaching Mondays and Fridays and retail at my local mall Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Thursdays/Saturdays/Sundays. The retail store announced it was going out of business and was laying everyone off in 3 months. Employees were permitted to take some clothing items we wanted to purchase and keep them in the back room until the price dropped low enough in the liquidation sale (think 50-70% discounts!) so I was doing this too. Well, one day I was trying on a shirt I wanted to “put on hold” in the back room. It was on my 15 minute break. I put the shirt on, and walked outside the store to the Starbucks (the next door shop in the mall). I got my drink, came back to the store, changed back into my regular work attire, and hung the shirt on the rack to save for myself. Well, it turns out if you leave the store with clothing on, you technically stole it (even though I (and the shirt) was only outside the store for about 4 minutes, and the shirt went to the back room with everyone else’s reserved stuff). I was immediately and summarily fired. I was so dumb at 22 I didn’t understand what I did wrong–it felt like being fired on a technicality. I kept repeating “but I didn’t steal it!” to my manager, who was in a tough spot because of the store’s zero tolerance policy for theft. I cried and begged for my job back, to no avail. I got a job teaching full time the following school year, so thankfully I get to leave my firing off my resume entirely. Truly one of my dumbest moments as a person on the earth. Thank GOD we are not 22 years old forever.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      If it helps, I did something so, so much stupider. I was the only person working at a small toy shop with a broken cash register. Since it wouldn’t lock and I had to do work in the back of the store (out of sight of the register), I took all the 20s out of the cash register and *put them in my back pocket*.

      Then I *forgot to put them back and walked home*. I didn’t realize what I did until the store owner called about several hundred dollars missing from the till.

      I didn’t get arrested, or even fired. Possibly because store owner was so disorganized that she paid me 3 months late once, claiming that it was because she thought she’d already paid me, and I believed her

  162. Josephine*

    I’m a female engineer and this happened over 20 years ago when I was fresh on the job as a process engineer. I was asked to go on a site visit to a manufacturing plant in the US (I’m in Canada). I decided that even though it was an overnight trip I wasn’t going to check any luggage – or bring a carry-on! – other than my briefcase. I somehow figured no man would bring a carry-on and I didn’t want to stand out as I knew I’d be the only woman in the group. When I landed, the colleague I was travelling with saw me with just my briefcase and assumed I’d checked a bag (he had a carry-on), so he headed towards baggage claim. He was a little surprised when I told him I only had my briefcase! I had a clean shirt, a change of underwear, and a toothbrush in there and not much else. I wore my steel toe boots the whole time I was there. I can only imagine what he thought… and it only got worse from there. When we got the hotel I just stood there, not realizing that I was meant to pay for my hotel room. I only had a student visa with a $200 (Cdn) limit and when I realized what he and the hotel clerk were waiting for, I started panicking because I knew I wouldn’t be able to cover the room. I did manage to blurt out “Oh no, I forgot the corporate credit card!” and my colleague paid for my room, but I have never stopped cringing at that whole trip. The folks we were meeting took us out for supper at a fancy restaurant and I sat there in complete mortification in my jeans, crumpled t-shirt and steel toed boots while my colleague kept up the conversation in his suit and tie. Yikes.

    1. Wolf*

      To be fair, they really should have told you ahead of the journey that you need to pay for the hotel room.

  163. Cookies for Breakfast*

    1) At my first job out of university, I developed a habit (once every 1-2 weeks) of helping myself to a posh breakfast food my bosses stored in the office kitchen, along with the tea and coffee available to employees. In my defense: those bosses were ultra-toxic, and there were way bigger privileges they flaunted in front of staff; I was very underpaid (hired for a barely-living-wage entry-level role that turned out to be three specialised positions rolled into one); and the reason I knew the food was there was that they offered some to me in the first place. But I should have realised sooner that it had been a one-off offer, and when the box containing it moved from the kitchen counter to one of the (still shared) cupboards, it must have been because they noticed the contents going down in volume.

    2) Got caught exchanging an eye roll with a colleague, when our most demanding and rude (but also highest-value) client made a particularly egregious request in a video call. I can’t remember what it was, now. Thought we’d been subtle, until my manager mentioned the client had contacted him directly to complain about it. Then again, that client complained about a lot of things without having a leg to stand on (e.g. an Internet Explorer bug messed up the formatting of a blog post that looked perfect on Chrome, and the client told my manager that the page looked terrible because of my lazy writing and editing). I learnt a mortifying lesson about my complete lack of a poker face on that day, and was ready to apologise to the client, but my manager also understood that I’d had an extreme reaction in a situation where my limits were continuously tested.

    3) Mild but pointed politics remark said with a lot of conviction, and a slightly-too-loud voice, in an open-plan office. I was having a conversation with someone who shared my views, and probably thinking “I’m an immigrant ranting against a party that hates immigrants, surely that’s my right?”. A moment later, I realised a few people had raised their heads, and the silence around felt a little heavy…which, in hindsight, tracks with the fact over half of the country had just voted for the party in question. Another lesson learnt. I actually don’t regret this one, but it wasn’t one of my most professional moments, for sure.

  164. Yaz*

    This isn’t mine exactly but when I was right out of school, I interned at a tiny think tank. The other interns and I generally worked in the conference room, which was also where the executive director often hosted visitors (like… from Congress). The other interns were a bit younger than me and mostly still in school, and one afternoon they had the idea to print a bunch of SpongeBob pictures and plaster them around the conference room. The same room that the ED showed a congressional delegation on terrorism into bright and early the next morning… after the incident, I took to working out of the tiny kitchenette to avoid being associated with that group.

  165. Kshoosh*

    In my early 20s I worked in the staffing field and every few weeks we would have a massive call with our major clients and all of the recruiters, account managers, and vps that worked on their account. The calls *never* started on time, and for some reason I took that personally. I also had not exactly figured out the mute settings on the phones…

    One day, not more than 5 minutes past when a call should have started, I was complaining to myself (out loud of course) something like “the call is set for xx time it should start then, how rude that people think it’s okay to make everyone wait.” After a moment of silence the call host said, “it sounds like someone thinks they’re on mute but isn’t. We’re waiting for vps xx and yy, they’re coming from (different important meeting) and will join us soon, then we’ll start.”

    The only thing that saved me from dying from humiliation was the belief that the call was large enough there was no way anyone would know it was me.

  166. Does Not Respect Authority*

    I was working with a portion of my department in a small windowless office, and the CEO stopped by to discuss the upcoming major move of all departments to different places in the building. I spoke up and said we could move down to a large open area with windows that was being vacated by another department. He said, jokingly, “What would you do with all that light, though?” I answered, fairly snottily, “I don’t know—thrive, maybe?” (Fortunately he laughed. Phew.)

  167. Redacted because I am still mortified.*

    When I was 18/19 I worked as a classroom helper in a very casual alternative elementary school where jeans and t-shirts were the norm. I wore a B-52’s t-shirt almost weekly for the whole year — I had seen them the summer before and picked up a t-shirt with a great illustration of Cindy Wilson in space riding a rocket ship.

    On one of my last days, a parent looked at my shirt and said, “oh my god is she riding a penis??”

    Dear reader, she was. It was a vaguely-but-intentionally-penis-shaped rocket ship and I had not noticed at all for the entire year I worked in an elementary school.

  168. Hiring Mgr*

    I’ve done much worse things more recently but when I was in High school i had a job at a pharmacy and one day in the summer i went to the beach without calling in. Next day the boss asks me why and I told him my aunt died. I’m sure my tan/burn didn’t help my credibility.

  169. I didn't do it, I just saw it.*

    This is not a thing I did, but a thing I witnessed. The set up is long but I promise it’s worth it.

    I work in apparel manufacturing and had a specialized skill that fed a freelance side hustle. I had a client who had a factory on the second floor of a big old New England mill building. These old industrial buildings are prone to things like 100 year old windows breaking and roofs or pipes leaking or people on other floors spilling something, so you’re always attuned to the background noise in case something has gone awry.

    This was in the stone age when digital tools for design and production were just becoming a thing, and this client had just bought a fancy CAD system. He was an outstanding professional mentor for me–just a hard working, genuinely nice person. He paid for me to get trained and then hired me to standardize and digitize all his products (a thing I will always be grateful for, because it gave me so many opportunities later). But it was a side hustle, so I was in and out of the factory at odd hours, tucked away in a nook between the cutting room and the shelves of fabric, quietly pushing buttons and having fun. The only people I regularly saw were the cutting floor staff. Cutting is a very highly skilled, physical job and the people who are successful at it are amazing, but the professional norms are not, shall we say, office standard. Think: a lot of rough around the edges young men shouting at each other across a huge room. I can switch from office behavior to factory behavior, and I can swear like I’m in a Tarantino movie so it’s fine.

    The final key bit of info: If you have never been in an apparel factory, the room where they spread and cut the fabric is full of very long tables–they can be 100 feet long. The tops are covered with fabric and spreading machines, so you can’t climb over them, and there is usually fabric stored under them so you can’t go under. People spend a lot of time just walking the long way around tables.

    So one fairly quiet day I’m in my nook pushing my buttons, and I hear water gushing. I go into action mode, checking everywhere for a burst pipe or a spill or whatever. The noise stops after a minute and I can’t find any puddles. Weird. I mention it to the owner on the way out. He can’t find anything wrong but asks me to keep my eye out. The next time I come in, I hear it again, and this time I am quicker to explore. It turns out it’s one of the cutters PEEING OUT THE SECOND FLOOR WINDOW into the alley below. Luckily, I only saw his fully clothed back before I figured out what he was doing. There were several long tables between him and the bathroom and at some point he had realized it was easier to pee out the window than walk all the way around. He usually double checked that there was no one around, but apparently it had become such a habit that he had forgotten I was right there and did it without thinking. TWICE. He was incredibly mortified. He was almost in tears and apologized profusely.

    When I tell you I never laughed so hard at work, I mean it. I know the whole situation was massively inappropriate, but life is a rich, rich tapestry and sometimes you just have to appreciate the utter absurdity. I did not turn him in. He was a young guy who did a spectacularly dumb thing and the owner certainly would have fired him (as an executive now, I would have fired him). The story eventually got out, but most people didn’t really believe it so it became a mini urban legend. Forever after that company had a shorthand for evaluating ideas–was it a good idea, a mediocre idea, or a peeing out the window idea?

    2. No Name This Time*

      EPIC.

      I’ve got one on this theme too! Among the hats I wear is that I am Chief Operator of my factory’s Wastewater Pretreatment Facility (Industrial Metals pretreatment), which sounds fancier than it is- just a few 1000 gallon tanks, a couple deionizing systems, lamellar settler, filter press, etc. It’s relatively compact, and is located at the back of an operating line. I have to go back there regularly to keep track of how well our discharge is being treated prior to entering the sump, from where it gets pumped to the city sewer.

      There is a single operator working up there on the line. The work is hot and fast-paced, with little down time to run to the restrooms at the other end of the building. You can see where this is going…

      One day I’m heading up there to check on the chart recorder. I must have been in Stealth Ninja Mode because the operator did NOT hear me coming in time to finish piddling into the discharge sump and zip up his pants. I don’t know which of us was more surprised! We were both like, “AAAAAAAAA!!!” and then I just collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter and yelled at him “NOW WE’RE EVEN!!!!!” referring to the time a few years prior where he’d returned early from lunch to find me mostly topless, wearing a bra that had been pretty well dissolved on one side by an errant splash of Nitric acid, sloshing The Girls around in a rinse tank. He yelled “AAAAAAAA!!!!” for that one too but I was like, “DUDE JUST GO BRING ME MY LAB COAT YA DOOFUS!!!!”

      Luckily we’re great friends and inseparable coworkers (to the point where if one of us ever were to quit and go work for a different plant, the other, with 99% certainty, would go work there too). Now I just give him grief to not pee in the discharge sump on days when I’m trying to collect a composite sample for compliance testing, but unless he’s pissing straight Chromium, I suppose it’s not even really an issue. As Chief Operator, I have informally approved this use of the sump tank. At least now I know to stomp loudly if I have to go back there and don’t see him around.

  170. Rumpole's Old Bailey*

    I was in my 30s and had been handed someone’s file to look after. A formal settlement offer had been received and not actioned by the lawyer responsible. I was handed the file after the offer was withdrawn putting us at risk of a costs order. I was so angry I threw the file across the room. Then I stood there thinking, well that was stupid, now I have to pick it up and put it back together

  171. TeacherofTeens*

    One of my summers in college, I interned (paid) for a county park, specifically hired to plan and run a two-week children’s day camp as a major part of my responsibilities. There are multiple reasons I was not invited back the following summer:

    1. I was frequently late to work by 15 minutes because my boyfriend and I would get up a bit late and we only had one car. The day after I was reprimanded for my repeated tardiness, my car broke down on the highway and I was late by over an hour.

    2. The first day of the day-camp, which was only four hours long and ended around noon, my boss suggested we just take a half-day off as a reward for a successful launch. The next day, after the camp ended, I nonchalantly grabbed my purse and started heading out–only to be stopped by my boss, who had to explain to me that the half day was a one time thing.

    3. My boss was out for surgery for a couple of weeks. Instead of being productive during that time, I read all her nature books under the guise of “prepping” for the day camp. I do have some fascinating trivia about the sexual practices and diversity of birds, as a result, so there’s that.

    4. During that same two weeks, I was charged with feeding and caring for her turtle, who had it’s own tank of water with rocks in the corner. One Friday I forgot to feed him until the end of the day, so I hurriedly dumped in some feeder fish and headed home. Monday I walked in to the office to be greeted by a terrible odor. To my horror, I found that the turtle had attempted to dive into the corner of his tank from his rocks, probably to go after an elusive fish, had gotten wedged head-down in the water, and had drowned.

    I suppose I’m only partially responsible for the turtle’s untimely demise, but I still cringe to think I actually called that boss and left a message the following year asking if she would offer me the summer position again.

    I did not get a reply.

    (I am now obsessive about punctuality and refuse to take responsibility for others’ living creatures, up to and including plants.)

  172. revengeofpompom*

    In one of my very first professional interviews, shortly out of college, the interviewer asked what my weaknesses are. Note that I had never had a professional job before, so my weaknesses were plentiful. I responded, though, “I’m not sure … I don’t like cleaning bathrooms?” No, the job did not have anything to do with cleaning bathrooms, I just thought I should answer broadly about any weakness in my life. In retrospect it’s quite lucky I didn’t say anything worse.

    1. Astrid*

      I love this because I can’t help but think that this response must be like the gift that keeps on giving for the interviewer – kind of like interviewees say the darndest things. If someone said this to me, I’d replay it in my mind whenever I needed a chuckle (you’d get bonus points from me for honesty).

  173. Gunther Hatherer*

    I quit a temporary summer job and, following some bad advice, sent a seven-page (!) handwritten letter of resignation describing in GREAT detail all the problems with my boss (“Because they can’t change anything if they don’t know about it”). Somehow my delivery did not result in action by leadership (facepalm).

  174. Meep*

    So many…

    My former manager is not the most professional person in the world. In fact, she is the least professional person I have ever met. When I started my first real job out of college, she decided to “mentor me” which meant telling me inappropriate things. I KNEW they were inappropriate, but here was this (alleged) woman of industry of renown (small field and she knew everyone), so it couldn’t be that bad right? I remember repeating a few of her milder comments and getting scolded by her in front of clients.

    Also crying. So much crying.

  175. RubyKate*

    My first job after college was 4 states away from my parents. I moved first, and the next weekend, my parents came down with a uhaul and my stuff. We were supposed to have breakfast together before they left, but they woke up early and decided to hit the road, and left me with a voicemail. I would not see them next for an unknown time due to lack of vacation time. I had to work that day. My (male) supervisor innocently asked me how my first weekend in the area was and I literally burst into tears without explanation. I excused myself to the bathroom, but he didn’t talk to me for the rest of the week, and it was a LONG time before he asked about my weekends again!

  176. Captain Vegetable (Crunch Crunch Crunch)*

    I photocopied my butt. On a dare from coworkers. In the middle of the day. In our very open office. What the hell was I thinking?

  177. Tuesday*

    Oof. This is not a funny story, but hopefully will serve as a cautionary tale. I was working my first job out of college with a bunch of other coworkers who were all around my age. There was a huge culture of gossip there, all the way up to the top, and we all used Gchat to talk during the day (presumably about work, but of course that’s not what we used it for).

    We had one coworker in our department who drove us crazy, and the rest of us would vent about her in Gchat. It’s so obviously a bad idea looking back at it – even with no knowledge of office norms, gossip is never okay! – but everyone was doing it, so I didn’t think twice about participating. It felt like harmless office chitchat at the time.

    Well… one day she accidentally got added to the chat and read EVERYTHING we had ever said about her.

    It was horrible. It’s a miracle and a testament to our boss’s incompetence that we didn’t all get fired. Our boss then demanded to read the entire chat, where we’d talked about HIM in a negative way, and any hope I had of being taken seriously at work went out the window. From then on, he saw our entire team as petty, immature, catty mean girls. And that’s how I had been behaving.

    The worst part was, this coworker was someone I actually liked and considered a friend! I had justified the gossip as being office-related venting, but of course it was still mean-spirited and completely uncalled for. She felt so betrayed and we all had to have really awkward one-on-one meetings with her to apologize and let her speak her mind to us. She was particularly hurt by my participation (as she should have been.)

    Somehow she forgave me and we remained friends after that, but I doubt she ever forgot. I still feel horrible to this day. It was truly a moment of growing up in an instant and realizing I was not the kind of person I wanted to be.

    Lessons learned: never say something behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face, and ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS assume that EVERYTHING you type at work will be read. If it doesn’t happen while you work there, it will happen after you leave.

  179. Maybe Too Competitive*

    My workplace is “fun” and we do an annual office olympics that includes both physical and mental games and activities. One year I was my team’s representative in the frozen t-shirt contest, which is when they soak t-shirts with water and bunch or roll them up and then freeze them solid, and then we have to get the shirt unfrozen and you win once you put it on. You can’t use any kind of heating element, so most people use their hands to try and peel it apart, or maybe take a rock or other small object to beat the ice off of it.

    Well, once they yelled “Go!” the competitive spirit washed over me and I violently and mercilessly beat the everloving crap out of the poor shirt against a rock wall outside, alarming a decent amount of the onlookers in the process including a group of summer interns I had never met. Side note: I’m a younger and pretty petite woman. I hit it so hard chunks of ice were flying everywhere. I was so in the moment I think I grunted and yelled? I was making swift progress and just kept it up because I was determined to win at any cost. Raising it high above my head and swinging it down onto the retaining wall over and over and over again. It’s a miracle I didn’t break my hands.

    I got the shirt unfolded and put it on before most of the other competitors were even halfway through theirs. High on the victory, I strutted around the patio before throwing my arms up and yelling “SUCK IT!” to the stunned onlookers.

    Yes, I still work there.

    1. Maybe Too Competitive*

      I should have said “fairly petite”, didn’t mean for that to read as calling myself pretty!

  180. Theothermadeline*

    My first job in college was as a bus monitor for a private school that was close to my campus. Most of the kids lived in suburbs like 45 min away, so it was very few stops and a pretty long ride. One day I was on a morning shift at the beginning of the school year, aka I was a hungover nineteen year-old that had gotten onto a school bus at 4:30 am and now it was 6:30 and I had a bunch of loud kids around me. This one kid I’d known from the year before was feeling like hot shit because he’d just graduated into the upper school, and he kept bouncing up and down in his seat, all the way to standing. I told him to stop a bunch and he wasn’t and I straight up forgot that I wasn’t talking to a friend for a minute and said:

    “Swear to god if you don’t sit down I’m gonna punch you in the face,”

    Kid was s h o o k. Sat down immediately, wasn’t sure if I was joking, then looked at me and was like, “You can’t do that, you’d get fired!”

    My response? “You’d be worth it,”

    Thankfully he did think I was joking after that, but holy hell

  181. Shira VonDoom*

    Somewhere in my early/mid 20s, got sick of being paid minimum wage to work the reception desk at an executive suite, so I connected with a hiring agency. Apparently I impressed them, so the first interview they send me to was for a bookkeeping position at an office midway up one of the downtown towers. One of those buildings so large and so fancy it has multiple banks of elevators for different sections of the building.

    I go in, interview is going well, and they ask me what I do for fun…and my young foolish self goes ALL in about how much I love horses and working with horses and how I hope to do that professionally some day (LOLOLOL, past me really had no idea what a fantasy that is if you’re not wealthy, supernaturally talented, or willing to destroy your body to work below poverty level most if not all of your life).

    Needless to say, I did not get the job, LOL, and it wasn’t till years later that I realized how completely I’d shot myself in the foot for what would have been a GREAT entry level position.

  182. Sue D. O'Nym*

    Worked as a supervisor at a theme park attraction that was outdoors, and involved putting guests on a vehicle (top speed, about 5 mph) and driving them through the park. This is an actual radio conversation (the unprofessional part is my last response:

    Vehicle: “Supervisor, be advised that there’s a bird near (landmark on the tour route)”
    Me: “Is it blocking your path?”
    Vehicle: “No.”
    Me: “Is it annoying the guests?”
    Vehicle: “No.”
    Me: “Did it poop and cause the guests to be disgusted?”
    Vehicle: “No.”
    Me: “So, let me get this straight. there’s a bird, that’s not doing anything, not interfering, not annoying anyone, just standing there?”
    Vehicle: “Yes.”
    Me: “Why exactly did I need to know that? It’s a bird. It’s outdoors. Last I checked, birds are allowed to be outside.”
    Vehicle: (silence)

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      hahaha, seems like a reasonable response to me

      like..send the bird to HR for loitering and not working? LOL what the hell

  183. Nathalie*

    My company acquired a competitor and they sent my manager and me to one of that company’s satellite offices to train their employees on our system. On the first day we did a sort of icebreaker, go around in a circle and say something about yourself thing, and one guy mentioned traveling in Germany and being surprised by how much all of the German people seemed to like him. Without thinking about it, I looked at his blonde hair and blue eyes and said “Well, you are very Aryan…”

  184. Rage*

    Mine was deliberate unprofessionalism, but I think it was deserved.

    This was back in late 2000/early 2001. I had been working at our local humane society for almost 2 years and though I loved doing rescue work and fostering, the place was toxic as hell, leadership was more focused on how they looked than caring for their staff, and I was beyond burnt out. Also I worked every weekend and holiday and it was just awful.

    So I had been interviewing for something more administrative, in an office – I had those skills, and had previous experience to back it up, so it wasn’t like I was really starting from scratch. I was applying myself but also had my resume out with a couple of placement/temp agencies.

    I was getting interviews, but especially with the smaller orgs I found that the interviewer had one of two reactions to my job search:
    1. OMG you work at the humane society? How could you kill animals??? (I mentally crossed any company off the list of prospects when I got this response.)
    2. OMG you work at the humane society? You get to play with puppies and kittens all day? Why would you want to leave?

    So this particular day, I met with a small organization and got reaction #2. I was tired, mentally, emotionally, and physically, and just couldn’t even at that point.

    So I looked her straight in the eye and deadpanned: “I killed 30 dogs today. Why do you think I want to leave?”

    I didn’t get the job. But I didn’t care. 10/10 would do again.

    1. Murphy*

      I used to work at a limited intake rescue shelter and I would always get the “You must love working there!” from everybody. Like yeah, I love dogs, but it’s a job like any other. There are aspects of it that suck.

      1. Rage*

        I got out of the dog/cat rescue scene a couple of years ago. Now I just do wildlife. The pay is the same (volunteer!) but I don’t get harassed over making the decision to euthanize a hawk with a shattered wing. Also, birds of prey are awesome and so much fun to work with. It’s baby owl season and we have 5. They are so stinking cute.

  185. Potato*

    Oh goodness. I can think of a lot of potential stories, but the one I still cringe over the most is this:
    I was an editorial intern at a large, well-known chain, and was for some reason also responsible for gathering and submitting monthly invoices from our group of freelance writers. This involved getting my boss’s boss to sign the invoices, which he hated doing and would avoid for weeks at a time. Did I mention the invoices were supposed to be paid monthly? This, combined with our accounts payable department’s tendency of losing at least one invoice per cycle meant our freelancers would sometimes have to wait several months to get their checks … a horrible practice I felt I had little power to solve.

    What I *did* do was try to offset the lack of payment with jokes. Many, many terrible jokes. Often suggesting that it was all my fault, “ha ha terrible intern!” and if it would make them feel better I would happily send them a photo of me to throw darts at. I shudder to remember the casual, flippant tone I, for some reason, thought would make them feel better. (!?)

    This lasted until, ultimately, one of our freelancers responded to one of my emails regarding lack of payment with a detailed list of the bills he was unable to pay that month without his paycheck. I was horrified, and quickly did what I should have done all along: apologized profusely to our freelancers and explained the situation accurately, and made a plan with my manager to make sure the invoices were all processed on time each month.

    1. Gabrielle*

      Honestly, at least you cared and fixed it. Judging by freelancers’ accounts it sounds like many people would not have.

  186. Combinatorialist*

    I had an internship that was part of a big summer internship program. So there were like 30 of us sitting in a room with 3 program managers. We were in small groups working on different projects and I was in a group of 3 with two guys who could not communicate. I sat in between them. The 2 of them had a tendency to have looooong arguments where they were actually saying the same thing but with different words without knowing it. I would regularly be translating between them but this was time consuming and so I often just banished them to not be talking across me (probably not the most professional response, but mostly not my issue). Like I literally said the words “you are banished until you can agree” and they would go have their argument somewhere else.

    The next summer, I was on a project with 2 guys who thought my way of solving the problem was as dumb as I thought their way was. So we decided to just work separately, and told no one this. The project lead was super hands off and didn’t notice until the end of the summer where we were giving totally independent and unrelated presentations.

  187. Another Librarian*

    I am a Librarian, but when I was a Library Assistant, I worked with a very mean coworker. When I told him my cat had fleas, he asked, without any hint of joking, why I didn’t just put her down. This is the kind of person he is.
    I would put Dating for Dummies on hold for him under his account…several times. I guess it worked because he ended up marrying a coworker. Sixteen years later, I still have the cat.
    I regret nothing.

  188. redflagday701*

    I was living in New York City and just starting out as a young freelance writer. I was trying to get gigs writing for trade magazines in an industry I had previously worked in, and had an interview with the editor-in-chief of one of them (a fairly prominent publication, in the industry) at their offices near Times Square.

    But I was also out of weed, and my dealer could only meet me in a brief window of time immediately before my interview. So I met him and bought $100 of what was always highly odoriferous bud. It usually came in a little plastic cube that was reasonably airtight, but for whatever reason, he brought it in just a little Ziploc baggie, which any regular smoker will tell you doesn’t do much to contain the smell.

    I couldn’t do anything else, so I stuck it in the back pocket of my suit pants and hoped for the best. And it actually went fine. The odor didn’t seem to be noticeable, and the gig sounded awesome — the money was good, and the editor-in-chief wanted me to travel to another city in just a few weeks to report on a big trade show, which would have been fun. They really needed someone, and she all but said it was a done deal.

    And then I don’t know exactly what happened, but I shifted in my seat, and squeezed some air out of the baggie of weed or something, as I stood up to say goodbye — I don’t know, but suddenly, the room was filled with the very distinct scent of cannabis. I could see in her expression that she definitely noticed, and I know I looked very obviously guilty and anxious. We wrapped up the parting pleasantries, and I don’t think I heard from her again.

    Oh, it’s also possible I had smoked on the way after meeting my dealer and was high for the entire meeting.

  189. Cat Mouse*

    Not me, but at my last job in an open office not only did a coworker regularly cut his toenails at his desk, but one day he brought a guitar and would randomly play it throughout the day! This was a (inbound) call center, so the extra noise was not appreciated!

  190. JMA*

    A few years back at my current office, a coworker I supported sat in a cube across from me, and we would do silly April Fools Day pranks to each other. Nothing more complicated than scotch tape on your mouse, that kind of thing.

    Well, she also had a habit of leaving her laptop unsecured when she got up, so that day, I screencapped her home screen with her many icons, set that screencap as her wallpaper, and then unchecked Show Desktop Icons. Her desktop looked the same, but obviously none of her icons worked. I assumed that she would notice while we were in the office together and we’d share a laugh.

    Unfortunately, she went home soon after and I missed a chance to tell her about my hilarious prank. Then she was trying to get work done over the weekend and had to escalate the issue to IT because she was certain that her computer was hacked. When I came in on Monday, my manager asked me to explain what happened, and she actually laughed at what I’d done, but warned me that my coworker was furious. She eventually got over it and we’d laugh about it a while after, but it was pretty touch and go for me for a few weeks. Lesson learned: No more pranks in the office.

  191. Dee-Nice*

    I’m an Old now, and this still HAUNTS me.

    I was 26 and leaving my first real office job, where I’d worked five years while getting my master’s. On my last day, my boss took me into his office for an exit interview. He had only become my boss recently, when my boss of 4+ years left, and I had largely trained him in his role just by virtue of having been there a few years and knowing the department well.

    At the close of the interview, he said, “Well, best of luck. Is there any feedback you have for me before we wrap up?”

    And I recalled (silently) several instances of times when I had had to defend him to coworkers from different departments who told me they thought he was snooty/standoffish. So out loud, I told him that I though he was doing a great job, but our office culture was really friendly and warm and some people were taking his reserve the wrong way, and though I knew he was a chill guy, he was making things harder for himself than they had to be.

    Now, guys, I know that this was not only uncalled for but also that it is terrible advice! But the worst part was that when he opened the door to his office, everyone shouted “Surprise!”

    The whole team had been outside putting together a surprise farewell party for me and the exit interview was just a ruse.

    I have to go scream into a pillow now.

  192. Wouldbedorothy*

    Mine is more recent than I would like to admit. I was pregnant early in the epidemic. I had almost no pregnancy pictures, because I was home alone in my house with my husband. My work threw me a virtual baby shower, and everyone wanted to see me. I felt very weird standing up and showing my belly, so I said I would send out a picture. For SOME reason, instead of asking my husband to take one of me, I used one of the only pictures I already had, in which I was wearing… a bikini. So I sent a picture of me about 8 months pregnant in a bikini to about 30 people. I had a stellar reputation, so nobody said anything, and I chalk it up to pregnancy + pandemic brain. But genuinely wtf.

  194. 2 Cents*

    Nothing scandal worthy, just embarrassing looking back because I did all of these things with NO SHAME:
    –At the publishing house where I worked in my late 20s, I wore flip flops (the $2 Old Navy ones) exclusively the entire summer. This was not a flip flop atmosphere. Paired with some of the dresses I thought were OK, I probably looked like I was headed to beach every day *headdesk*
    –A friend created a “hot guy” calendar for me based on my favorite actors (their heads poorly photoshopped onto firefighters’ bodies) AND I HUNG IT UP IN MY CUBE

  195. A Simple Narwhal*

    Ugh I still cringe at dressing too casually for my first day of work at an old job. In my defense, when I interviewed (in a suit!) everyone in the office was dressed relatively casually. Maybe not quite jeans and t-shirt level, but just above – no suits or dress shirts, at most khakis and polos, women in casual dresses, definitely saw some sandals. So I assumed that I had overdressed for the interview and could dress more casually for the actual job, and picked my first day outfit accordingly. Not completely casual, but definitely a half step below business casual.

    I was absolutely horrified to walk into the office only to realize that I must have interviewed on a dressing-down day, because now everyone was very much wearing business attire, and I most certainly was not. I felt horrible, and I had several meetings with higher ups rescheduled with the implication that I could meet them once I dressed appropriately. My manager ending up sending me a note on expected dress for the office, and I felt so awful I couldn’t wait for the day to end.

    In hindsight, my manager should have provided that information before I started – how else was I supposed to know what the dress code was when my only day of interviewing (unbeknownst to me) happened to be on a non-standard dress day? I know the old adage is to always overdress to start, and I should have listened to it, so I definitely blame the situation on my own youthful unprofessionalism.

    1. Meg*

      omg that happened to me at an internship once! I had interviewed on a Friday, which I didn’t put together until later. So I showed up my first day dressed way more casually than I would have since I thought I would be overdressed in business casual. No one said anything to me, but I felt so dumb that whole day.

    2. rage criers unite*

      absolutely should have told you what the dress code was before you started!!!

  196. Meg*

    Oh god I feel like I have so many that I’ve blocked out and don’t want to unsurface….

    But here’s one that was pretty unprofessional but also don’t regret at all. Several years ago my organization was making a series of deeply terrible decisions. The biggest was dismantling my department in the most illogical way, without input from anyone in the department, with no move to replace the departing VP. I’m trying to keep this vague, but it was a pretty essential department for our relatively small (about 50 employees) organization. The initial dismantling happened in February/March, and by late October morale was in the toilet for the few of us left. It was becoming very clear there was no end in sight for getting a new VP. At the same time, we had a fairly substantial projected budget shortfall (which anyone with half a brain could have linked the missing income to the vacant VP slot, but what do I know). Some moron in our leadership team thought that a great all staff exercise would be breaking us into groups to brainstorm ideas to make up the budget shortfall. They did not give us a copy of the budget. I spent my breakout group getting progressively angrier with every stupid suggestion that came up, which included take the metro instead of cabs when going to work meetings, police what professional development opportunities people use (department heads already had approval, this was an idiot in finance who didn’t know what they were talking about), and getting rid of the snacks in the kitchen/seltzer in the fridge. An important note: I’ve seen financial reports that go to our board, and while we had a projected budget shortfall we have an enormous amount of cash reserves. the organization was not in any actual financial trouble. Also notable was that the 2 most senior people in my department had not been replaced, and both were making mid to high 6 figures, and their salaries, benefits, and bonuses were already in the budget. So I did not take it well when someone asked me “any suggestions in your department?”. I then got forced into reporting back out to the whole staff, and the list of suggestions was extremely stupid and frankly kind of offensive.

    My group was up last, and I sat through all of the other report outs getting progressively angrier and angrier. There was not a single good suggestion, a fair amount that pointed fingers at my (now dismantled) department without any understanding of what they were talking about, and leadership did NOT respond well when people brought up that executive bonuses were a huge chunk of our budget, per the publicly available 990 tax form.

    So by the time I was up I was absolutely fuming from the whole exercise, and the past year of trying to keep our department’s work above water with zero support and zero acknowledgement that our work had any value. I…made my feeling pretty damn clear in my tone. I had a huge attitude, I said I didn’t contribute any of the suggestions, read them out, and it was extremely clear in my tone, facial expressions, and body language how angry I was.

    It was absolutely unprofessional (an assessment that is backed up by multiple co-workers who were present lol). Several people came to my office afterwards to check on me. The thing is…I don’t regret it. I was far from the only one who felt that way, but no one else felt comfortable pushing back. At that moment in time there was no way I would be fired, given how much they had cut from our department. I didn’t actually make this calculation in the moment, but in hindsight I think it was a solid use of my capital, and I knew there was no way I would face any real consequences.

  197. Melanie Cavill*

    My first non-retail job involved shutting myself into a completely pitch black room and changing photo paper using only my sense of touch. Any light would expose the roll and make it partially or fully unusable, and the rolls were big – over twenty pounds individually. One time, I was doing this and felt something crawling very quickly up my arm and across my torso. I freaked the eff out, as in, like, screaming and running out of the room. (I did make sure to close the box!) My boss and my much more experienced co-worker were right on the other side of the door and they were very concerned by my response.

    The culprit turned out to be a cute little mouse.

  198. Rigamaroll*

    I had a coworker who would always talk SO LOUD on the phone, it became a running joke/pain point between me and another coworker I was friends with.
    One day the loud one was being especially bad (on a personal call no less!) and my friend was not there that day. Without even thinking, I grabbed my phone and recorded like 30 seconds from my desk and sent it to my friend lamenting about how bad it was that day.

    I didn’t even think about the fact that I worked in a company with a TON of HIPAA protected information, even though none was typically spoken. It somehow got back to my manager and I got a formal write-up and had to play the recording for them to prove there was no PHI/PPI contained. It was the only thing I’ve ever been written up for and I was absolutely mortified!! I legit almost quit because I was so embarrassed…

  199. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    I had a bad cold and had got very reliant on a vics inhaler up the nose. So in the middle of a meeting I grabbed it out of my purse, shoved it up my nose and inhaled.

    Didn’t work.

    It was my lipstick.

    I sat through the rest of that meeting with bright red nostril and people staring at me.

    2. A Simple Narwhal*

      Oh my god, that sounds horrible!

      …What is also horrible is my reaction to reading that story, which was to laugh really hard.

      I hope you’re able to laugh at it now because I gotta say, that’s freaking hilarious. Not in the moment of course, and you have all my sympathy for what must have been an excruciatingly awful experience. But with some distance that makes for one heck of a story!

    4. Rigamaroll*

      Another unprofessional moment for me- reading that story and laughing out loud while leading a call and not being on mute

      1. 2 Cents*

        OMG, I just remembered a recent one! It was a Teams mute fail. The head of the company was speaking and said something like “we’re working with so-and-so to bring these ideas together.” I’d just had a meeting where I found out so-and-so threw a hissy fit. I laughed out loud, not realizing I wasn’t on mute. Thankfully, I don’t think anyone realized it was me (it was a 70+-person call) but oh man.

  200. NatalieMorgaine*

    At my first professional job (at a Third Party Insurance Coordinator), I somehow landed on a phone call with a Medicare plan we handled along with two of my immediate bosses (who were in the office next to mine, on the call together). It was my first conference call ever and in general I am not overly jazzed about talking on the phone (blame either my Millennialism or my several years working retail/in a call center). As the newbie on this call, I got introduced to EVERYONE, which I thought meant I needed to RESPOND to everyone’s introduction. I eventually ran out of distinct one to four word responses (“Great!” “Nice to meet you!” “That sounds good!”) and finished up the last introduction with an enthusiastic “AWESOME!”. My bosses had muted their phone, but I heard the cacophony of laughter through the wall. One of my bosses came running through my door, whispered “Are you muted?!”, which I acknowledged shamefully that I was – to which she responded “What WAS that?!” with a huge grin.

    The story has a good ending because AFTER that call both of those bosses sat down with me to go over what I had actually handled well on the call (most of it) and what constitutes general conference call etiquette. They seemed to think that I projected enough professionalism on a daily basis to ensure that I could handle being thrown into the deep end of a high-stakes conference call – but being able to banter with a customer and being able to corporate-speak your way through a gauntlet of Medicare regulations are two very different beasts.

  201. I swear I'm not a hobbit*

    At one of my first office jobs, I always took my shoes off under the desk to be more comfortable. And then I’d proceed to get up and walk across the suite to the copier, as well as stop to talk at coworkers desks, all while barefoot. I’m not sure how long I did this, but I recall one time I ended up running back to my desk for something, bare feet flailing behind me. Not long after, my manager talked to me about wearing shoes around the office at all times. Whoops!

    1. MigraineMonth*

      At my OldJob they had to send out reminders to please at least wear shoes in the cafeteria for public health and safety reasons.

      Then again, their dress code was “wear clothing around customers” so… not a surprise.

    2. Jenny D*

      I’m in Sweden, where in most businesses we are far more casual than what appears to be the norm in the US.

      For a while I was consulting at the Election Agency, and as the upcoming election drew closer, the Agency was getting a visit from the King and the Crown Princess.

      A message was sent out to all staff and consultants to please wear shoes that day…

  202. Midwest Manager*

    About a decade ago, I found out I was pregnant with multiples. Right around that same time, the company that I worked for decided to close the small branch office that I worked in. They pulled us all into a meeting with the regional manager and delivered the news. EVERYONE in the room was in tears… except me. When they started doing 1:1 meetings to discuss the severance packages and field any of our questions, they asked why I didn’t seem upset like the rest of the staff. My response was a really flippant, “Oh, it’s fine, I’m kind of excited! I’m due right about when this is happening. It’ll be a good excuse to stay home with the kids!”

  203. S*

    One of my colleagues in my first office job had a few small-to-medium plants in her office. She occasionally asked me to care for them when she was on work travel, and I got really into them too, eventually buying my own. I ended up spending a lot of work hours taking care of the plants (going shopping at the Home Depot next door, feeding/watering, propagating succulents, researching care, etc). In the middle of one work day, I fully repotted a plant in the middle of my office. The owner dropped by later… and noticed the ring of soil on my floor. (I had realized too late that we didn’t have any cleaning supplies in our suite, since those were brought by the building’s daily cleaning crew.) She was horrified. I wish I could say that was the last time I repotted a plant at the office, but at least the next time I did it outside. This experience did instill a long-lasting love of house plants, but I now cringe when I remember the look on my boss’s face when she saw the soil on our office floor.

  204. Cute Li'l UFO*

    I worked for a company that has a reputation of being OMG BEST PLACE EVERRR and naturally felt like working for the Octan Corporation in the LEGO Movie. Between the starting date yanked out from under, weeks in limbo, reinstated, and then getting stuck with an unusable desk full of old papers, a mouse I didn’t like and begged to swap out, a broken monitor that only got swapped out when I mentioned it was a serious accessibility issue, almost getting killed by vegan sushi contaminated with crustacean (my floor’s fridge broke and the janitorial crew threw out everything, including people’s bags and containers and no one was happy because… we’d like to know, right?)

    There was a lot of discontent in our little design department. Project Manager and Supervisor would routinely admonish us that they were working “really hard” on getting our contracts extended… and scrambling for work and looking busy was par for the course. I had to hang on for the money but you bet I was hunting. Sheer misery. Quasi-legal requests to stay behind and work (on what? Just look busy? no thanks.)

    I was out for a couple days after some serious heat exhaustion after PM bugging me non stop about when I was coming back, etc, and if I was bringing the laptop. I came back, still sounded and looked terrible, and all he had to say was “Wow, you really were sick.”

    I got let go and was the first domino to fall. Two of the other three went not long after. But for once in my life I did not fall victim to l’esprit de l’escalier. My throat was scratched but I managed to get out “So that contract wasn’t worth the toilet paper it was written on, huh?” before I left the building.

    It’s not like I wanted to work for them again anyway! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  205. Secret Squirrel*

    During one of our monthly team potlucks, picked up my plate to lick off a stubborn smear of chocolate icing while I thought no-one was looking. Glanced up to see my manager silently shaking her head at me.

  206. Oops not that word*

    I work in a healthcare-adjacent field and was once discussing charges for breast implant delivery with my manager. She mentioned a shipment of 100 implants for $1,000 (numbers made up), and I responded with, “Whoa, that’s $10 a tit!”

    Immediately mortified. Thankfully, she thought it was hilarious.

  207. Kramerica Industries*

    At my co-op jobs in university, no one told me that the cute work outfits you see on TV are NOT appropriate in the real world. I’ve definitely worn mini skirts with a blazer and 3 inch heels to work on multiple occasions. Waaaay too much leg!

    1. van wilder*

      Oh god thinking about what I wore to my first “real” job makes me criiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge!

  208. Lynca*

    So I got my first cell phone when I was in college. I was a weirdo who liked to have off-beat, prank voicemail messages. For about 10 months I had a voicemail set up that was me stating they had reached the city morgue and ended with a really bad pun. My friends thought it was hilarious but man I realize now that anyone that was trying to call me about a job got that message.

  209. Amber Rose*

    We had an impromptu planking competition.
    Which we were really loud about doing.
    Right in front of my manager’s office. While she was in a meeting.

    I was tomato red with mortification during the scolding that followed.

  210. Irish Teacher.*

    A sort of amusing one, that I don’t think anybody but me noticed or cared about. As a college student I did work experience with this afterschool project for teens and preteen at risk of early school leaving. Given that I was not yet 20 when I started, the oldest kids were mere months younger than me! Anyway, there was the one girl about 13 who had a temper much like mine and we used to quarrel like sisters. I remember one time she asked if I was going to tell the boss she’d been rude to me. I said, “of course not” and she asked, “what did I say anyway?” I couldn’t remember. We’d gotten so caught up in arguing, neither of us even knew what we’d said.

    It was all fairly good natured, we’d argue and make up within minutes. That time, we both started laughing, but I’d always go home, thinking, “you’re supposed to be the ADULT, not be arguing with 13 year olds on their level.”

    To be honest, the whole place was so…well, odd, that the odd argument probably didn’t even register as unprofessional, but by any normal standards…

  211. Alexandra*

    One day, I was having really bad cramps so I begged a co-worker for some of their extra strength motrin. I learned I was allergic to motrin that day when my face and hands swelled up like giant, plump, crimson tomatoes. My boss had to drive me to urgent care while I was throwing up into a bag in the backseat.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      Aw, but that one’s not your fault – it was a real medical emergency and your boss stepped up to take care of you as a human.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      Professional standards don’t apply to allergic reactions!

      At least I hope not. As I mentioned up-thread, I had a bad reaction to some “non-drowsy” cold medication once and fell asleep on the bus to work, at my desk (multiple times), at a meeting and again on the bus home. I’m surprised I managed to make it home.

  212. Kacihall*

    I learned the hard way one of the side effects from my migraine medicine was completely removing my verbal filter. Worked at an in-store bank with fairly strict check cashing policies – for account holders only, and we could accept a spouse’s (or child’s) check if they were there and endorsed it properly. No other exceptions. I had two teenaged girls walk up to me in the summer of 2009, in Kentucky, and asked to cash the non-account holder’s check. I let them know the policy, and they immediately said (in unison) that they were spouses. I had taken my migraine meds about an hour before. My mouth, entirely on its own, popped open and said ‘Not in this state you aren’t. ‘

    Guys, I’m bi. My manager and assistant manager were both very flamboyantly gay. The AM and I used to go out to bars together and he would use me as straight bait. There was only one employee at the branch that identified as straight. We had a decent customer base just off of gow LGBT friendly we all were. I honestly don’t think the girls knew what I meant by spouse. My AM was biting back hysterical laughter as the girls left and I about died from shame. (Granted, not from the lack of professionalism. The manager there was a terrible human being with absolutely no professionalism whatsoever. The rest of us tried but there’s only so much you can do with a terrible manager and you work inside a Kentucky Walmart.)

  213. van wilder*

    When I quit my first job at a pharmacy at 17 years old, I handed my terrible manager my resignation letter and just said, “Merry Christmas.” He was less than pleased once he opened it, but honestly he was borderline abusive, so I don’t feel too bad about a little bit of sass.

  214. SuspectedDragon*

    I’ve cried in front of my boss twice and wanted to die both times. I was extremely frustrated about something and I cry when I’m mad and … yeah, not great.

    Remembering some of the outfits I uses to wear to work in my early 20s is also cringe-inducing. Specifics that I can recall include a mini skirt and combat boots (with tights at least!) and fairly boring dress pants and sweater paired with red, 6-inch platform heels. Did I mention that I worked for a bank?

  215. Just Me*

    I used to work with local unemployment offices helping to set up job fairs, practice interviews, that kind of thing. My colleague is doing a practice interview with a client and asks, “What is your greatest weakness?”

    The client says, very sincerely, “Beautiful women.”

    I laughed. Quite loudly. The teachable moment was lost.

  216. High Score!*

    In the days before cell phones, my tire blew out on the way to the office. When I arrived, everyone at the office seemed all gloomy. Hoping to cheer my co-workers up in our relatively open space where everyone hears everything, I asked, “Who died?”
    A coworker yanked me too the side and told me that our salesman had died in a car accident.

  217. Elizabeth Bennett*

    In my first professional office job at the age of 24, I was in the Exhibit Hall of a trade show that my organization was in charge of and talking with group of men (all older than me by about 10 years or more). As I was trying to explain my role within the set up of the Exhibit Hall, I loudly proclaimed that “I like having sects.” I blame my age and naivete for what I did next because instead of trying to explain what I meant (I meant sections, I promise!), I literally ran out of the exhibit hall, crawled under a table to hide, and for the duration of the trade show, avoided those men like the plague. I have never been so mortified in my entire life.

    1. Tessera Member 042*

      This reminds me of a story from college work study, which for all freshmen, was working in the dining halls. The manager had asked my friend’s roommate, “Robin, do you have a sec?” and she replied, “Sure, I have lots of secs!” – not thinking about how that would sound out loud.

  218. Er, that happened*

    In my early 20s I turned in a resignation letter that looked completely professional, but if you put together the first letter of each sentence, it spelled F-K YOU B-TCH (with each word being it’s own paragraph).
    Luckily no one ever noticed.

  219. Mischief & Mayhem*

    A former supervisor I supported used to have monthly meetings with someone who was a Retired Navy Admiral in a previous life. I got to know him well over the years, so we were friendly but still professional. As he was leaving one day, he needed to throw away his empty coffee cup. Being a tired mom of toddlers on this particular day, I offered to place it in the trash can in my cubicle. As he handed it off, he said, “Thank you dear” (I knew him well enough that this was OK) and as I tossed the cup into the trash, I replied, without thinking, “You’re welcome sweetie.” I. Was. Mortified. when I realized what I had just said, but he was long gone. I ran to tell my supervisor, but he just busted out laughing. The next month when the RNA returned, I apologized profusely, but he merely laughed and responded with, “I’ve been called worse.”

  220. Lemonlime*

    In high school I worked as a receptionist for a car dealership. One day my ‘college age’ sister visited me at work and when she left all the salesmen came over asking about her, how pretty she was, was she dating anyone, could they have her number, how could she be my sister?! ( I guess we looked nothing alike- she pretty- me awkward). However at one point one of the sales ladies came over and remarked that the guys were being dumb and on an aside- she thought I was prettier.
    The (unprofessional part) was from then on every time I got a customer calling to talk to a salesperson- I’d patch them directly to her and not general sales like I was supposed to. So I pretty much way upped her sales numbers just cause she complimented me.

    2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      If you have to choose between Karma and Professionalism, it’s hard to fault you for choosing Karma in that situation.

  221. ZebraNeighbor*

    I was supposed to go to my husband’s employer’s fancy holiday party right after work so I planned to get ready during a 15-minute afternoon break. I laughingly suggested that my coworkers could give me a makeover, and they loved the idea. We couldn’t tie up the single-occupancy bathroom so we sat in our office. Unfortunately my eyes were closed while they worked on me, so I couldn’t check the clock. Our boss came in and was quite angry. I hardly ever took breaks but my coworkers were notorious for their long absences.

  222. NyaChan*

    I had a summer job subbing for the receptionist at the family business my mom worked at. They had me start a week early so I could train with the person going on holiday for two months. There was a LOT of down time and when I asked if there was something I should do, I was told no (some of this was her being territorial, some of it was genuine slow days). I decided it was silly to sit doing nothing so brought a crossword puzzle book to the office and pulled it out while the owner of the company said in a glass office directly behind me and the public entrance/lobby of the company was in front of me. I lasted about a minute before my trainer stopped me and handed me mail to open and sort. My mom later set me straight….whoops.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      in fairness, I’ve been allowed, and not allowed, a WIDE variety of things at front desk jobs:
      – read a book
      – no reading books
      – surf the internet (nothing of an adult nature obviously)
      – can’t surf the internet
      – coloring books
      – no coloring books
      – working on chain mail, LOL
      – do admin work between calls
      – you cannot do anything if the phone isn’t ringing, just stare at the wall and drool on yourself, I guess. oh, and don’t fall asleep even though this has to be some kind of torture

      anyway, that’s why I got additional schooling so I didn’t have to take those jobs any more, LOL. boredom gets me in trouble every time. I need SOMETHING to do!

      1. Dinwar*

        “– working on chain mail, LOL”

        A fellow mailler! :D

        I used to make maille jewelry or armor while sampling wells. The way we used to do it often required four hours per well, where you need to be there and respond to things, but 99.99% of the time there’s nothing to do. I had a partner take a three hour nap once, and another person brought a portable DVD player. I figured maille was tame by comparison, because I can always put it down. Got a bit snarky when the company told us we couldn’t have knives and made myself a set of maille gauntlets, but never had a chance to use them on a jobsite.

        I used to keep some stuff I’d made on my desk–cubes, wanna-be cubes, and one byzantine cube that failed to be a cube but worked fantastically as a pen holder. Gave a copper cube to a VP who’s son loved that sort of thing. For me the fun is in the making, not the having (except my byzantine cube, it was a pain to make and I love it), and I only had….four more? Five?

      2. Third Generation Nerd*

        Ha, I was a volunteer receptionist who was told doing crosswords was unprofessional. I replied that this was not my profession, so…… Then when I got a real job at the same company, they said I had to find and train my replacement before I could take the actual paying job in another department.

  223. Dark Macadamia*

    A friend suggested we carpool to a restaurant during a training session – I wasn’t familiar with the place but assumed it was (a) nearby and (b) quick service, since we only had an hour for lunch. Nope, it was dine-in. A couple friends from a different session were there, though, and ordered margaritas, so I was like this must be fine if they think it’s okay! As we got ready to head back to work I found out the others were done with their training and had the rest of the day off.

    I think my friend was also regretting the whole situation because she was making “it’s fine, be cool” type comments all the way back. When we got to work (only a few minutes late!) she went to the bathroom and even though I also had to pee I booked it to the conference room so we wouldn’t be arriving together. She spent a good chunk of the afternoon loudly saying things like “we TOTALLY didn’t have margaritas LOL” and I did not go to lunch with her again.

  224. Shira VonDoom*

    oh hey, better one than my other one:

    Interviewing in Nov 2020 for the job I now have, they asked the standard question, “why do you want this job?”

    I’d been in SO MANY interviews that year, and had gotten few nibbles and nothing not at an insulting rate of pay, so I was kind of over the boilerplate gotcha questions.

    So I told them, “I would like to keep my cats in the style to which they’ve become accustomed”.

    Turns out my attorneys are all animal lovers and 2 of them have cats. LOL

  225. bastian*

    We were giving an insurance company auditor a tour of our facility last week, and right as we’re wrapping up, one of our engineers comes up, sees the auditor, and walks to him, saying, “Hey, man, what the fxxk?!” Our site lead went white, me and the other EHS person are just open mouthed staring… and then it turns out they used to work together and they’re just playing around. Definitely had a “WTF THAT’S THE AUDITOR DON’T!” moment, phew

  226. Elliot*

    When I was new at a job and a mere 22-year-old in a large entry level department, I decided our team needed more team spirit…. I know, I know, already a bad start.
    I ended up proposing and executing a snack break once a week, and would bring in snacks along a theme…. Like Build Your Own Trail Mix, decorate your own cupcake, or (big cringe) – kindergarten snack day, where I spent 30+ minutes making people ants on a log…..
    Not the worst thing on earth, but I’ve since learned that being known as the young woman who makes kids’ snacks for her coworkers every Wednesday isn’t the reputation i want.

  227. Hepzibutt Smith*

    In an interview, I was attempting to express this sentiment: “I know what everyone wants is a rock star, but flashy solo work isn’t for me—what a rock star needs to perform well is a dedicated crew doing set-up, tear down, and all kinds of maintenance behind the scenes. That’s who I am—one of the people who makes it possible for a rock star to show up and bring down the house.”

    What came out was this sentence: “I make other people look like rock stars by comparison.”

  228. Neutral Shy*

    Ohh boy.
    I have a bachelor’s in education and I taught my first year out of college. I’m not proud of anything I did in that field, either as an undergrad or during that one year — it was a long, long ride on the struggle bus until I quit. Some of my greatest hits:

    -Cried in front of my student teaching supervisors.
    -Taught a class with my fly open.
    -Left my junior clinical class as soon as the students left one day because I was concerned about the weather.
    -I let slip to a group of 9-10 year olds that Santa wasn’t real. (This one I’m still deeply ashamed of, seven years later.)

    I was 21-22, dealing with anxiety and depression, and I was only teaching because my parents wanted me to, but yikes on trikes, I was awful at it.

  229. GoldenHandcuffs*

    When I was in college, I worked as a manager in a fast food restaurant that I’d been at since high school. I was also dating one of the other managers and on shifts where we’d work together, we’d get into screaming fights in the dining room after the restaurant was closed. My poor employees – I’m still mortified about it to this day and I’m 22+ years past that experience.

  230. Volunteer Enforcer*

    In my previous job, I felt overworked and underpaid and felt as though my team head was the root cause. I ate food that I knew to be his and thought I would get away with it. I didn’t, and whilst acting apologetically I was thinking to myself “You make me put up with all this shit so it’s only fair you get the same back.”

  231. Momma Bear*

    Temp job in college. I locked my keys in my car and had to spend the night at a friend’s house because the cops wouldn’t come out until morning(very rural area) and we couldn’t break into my car. I stayed up way too late, drove home, changed, and went to work completely wiped out. I may have nodded off at my desk. I should have just called in a sick day.

    No one spoke to me about any performance issues, but my duties got truncated to mostly filing and filling in at the receptionist desk for the rest of the summer.

  232. Ashkela*

    I was in my mid-20s, first real admin job, and my favorite lesbian comedy duo had a song called U-Haul the music video. I proceeded to show this thing to any coworker who would watch when they walked by on my lunch or break. Which was all fine and good, except when the singers say ‘beep-beep’ it then cuts to an image of one very clearly ‘honking’ the other one’s breasts from behind… twice per chorus. This video is like 6 minutes long and I am honestly shocked no one ever walked away in the middle. (Kinda wish someone had pointed out to me that it was unprofessional, but I stayed at that job for 5 years)

  233. creepy carbonara*

    I worked as a server in my fairly small hometown during my gap year between finishing undergrad and starting grad school. It wasn’t a particularly fancy place, but it was very much the nicest place in town. The mayor held his annual Christmas party on the side patio, and I was one of the servers assigned to it.

    I was struggling with getting a large tray of salads out the patio door; I was trying to slip out as quietly as possible since the deputy mayor was in the middle of giving a speech to the party-goers. I thought I was in the clear when the patio door swung shut behind me, clipping the side of the tray I was holding.

    Dear reader, it was … absolutely horrifying. One glass salad plate slid off, then another, then another, until they had all shattered on the ground. The entire patio was watching me, and the deputy mayor’s speech was unceremoniously cut off by the sounds of the crashing.

    Luckily, everyone involved was super gracious. The deputy mayor finished his speech abruptly, saying, “Well, y’all, I don’t have much to add to that! Enjoy your dinner!” I hustled my buns inside to make 30 more salads, the bussers helped me clean up the glass, and the rest of the dinner went off without a hitch. But I still have nightmares about that ten seconds where every single salad plate was sliding slowly off my tray and I couldn’t do anything to stop them

  234. EH*

    Early in my career, I worked at a media company where the big boss was a very big deal in the industry. I was too green to know what a big deal she really was so I was pretty casual and not all that professional around her. One day she stopped by my desk and asked, “Have you had lunch yet?” I thought she was just checking in to see that I was going to take my break, so I said, “Not yet, I usually like to go later in the day so it makes the afternoon feel shorter.” She looked a bit surprised but said, “OK, well, would you like to go at around 1:30?” Only then did I realize she was generously offering to take me to lunch — and now delaying her own lunch to meet my preference. Instead of saying I was fine to go right then, I just agreed to the 1:30 time. We went to a nearby cafe, where I proceeded to open my panini and pick off all the tomatoes with my fingers. She never invited me to lunch again.

  235. Volunteer Enforcer*

    Current job, both about the same manager who I enjoy banter with. I compared her to Deborah Meaden from Dragon’s Den in terms of appearance and intended as a compliment, she misheard it and thought I was calling her a dragon. Also told another colleague that this manager could be her Mum,based on appearance and personality similarities. Taken as a joke by both but the colleague said they are closer in age than I thought.

  236. I should probably be anonymous for this*

    I once egged on my boss to google pictures of naked male ballet dancers. After ascertaining that yes, these pictures do in fact exist on the internet, the browser was quickly closed and we had a small panic about IT finding out.

    This was entirely separate from “the Pornhub incident”

  237. Roger*

    Back in the late 90s, when I turned 20, I landed my first job with an email account. I signed all of my internal AND external emails “Love, Roger”. After a few weeks, my boss pulled me aside and had to gently explain why it wasn’t very professional and I shouldn’t do it anymore or it might color how people view me at work. I was genuinely stung at the time, but now anytime I think of my early email habits I want to chew my own face off with embarassment.

  238. Doctors Whom*

    I had a job as a program manager at a startup 20 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child. I was one of two employees under 30, and the majority of the company was men in their late 40s/early 50s. I was also one of exactly two women technical professionals (both of us being the two people under 30).

    One of the VPs was just an ass. I had already quietly approached our HR director about him screaming f-bombs all the time in our open floorplan office. (I swear like a sailor in private conversation, not at the top of my lungs at work.) He was rude, abrasive, and was still trying to live his young hip revolutionary days.

    One day in a meeting when I was very pregnant, nauseous, and fed up, he started just being his regular obnoxious self and would not let me finish even a single sentence when I was speaking to the group about something. Just constantly berating and trying to belittle me. In front of 20 other people. After a history of just making obnoxious comments to little old pregnant me.

    I finally gave up and said “Christ, Ron, will you just shut your piehole.” He just stared at me mouth agape, and a room full of 50-somethings just giggled and someone said “oh damn” and then I went on my way with what I was saying.

    I had no further problems with Ron. But “Christ will you shut your piehole” was the least professional way I have ever addressed workplace conflict.

    2. The Prettiest Curse*

      I’m not surprised you ended up saying that, and I’m glad that Ron eventually learned to keep his piehole shut!

  239. Dona Florinda*

    On my VeryFirstOfficeJob, my job was to answer the phones. Didn’t take me long to realize the busiest days/ hours, so I decided to just PAINT MY NAILS when things were slower. Yes, at my desk in plain sight, in an enclosed space where everyone could see it and smell the nail polish and remover.
    To make things worse, I worked one Sunday a month and often was the only one in the office, so one time I brought a DVD copy of Twilight (!!!) to watch on my computer, no headphones on. Obviously a higher-up came to the office that day.

  240. Duke of I use*

    I used to work in a creative office that went all-out for Halloween and costumes were strongly encouraged. They said that if you didn’t have a costume, then at least wear orange and black.

    There was also a “costume parade” on Halloween that everyone was supposed to participate in, the upper management were the judges of the costume parade.

    So on Oct 31 I showed up wearing all black (I’m not really a Halloween guy) and waited for the lunchtime parade.

    The parade started and I got in line and once I got to the judges I think one of commented about my lack of orange in my outfit. That’s when I dropped my pants to reveal my orange and black jack-o’-lantern boxer shorts.

    Thankfully it was a VERY laid back company and the judges all died laughing. I ended up winning the “Best use of orange and black” award in the costume contest.

  241. Anonymousse*

    I yelled at my assistant when I was a young manager. Long story, I let her move into my apartment because she moved to take the job and we couldn’t offer her any moving package at her level and my boss heavily implied I should let her stay there while she looked for a place…in Seattle. She didn’t find a place, didn’t qualify to take the lease, and when she was telling me all that I freaked out. Not my best moment and I still cringe to this day. I’ve worked through those inclinations and I’m a very calm and cool person.

    I even signed an additional month or two lease in my name, for her to stay there. My boss…not the best. She also announced to like 200 people that I was getting going to be a new lead and then I didn’t get it (the first time) and that was mortifying.

  242. Becky Warburton*

    Two different notorious difficult customers I let get under my skin
    1. I threw my pen in frustration, cause I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. Very stressful personal life dealing with sick spouse AND my Mom had died the same week. Nope I just couldn’t with him that day.
    2. Customer service window has a shade for when it’s not manned. Guy is a flat out bully to women and kept talking over me and I said LISTEN! To which he said I will not. I said I’m done with you and I shut the shade in his face. He’s b**ching on the other side and I moved the shade to add, “you sir are rude.” Ummm and shutting the shade wasn’t? Not my finest moments.

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      No, I sure don’t think shutting the shade was rude. Not one single bit.

  243. NHNonprofitDirector*

    I was sent to anger management training as a result of speaking improperly to someone I managed. She had wanted my job, didn’t get considered for the role, and resented me from the first day. Fine. I did the best I could to accommodate her needs (starting the workday at 10 am) and appreciating her input. But she often stonewalled me and one day I had enough. I was asking for a status update on an important project, and she kept giving me non-answers. Finally I said, “why do I think you’re full of sh*t?” and she reported me.

    1. Miriam*

      We are all human and it’s tough now days to be in a managerial role! You can have a great track record and just one bad sentence can ruin it. I have noticed with some companies that they let the “challenging” employee get away with so much towards the good employee it’s astounding. I had one who was bad mouthing me all around and making untrue rumors about me. I had went to my boss about it to try to nip it in the bud (sorta similar to your case she wanted my position but she was demoted due to her lack of being able to do the kid and was moved to my department under me and resented me). Finally I had to literally threaten to quit before they decided to remove her. I wasn’t the only manager In the company that had issues with her like that. I was astounded how far they let it go before finally stepping in!

      1. NHNonprofitDirector*

        YES! I am definitely on the alert now if I am offered a position and would be managing someone who wanted it but didn’t get it. It’s a recipe for problems. It happened to me a second time but that person moved on before any real conflict arose, thankfully.

  244. Those were the days*

    In honor of the alternative poetry appreciation communication above, I offer:

    New students meet departmental camping
    Stand around the campfire while drinking
    Old professor speaks up,
    “Whatever happened to pot?
    Fifteen years ago we’d all be toking!”

    1. Dinwar*

      I remember doing environmental monitoring on a construction site. I always chat with people, because if I do I’m that friendly guy who likes to see whatever shiny rock you found, and if I don’t I’m that idiot who keeps shutting the job down for no reason. I also chat with the construction managers, project managers, and the like, because that’s my job–I need their buy-in, and to keep them informed.

      One time I was chatting with a group of laborers–completely unskilled folks, just barely trained to the point where it was legal for them to be on a jobsite. Most were in their late teens/early 20s, trying to get into one of the trades. The topic of conversation was where to buy good pot in town, since they were all new to the area. I don’t partake myself, but I don’t judge those who do and it was an amusing discussion. Then I had to talk to the CM about scheduling, and he, his safety guy, and another person were discussing where to buy the best pot in town, since they were all new to the area. Turns out the laborers and the managers were buying from the same guy.

  245. TM*

    I had met with my doctor and gotten a new, stronger allergy prescription. I decided to try it at about 10 PM one evening so that if it caused drowsiness, I was going to bed anyway, and I could get allergy-free sleep.

    I woke up to it being 10 AM, my alarm had been going for over three hours, and I’d gotten 5 missed calls from coworkers wondering why I wasn’t leading the 8 AM call with our client.

    Nowadays if I’m adjusting my allergy meds, I know to do so on Friday evenings.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I took some “non-drowsy” cold medication before work one day and must have had a bad reaction, because I proceeded to fall asleep: on the bus to work, at my desk (at least 3 times), in a meeting that included my manager (he was not impressed), and again on the bus home from work. Thank god I wasn’t driving!

  246. VermiciousKnid*

    When I waited tables at a chain restaurant, we would have early morning meetings about new menu items, corporate initiatives, etc. a few times a year. I typically closed the restaurant, leaving around 1 a.m., and would have to be back by 7 a.m. the next morning for the meeting.

    After years of this (I worked at this restaurant for a decade), I was DONE with these meetings. It was the same corporate BS every time, and I would spend most of them with my head on a table, sunglasses on, hoodie up. I had some of the best sales in the place and an army of loyal regulars, so the managers typically left me alone.

    At one meeting, the GM finally broke and said, “VK, can you please pay attention?!”

    My response: “GM, I will pay attention when you tell me something I haven’t heard more than 50 times before.”

    He rolled his eyes and moved on. To this day, I cannot BELIEVE there were no repercussions for that.

  247. Miriam*

    As a manager I try to strive to be a good role
    Model and be professional. About a year ago I was having many issues going on at once in my personal
    Life and my work life. I have one very challenging employee that seems to want to push my buttons and I always hit the higher ground. Once, while she was doing the pushing and complaining as she sat In my chair in my office I just snapped and told her how about she doesn’t sit her butt in my chair and complain for 45 min before she actually gets to work. Well I did apologize the next day but then did inform her that if she had any other issues she would need to schedule a meeting with me and my boss to talk about them. I no longer felt that having her push my buttons alone was a good idea and wanted to make sure another manager was present when she requested to talk to me (this was an every other day occurrence about something).

  248. Anya*

    Back when I was still in undergrad, I thought I might want to go to law school, so I was fortunate to get an internship at my county’s district attorney’s office in their paralegal team. The paralegal team was amazing – all women, all young, all in law school and happy to talk about the experience. I quickly felt comfortable in the very formal office. One thing that was important was dress code: I wore a skirt suit or dress every day and heels (not at all my typical attire, so I was regularly uncomfortable). At the time, I didn’t own any of those little socks built for shoes like this, so my feet would always get sweaty and uncomfortable after only a few minutes of wearing the heels. I would kick off my shoes at my desk regularly, slipping them on when I needed to get up. One time, one of the very well regarded attorneys was reviewing crime scene photos and something caught her eye, so she asked the paralegals and a few other attorneys nearby to take a look and help her work out what she was seeing. I ran over to the little circle to join them… barefoot. There was a moment of silence as everyone noticed – they were already looking down over the photo and we were standing in a circle, so I could practically FEEL all their eyes move to my feet – and then thankfully the attorney quickly diverted everyone’s attention. I still cringe!

  249. AKM*

    Honestly I have too many examples to count (I swear I’m actually a good professional!), but the number of times I’ve cried in front of my bosses is… a lot.

    1. Respectfully, Pumat Sol*

      I have cried several times, almost always from frustration or overwhelm. Very rarely from sadness.

      1. Elizabeth*

        I was a consulting nurse (specialized area who would review cases and provide suggestions to the team caring for the patient) and gave some suggestions to a physician who did not agree with my suggestions. Rather than discuss them with me, he started talking over me and giving orders that directly contradicted what I suggested all the while looking at me with a smirk on his face. I was so mad — and unfortunately when I am mad I cry. I ran out of the area and made it to the stairwell before I burst into tears. I hate that I cry when mad. The only thing that makes this memory a decent one, is that a pharmacist overheard my suggestions and then contacted me later in the day and with a different physician we enacted my suggestions and they worked!

      2. NotAnotherManager!*

        Good lord, I hope not. I’m not sure I have a boss that I never cried in front of. I can cry and get shit done at the same time!

    3. Resident Catholicville, USA*

      My hill to die on is normalizing crying at work. At this point, I’m tired of trying to explain that crying is a form of communication when you can’t verbalize how you feel (and not all crying is about work, even if that’s where you happen to be when it happens!). Sometimes, life is just hard and you want to cry- it should be fine. Does it make everyone, including yourself, uncomfortable? Yes. Will everyone be that upset about the world at some point in their lives? Yes. We just need to accept that sometimes, crying happens.

      I might have literally been sitting here, wiping my eyes and trying not to ugly cry, so this might have hit a little too close to home. ;)

      1. Yeah, nah*

        I think this needs a hell of a lot of caveats — race, gender and class play a major role in who gets to cry and why.

        If a white colleague cries after an interaction with me, I’m the office bully, no matter if they’re crying because that’s just how they react to frustration. Bonus points if the colleague is a thin, traditionally attractive white woman — then I’m really a monster. But, as a black lady, if *I* cry, I’m unhinged and unprofessional. It’s not great, and honestly I have no desire to be that vulnerable at work anyway.

        Keep the tears to the bathroom stall; I’m not looking to deal with the blowback of other people’s emotional management techniques at work. Nor do I particularly want to manage their emotions for them, which is what always seems to happen.

        1. Feral Campsite Raccoon*

          That sounds absolutely maddening. I’m not always in control of whether I cry or not, I’m afraid; but I wonder if I would have been forced to develop more control if I weren’t a white woman. I also wonder if normalizing crying at work might actually improve the blowback on you.
          I’m sorry you face this so frequently.

          1. LittleDoctor*

            FWIW I’m also racialized and I still have very, very little to no control over when I cry, but I also have a pretty major and largely untreatable psychiatric disability, so ymmv.

        2. Gerry Keay*

          These are incredibly good points. I do feel like a more just path forward would be dismantling the racism at the core of professional norms so that no one feels like they’re going to be punished for having emotions, as opposed to doubling down on “everyone should hide their emotions.” (Though I recognize that’s obviously not something that can be changed by a single person in a single office.)

          1. Yeah, nah*

            It’s not so much about not having emotions as it is not expecting people to manage them for you. There are obviously exceptions as to when difficulty keeping it together is expected and should be given a bit of grace — bad things happen in people’s lives, and some workplaces do deal with genuinely emotional subjects and tasks. But, generally speaking, it shouldn’t be on your coworkers to handle your tears. Even if it without the racism, I’m not being paid for that kind of emotional labor, nor am I interested in it. I’ll do it for friends, but not Jane from Accounting.

            1. Yeah, nah*

              (Though if you’re crying because you’re in the middle of a confrontation with the office asshole, of course they should have to deal with your feelings. The problem is that they won’t care because, you know, office asshole)

            2. LittleDoctor*

              I hear that, but I also think people can cry and visibly feel emotions without it requiring other people to do any managing. It’s okay to cry!

      2. Nameless in Customer Service*

        I send you all my strength and hope, but it’s going to be an uphill battle. Even here, commenters are very hard on people who cry at work.

      3. RAB*

        I agree that crying is a normal human thing to do and no one should get penalized for it, but sometimes crying at work is a sign that something is seriously wrong with the workplace. I once had a boss who was super impressed because I was the first admin he’d ever had who didn’t cry within the first week. It turned out he was a horrible person to work with, racist, sexist and a yeller. But I was too young to realize that this was actually a massive warning sign, not a compliment.

      4. LoudBookJockey*

        I am with you! Crying is NOT unprofessional, it is simply a form of nonverbal communication. We need to stop shaming people who cry in ANY circumstances, honestly.

        1. Ace in the Hole*

          Slamming my fist on the table and growling is also a form of nonverbal communication, but it’s certainly not okay to do at work. Same for laughing so hard I can’t stand up, or groaning and rolling my eyes at someone irritating.

          Not all forms of communication are equally appropriate in every circumstance. I wouldn’t say that crying is always unprofessional… but I would say that in general, I think it’s unprofessional to show strong expressions of emotion at work outside of exceptional circumstances. Such expression creates a kind of intimacy that may be unwanted by coworkers, and can be very stressful for others to witness. This is no different than sharing intimate or sensitive personal topics in verbal communication… it’s not appropriate at work outside of very limited circumstances.

          Crying at work on rare occasions, for example after getting very bad news or during a time of unusual stress, is not a problem. But if someone is frequently crying at work around other people they need to find a way of handling their emotions more privately.

    4. A Simple Narwhal*

      I’m pretty sure I’ve cried at every job I’ve ever had. Fortunately as I’ve gotten better jobs it’s become a significantly less frequent occurrence.

      But I don’t think crying is on its face unprofessional. Sometimes tears are an uncontrollable response to extremely stressful situations, and as long as it’s not constantly happening, obviously being milked for attention, or used as a manipulation tactic, there’s nothing wrong with it.

    5. Irish Teacher.*

      Oh, my first week working retail, a customer threatened to call the police and his lawyer because I accidentally overcharged him by…maybe a euro and only managers could do refunds so I couldn’t give him the money back until a manager came down from the office – it was probably a 5 minute delay. Yeah, I cried in front of the manager and customers. (The manager, by the way, was completely supportive and told me to call her immediately if any other customers ever spoke to me like that, that I did not have to deal with abuse. Literally the best boss I ever had.)

      1. Lexi Lynn*

        I couldn’t stop crying while trying to write up my self appraisal for the year. My mother had died unexpectedly earlier that year and my boss had told me to make sure to mention that my performance for the year reflected how below expectations I was during the few months around her death. Finishing the self appraisal was the last thing I had to do before starting my Christmas vacation. And I just started crying and couldn’t stop because I wanted my mommy. Not professional but I couldn’t stop.

        1. Juneybug*

          Too bad you couldn’t write your boss’ appraisal for how he was below expectations as a manager and compassionate human.

    6. Dark Macadamia*

      I love in Grey’s Anatomy when Arizona confronts the Chief and starts with “I am going to cry, and I just want you to know that I know it’s going to happen” then proceeds to sob through the rest of the scene. It’s probably the most relatable moment of the whole show and always makes me laugh because I cry SO easily

      1. SpaceySteph*

        Ugh I moved organizations several years ago and then a promotional spot on my old team opened up so I applied. When the boss called me into her office to tell me I didn’t get the job, I just started crying and it was The Worst. Then my coworker saw me in the hall after as I was trying to slink off toward the bathroom and thought something horrible had happened.

      2. TotallyBananas*

        Oh man, it makes me die inside to remember this. First day of a new position, was meeting with my supervisor and a few collaborators and things were very casual/chatty…the conversations turns to kids and supervisor asks if I have kids and I blurt out ‘Oh, fuck no!’, as I was pretty caught off guard by the question. Supervisor then turns to collaborator and without even missing a beat says ‘and I hear congratulations are in order, when is your wife due?’ (with their first child).

    8. Cedrus Libani*

      There’s a short window, roughly 8-12 hours per month, in which I have no control over my tear ducts. Any emotion whatsoever turns into Niagara Falls. I’m not even more emotional, I just weep.

      I got laid off from my first job on Waterworks Day. It wasn’t entirely unexpected; it was a startup, and we all knew the runway was running out. But I still wasn’t happy about it. And so I cried all the tears, over all of the paperwork, to the point where the poor HR rep didn’t want to continue. I had to reassure her (and my boss, and my other co-workers that were also being processed out at the same time) that I was perfectly rational and it was just PMS.

    9. anonynonnon*

      Yeah, when I think about my first teaching job – I am mortified by several things that I said around parents (private school) or searched on a computer that literally make me melt into the floor thinking about it. I grew up and learned what was appropriate to say and do – but there is no accounting for my early 20s!

  250. TrixieD*

    I worked for a fruit-based tech company in Silicon Valley in my early 30’s as a floating receptionist. Receptionists usually had some sort of personal effects on their desk, and many had family pictures. I kept several copies of a stock photo of Zach Galifianakis (one where his mouth is wide open and his hair looks like he just got electrocuted) in different sizes with me, and when I would cover at someone’s desk, I’d replace their family photos with pictures of Zach. I thought it was the FUNNIEST damned thing.

  251. Lattes are for lovers*

    At the beginning of my junior year of college, I was hired to work as a cashier at the on campus bookstore. On my first day at work, i showed up to find approximately 30 other students who had been hired as cashiers.

    The manager shows up and explains to the group that only a handful of us will actually get to work for the entire semester and if we hoped to be chosen for the permanent spots, we would have to “prove ourselves.”

    We then got to work doing all kinds of work that none of us had been hired for. It soon became clear that they need several students to do a bunch of dirty work for a couple of weeks and then we would be promptly let go. It was very Hunger Games before it was a thing. Some kids were busting it, trying to prove themselves. I sat back and did as little as possible because I was pissed.

    When we broke for lunch, I simply didnt go back. I picked up the local newspaper (this was the early 2000s) and started going through the help wanted ads and found a new job by the afternoon.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Sounds like a perfectly professional response to a very unprofessional job application.

    2. Luna*

      Heck, your response was rather decent. I probably would have told the manager that I am not playing his sick powerplay and would have left right then and there. Just because college kids tend to really need jobs doesn’t mean they have no self-respect or can be treated like dirt.

  252. ducki3x*

    I was a technical analyst at a website that was undergoing a big redesign about 15 years ago, and I was known for my ability to get along with pretty much everyone, so I was put in charge of being the interface between our product and technical teams since there was some simmering tension between the two. As we were going through requirement discussions, every single meeting was covering net new functionality and as there was little discussion of how changes would be impacting our existing core functions, and I was getting a little nervous. Our product team promised up and down that the next meeting that we’d start covering the existing stuff.

    We sat down, and the product managers started pitching a new drag-and-drop function that would apply to a single, rarely visited page of the site, and something snapped inside. I took a deep breath that was supposed to be calming, but what came out was “What a f***ing waste of money!!!” and I was off to the races, ranting like a madman for like five minutes, until I finally said we just should reschedule until they were ready to show me something meaningful and I stomped out of the room. I knew I was in the wrong even during the rant but once the frustration started getting out, it just couldn’t be contained.

    I immediately went to my manager and said “You may hear some things, I’m gonna go try and fix it”, and then went straight to the boss of the people I chewed out. I filled him in on exactly what I’d done, and then went to his team and apologized to each one of them individually. Everyone took it in good faith and everyone was more shocked, given my rep, that something had finally set me off.

    (the only lasting impact to it was my boss, when promoted to head of IT, would occasionally turn to me in a meeting and go “What about this, Ducki3x? Is this a f***ing waste of money?” and I’d turn red and we’d all have a good laugh)

  253. Jeremy*

    Once I was sitting at my desk in a cubicle trying to get the attention of a co-worker. He wasn’t responding to me calling his name and rather than stand up and go get his attention normally, I decided to ball up a clean napkin I had on my desk and throw it over the divider between us. This caused him to freak out because he thought it might be a used napkin and he complained to our boss who gave the entire office a lecture about not throwing napkins at each other.

    2. Elizabeth West*

      This reminds me of OldExjob when we had these long rubber bands to put around thick file folders that had samples in them. We used to shoot them at each other until one day, the boss caught us doing it and told us to stop.

  254. Anonymous in Seattle*

    A newer coworker worked east coast hours (we’re on the west coast), and routinely woke up at 4:30 or 5 am. I couldn’t think of any reason why someone would get up that early, so asked her if she did yoga or meditated. She’s Indian.

    (We’re good friends now and she did not remember the incident, but…come on, mouth!)

  255. Julia*

    So, so, so, so many. I was a truly awful employee ten years ago before I got my act together. In my early 20s I rarely did laundry, so I’d come to work without underwear on. Problem is I also didn’t shop for new pants and I’d gained weight, causing me to need to unbutton them when sitting down. You can see where this is going: I accidentally stood up without noticing and my boss saw a bit of my pubes.

    I had trouble controlling my emotions to such a degree that at one point my boss actually recommended a meditation app to deal with my anger. Instead of just saying “this is unacceptable, cut it out” like I’m sure he wanted to. In general I was pleasant and sought feedback most of the time, but when I occasionally didn’t like something, I threw sullen little tantrums and snapped at people.

    I hooked up with two different people in the office, then got wildly jealous when they started hooking up with each other and entered a huge nest of drama with the two of them and their respective monogamous partners (!).

    I regularly came in late or missed work entirely, missed deadlines without communication, and spent long stretches of the day not working even while at work. I came close to losing my job twice; they only didn’t fire me because when my life wasn’t falling apart I had a bunch of subject matter expertise on something mission critical. Ultimately, however, I was straight up unqualified for the job and I’m sure they breathed a sigh of relief when I finally left.

    I made disgusting nose/throat-clearing sounds at the lunch table.

    I had a serious drinking problem and at least once a month got drunk enough that it affected my work performance the next morning. Once I got wasted near work and snuck in at 3am to sleep there so I wouldn’t have to go home and commute back.

    I had no concept that the little stuff in my world that I thought was World Endingly Important to fix ASAP was not a priority for my bosses, and that every job has some technical drawbacks that you have to work around.

    I once tried to host a little brown bag lunch thing to explain a part of my job to my coworkers. It was a disaster – I got so anxious about it that I rescheduled it like five times at the last minute, affecting 15 people’s schedules, and when I finally did it I was unprepared enough that there were no questions at the end, and texts from my mother kept flashing up on the projector screen.

    This is all enormously shameful to relate and I’m glad there are already six hundred comments so this will be buried. I’m glad I have cleaned up my act now.

  256. Dinwar*

    I think the least professional thing I’ve done is a solid 10 minutes of swearing. In my defense, it was justifiable. We were collecting soil samples with an EPA rep standing over us. The guy was, to put it mildly, a complete jerk with very few redeeming qualities (again, that’s the mild version). Made life miserable. It was 100+ degrees, 90% humidity, no shade, and a BAD part of town–to the point where the company had negotiated with the local gangs to ensure we weren’t shot. The EPA guy expected us to sample in yards with large, aggressive dogs (obviously used in dog fights), told us to sample a church yard we didn’t have authorization to sample, and do other really stupid things. It got to the point where I literally memorized my SOW because he’d try to sneak stuff past us when we didn’t have it with us.

    One day, after a few weeks of this, was particularly bad. I’d knelt in three fire ant mounds, I was knee-deep in a flooded back portion of an abandoned school’s playground, and a freaking bee came out of nowhere and stung me in the kneecap. I lost it. I retained enough situational awareness to not cuss at anyone–this was just general swearing–and it didn’t interfere with the job because my part was done and I was waiting on my partner. But I went on for a while. I was just out of college, and the saltier portions of my vocabulary were quite extensive, and I used all of it. After the first five minutes the EPA guy left, and he was always a little hesitant to talk to me after that.

    After that I refused to work in that area or for that project manager. Field geology is a rough business, and you expect to work under adverse conditions, but there are limits.

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      Can I ask what you meant by the “obviously used in dog fights” comment? Just because they were large and aggressive or are you also attaching the “bad part of town” and gang aspects to it? There’s something I don’t quite like about this assumption, if it was an assumption. I’d only assume the dogs were offering protection from the bad parts of the area.

      1. Dinwar*

        “Can I ask what you meant by the “obviously used in dog fights” comment?”

        There are wounds that are indicative of dog fights, and when you start seeing a large number of dogs with such wounds in a small area, it’s pretty telling. Plus at least one owner admitted that they were doing dog fighting, and a dog fighting ring got broken up while we were there. While we never directly observed the dog fights, the evidence was pretty overwhelming.

        I get what you’re saying. In a neighborhood like that you’ve got to protect yourself. Most people had guns, but this was the South, that statement is universally true. And there were dogs that were both aggressive and not part of the dog fights–again, the wounds (or lack there of) and discussions with the owners demonstrated that. Or you’d see a dog that was playing with little kids, then when it saw us would stand between us and the kid and start barking and growling–a dog defending its pack. I’m not going to complain here–my family does the same thing, in a much nicer neighborhood.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Appreciating this entire exchange. AskAManager commenters are the best commenters!

      2. Threeve*

        If you see a cane corso or bull terrier with particular scars and unusually close cropped ears, you don’t really need other context clues :(

  257. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

    First job after law school, maybe second week on the job, in a meeting with the Special Assistant for my GrandBoss and a couple other attorneys. Before the meeting starts said Special Assistant starts making all these tired lawyer jokes that I’d heard a million times before, and which I hadn’t yet learned to just let wash off my back.

    I said nothing at the time, but had the bright idea to go into the Special Assistant’s office the next day and tell her (nicely, I thought) that those lawyer jokes were inappropriate. Later that day I got called into the office by my immediate supervisor, who told me the Special Assistant had told GrandBoss that I had called her “unprofessional” and how he had to run interference for me with GrandBoss to smooth things over.

    Oops.

    Funny thing is, I ended up getting along very well with that Special Assistant, who eventually became my immediate boss.

  258. The Lion's Roar*

    For years, I worked for a manager who disliked our whole department and would loudly voice her displeasure all the time – as an example, it was very common for her to call our lunches or snacks disgusting.

    I had a calendar up at my desk with several celebrities in it (G-rated, and “fun” calendars were fairly common at the company), and mid-year my manager changed our department’s seating arrangement. In the new layout, she had a perfect view of my entire workspace – which led to a lot more comments about what I was eating, plus vocal outrage at having to look at one particular celebrity’s “creepy eyes” on the calendar.

    Well, since she could see my screens just as well as she could see my calendar, I found as many gigantic, off-putting pictures as I could of the celebrity staring right at the camera. Then I set my desktop background to rotate between them, so my manager could enjoy a variety of gazes throughout the day.

    I wouldn’t have any regrets, but then what I thought would be a quick call to Tech ended with them logging into my computer for a prolonged rescue session, and I had to sit there mortified while my screen cycled through what must have looked like a deranged shrine.

    (Still worth it.)

  259. CantBearToUseName*

    I was 22, at a work happy hour, way too tipsy for a work event (or for 6 pm) and led a game of “Fu**, Marry, Kill” …using our senior leadership as the people we’d murder or sleep with…some of who were there…some of who heard me.

    I got a very kind talking to by my grandboss, a man in his 60s, the next day about the need to stay professional at work events and that this game was completely inappropriate in any context. I still want to die thinking about it.

  260. Bethie*

    Im my first job out of college (not my first job, professional or otherwise), I worked in a district attorneys office. I was promptly shit on by everyone there, because my (soon to be ex) husband’s grandfather was friends with the higher ups. So this led to the most tedious job of managing the victim notifications for felony sessions court for a city with probably the 3rd highest crime rate in the country. For 22k a year.
    And one day I got a sweet old woman on the phone who just really wanted her subpeona. Now I had interviewed for a job serving subpeona’s and was told I wasnt qualified. Hindsight I probably would have been shot, but anyway. The process server I called refused to go serve the subpeona because she “had to go to the mall” (its been 16 years and I still remember this!)
    Anyway, about an hour later I ran into the Sheriff of said large crime ridden city and he politely said hello (remember family friend who was probably only being nice bc of grandfather). Instead of, you know, being polite and working through the usual small talk – I launched into a tirade, right there at the vending machines, about said process server. To the sheriff. Loudly.
    Anyway, the sweet old woman got her subpeona. People were slightly terrified of me. And I look back and think, wow, I really could have used a lot more tact.

  261. Trillian*

    Not me but my twin brother. Way back in our early twenties, he and a group from work (both male and female from early career to close to retirement age) would regularly go to a hot spring and hang out naked together for the weekend. I can’t imagine going into work after that!

    1. Jan Levinson Gould*

      My first office job, aged 21, working in the same place as my spouse. They had a shared office and I worked on the line. I opened their door, thinking they were alone, and launched into the raunchiest possible list of things I was going to do to them— their office mate had bent down to fill a file box and heard everything. I was mortified. Spouse was mortified. Office mate mortified. I don’t think I ever entered that office again, and now as a rule won’t work with my spouse ever again (for other valid reasons lol)

      1. Jan Levinson Gould*

        That was supposed to be a separate post not a reply— big facepalm sorry

  262. Ally McBeal*

    Oh god. About 5 years out of college, I was in an admin role and around Valentines Day printed out a meme I thought was funny, with pictures of historical dictators with silly V-Day phrases (think “Be Mao Valentine”), and pinned it to my cubicle wall. Bad enough on its own… and then the CFO pulled me into his office and very gently reminded me that both he and the CEO were Jewish and having “Be Mein” superimposed onto Hitler’s face wasn’t a good idea. I wanted to dissolve into the floor. Luckily I had a good relationship with both execs and they took it as the ill-considered mistake it was.

  263. The Dude Abides*

    PT job in college, part of a team of 10ish students supervising a group of 80-90 employees.

    I was the on-call manager in a 2-3 hour block, and one employee did not show up for her shift on time. I was already on my way to that particular location, as I needed to swap out a battery for the third time in a month, so I was pissed that the building maintenance people hadn’t responded to multiple requests to look at it.

    Forty-five minutes into the shift, I’ve swapped the battery, and told the other on-site employee to text me once the offender arrives. As I am about to exit the building, the offender walks in chatting with a friend, and about 30 other people are moving around us. I lose it, and ask her “where the **** HAVE YOU BEEN?” Turns out, she had agreed to sub for that shift, but got mixed up by a day. Not ideal, bdid happen on occasion, but I very much over-reacted.

    I do have another story about showing up to work at the same job black-out drunk, but that will never be told in a public forum.

    Thank goodness that big boss at that job was incredibly chill and understanding, but I did get a final warning for the latter incident.

  264. All the Words*

    The time: The early 80’s. Me: Early 20’s woman for whom her clerical job was the means to cover rent and night-clubbing expenses at the various punk/gay/lesbian hot spots. I identified as a lesbian but wasn’t out at work. The place: Mortgage company division of one of the largest banks in the U.S.

    A very out gay man started working there and we immediately became inseparable, yukking it up and trying to make the office a bit less stuffy. Our humor was often more than a little inappropriate. One day there was an offsite department party and for some reason he and I were the last ones left on our floor. We were horsing around on our way out and he decided to hoist me up on his shoulders and give me a helicopter spin. Yes, the wrestler move. Yes, in the office. But nobody else was there so no harm, no foul, right? I was squealing and telling him to put me down when I look up just in time to see our very soft-spoken, very conservative Manager walk in and freeze with an expression of shock and confusion. There were a few seconds of stunned silence from everyone. My friend put me down post haste and started rapidly telling the tale of how he had been behind me, bent over, and I didn’t see him when I spun around so sort of fell over his shoulders, and he stood up and there I was, lifted on his shoulders! Yeah, it didn’t sound plausible at the time either, but my manager played along and just told us to be more careful and go join the rest of the department. We skedaddled to the party, stifling embarrassed and terrified giggles the whole way. We were sure we’d be fired.

    She never mentioned it again, for which I’m eternally grateful. Those days contain countless full body cringe moments. This one takes the prize for the most ridiculous.

    1. Unkempt Flatware*

      Imagining watching this silently and in black and white and choppy on a security cam makes me laugh so so hard. This is the greatest workplace story of all time.

  265. Rose Video Employee*

    My first job out of grad school, I was basically a glorified intern. I was invited to the company’s fancy holiday party. I worked in a satellite office and the party was in HQ’s city, so this included being put up in a nice hotel and having meals and travel covered. At the holiday party, I drank too much, danced terribly, and asked my boss if the much-younger man the CEO was dancing with was her assistant. He was her husband. They were the same age.

  266. MDinSC*

    At my first professional job out of college, myself and two of the sales administrators would lock ourselves in my office once a week at lunch and watch the most recent episodes of Jersey Shore on my computer. We put a sign on my door telling everyone what we were doing and no one ever said anything. We had a lot of fun but looking back it’s a little cringey!

  267. Con Dar*

    I was running late for work and didn’t have time to eat breakfast. I remembered I had made a smoothie for a lazy dinner a few days ago and had leftovers in the freezer. I grabbed the smoothie and headed off to work.

    I remember briefly marveling that the smoothie hadn’t frozen entirely and made a mental note to check on my freezer when I got home. I then began to feel woozy and lightheaded, and a little foggy in my thoughts.

    Suddenly it all hits me – I PUT BOOZE IN THIS SMOOTHIE! Since it was serving as my “dinner” a few days ago I had decided to have a little fun and glugged some Midori melon liquor and vodka into the mix. That’s why it hadn’t frozen, and apparently the confusing feelings I was experiencing were because I had gotten myself inadvertently tipsy at my desk by 9:30a – OOPS!

    Luckily I don’t have much contact with others when doing my job, so I just grabbed some water and sat mortified (and tipsily bemused, if I’m being honest) until it wore off!

    1. Legal Beagle*

      Hahaha this is incredible – and definitely something I could see myself doing.

  268. Gerry Keay*

    Worked the front desk at a network of childhood enrichment/prek centers — once smoked a joint with my boss on the roof playground after work, and may or may not have slung her some harder drugs literally under the front desk WHILE THE CENTER WAS OPEN. Sooo much drug use happening at that company, like people were not-so-secretly doing blow in the bathroom of the holiday party. That’s what happens when you hire a bunch of 22 year old actors fresh out of college living in NYC I guess!

  269. Whynot*

    I was 18, and working a summer job in a large department store where I was often placed in the hosiery department. It was pretty boring, and eventually I started to entertain myself by trying out different accents on the customers. My go-to was an exaggerated US southern accent (not common at all in the Pacific NW), and I would see how far I could go being chatty with the customers, making up a back story as I went along. I believe I also tried out British and German accents.

    I am not a particularly talented mimic so I’m sure my accent antics were noticeable, but no one ever complained and I never got caught by a supervisor. So, file this one under “unprofessional but harmless.”

  270. Emme*

    I was interviewing for an executive role. My interviewer asked what I was reading for fun, a very standard question. I responded with a brief mention of the things I really enjoy reading, though they happen to be related to my field. My I interviewer kept pressing and I finally said “lady smut.” I know better! I laughed. My interviewer laughed after me. Was it genuine? I am not sure. I didn’t get the job!

  271. Sorcyress*

    Oh hey, I actually have one!

    My first serious teaching job was at an all-girls high school. I was about 26, and had done a lot of substituting (including some long-term maternity leave gigs) so I thought I was all set for a “real” full year teaching job…but I definitely was not. I had no idea how to plan lessons or classes, and was often just flying by the seat of my pants at any given moment. When you’re a substitute, people just give you the plan to follow!

    Because it was a school full of fairly intelligent teenagers, the girls _loved_ to have conversations with me about anything. Life, politics, whatever…and all of that turned out to be way more interesting than math! Until about halfway through the year, when some parents complained that I’d been spending too much time talking about current events, and not enough on the actual curriculum. I got called in to talk to the principal, did my best to shape up for the rest of the year, subsequently was not hired back for the following year.

    Now that I’m several years into a (different! better paying! better culture! more support!) high school teaching job, I can look back on how much I let the students run the class and _cringe_. I still enjoy a little bit of conversation with the kids…but I keep it to a few minutes here and there, and not the majority of class!

    ~Sor

    (Also FWIW, I can look back on that private school and cringe about how BAD they were at supporting and mentoring new teachers. It’s no wonder I floundered –there was no one looking in to how I was doing or helping me learn! Being at a school where I was assigned a regular mentor and had multiple observations my first year did _wonders_ for my ability to lesson plan! So I was unprofessional…but partly because so were they!)

    1. Sorcyress*

      Also, there were some STORIES from my first year as a substitute. Probably the least professional one was when I subbed for the same third grade class two days in a row and accidentally encouraged them the first day when they started telling ghost stories…which got progressively worse the entire second day.

      (also bad was the year where I had a sub job starting on “the first couple days of school…maybe the whole week” and wound up being a third grade teacher for six weeks without warning –as a reminder, my degree and training is in high school math. But that was not *me* being unprofessional, and while the admin were clearly A Mess, the other third grade teachers were absolutely heroic in stepping up and sharing plans with me so I could at least do _something_ with the bunch of eight year olds I was suddenly responsible for.)

      1. Catonymous*

        Oh man, substitute teaching stories are the best/worst. One time, the “lesson plan” was that students were watching Gladiator, and I ended up so deep down a Wikipedia wormhole about ancient Rome that I didn’t realize the principal had been in the classroom for an indeterminate amount of time. I just looked up at some point and he was there, observing.

        Then, reverse unprofessionalism, there was the school where they didn’t know which room the teacher I was covering was teaching, kept sending me to the wrong one (with keys that didn’t work), and then when I found the right one thanks to a teacher who was friends with the teacher I was covering, there were no students…because they hadn’t put any into that class yet (it was early in the year). So the principal sent me home early with full pay for the day.

        1. IndustriousLabRat*

          As a sub for a middle school class, while having a post-college crisis of “should I go to grad school and get my teaching license?” I somehow got tricked into going into the greenhouse attached to the science room… and was subsequently locked in by the students. I had to go knock on another classroom window and get the rather surprised teacher to come rescue me.

          I did not pursue teaching as a career.

  272. Qwerty*

    This JUST HAPPENED. This is not my first job, or even my first professional job. I am late 30s and work for the government. And I just flashed my grandboss my boobs.

    My direct manager was a personal friend prior to becoming my manager. And I just got a long awaited sternum tattoo (that goes between my boobs) while I was away on holiday. My first day back, he asked about it and I yanked my shirt up to show him. I was not wearing a bra, but I’d pulled my top up in such a way my tattoo was visible but my boobs were covered.

    Until HIS boss, who was passing in the hall, asked what was going on, and I turned to show her…and in turning pulled my shirt more and out popped both my boobs.

    I’m not sure who was more surprised, me, or my grandboss who just discovered I also have my nipples pierced.

    3. TypityTypeType*

      This is fantastic — I laughed loud enough to startle a passing cat. =^..^=

  273. hallucinating hack*

    When I was starting out, I lectured a senior person about the correct way to refer to someone from another country who had been granted an honorific (think the equivalent of a Sir or Dame). The senior person was from that country.

  274. Rose Video Employee*

    Ok I just remembered this one and I am still mortified 15 years later. I was newly out of college and figuring out how to be an adult and a professional. My job was client-facing at a social service agency, working with people with serious life problems, so…not a goof-off type of role. One day, a friend and I were emailing each other talking e-cards as a joke (this was the early 2000s) and trying to one-up each other with hilarious things the e-card would read out to you. I accidentally pressed play on one and it BLARED out of my office door — which opened directly into the lobby where clients waited — “I WANT YOUR SEX!” Somehow in frantically trying to close it and turn my volume down, I instead played it AGAIN. Miraculously no one complained and I don’t think my boss ever knew about it, but I still cringe when I think of that.

    1. alienor*

      Oh god, this is reminding me of a time when a coworker sent me a video of something like…squirrels, maybe? I thought I had my headphones plugged in, but I did not, so I hit play and blared the entire video into a quiet midafternoon office before I realized what was happening (was only about a 20-second clip). That would have been bad enough, but to make it even worse, the music accompanying the video was a rap song that contained the n-word. I was ready to die.

  275. Smaller potatoes*

    For my first job interviews I splurged on nice heels and a “grown up” linen dress. Very professional except completely impractical for the factory engineering jobs I was interviewing for where steel toed shoe covers were needed just to walk from reception to the interview room!

  276. Renee Remains the Same*

    Picture it – College Freshman in the mid-90s with a work-study job at a copy room in the Education department. From 7-9 in the morning, I was meant to sit in the copy room and either complete copy jobs that had come in the night before or take copy jobs that came in the morning. I am not a morning person. For the first month, I dutifully went to work. Sat at a desk with a phone (no computer) for two hours. I think I had maybe two copy jobs during that first month. Otherwise I saw no one, talked to no one and no one checked in on me. I had to sign a sheet when I arrived / left, which is how they tracked my time. I started to skip a day or two here and there. No one noticed or at least no one called me out. Then I started to skip more and more days, eventually reaching a point where I was simply too guilt-ridden and embarrassed and couldn’t possibly step foot in that building again. They called me about a week or two later to officially fire me. I wasn’t an Education major, so I never did step foot in the building again.

  277. Lkr208*

    One of my first professional jobs in my early 20’s, I was the front office administrator and one of the after-school care workers for a Montessori school. The school and sister schools were planning their Christmas celebration dinner at a restaurant (not a gala or anything, just a simple dinner), and myself and the other after school program teacher weren’t “invited” because we needed to be there for the after school program. Even though I had only been there since September, I was greatly offended for some reason and told my manager this. Lovely person that she was, she actually found someone else (who didn’t even work at the school itself!) to cover for me so I could attend but in hindsight, I can’t believe I asked and cringe every time I think about it! If my old manager sees this, you’re awesome and sorry about that!

  278. Minimal Pear*

    Oh also I’m currently working in underwear and a sports bra and nothing else lol (I’m remote, it’s the first really hot day in my area, my AC breaks if I set it too low, etc etc)

    1. Neutral Shy*

      Shorts and a tank top. I’m in an apartment with one AC unit and I work remotely, and no one below a certain pay grade ever turns on their camera.

  279. caseykay68*

    Okay, have to share one. I was on a second interview for a training position for a bank. Part of the interview was a presentation. I had misjudged the walk from parking to the office and the affect it would have on me – wearing sensible heels for the interview but not ones I wore regularly. By the time I got there, my legs were visibly shaking. When I got up to give my presentation, I took off my shoes. The set up was such that I didn’t think they could see it….but yeah, they did.

    1. cleo*

      Oh no! I can can completely see my younger self doing that. (also my much older self)

  280. Lady_Lessa*

    This happened to me and I was the victim of someone else’s behavior.

    I was bothered by what my pastor had said in a sermon, because I thought that it could easily hurt abused women, especially those hurt by their husbands.

    I wrote the man a letter, and before he got it, read it to a girlfriend who was both on the same page, but could be more diplomatic. (I chose doing it writing because I thought I would be heard better and not be intimidated by him in his office). I put the letter inside a sealed envelop and placed it in his mail slot at the church’s office.

    A few days later, he called me at work, not to set up an appointment to talk about it, but to lay into me. It wasn’t what I said, but the fact that I didn’t confront him in person. One of my jobs was to answer technical service phone calls, and I consider it a marvel that he got 30 minutes without interruption. I’m not sure he ever got what I was trying to say.
    Fortunately, I already had one foot out the door to another branch of Christianity.

    1. Bibliothecarial*

      That’s …a misinterpretation of Matthew 18 (?) on your pastor’s part, to say the least. You did nothing unprofessional there!

  281. CouldntPickAUsername*

    I was working in a call center for home phone billing. It was my second last day. Even though I was almost gone I refused to be lax on verification, because I will not do that to someone. This woman calls up and gives me her phone number I start the verification questions beginning with if she has her account number. “no, I don’t and I’m not looking anything up at all”
    “miss if you don’t verify with me I cannot help you.” emphasized on the last half of that
    “I’ve been on the phone for over an hour” and I hung up. Just hung up and went on to the next caller. still feel 0 guilt about that.

  282. Too tired*

    I worked as an admin assistant at a university in my 20s. The days were slow as I never had much to do. I had a cube where my back faced the door of the office of the Dean. My friend would come and visit me. He would sit in a chair next to me in my cube, and we would have our conversations. Can’t believe I did this and that no one ever said anything. Then again, the academic advisor of our department would spend her afternoon at Sephora and then leave early “to catch the train”.

  283. Schmitt*

    I used to eat muesli at my desk, the kind with raisins and other dried fruit. I would put yogurt in it. I was never much of a breakfast eater, so it would kind of sit there soaking up the yogurt and drying up on the edges, and I’d push the muesli around and eat it slowly over the course of the morning. In retrospect, it was probably pretty gross to look at and they probably wondered why I couldn’t eat breakfast like a normal person in one go.

    They banned eating at your desk.

    I asked my boss, “Surely no one has a problem with me eating breakfast at my desk?”

    Bless him, he just reiterated the rule instead of telling me how gross my dried up yogurt muesli stretched over three hours was.

    1. Wolf*

      That’s pretty tame for gross office food. You didn’t microwave fish, and didn’t let anything rot in the shared fridge.

  284. Sam Yao*

    I worked for an office within my college during my first summer there. I had absolutely no social skills coming in but boy did I think I was FUN and INTERESTING and boy did I not understand that the place and time to be FUN and INTERESTING was… not this place or time. Among other things, I:
    1) most egregiously, treated my cubicle, plainly visible from the front desk, like my personal locker in which I could hang up any decorations I so desired, which at this time included several arty photos of male stars from old Hollywood and a “Vote Cthulhu: why settle for the lesser evil?” poster. It took them way too long to speak to me about this and I genuinely did not understand the problem.
    2) wore my summer hippie dresses and walked around the office barefoot
    3) let’s say my boss’s name was “Susie” and so I would greet her by loudly singing “Wake Up Little Susie.”

    I honestly expected them to hire me back the following summer and was surprised when they declined to do so.

    1. Sam Yao*

      (I wish to defend Current Me against Past-Me-What-A-F**ng-Dope, so I would like to state for the record that this was 25 years ago and I have currently been working in the same office for 9 years, where I now have on display one (1) Star Wars Funko, a calendar with hypothetical modern updates of historical figures, and some postcards from previous vacations.

  285. Temperance*

    I worked at the student center in food service in college. Going to work still drunk was pretty common for many of us and we rallied, but there was one day where I was very drunk, got dressed in the dark, and showed up wearing a lime green shirt with a pickle on it instead of our tan work t-shirt.

    My very kind boss gave me a clean shirt, and a plate of foccacia and cheese to sober up.

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      I would occasionally go to work hungover and on very little sleep when I was working a janitorial job at university. Luckily, nobody cared what I wore. Looking back, I can’t believe that I ever had the energy to be out till 1am and get up at 5am.

  286. Aunty Fox*

    Ok, so I no longer drink in a professional setting, ever, at all, not even one because I have self control issues and
    things that happened in my early professional years when I was drunk:
    I told a colleague that I knew he didn’t intend to be but he should know he really is a total a55h*le.
    Colleagues called my then boyfriend and told him to come get from the Christmas party at about 5pm, I don’t actually remember why but that probably is explanation in itself. (it started at lunchtime)
    I put someone in a headlock. This was before I took wrestling classes so it wasn’t even a good headlock. (I appreciate that would not have made it better from their point of view).
    I think those are probably the highlights. I still come across many of these people in my professional life because people stay in the industry.
    So now I go on networking things and tell people I don’t drink. I also usually sneak off up to bed as soon as people move from the table to the bar.
    Less dramatic but probably not really ok, someone was once shirty with me for saying it was nice to meet him when we attend the same meetings a couple of times a year, I just said, ‘oh there’s like 30 white guys in that meeting and you all look the same to me’. Tbf, they are mostly of an age, wearing similar suits and all discussing the same thing and i’m bad at faces.

    I love how many of the answers are super sweet about nick nacks and posters etc. :)

  287. On time arrival*

    Landed my dream corporate job after working at creative agencies. Preparing for my first day, I emailed my manager asking if I should call her once I get to security that day. She confirmed. I didn’t ask what time I should be there. I sort of realized later that I should have, and during my first 1:1 I asked. My manager sort of laughed and said she was glad I asked, because she was surprised I hadn’t asked in my initial email about security. As she was coordinating my onboarding with our teams coordinator, they discussed this misstep of mine, apparently. Embarrassed that it had been a whole conversation and lacking a professional filter I blurted out, “I figured we were all adults and could decide the best time to arrive ourselves.” Needless to say her draw dropped. She arrived daily at 7:30 and from there on out, so did I (and I stayed until she went home). She ended up being one of the best managers I ever had, and I can’t believe I said that to her!

  288. Random Biter*

    Hands off my collection of Nightmare Before Christmas stuff, it keeps me from running amok at times.

  289. Catonymous*

    I was in my early 20s doing field work with a (mostly) equally young group of people. I had recently had my heart broken and noticed that one of the men on the team, who had talked about his girlfriend back at home, was paying a lot of attention to one of the local women where we were staying. Internally, I was beyond angry. Externally, I cornered the guy one day and asked tersely if he was cheating on his girlfriend, and when he said no, they had broken up, I blurted out how relieved I was because “something similar happened to me recently and I would hate to be working with someone who would do that” or something to that effect…well and truly it was none of my business! He was very gracious about it.

  290. Shiba Dad*

    This one was pretty bad but worked out well.

    I worked at a car dealership in sales. Another coworker and I became managers of a sales team. This sales team had issues with their previous managers, who were reassigned. I knew about this going into the role. I got along with and had been known to have a drink or five with a few members of this team prior to becoming one of their managers. I thought this would be helpful.

    It did not go well…at first. They were almost immediately complaining about us to the GMs. In fairness, some of their complaints were valid. Others I heard about, not so much.

    One day I just got totally pissed. I asked the main team member complaining, who I’ll call Cassie, to join me in the break area upstairs. The conversation started something like this:

    Me: I hear you have some f**king problems with me! Write down anything you want to bitch about. *tosses tablet in her direction
    Cassie: F**k you Shiba! Why are singling me out? I’ll go to Todd (one of the GMs)!
    Me: Go ahead! You’re going to stab me in the back regardless! That’s what you’ve been doing this whole time!
    Cassie: I’m not stabbing you in the back! You are being an asshole!

    We went back and forth with plenty of f-bombs mixed in. Eventually we started listening to each other. I did find out what she and the rest of the team had issues with as well as a few thing that I and my co-manager had done that I wasn’t even aware of. She learned what we as co-managers were dealing with and what we were told going into our roles as managers. Her biggest problem with me was I wasn’t being me. I promised to do better and she promised to give me another chance.

    I briefed my co-manager when I saw him next. I met with each team member individually, apologized and promised to do better.

    I did do better, and so did the team. We were pretty consistently the best performing team.

  291. BA*

    First job was outside sales at a radio station. I would definitely take the long way both to and from sales calls just to kill time. And I’d listen to a show on a competing station. The host started talking one day about how much sales jobs suck, so I called in and told him that I worked for another station, would sit in parking lots listening to his show and knew that most of the time, my sales call would last about the length of commercial breaks so I could get back in my car and continue listening to his show without missing anything.

  292. anonsurg*

    I was the chief or surgery at my hospital. I needed to speak with another surgeon about his behavior. I managed to stay calm throughout the convo (“no, you cannot throw things, you cannot call the nurses names, you have to do your records”) until he started the classic derailing things “but if the nurses would just do things right”. I snapped and called him a condescending ass and told him that any behavior that would get a child of mine a time out would be an issue. I also introduced him to the new Disruptive Physician policy. He absolutory did not think it was necessary. I told him that he was lucky it did not have his name on it. No my best moment but I had just had it.

    1. Nanani*

      That’s hardly unprofessional, that sounds like you did your job with the intensity that was called for!
      Go you!

    2. AnonForThis*

      I used to do end-user support at hospitals when they started using a new Electronic Medical Records system. I fully understand that switching to a system designed by people who knew more about medical regulations than actual healthcare was stressful and frustrating; I used to consider it a good shift if I could get through the full 12 hours without a nurse bursting out crying while I was helping them.

      The tantrums the doctors threw were amazing. Fully grown professionals ranting and screaming and throwing things like toddlers. Bad enough when they threw clipboards at people; more than one doctor destroyed thousand-dollar monitors in frustration.

  293. Nanani*

    I started wearing contacts for the first time in the first couple of years of my first full-time, not-student job.
    Within the first couple of days I lost one of the lenses and enlisted my manager’s help trying to find it, then got sent home early because I couldn’t work with half my vision.

    The kicker: the lens didn’t fall out, my eye was just dry and it had rolled up under my eyelid (or… something? I don’t remember exactly how it happened, just all of a sudden I didn’t have a contact lens over one eye).

    Started carrying those artificial tears for dry days after that.

  294. All Hail Queen Sally*

    Back in the 1980’s, as a brand new manager, I was doing my very first firing of the very first employee that I had ever hired about a month into her probation period. I was trying very hard to remain professional as I was describing that I found her behavior unacceptable (she like to talk back to me and argue with me about every work assignment) when for unknown reasons, I added “and you can’t type worth shit.” I still cringe when I think of it!

  295. Rosie*

    This is embarrassing because it was only a few years ago and I’m well into my 30s now but I had a director that was pretty incompetent and we Did Not like each other at all but the founders liked me and well…I was right about the way to do things a lot of the time because it was in my field of expertise and not hers. Anyway I basically ignored her, did my own thing and justified it later and was pretty antagonistic, basically a bosses nightmare especially since there was nothing she could do about me because I had the higherups backing and it was a start-up that needed my knowledge (I mean they’re still using systems I developed back then). Like it started out just me gently pushing back but I definitely grew bolder and bolder especially as the CEO just laughed and was like whatever gets us licensed! It got to the point of open hostility and I’m pretty sure I made her cry multiple times. I definitely feel bad about it now and honestly felt bad about it then but, well, sometimes you just react.

  296. Extensia*

    I was working a job that was pretty dull and slow-paced. My boss gave me a batch of projects every Monday and I had to finish by Friday – except I could easily get through the work within a couple days, so I spent a lot of time basically surfing the internet, taking the occasional nap, etc. Well, the small company had recently been acquired by a much larger corporation and was in the process of being absorbed at the time I started. So around 8 months into my tenure, we got a weeklong visit from some sort of corporate efficiency analyst who was supposed to review our work processes and figure out how to incorporate us into the larger organization. The guy ended up observing me for several days, and as we were similar in age (and nearly everyone else at the company was a couple decades older), we got to chatting. Reader, I got too comfortable. When the end of the week rolled around and I was clearly out of work to do, he asked me what I was going to do for the rest of my work time. Me: “Oh, usually I just do some internet shopping.” Facepalm. A couple months later that office got shut down and the work outsourced to another cheaper location…and it might be my fault?

  297. KC*

    I worked super long hours at my first full-time job outside of college and was constantly exhausted, so I used to take naps in my boss’s office during my lunch break whenever she was out, lol. No one knew – and probably no one even noticed me going in there because the place was a bustling environment – but I am still amazed at my own 22-year-old hubris!

  298. TeaFiend*

    Still hurts to say it but in my first full-time job as an admin assistant/receptionist I:

    – Fell asleep at the front desk but pretended like I just had my head in my hand and was deep in thought. Was very obvious this wasn’t the case when I was startled awake by a patient politely saying ‘excuse me’. That, and the fact that I asked when they’d like to come in for their next appointment but they’d only just arrived and were checking in.

    – On one of my first days on the job I sat and read a book—at the reception desk—while waiting for patients to arrive/leave so I could process them on the computer. Was very embarrassed when my boss told me that I was supposed to be productive in that time rather than just waiting to be told what to do.

    – Had a phase of just not wearing shoes while at the reception desk (only while behind the desk) because I didn’t like having sweaty feet. Also regularly napped at the table in the break room during my lunch breaks.

  299. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

    First job out of college, small office, that did a lot of traveling to sites for work and we stayed at the same hotels together. Got in with the ‘in’ crowd of the office, which was a lot of drinking to excess at night during the work week, gossiping, and talking crap about those not in the ‘in crowd’. The ‘in’ crowd was a lot of the middle managers, and one senior manager, very few entry level employees, so I thought I was cool. I didn’t really talk crap about anyone, but I definitely was a gossiper and just overall contributed to the toxic culture. Everyone seemed to want to hang out with them when we were on work travel, including different levels of management so I hung on to my fringe ‘in crowd’ status. I just assumed that if they were ‘buddies’ with the senior level, being part of the group would help me out.
    Luckily I was on a trip where I was the only one from my site with one of the great grandbosses (it was a not so great travel location) and grandboss pointed out to me that the middle managers had been middle managers for awhile and had applied to move up but weren’t moved up because of the toxicity they brought with them. Basically they thought I had the ability to be successful and wanted to let me know that if I didn’t stop doing what the others were doing I wasn’t going to go very far in any job. Took a step back to observe after I came back from that trip, realized that great grandboss was right, stopped being toxic/gossiping and eventually left a little less than a year later. Also while taking a step back I witnessed things such as middle management pitting us entry level workers against each other and rumors I had spread about other entry level people got told directly to them, with my name attached “AAL said that you…”. Definitely learned, NEVER say anything about anyone or anything that you do not want to be told to everyone with your name attached, and that at in good companies, senior leadership are looking to promote those that can work with everyone, not just the ‘popular’ crowd.

  300. Yellowjacket #3*

    In my early 20s, I worked as a receptionist at a fancy law firm and one day I was informed by two of the most intimidating lawyers (the managing partner and another shareholder who was heavily involved in local politics) that a VIP client would be coming in and I should contact only the two of them when she arrived, no one else should deal with her.

    Well. For some reason, when the VIP client came in, after asking her name (standard procedure) I stood up and…shook hands with her, and I think introduced myself???? I have NO idea why this seemed natural at the time. I was sitting behind a large desk and was NOT at the level where i should be shaking hands with clients, and I literally never did that before or since. It turned out that she was the daughter of a very, very prominent US politician and was hoping her visit would be *discreet.*

    Anyway, nobody said anything about it, but I died inside.

  301. Aximili4*

    In my mid 20s, I was dating a coworker. We’d kept it out of the office, but showed up to a work event as a couple once so it wasn’t a secret. She was in a car accident that left her with a concussion. A few days later, the headache wouldn’t go away, so I spent most of the day with her trying to get her treatment; eventually a doctor looked at her, gave up, and gave her pain meds. She said she would call in sick for tomorrow and rest. The next day, I walked into the office, saw her at her desk, and exclaimed, in front of everyone, “What are you doing here!?”

  302. 5Cats&Counting*

    I recall some cringe worthy moments of my youth so I tried to remember as much when I recently dealt with a twenty-one year old intern who TOLD me when I could pay him. I manage payroll and limited HR functions and chuckled when I received an email from said intern instructing me-not inquiring- on how I should pay him directly for his time put in thus far-2 days. Never mind that I thoroughly explained the company’s pay cycles, onboarding paperwork, etc. during his one-on-one orientation or the several times I had to follow up for him to finish his hiring documents. I spoke with his supervisor, who agreed that this was an opportunity to explain to our new hire some professional norms to anticipate in the workplace. I found out later this intern also phoned the CFO while he was on holiday to find out why we had such a unreasonable policy on paying staff according to pay cycles.

  303. Triple Toe*

    2015 Zoom hell – I was really sick but had to join a call (video was firmly off). As the meeting started I lost the connection and was struggling to rejoin – an unleashed an incredibly harsh string of swear words. A colleague messaged me that my microphone was actually working. The best part – my voice was so deep and nasal that everyone thought it was a male voice and gossiped about which one they thought had done the swearing.

  304. Fabio fan*

    At my previous job as a team lead, I developed an ironic obsession with Fabio (the male model on all those romance novels). It went so far that I made an actual Fabio themed problem solving flow chart, which I hung on my cubicle wall. The shortest path was “Do you have a problem?”/”No, I am Fabio, there’s no problem I can’t solve”/”AWESOME FABIO, YOU ARE THE BEST!”/”IKR?” and had super useful solutions such as “Did you rip open your shirt to show the problem your waxed, oily and very manly chest?”. It also included numerous Fabio pictures.
    Reader, I actually referred my team to this chart regularly when they had issues. I still have the flow chart, I’ll see if I can post a link to it as a reply to this comment

    2. Nannerdoodle*

      Your flowchart is amazing, but it unlocked a core memory. At my old job in research, one of the studies I was in charge of used basically an entire pallet of product every week. Other studies used small amounts, but none used as much as mine. Because getting this product from 1 end of the building to the other (about 2/3 of a mile and multiple elevators apart) wasn’t ever scheduled into my day by the powers above, I really needed that pallet to last the week. When I found out people were taking from the pallet, I made the most passive aggressive flow chart about who should use the product on that pallet. AND I TAPED IT TO THE PALLET SO EVERYONE COULD SEE. Luckily all my coworkers were as unprofessional as I was and thought it was hilarious (one took it after the study ended and laminated it so it lives on in infamy at that office).

      1. Fabio fan*

        I think the only conclusion to draw from this is that flowcharts are always a good idea.

    3. Sultry Flowing Locks*

      Even funnier is that when you search for “Fabio flowchart” you get sent to an actual thing that is not this!

  305. LittleFox*

    Ugh. Mine is not charming and I still can’t believe I did it. I was stuck in this meeting that had dragged on for 45 mins about what we should call the employees in our new call center. I was tired, cranky, and watching my email start to pile up. My intrusive thoughts won out when I suddenly blurted out ‘let’s just call them phone b**ches and be done with this’. I apologized PROFUSELY in the moment and sent apology emails as a follow up. In my very limited defense I was working 60 hour weeks and was managing about 150+ people with no help.

  306. HiHello*

    I was in a meeting with my immediate team, including my manager. I got confused about my next meeting and screamed “Fuuuuuckkkk I should be in another meeting right now!” I just started few weeks before so I was unsure how that lengthy “fuuuuuuuck” would be taken.

  307. Iroqdemic*

    I was a manager of a 18 person team and frankly I could probably fill a book with the mistakes I made as a leader. I discovered AAM *RIGHT* after I left for an individual contributor role. But here’s my absolute favorite tale.

    Like I said, I managed an 18 person team, we had weekly team meetings. About 11 folks were in the office, the rest telecommuters. There was another team that was related, but worked for a different client than we did. That team was almost all telecommuters except ONE person. The manager of that team and I frequently collaborated and helped each other out, so I invited that lone employee to our team meeting her first week because every other person around her was in my team meeting. You know, welcome to the office, we don’t do exactly the same work but we can collaborate etc. Let me be clear- I DO NOT REMEMBER DOING THIS. But the new employee that reports to a different manager said I started the meeting bursting into the conference room 3 minutes late and said “sorry I’m late I was taking a sh*t”. I mean, I have no doubt this is exactly what I did, because that is the kind of professional norms I lived by in those days. Just I did not remember it as being a memorable moment. The new employee, however, immediately said to herself “I need to get to know this woman!”. So we actually became friends, and are friends to this day. And that is how she tells the story of us meeting. Which I cringe at every time she tells the story. I WAS NOT SUITED TO MANAGEMENT YALL.

    1. Iroqdemic*

      Argh I edited this and somehow made it less clear. My team- 11 in house, 7 remote. Other team- 7 remote, 1 in house. 1 person in house was new, and I wanted to make her feel welcome so I invited her to my team meeting.

  308. ThwackedAgain*

    Working for a resort style hotel in my 20’s. My manager asked me to jump into a meeting with all the directors of our property last minute and after the meeting had already started. I snuck into the executive conference room and quickly found a chair off to the side. Sat down and heard a large THWACK! which was my head hitting the a thin wood cabinet above the chair…hard. While I tried to shrink back into the chair a kind woman next to me said “Are you ok?” and I just whispered yes while the hotel directors shoulders shuddered with laughter in front of me.

  309. Anonymous platypus*

    I strolled in to work at my first professional job one morning, took off my coat, enthusiastically greeted my boss and had a longish chat with him about the day ahead. Then I walked down the corridor to the bathrooms and realised that I had completely failed to zip up my dress, which was open down the side from armpit to thigh. He was too polite to say anything but I still cringe ten years later

  310. Saraquill*

    I had a temporary job ten years ago where I worked in a college language lab. Despite my schedule stating I’d get training four out of every five days, I got a few minutes on my first day and nothing else. There were long, long stretches of down time every day where I had no idea what I should be doing. It was supposed to be self study for students, where I’d try to answer questions or handle tech issues I wasn’t taught about. I spent a lot of my day browsing the internet or sewing small things at my desk.

    More confusing were parts of the trimester where we were supposed to show up during exam weeks, when students wouldn’t be at the lab. We had no work assigned for those days. The closest I got was a colleague saying he spent those days watching movies. As it turned out, my coworkers didn’t show up those days. I’d show up for an hour or so in case *something* happened. If nothing did, I left to spend the day as I pleased.

  311. Lucy P*

    -Had a receptionist job at a local church. There was a big to-do that night and some catastrophe happened. Was told to urgently find Mr. X so that he could take care of the problem. In all of my running around, I ran (literally) into the Archbishop.
    -Worked as a tutor at an agency. Got a call from a tutee’s parent and was told to take the call in the boss’ office (boss was always out of town and almost never in the office). Call became long, so I got comfortable, sat in boss’ chair and propped my feet up on their desk. Boss walked in the office and caught me like that.
    -Same agency, now working as the receptionist because the pay was more consistent. Jokingly told the office manager and one of the speech therapists that I could use a daiquiri. They gave me cash to buy drinks for all of us. There wasn’t enough alcohol involved for any one us to get sloshed, but I would never consider drinking at the office during office hours.
    I’m sure there’s probably more, but I can blame those on my youth.

  313. MommyBrain*

    Oh boy, I wish this was a “when I was young” story, but this happened last week…
    I wear jeans more than once (we’re a casual office), so if they are draped over the bench in my room and they still look very clean and crisp, I throw them on. Last week, I found my favorite pair on the floor near the bench. In my morning rush, I just assumed they missed the “clean-ish” bench of clothes and didn’t question why they were on the floor.
    BAD DECISION. They were the pants my 5 month old peed on the day before at a doctor’s appointment. Like a lot of pee. Was so tired and out of it that I didn’t connect the dots until I was halfway through the first meeting of the day, looking down at my PEE PANTS OF SHAME.

  314. noninoninonicon*

    Something usually regarded as unprofessional: I’ve cried in front of three bosses, but to be honest I don’t feel particularly mortified about it.

    Two were genuine moments of overwhelming stress and led to some much-needed assistance. It’s not the best way to get people to listen, but I think it at least demonstrated there was a genuine problem. They were both extremely kind about it and I don’t think it hurt my reputation or anything.

  315. cmdrspacebabe*

    For the most part, I am incapable of sitting like a normal person, and as such it took me a few years of co-op to learn that “propping your high heel up on the keyboard tray and typing under your arm” was not a professional look. Unfortunately, I did not learn this lesson until after the [My Field] Advisor for one of our agency’s top officials walked past my desk on a Friday afternoon… at which time I was slouching pretty much in half, with a foot on the desk, hoodie on with the hood up, loudly blasting metal music through my headphones. I did not notice him until he had been standing nearby talking to my supervisor for several minutes already, at which time I slowly, carefully lowered my foot to the floor and tried to pretend it never happened.

    It did not help that I was 19 and he was both one of the most important and most attractive people that I had ever personally encountered in my entire 6-month-long career.

    1. Why Can't I Sit That Way?*

      I got told to take my feet off my desk in my internship years ago. A legit part of my job was to watch tv and I sat slightly leaned back with my feet on the edge of the desk (so I was almost in a ball) as I watched.

      and more recently, my current boss got reprimanded for putting his feet up on his desk (and he’s c-suite). But the place we work likes to micromanage the weirdest things.

  316. tiny moon*

    At my first job out of college, as a receptionist for a foundation, I:

    • Assumed I was just serving as a switchboard for incoming calls. That lasted about an hour before multiple people came up and told me to screen their f***ing calls, because people who grant money get a lot of calls.

    • Consistently forgot to eat breakfast so I’d eat the snacks at work. This resulted in a building evacuation when I burned my popcorn at 9:30am.

    • Discovered that taxis really hated coming to our neighborhood and departing guests would end up waiting a long time, so sent an email to all staff telling them that they should call cabs for those guests ahead of time. That *they* should.

    • Got a call asking if the foundation would be interested in a particular investment opportunity, told the caller that investments were handled by a private management firm, and declined to give their information. So far so good. When the caller did some research and called the management firm, whose phone I also answered, and asked “did I speak to you earlier?”, I CHANGED MY VOICE AND PRETENDED TO BE SOMEONE ELSE.

    I’m sure I’ll think of more, but those haunt me almost 20 years later.

    1. Empress Matilda*

      Okay, so I don’t think #1 is unprofessional – the people who trained you should have been more clear about their expectations.

      #4 is hilarious, and I’m so glad you did that because it’s awesome!

    2. AnonForThis*

      For #2, I worked at a company that hosted a big conference once a year. A week before the conference, the free microwave popcorn would disappear from all the break rooms because in the past they’d had to evacuate buildings due to burnt popcorn. I loved that popcorn and would stash bags in my desk drawer so that I could still make popcorn during the big conference. *facepalm*

  317. The Colonel*

    My second year of teaching in a new school, I asked to have my class schedule changed so I could eat with my friends. I had no idea how complex a school schedule was or how little the principal would care if I got to eat with my friends.
    For some reason, they said okay.

  318. That's Not My Name*

    I graduated right as the recession started so I ended up in retail for a while. And as anyone knows that has worked in that environment for more than a few months, my tolerance for bs was limited. This of course led to a few moments of unprofessionalism, worst one being the following. We had an intercom system that people could page people on. One day, my least favorite manager was trying to page me. Only they weren’t using the right name. (Think calling for Pam instead of Sam). I knew he wanted me because he regularly called me this wrong name. A little while later, I happened to walk by him at the front of the store in front of customers and he remarks “well look who won’t answer her pages” and I very quickly responded “well look who keeps calling me the wrong name” and kept walking. Probably could have handled better but I felt pretty proud of myself for the quick comeback.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      +1 I can never think of the right retort in the moment so bravo, I am living through your success.

  319. Sad Desk Salad*

    Fell asleep during an interview for a research assistant job, got a very pointed rejection that suggested that instead of performing scientific experiments, I should go teach science to schoolkids in South America, since my Spanish is so good.

    Finally did get a research job, hours were all over the place, so I was accustomed to coming in late morning and staying till the evening. Until one day when I rolled in right before noon to find my boss wondering where my colleague and I were, and why we’d missed a lab inspection. Even more cringy, I was super into martial arts at the time and had a demo practice after work, so I got to be gently but firmly chastised by a well-known professor with a nine-ring broadsword strapped to my back.

    Same research position, was cutting some samples out of a gel using the UV light with a camera. Got frustrated with the camera’s awkwardness, stuck my goggled head inside the light box to finish cutting the samples, didn’t make the connection between UV and skin until it was too late. Worst “sun”burn of my entire life, accented by goggle marks. I didn’t show my face on campus for days. My boss usually traveled most of the year, but of course the day I show up red-faced was one of the rare days he was on campus.

    I left for law school not long after and he wrote me a glowing recommendation. I think he was just relieved to see me go.

    And the dumb, embarrassing messes I’ve made of myself during law school could fill a whole AAM entry themselves, so I’ll leave it there. They’re mostly all some version of “law school is hard, everyone is mean and unhappy, and drinks too much.”

    1. Nannerdoodle*

      To be fair, everyone working in research is a little odd. And that tends to lead to not high professionalism across the board. As an undergrad, one time my lab manager was telling the other student and I that we need to test the eye wash station and safety shower every month. I agreed to the eyewash station and stuck around for that demo, but then thought about the safety shower and remembered that those basically flood the whole area. Did I tell my boss what I remembered? No. I wasn’t 100% sure and was afraid to question someone in authority over me. I just quickly hightailed it across the lab, so that when she turned on the safety shower and soaked herself and the other student, I was far out of reach of the water. Probably the only time in my life I managed to not laugh at something I found hilarious.

      1. Lady_Lessa*

        I had to correct that safety test at one of my employers. They make cloth funnels just for that purpose and the bottom fits nicely into a 5 gallon pail

        1. Nannerdoodle*

          That is definitely how they’re supposed to be done. And where I worked, the building management group would go through and test every safety shower at the required times every year because they had all the equipment needed. Labs were never supposed to do it alone, but the incident was at least funny.

          1. Wolf*

            At my lab, they got tested by a student who had to stand on a stepstool and balance a bucket on his head. You can imagine how well that caught the water.

  320. Save Bandit*

    My office typically holds a golf outing at the start of every summer, just for fun. Food and prizes, and if you don’t want to golf you can sit and play cards at the club house. I had just returned from maternity leave one year and hadn’t had more than a sip of alcohol in almost a year. My boss bought me a Mike’s pre-meal, and we were all standing around talking and laughing. I ended up standing with a small group of admins and a fly landed on the neck of the dude who was talking. He didn’t notice and kept talking. In my buzzed state, I reached out and brushed the fly off his neck. He was completely thrown off guard, I looked like a creeper, I want to die a thousand deaths every time I remember it, and I no longer drink at work events.

  321. Tirving*

    Years ago when I was quite young, I applied for a job that I really wanted. I’d met with an agency and they said someone from the company would follow up by phone.I got a call from someone who identified himself as being from that company wanting to ask me some preliminary questions . His voice was very high and squeaky and sounded a bit put on, and as I had a few practical joker type friends, I thought it was one of them pranking me. I put on a really silly voice and started answering the questions oddly. it slowly dawned on me that this was a real interview call so started answering the questions more professionally but I was stuck having to continue the interview in that clownish voice so the hiring person wouldn’t know I was making fun of their voice. I didn’t get the job.

  322. Brain the Brian*

    My company has a room designated for nursing mothers to pump breast milk, which can be reserved using the same system as our conference rooms. For some reason, though, management euphemistically decided to call this room the “Wellness Room,” and for several years before I realized the room’s true purpose, I — a young, cisgender man — would schedule time in the room to literally go take naps. I even used to refuse requests from my female colleagues with new children to move my block of time. What was I thinking???? At least I never accidentally walked in on anyone pumping…

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Another function one is the time I had a seizure at my desk, and my coworker in the next cubicle rode along in the ambulance with me. I woke up as we approached the hospital shirtless with a heart monitor hooked up to my chest and my poor colleague sitting there slightly agape. Good times!

    2. A Tired Queer*

      I feel this feel so hard. I’m Very Bad at euphemisms and other coded language; definitely would have done the same thing!

  323. Sir Pendragon*

    This is gonna get super buried but for once I can contribute!
    I work in a pharmacy, and where I live, certain medications (Class II) can’t be directly transferred. The patient has to call the doctor and have them cancel the prescription at Pharmacy 1 and write a new one to Pharmacy 2. A related note, we can’t order items in the computer until they go through cash/insurance, and if it’s too early to pick up then it won’t let us do that.
    So what had happened was Customer had called in two days prior trying to get a C-II, but it was too early. So she calls us back two days early, and it runs through, but we don’t have it in stock. So I tell her that it will be at least until (2 days in the future) to get it in. She gets (understandably!) a bit huffy about why this is a thing, I put on my best Gentle Retail Voice about how yeah it’s a bit ridiculous but we don’t have any way around it. I’ve been on the phone with her for about fifteen minutes at this point, which is far too long for how busy we were, but I try not to leave a phone call until either I have a question or the customer is satisfied. But we start going in circles. We hit sixteen minutes on the phone in the middle of a rush, and she asks about transferring it. I explain the above, about how it’s the law.
    Then she huffs out, “Do you think my doctor has TIME for all that?!”
    And I, being a twenty-something autistic tech unable to stop their mouth sometimes, responded, “Ma’am, I don’t know how much time your doctor has.”
    All was silent for a moment before she just frostily said “Can I speak to your pharmacist?”
    “ABSOLUTELY.”
    I did not get into trouble but I did get told not to do it again.

  324. Cheap Ass Rolls>King's Hawaiian Rolls*

    This was a few years ago, but I had been working at a non-profit and had just finished a huge project that included organizing and facilitating a big volunteer conference. I was pretty tired, as was most of the team, and it was a successful project so we were all kind of giddy and silly tired. I was still working on onboarding new volunteers and had been exchanging emails with this very serious and professional woman. I found this random cartoon Narwhal online for some reason, and thought it was hilarious. It was very silly and ridiculous. I thought I sent it to my team, and I wrote something in the email to the effect of, “Let’s make this our new mascot.” Well, by accident I emailed the potential volunteer. She emailed me back a very curt response, asking if we were still interested in her volunteerism. I was so embarrassed at the time, but it was actually pretty funny.

  325. Socks Everywhere*

    When I was a medical resident I would bike to work and arrive all sweaty and gross, so I would change my clothes into clean scrubs but also hang up my sweaty biking clothes to dry….all over the tiny, windowless office I shared with one of my colleagues. So there would literally be soaked pieces of my clothing draped each day over the backs of chairs, on desks, etc. One time a different colleague walked in remarked that “it looks like a boudoir in here.” I didn’t get the hint. Happy to report I now have my own, private office in which to hang anything I want.

  326. Pumpkin215*

    I was in HS and had a job in the kitchen of a nursing home. Our trash cans had wheels on them. You can guess where this is going…..

    I put a lid on an empty trash can and sat on it. My coworker got a running start and hurled me down the hallway next to the kitchen. The only thing that is down that hallway is the activities room which is always empty. She is running fast, my arms are in the air and I’m yelling “WOOOOOOOO!!!”. As we fly by the activities room we realize the entire nursing staff is having a meeting in there.

    The best part was that we had to turn around and walk back past them since the hallway had a dead end. We casually strolled back, pulling the trash can this time. We still got written up for it.

    Worth it.

    1. All the Words*

      I love this so much. Totally something I would have done in my younger days (although in our office it was giving my co-worker a ride on the two-wheel dolly).

  327. Kitchen Witch*

    I just came here to say that I have many unprofessional moments and some of them were not remotely funny. I cringe when I think of them!
    It took me many years to get over my dysfunctional upbringing and learn how to relate to people in an adult way.
    I went into dysfunctional jobs because they seemed normal to me, and I guess I didn’t come across well in functional environments so didn’t get healthy jobs either.
    It was only when I got a job in a very professional, functional, and diverse team that I realised oh my god, this is what is meant to be like!
    That was 7 years ago and I’m still in the same team. I am learning a lot from them, not just professionally but personally as well.
    I must credit Ask a Manager too for helping me to question the things I was doing. If it wasn’t for this blog, I wouldn’t have noticed my part in the dysfunction or tried to change it.

  328. Theo*

    Maybe telling y’all this will exorcise my shame: sometime during the weird summers right before my senior year and right after college while I was trying to figure out my life and before I got hired at the job I’m still at, I worked for a couple different places (including a very pleasant stint at two 4-H camps). The one I’m thinking of is a small literary magazine run out of someone’s house based in the part of Massachusetts I’m from. I have a fair bit of lit mag experience so this was a good fit — I was basically a volunteer and I think was meant to be doing slush pile and layout stuff? The reason I can’t remember is because I just……….. stopped showing up. I just didn’t go!! My mom had kind of peer-pressured me into working with them and I didn’t find them very compelling so I just STOPPED GOING. This haunts me. I’ve totally blocked out the name of the press and the name of the journal and even a lot of details about it.

    They never chased me, bless them, and I’m now happily employed in publishing, but Oh Man.

  329. Tristan*

    Oooof, so many!

    The best might have been a call center job where we did customer service for a Medicare plan. One of the most frequent calls was from people who had lost their ID cards and it was a simple fix and usually a brief call. An elderly woman called to explain that she had lost her card, and like many of our callers, was also lonely and appreciated the chance to have a conversation. As she went into excruciating detail about how she needed a new card, I muted my phone to vent my frustration while my average call time dipped and said “Well if you’d just SHUT UP for a second I’d be able to help you.”

    My blood ran cold when she then stopped speaking and said in the saddest, most sheepish voice ever “Oh, okay, go ahead dear” and I looked up to find I had missed the mute button. I apologized up and down, but probably ruined her day. That was the last time I ever used the mute button to talk about someone “behind their back”

    1. SoFresh&SoClean*

      I used to do this, too. One day I missed the mute button and THANK GOD, I was just trying to push my boss to do something better for the customer on the phone. But there were many times I had badmouthed the person on the phone in horrible, graphic details. I learned a lesson fast.

  330. Hosta*

    Oh so many, including some recently. But my favorite:

    I was 18 and had my first internship. I was a tomboy who hated dressing up so 99% of my clothes were jeans, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. For some reason I had it in my mind that “women wear skirts or dresses, but you need something under it like a slip”, so for my first day I paired the one skirt I had with shamrock boxers and a sweater. The skirt was purchased when I was 12 or 13 and was effectively a micro-mini on me at 18 and showed off my boxers. The sweater kept falling off my shoulders and showing my bra straps. Also, the job was working in shipping at a datacenter so heels and a skirt were incredibly impractical. I still can’t believe my parents didn’t say anything when I came down for breakfast. Luckily, my manager said “you can wear khakis or colored denim and you need flat, closed toed shoes tomorrow.” I learned, but I still cringe thinking about showing up that way.

  331. jj82*

    The summer after my freshman year of college, I signed up with a temp agency and was placed in an accounts payable department of a restaurant supply company. Nine key data entry 40 hours a week was not for me, and after about a month I got a job in medical records at the clinic where my mom worked.

    Instead of giving reasonable notice to a human being at the place where I worked, I FAXED IN my notice on my LAST DAY to the temp agency along with my time card.

    The boss came to find me approximately seven minutes and was like….so you’re leaving?

    I can still nine-key like a mofo twenty years later though!

  332. irene adler*

    The women at the very small company (30 people) where I work, would get together for an after-work party to celebrate whenever there was a birthday or wedding engagement. Always at Audrey’s home as she lived close by work and had an actual house.

    Now, Audrey LOVED planning these things. We’d all bring food and she’d stop at F Street (adult video & gift store), pick up lots of party favors (condoms, sex toys, etc.) and a video. Yeah, hard-core porn. The humor got pretty crude but that’s as far as it went. Lots of laughs.

    After a few of these parties, the guys would tease us about not being invited. One of the lab managers, Ralph, the most milquetoast person you ever saw, offered to help “spice things up” for our next party. Said he had some ‘literature’ he thought we’d enjoy reading. We kind of dismissed this offer.

    So the next opportunity for a party comes around, and Ralph brings in two paper shopping bags full of this ‘literature’. Plops the bags right down on one of the lab benches in plain view of all.

    We innocently pull out some of the ‘literature’ and begin to read. We quickly discover this ‘literature’ are issues of a subscription porn magazine, with stories (but not much in the way of pictures) containing very twisted sexual themes (kink, fetishes, and beyond). Explicit. There must have been 40-50 issues.

    Oh, Ralph, there’s a whole ‘nother side to you, isn’t there?

    And everyone spends the rest of the day reading these things. No attempt to conceal what we’re reading.

    (no, I cannot recall the name of the magazine.)

  333. rosyglasses*

    Back in the days of Yahoo chat rooms — I lived and worked on my college campus. I had an onsite work study job in an office and therefore had a key to the office. Quite often my computer (an old boxy apple computer) would pause or hang during a particularly juicy chat and of course I couldn’t just throw up my hands and say – oh well, too bad. Oh no. I would use the key after hours to use my office computer to log on and continue the chats. The contents were not always innocent and I am mortified to think now what IT had access to!

  334. Ana*

    In my mid-twenties, my boss (the only other person in our very small company) went on a two-week honeymoon. In his absence, I tried to intercept as many issues as I could, so only the really important stuff would be escalated to him.

    Our profession put us in contact with some very demanding and occasionally rude clients. One of our worst, Cersi, was in the process of moving out of the area. A week into my boss’s honeymoon, I was already juggling a lot of balls and was at my wits’ end with Cersi when she emailed another completely unreasonable request of me, complete with a snide comment.

    I opened her email to reply to her, and just.. snapped. I typed: “Cersi, F— off. Regards, [name]”.

    It felt good to vent. I clicked the “discard” button and went back to my inbox to process her request. Except, of course, I had pressed “send” instead!

    When I got done absolutely writhing in horror, I called her up to apologize. Cersi received my email while we were on the phone, so there was a long pause while she read it in real time. She politely excused herself, I apologized again, and we hung up.

    I had to text my boss about the Terrible, Awful thing I did. I got very lucky that 1.) he found it hilarious, and 2.) it rattled Cersi so much that she was unfalteringly polite to me for the remainder of our time together.

    For years, I could only tell this story when I was well and properly sloshed. Mortifying.

  335. Weekend with Bills*

    It wasn’t even my first Real Job, so I should truly be ashamed. I worked in the deans office at an Ivy League school as an admin for one of the deans. The dean’s office admins were hand selected from the broader faculty admin pool because of their ability to be professional and timely and confidential, etc etc. So I knew it was the standard to be a bit more elevated than your typical office environment.

    One day, a couple months into the job, my colleagues and I were talking about our weekend plans during the morning meeting. A dean (I’ll call him William) walked in and I got nervous that we’d been caught in our casual conversation. So naturally, the most appropriate response I could think of was to say “ah Billy! Any fun weekend plans?!”

    To the dean of the school. To my boss’ boss. To the (still!) most stoic person I have ever worked for. Who most certainly did not go by “Billy”.

    He did not answer me question. And we never spoke again.

    1. Ali + Nino*

      At my first office job post-college, i was leaving a bit after 5 pm and saw my boss, a department head, in her office and apparently not leaving anytime soon. We said good night to each other, and then for Gd knows what reason, I added, “Don’t stay too late, OK?” Immediate regret.

  336. CommanderBanana*

    I was a contractor for the feds and our contracting company didn’t give us any sick leave. Any days/time off came out of our 14 days of PTO for the year. When I was sick, I would go to our supply closet, which was on another floor and locked, and would lie down on the floor.

    Definitely not professional, but also give your employees sick leave, FFS.

  337. Anonymosity*

    Oversharing, definitely. Socially awkward as a younger person, I always felt I had to share personal tidbits in order to connect with people. Even now, years later, it’s very hard to resist. There are people who know more about me than I intended and that’s absolutely my fault. It’s like something Stephen King said his (mother?) told him: “When you open your mouth, Stevie, all your guts fall out.”

    My intention is to do the exact opposite going forward. I’ll pretend to be a spy who doesn’t give details in order to conceal my secret identity.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      Ugh, same. I am Not Good At People, although time has at least taught me to be better at faking it. But I gave SO MANY too honest responses to the sort of dumb greetings people in offices like to give (“how’s your day” etc) until I finally learned to view them as the passcode to get rid of neurotypicals in the office so I could go back to work, LOL. “Doing good!” even if my entire world is on fire, LOL, because those are not the people I want to invite into my personal disasters.

  338. Still Mortified*

    Many years ago, a co-worker and I were secretly dating. One day, we completely lost all common sense and spontaneously had a kissing session in the office. A government office. In uniform. Where the public could pop in anytime. We missed being discovered by the superintendent by mere seconds.

  339. Pam Beasley*

    A few years ago the nonprofit I worked for basically melted down. The President, along with most of the executive team was fired. I was friendly with the president, and I called him the evening after everything went down to see how he was doing. We had a good conversation, and we joked about drinking our sorrows away. At the end of the conversation I said, “Let me know if you need anything stronger.” He paused for what seemed like a long time, and then said, “Don’t worry. I don’t need any help with that.” Now we hang out and get high all the time. We have become good friends. No regrets.

  340. Bill Carmichael*

    Many many years ago I was the supervisor of a data entry team that was responsible for inputting commission payments to a payroll system. The people getting paid these commissions were not employees of the firm I worked for; we provided payroll processing and other services to them for a fee. A couple of these people in particular kept on creating these elaborate payroll sharing schemes for other agents in their office, so that rather than having 5 payee id numbers for 5 agents, they had around 120, each representing a different way of splitting up the funds among them. It made getting payments logged to right id number a gigantic pain in the neck. And half the time, the fund companies wouldn’t use our id numbers, they’d just use last names and combinations of last names, such as “Smith/Jones/Johnson/Jackson”, not knowing or caring that the money could be split any number of ways between those four. Every week I fielded complaint calls.
    One day, a customer service agent caught a call from them, and came in afterwards to complain to one of the data entry clerks on their behalf. Why he didn’t come to me, I dunno, but I overheard the conversation, up to the point where he said to this young woman, “Any IDIOT could see this was incorrect” and before I could stop myself I yelled out from my desk, “THAT’S F***ING B***S***!”
    Later on I got called into my bosses office and told to apologize. Although, he was a pains to emphasize, he agree: it WAS f***ing b***s***. I just shouldn’ta said it.

  341. a*

    I currently have a Trolls world tour banner with dangling streamers serving as a door to my cubicle. Nobody cares, although my boss did suggest that I could find something more tasteful. I diverted her with a discussion about how the door-hanging stars that our former coworker had placed in their section doorway kind of stabbed you as you walked through and how my aunt had nice bamboo beads in her pantry in the 1970s.
    Given that we have a lot of plastic sheeting directing leaks from the roof into buckets…I’m not really worried about my unprofessionalism. Also, it’s kind of a given here.

    I can’t decide which of my former coworker’s unprofessional time-related comments are the worst, but I will describe them both here:

    First, my coworker was chronically late, because she liked to drink coffee and talk to her mom on the phone in the morning and didn’t like to work late (she could have changed her work hours). She would use her accrued time to do so. It really irked our micro-managing jerk of a supervisor, though, so he would call her into his office every time and ask why she was late. Eventually, she got tired of the questioning and said “well, you know, Dave, sometimes my husband wants a quickie in the morning.” Dave stopped asking.

    My employer is pretty flexible about time, generally, though, so occasionally people will get a little lax about observing break and lunch time limits. Then we have a staff meeting where we are reminded that our break and lunch times are set by our union contract and we should abide by them. During one of those staff meetings, our director said, “we know we’re all supposed to arrive on time, take our scheduled breaks and lunches, and not leave early” and the coworker above, with perfect comedic timing, said “When did that start?” The director was slack-jawed for a minute, before ignoring it and moving on after we all stopped laughing.

  342. Queen_of_Comms*

    When I started my first professional job, I filled a whiteboard next to my desk with super cringey lyrics relevant to things that happened at work. Director from another department wasn’t overly kind? Boom, lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Mean”. After being told “No” to an extravgantly overprice conference only semi-relevant to my position, I wrote out the entire second half of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. Throw in some squiggly borders and stars and my whiteboard looked like a middle schooler’s diary.

    Eventually, my boss pulled me to the side and asked what the deal was with all the lyrics. When I explained my process, he just shook his head sadly and sent me on my way. Somehow, this was much more embarassing than being reprimanded or told to erase them. I scrubbed the board clean and now save my cathartic songs for my commute.

  343. Violas are blue*

    I went from a job at a manufacturing company (Company M) to work at a print shop. One of my former coworkers from Company M was now working at an advertising agency and hired my print shop. My former boss from Company M wanted to know how much we charged the advertising agency for the job, probably to find out the markup. I didn’t know what to do so I asked the print shop owner who said to do whatever I wanted (?!) so basically I ended up disclosing the ad agency’s margin to my old company. Breach of confidence at the least. We unfortunately never received any other work from the ad agency.

    1. Migraine Month*

      I’m not sure there was a professional way to handle that, and the owner obviously didn’t care!

      I worked at a completely dysfunctional toy store where none of the big-ticket items had prices on them. The only supervisor I had was the store owner, so I’d call to ask her and she’d make something up. Then the owner got a part-time job and stopped answering the phone, so after getting chewed out for refusing to sell an item when I didn’t know the price, I started making up prices as well. That tricycle? Uh, $70. The huge rocking horse? Um, $120.

      I’m not surprised the store went out of business (and left me without a W-2), I’m surprised it took multiple years to fail.

  344. caryatid*

    I was interviewing for a tech job and was asked to tell a joke as one of the interview questions. So I told my favorite joke:

    “A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office wearing nothing but plastic wrap. And the psychiatrist says, ‘Well I can clearly see your nuts.”

    No one laughed, and I didn’t get the job.

  345. Tristan*

    Also, earned myself the nickname “Pockets” at my first job for standing around, bored with my hands in my pockets on day number 1. Oh teenage Tristan…

  346. Goofy high school behavior*

    In high school, I was enrolled in a class where we spent our afternoons working at jobs the school lined up for us. I was placed in a single-person insurance office, and my job consisted of answering phones, typing a few letters, and filing. My boss was out of the office most afternoons on sales calls. On quiet days, it was EXTREMELY boring. One nice spring day, I was itching to get out of there, so I set the clock ahead 15 minutes and then left at my “quitting” time, forgetting to set the clock back. The following day, I got a stern talking-to about that. My boss also had a petty cash box where he would occasionally pull quarters for the pop machine. I figured I could do that, too. After about two weeks, my supervising teacher told me I was no longer to report to that job. She explained the problems, and placed me elsewhere. I ended up working at job #2 for quite sometime, and the embarrassing lessons I learned from my entitled behavior at job #1 stuck with me.

  347. LawIntern*

    In my mid-20s, I was working at a law firm as an intern, and we all went out for happy hour drinks to celebrate the previous batch of interns’ last day. Afterwards, somebody suggested we play drinking games at their house. We didn’t have cups for said games, and for some reason, instead of just going to a dollar store to buy some, I offered to go back to the office and pick up cups from the supply closet. We all had a lot of grievances with how the firm was treating us (some justified, some not), so I probably justified it to myself that since the firm didn’t do anything to recognize the students’ last day, we were entitled to at least something. I tipsily made my way back into the office and swiped a pack of Red Solo cups. Then I spent the whole following month worried that someone would have noticed the missing cups and that I was captured stealing them on security camera footage, or that I would be asked why my keycard was used to access the office after hours on a Friday. None of that ever happened, but I look back and wonder how I would have explained it if I had run into someone at the office while drunkenly clutching a a pack of plastic cups!
    I also once cried on the phone to the managing partner when he called for a progress report on a task he’d given me, after I ignored a couple of his e-mails on the matter. He was sympathetic (I had a lot going on in my family life at the time), but reminded me that if I needed more time for assignments, I needed to communicate that proactively to the lawyers instead of letting ageed-upon deadlines slip by and hoping the lawyer wouldn’t notice (which I obviously knew… to this day, I don’t know what my deal was – and I continued to make that mistake throughout the rest of my internship).

    1. Sal*

      I feel like that second one is the single biggest mistake that I see (and also commit). Very “magical thinking.” I’ve done it myself (dating back to high school; what if I just…never…turn in this book report?) and had it done to me as a supervisor by an intern as recently as two weeks ago. Bless.

  348. Super Duper Anon*

    I had a part-time job during university that was an extension of a full-time summer job and was just a few hours a day a few days a week. One day, it was bucketing down rain, and my route to this job was a bus and somewhat of a long walk. 99% of the time I didn’t care, but it was raining super hard and I just didn’t want to get wet. I called in and said I wouldn’t make it today……because it was raining. Why? I was a student and had a million better excuses that I could have pulled out between sick, or an emergency project meeting, or ANYTHING else. I realized later that night how dumb that was and then slunk in quietly my next shift. Nobody said anything outright, but I could tell they thought I was a bit of an idiot!

  349. Anonymous Tooter*

    I had joined an all-hands meeting on Google Meet. I was used to being muted automatically. Assuming I was safely muted, I, uh, expressed flatus in a rather cacophonous manner.

    Surprise twist — I was not muted. If anyone heard it and/or knew it was me, they were gracious enough to say nothing.

    1. Another Anon Tooter*

      Haha, this reminded me of my own blunder, which I shall post so you’re not alone in professional space flatulence ;)

  350. Maseca*

    Not me but a former coworker: My office hired 2 new people who started on the same day, Ellen and Kira. Ellen was very friendly but also a bit eccentric – she immediately dove into every extracurricular activity our workplace/office complex offered while showing only passing interest in learning her actual job. Just 3 weeks after Ellen and Kira’s first day, it was Kira’s birthday. Ellen threw this woman she’d just met 3 weeks ago an elaborate all-day birthday celebration. Now, our department is big, and has some remote members, so we didn’t typically do much for birthdays because it would be hard to do it equitably. Ellen decorated Kira’s entire cube, brings in treats, and arranges for the campus ukelele club to come serenade her mid-workday. Now, Kira was Indian and Ellen white. As part of Kira’s birthday celebration, Ellen brought in **bindis** and encouraged Kira’s (female?) coworkers to put them on. All in her first month of knowing this woman and working at a new job!

  351. Another Anon Tooter*

    I was the Practice Manager of a busy medical clinic. I had my own office, but the copy machine was up at the front desk with our admin team. One morning around 8:00a I went to collate some copies. Standing at the copier and in front of a lobby full of waiting patients, I SNARTED.

    If you’re unfamiliar, it’s when you sneeze and fart at the same time. It was loud and unmistakable. I was MORTIFIED. In my horror I couldn’t get my brain to figure out how to recover and I just blurted out “well, that just happened!” and ran quickly walked back to my office to die at my desk, realizing “excuse me” might have been better.

    1. Anonymous Tooter*

      Getting caught in those sudden windstorms is the worst, isn’t it? Happens to the best of us.

      1. All the Words*

        And we can take comfort knowing you’re right, it happens to the best of us.

        Somehow it’s never much comfort in the moment.

  352. Juneybug*

    Travel back with me to 1995 when I was a young airman in the Air Force. I was one of three administration support for the military base’s operations group commander (his position was responsible for 3,000 employees and his direct supervisor was the base commander – so yea, a big deal). For whatever weird design reasons, we had three doors from various hallways that allowed access into our small office area. The building designer did not want signs to “clutter his vision” so I quickly became efficient in giving directions to lost individuals. The operations commander and his deputy commander had their own private offices inside our administrative support center.

    One quiet day, everyone in the building was gone for a military event (I stayed behind to answer phones). I was at the copier and had my back turned and heard someone enter from one of the many doors. As our office was a drop off point for paperwork for the operations commander, I didn’t turn around (but did holler over my shoulder asking if they needed help). Hearing the male voice of another admin in my building answer me no, I kept doing my work. This admin (same rank as me) was a rude jerk (I would be safe to say no one liked him). I hear him walking around looking in offices (probably to brag about himself to any possible person) but since all of our classified and personnel info was locked up, I wasn’t worried.

    I usually keep my snarkiness tamped down while on duty but his guy really got on my nerves. When he asked me where does this door go, I answer him “it goes out”. Rude admin was new so figured he would get the hint and leave.

    Then I hear laughter. I mean busting from the gut laughing. Rude admin guy wouldn’t have not laughed at my snarky comment cause how dare someone is rude to him (regardless of his lack of charm). I slowly turned around and see the new deputy commander wiping tears from his eyes. My heart stops, my mouth is frozen open, and I freeze in place. The new deputy commander was not due to come in until next week. I know because I organized his welcome reception with other big-wigs. After a lifetime, I am finally able to talk and all I do is stutter and stumble over my words apologizing, telling him I thought he was someone else, and what could I do to assist him. He smiled and said if someone asks me a stupid question, they should expect a stupid answer. Then he leaves out of the one of the door and I don’t see him until next week when he starts work. Unknown to us, he arrived early to the base.

    This deputy commander never told anyone about my lack of professionalism. In fact, he was one of my biggest fans and when I got promoted, he was the first to tell me. Great guy.

    I used this mistake to ensure I was the upmost professional for years. I mean YEARS!

    Month later, the new deputy commander tells me in confidence that he meet the person who I mistaken him with and tells me he also thinks he’s a rude jerk. I never gave him a name but he must have figured it out.

  353. WhatAMaroon*

    At my first job I wanted to show how to send real business emails so instead of copying and pasting a link I hyperlinked the word “here”. Well I did hyperlink the word but instead of the link to the guidance document I was asking for help on i linked to an article about a village that had been overrun by sheep because I’d sent that to a friend through the chat program. I will never forget the email question I got back “was this meant to be a joke…?” by the very serious programner who was just trying to help me. It’s been 10 years and I’m still cringing

  354. A Tired Queer*

    My sense of professionalism is a little whack because I started working life in academia surrounded by grad students, so I wasn’t prepared for the expectations of hanging out outside of work with real professionals. Still cringing at how much I drank and how much I WAS at one of my first work functions at my current job. My continued popularity is honestly a marvel.

  355. Yoga Sloth*

    During my first job post-college, I used to talk about my cats A LOT during the work day. I was one of those people who wouldn’t shut up about their favorite topic. We had just adopted a sibling pair and I was head over heels for them, and wrongfully assumed everyone would want to know what zany and adorable antics my precious babies got up to. We had an open office format and no one was allowed to wear headphones or do anything to block out other sounds. I’m not sure who was hated more – me, or the guy who wouldn’t stop talking about the stock market/investing. I still cringe when I think about just how much I talked about those cats. I finally got the message to knock it off after someone made a rude comment within my hearing about it.

  356. Nonny Mouse*

    Hmm, I think this one appalled people. We had a training instructor who was visiting us, and using one of our laptops/connecting to our network. At lunchtime, he wondered if he should log off.

    I said yes, the last thing you want is somebody coming into this room and using the opportunity to surf NSFW content and have you blamed for it!

    In my defense, I once worked for a company that had such a toxic culture that someone would do such a thing to discredit another. At my current employer, they don’t put up with that, thus the surprise/appalled faces.

  357. ADidgeridooForYou*

    Oh god, this pops into my mind every so often when I talk to people in their first job. I was maybe 19-20 in my very first internship at a non-profit (which was also my first professional setting ever). At the end of the summer, we put on a summit where we invited our major donors and partners. It was super fancy – we rented out part of a building on Lake Michigan The day before, I had gone to Forever 21 (I know lol) and gotten this short, super tight, body-con dress with a mesh upper chest/sleeve area. I was so excited to break it out that I wore it to the summit, along with a pair of fishnet tights I had gotten to go with it. I don’t think I thought anything of it until I got the group photo back and saw myself next to everyone wearing actual professional suits. I literally never touched the fishnets again.

  358. So Anon for This*

    When I was a teenager, I had my first internship at a family law firm. My boss told me there was a packet of pictures on her desk for a custody case, and not to look at them. I looked. It was adult pictures of the client with her small baby in the background. I was mortified, and even worse, my boss knew I looked because I guess I didn’t put them back quite the right way. She gently told me not to do that again. Lesson learned.

  359. Zipzap*

    One time I was scraping off some gunk that had gotten on some photos we were returning to a client. It was sticky material from the envelope they were in. Another coworker was with me. One of our bosses walked by the conference room we were in and asked us what we were doing so I told him. As he was leaving I said, without thinking at all about how this would sound, “We don’t want to send the client dirty photos.” Without missing a beat he said “No, we certainly don’t” before walking away. I turned to my coworker and said “I walked right into that one didn’t I?” She smiled and said “You certainly did.”

  360. SometimesALurker*

    Oh god, I think this is finally the day when I confess to the whole of the AAM commentariat that I came to work dressed like a pirate, for no good reason other than to blow off steam, in an office in which it was definitely not cool to do that. I had been there about six months and I was let go less than a week later for “fit” — I really don’t think that this was the reason, because there were other job responsibilities I really wasn’t managing well, in retrospect. I think it was either the final nail in the coffin or something that made them feel good about an already-made decision.
    They were terrible at being direct with people, and I had recently had a performance review that I realized after the fact had had no content at all; they hadn’t given me any information on how I was doing. It was a very stressful workplace and I really wasn’t doing well at it. I had recently taken a few sick days for the stress. It didn’t take long for me to start feeling relieved instead of awful about being let go. My old job was short on people at the time and happily took me back, although there’s part of me that wonders whether I could have made more progress in my career if I had been willing to take more risks in job hunting at that time rather than going back to the old place.
    Is there a tiny bit of me that still fears that I was let go because of the pirate costume? Oh hell yes. Does most of me think I would have been let go anyway, and if it was the pirate costume then I did myself a (n extremely awkward) favor? Yeah.
    It was a reasonably good costume, too, not some shiny polyester thing; I do community theatre and can pull off a lot costuming-wise on a whim out of what I have on hand.
    Until today, I’ve been avoiding telling this story here because I am still mortified by it ten years later.

    1. Elizabeth West*

      I’m sorry you were so stressed. But I kinda love that you wore the pirate costume. It was like a great big unconscious “F*ck this place.”

      1. Shira VonDoom*

        Right?

        as someone who ALSO loves costumes, this is honestly a fantastic image. much better than the time I was ACCIDENTALLY the costume weirdo in an office, because Halloween was a workday and I THOUGHT it was okay to dress up (not showing a work inappropriate amount of skin) and that other people would be doing so, but uh…they did not, and I felt like a huge dork all day, LOL

    1. Little Miss Sunshine*

      We should all get over thinking of crying as inherently unprofessional. It is a biological stress response that women have almost no control over. As long as you aren’t shedding crocodile tears in an effort to be manipulative, this is a forgiveable sin.

      1. WillowSunstar*

        Agreed. Also, you never know if someone had an abusive parent. Sometimes, it’s difficult to know what triggers the tears. Other times, if a manager figure resembles the parent or follows a similar pattern, the person may not have much control over it. Yes I know, therapy, but therapy is generally for rich people with money to spend on it. Not all companies include that in their perks.

  362. Gumby*

    I was injured on a Tuesday night at my adult gymnastics class. Went to urgent care and was given Vicodin and told to take a day or so off work and not to operate heavy machinery. At the time I only lived half a mile from the office so I asked if I could walk to work and the doctor was like “… I guess.” Please note that my role was in *no way* important enough that missing a day or two of work would be problematic and we had unlimited sick time. So really, this was all so unnecessary.

    So I go to work on Wednesday. Take the morning pill and am as productive as usual. Take the lunch-time pill and proceed to spend the next hour or so telling anyone within earshot that “on one pill I am fine but that second one really hits me.” Eventually my manager had me lie down on a couch in our break room for a bit until he could drive me home.

  363. PookieLou*

    At my first office job in my 20s, while sitting at my desk one day, I let out what I thought was a harmless little bit of flatulence. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that the ungodly stink hit my nose. None of my cubicle-mates reacted, so I thought I was safe. But to my horror, the gas kept coming, and I was powerless to stop it! I froze in place, terrified that somebody would single me out as the perpetrator, but nobody said a thing. And then my coworkers’ faces started to contort, and I knew that my secret was out! “Do you smell that?” they asked around. About ready to sweat with fear, I denied any culpability, but agreed that something was amiss in the air.

    The uncontrollable flatulence continued for 2 or 3 days straight. (To this day, I have no idea what caused it.) Work from home wasn’t an option at the time. I made a point of getting up often and walking around the office in an attempt to spread my tracks and make the foul stench untraceable. Soon everyone on my entire floor felt the wrath of my unruly bowels. Someone from another floor came down to discuss a project, and stopped mid-sentence to say how awful our floor smelled. The office manager came in, nose buried in her shirt, armed with a can of air freshener. It barely had any effect. For context, I’m a woman with a small frame, so not the obvious suspect for someone capable of single-handedly stinking up an entire office. Maybe that helped me keep my cover. I alternated constantly between using all my strength not to laugh, and trying not to sweat in fear that I’d soon be found out. It was too late to confess, I’d already claimed innocence, and I didn’t want a reputation as the office stinker (not to mention what my office crush would think of me).

    One day, as suddenly as it started, the gas stopped. The air cleared over time, and it was never spoken of again…until I confessed to my aforementioned office crush (then my boyfriend) months later, after I’d left that office for another job. “That was YOU??!!” (Thankfully, he married me despite my shocking revelation. I’m afraid that living together has erased all doubt in his mind that I was telling the truth.) Years later that story still comes up from time to time, and we have a good laugh.

    1. All the Words*

      Some day I’ll be mature enough to not find these types of stories hilarious.

  364. Catonymous*

    Ok, this wasn’t unprofessional, per se, but the accidental boob flashing story reminded of it:

    I was substitute teaching and was using a (single person) washroom. Apparently, I forgot to lock the door because as I was sitting (the toilet was directly facing the door), it opened and in walked the attractive teacher I had noticed at a staff meeting earlier in the day. His face was a mask of horror, and he fairly ran backwards out of there, but as he did, he closed the door on his key lanyard and got it stuck in the door.

    As I tried to finish what I was doing as quickly as humanly possibly, I watched the keys travel up and down along the edge of the closed door before dropping to the ground – apparently he had abandoned the enterprise.

    I then had to track him down to give him back his keys.

    2. Negative Influence*

      My first professional internship, Christmas break of my second year of university, I was the last in the office on Christmas Eve after everyone else has gone home. (Company gives everyone the afternoon off for Christmas)

      So… I pulled over all the sofas and beanbags in our chillout zone and made a blanket fort??

      It was awesome, by the way. I tidied it up afterwards. And I still work there now 9 and a half years later :)

    3. Con Dar*

      I am DYING laughing! In your shoes I would have been dying inside, of course, but that’s pure gold for a fly on the wall.

  365. Why no facepalm emoji*

    In the midst of a major project, a very senior (male, late-50s) manager took all of his frustration out on me (female, early-30s) and jumped on every moment to speak down to me in every single meeting we were in, as well in the hallways, cafeteria, parking lot, and once outside of the ladies room while I was holding the door open to go inside. Did I go to HR? No, I told every person in the office about the drama (not that they hadn’t noticed his ranting and raving). I complained openly, loudly, repeatedly. HR pulled me into their office and told me if I was so miserable that I should just quit, which I then complained about to anyone who would listen openly, loudly, and repeatedly.

  366. Older and hopefully wiser*

    The most unprofessional thing I’ve done deliberately was to chew out my coworker who’d been harassing and borderline stalking me (staying after his shift ended if I was there, trying to figure out where I lived, stealing my phone number so he could bother me outside of work). I was 20 and working front counter at a bakery, and up until that point would have said that I get annoyed easily but almost never truly lose my temper. (This was not entirely true since I already knew at that point that I was an angry crier, but self-reflection develops with age.) He’d been following me around nonstop for the few months he’d worked there, unless my hands-off boss was there, in which case he’d be kissing up to the boss. This gave me a break from his harassment but also made it impossible for me to tell my boss what was going on.

    Dude gave notice after only a few months and texted me after to let me know, which was almost the last straw for me. I didn’t have a smartphone at the time so my phone broke his message into five messages, one of which was him typing out his terrible giggle. I was professional enough not to text back “Go to hell,” even though that was my immediate reaction.

    My boss was there when I got to work the next day and was not being dogged by this dude and so was able to witness me snapping at dude when dude asked why I hadn’t responded to his text message. Boss asked me what that was about, and the entire story spilled out since I was at that point so upset about the whole situation generally and the text messages specifically. Boss listened but didn’t take any immediate action, and I had to resort to telling dude not to talk to me for the next two hours, at which point his shift would be over and he would go home (or so I hoped).

    Except then after an hour, he passed me a note asking if he could talk to me now. This was the actual last straw, and I’m not sure how (or if) I managed to keep a pleasant demeanor for all the customers for that last hour.

    His shift ended, and he immediately accosted me to talk. I was quite savage in replying, “Yes, let’s.” The front counter was dead, so it seemed okay to not only disappear from it for a while to give him a piece of my mind, but also to rope in another coworker as my witness. The three of us trooped to the back loading dock. I’d descended by that point into a cold anger, beyond my usual weepy anger, and I remember thinking clearly going in that I could not let him start talking, or else he’d have control of the situation. And I did not let him start talking. I don’t remember exactly what I said, all variations on the theme of “You don’t really respect me, if you respected me, you wouldn’t be treating me this way” with examples of his bad behavior. For about half an hour. On a Friday, at an hour when we’d usually get commuters in picking up sweets for Saturday breakfast. I said my piece, and my witness and I went back into the bakery and let the back door slam and lock behind us.

    I lucked out in that:
    1) my boss had gone home by then so wasn’t around to stop either of us or be swayed by dude’s side of the story (but Boss tacitly approved what I’d done by the next day, when dude showed up unscheduled to try to escalate the situation)
    2) the counter remained slow so having two people away from it wasn’t a problem
    3) the way in which dude tried to escalate the situation was easily thwarted and he didn’t attempt anything worse (i.e., physically violent)
    3a) dude attempted to rope my boss into his attempt to escalate so my boss knew where he was and what he was trying to do.

    Dude did not work any of the rest of his notice period.

  367. Stripes*

    I called a customer a jerk on the phone.

    I was a supervisor, he wouldn’t quit yelling at me long enough to fix his issue, and then he told me I wasn’t being helpful and was in fact, a long list of expletives. So I told him “Sir, you’re being an absolute jerk, too” and hung up on him.

    Nearly got fired for that one.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      Honestly, the world might be a better place if more customers and clients got pushback for being jerks. My current bosses have explicitly told me they’ll fire a client before they’ll let someone be nasty to me (if I didn’t inexplicably start it, which I wouldn’t), and that’s one of many reasons I love my job.

  368. So very anon for this*

    Oh God… you want unprofessional, here you go:

    I was 25. He was 23. He was also my student at the community college where I’d just become an adjunct. He had a crush on me. How did I find this out? I thought he was cute so I looked at his Facebook account and read “is hot for teacher” as his status, posted right after my class. Later in the semester I deliberately hung out a cafe where I knew (because of the aforementioned social media lurking) he hung out, and accidentally-on-purpose ran into him. As the semester wrapped up, we started dating.

    This is NOT a scandalous beginning to a wonderful love story. I realized very very quickly that he and I were not at all suited for each other, but waited until there was slightly more distance from him being my student to break up with him.

    Ugh. I was an absolute idiot and I’m lucky he just did a few angry drunk dials after I dumped him, nothing more.

  369. Just Me*

    God, I just remembered. I worked in an English school for adults who were not citizens. If a complaint, question, request came in, my colleague and I would regularly need to forward them to each other from a general email inbox to ensure that the message went to the right person. We did love these students, but everyone gets compassion fatigue from time to time, and every business encounters its fair share of rude, not-very-bright, or belligerent people. Sometimes my colleague and I would forward these messages to each other with comments like, “Lol, did you see this?” or “That’s not gonna work the way he thinks it’s going to work.”

    Well. A former student raised a complaint with the accrediting agency and we were required to turn over all email exchanges with the student. This meant that when the full email thread was printed, it included all of the comments that, uh, my colleague and I had made as well.

    Boss just said, You can think these things, sure. But please don’t put them in email.

  370. Beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

    This was my very first job — a fast food position. I worked there less than a month and found a job elsewhere that I knew I’d like better. I think I put in two week’s notice, but I was miserable there and really didn’t want to work my last week. My dad offered to call and tell my boss that I wouldn’t be in my last week AND I LET HIM DO THAT.

    I was 18. I realize I was young and it was my first job, but STILL.

  371. Been there*

    I was going on a 2nd interview for a job that I already knew I didn’t want, but they had begged me to come to one more interview and at least consider the position. I showed up 15 minutes late, with no excuse and no apology. I walked in and sat down, leaned back in the chair, put my hands behind my head and crossed my legs with my ankle over my knee. One of the interviewers showed me a picture of her newborn grandbaby on her phone. Instead of handing the phone back I SCROLLED THROUGH HER PHOTOS! They asked how I handle difficult people because the big boss was ‘prickly’ and I said that I was sure I could handle it, as I have two children and know how to deal with toddlers. At the end of the interview, they offered me the job on the spot and I actually laughed and said that it didn’t sound like a good fit for me and thanked them for their time. They called again as I drove home and once the next day. I think I was the only person who made it past the phone interview, because on the phone interview they spoke extensively about what a nightmare the big boss was and how they needed someone with ‘thick skin’ who could ‘work miracles’. I should have denied the 2nd interview when I knew I wouldn’t take the job, but there was no excuse for that behavior!

  372. SloanGhost*

    So I’m not really shy, but what I AM is socially awkward, and when I first started my vet reception job, something went very wrong in my brain when I was about to introduce myself to the head vet/owner and I choked. And then the next time I saw him, I felt weird about it…and choked again. And it just felt weirder and weirder.

    When my 90 day review came around, one of the items was that I’d never spoken to Dr. Ryder, and he found it quite odd.

    That’s right, I COMPLETELY IGNORED my GRANDBOSS for THREE MONTHS.

    Needless to say, I grated out an extremely uncomfortable “have a good night” the next time he left at closing time, and everything got better from there. During the review, all I could say was “yeah, I can see how that would be weird.”

  373. Snutterjumble*

    Not sure if these count as unprofessional, or simply inadvisable, but here goes…

    First ever job interview I had, aged sixteen, for a weekend library assistant position, when asked what I would do if a friend came in wanting to talk, I told them it was okay, because I didn’t have any friends.

    Sadly, even twenty years later, my filter seems to go in interviews – had a zoom interview before Christmas, and one of the first things out of my mouth was “ah yes, my least favourite topic – me.”

    For some reason, I didn’t get either job.

  374. morethanbeingtired*

    My first few jobs at small companies (less than 20 people) gave me a really warped idea of what was acceptable behavior in an office. I had been so burnt out and driven to a near breakdown from the stress of my job and toxic workplace that I was about to be fired but negotiated a resignation. I was still not in a good place mentally when I started working at a big, global corporation a couple months later. I cringe thinking of all the things I talked about with co-workers I had just met. I had no concept of boundaries and would just ramble on about all my personal problems (health, family, etc) and complain about my last job in a way that was really unprofessional. Got laid off in a restructure after 8 months and, the moment I had any time to reflect on that job, I was horrified at how I had behaved. It was like I had been sleep-walking and then slapped awake. I ended up being grateful I was laid off because I am sure the reputation I was making for myself there was probably not good. I made sure at my next job to be friendly but not talk too much about my personal life unless people asked questions or I had work-appropriate news (bought a house, adopted a cat, etc), and to rarely, if ever, complain about my previous jobs to anyone except friends and family.

  375. Dinwar*

    A few years ago I had to put together a stack of SDSs (Safety Data Sheets) for chemicals we use on a jobsite. My safety manager kept saying “Well what about this one? What about this one?” Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of these documents–but there are limits, and this person was being absurd. In the end I had something like 30-40 SDSs in a binder, and I was…not happy. So I just got silly. I put in an SDS for sand, one for gravel, one for clay, one for potable water, for oxygen, for nitrogen, for carbon dioxide (more commonly known as air), one for coffee… I think I found one for Mountain Dew, I know I certainly looked for one.

    The part that depresses me most about this is that I shared this with a colleague (who also was annoyed by this whole process) and he posted the coffee SDS near the coffee machine. His safety officer missed the irony, thought it was a fantastic idea, and at the next meeting recommended we all have them posted next to our coffee makers.

    1. Breakfast Skirmish*

      Kudos! That sound less like unprofessionalism and more like Extremely Professional Malicious Compliance.

  376. Cole*

    My first job out of college, worked for a state agency that was pretty formal. I went to my boss’s office (assistant director level), and without thinking went, “Hey bestie I have a question!”

  377. Ivka*

    Oh god. A few years ago, I was relating a piece of news during a meeting, and said the name of the city – for the example, Vientiane – incorrectly. When my boss casually corrected me, I for some reason tried to laugh it off by saying, “oh yes you’re right, I’ve just never talked about Laos out loud before!” My job description was SOUTHEAST ASIAN AFFAIRS SPECIALIST.

  378. Dragonfly7*

    My first non-babysitting job at a local greasy spoon drive-in had so many, but here is the most memorable. Some of our condiments came in 5-gallon buckets. Since our drive-in didn’t have any seating, even for the employees, we often sat on those buckets even though it was against the rules. One day, a coworker who I was either in love with or hated (depending on the day) was being especially annoying, so I tied him by his shoelaces to the pickle bucket.
    This is also the workplace where my underage manager spent one Friday evening making Jello shots using the work fridge for her party immediately after work.
    I continue to have “I’m sick of your bullshit” moments of unprofessionalism, so I would say I haven’t improved.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      HAHAHA, omg. this unlocked a memory of the time I was working at a retail camera shop chain, and out of irritation with the terrible management, boredom, and malicious pleasure in discovering a TRULY EFFECTIVE one-step craft epoxy*…I went on a campaign of gluing things to things. not supplies or product, but like…the Econoline emblem a coworker found to the back of the industrial sink, dinosaur toys to the top of the monitor for the photo processing machine, and suchlike. It gave me great joy, and I still don’t regret it, tbh, even though it’s not exactly something I would recommend anyone do, haha.

      *E-6000. truly the greatest craft glue of all time. glues ANYTHING TO ANYTHING. far superior to Super Glue, which is only good for its original purpose of gluing skin. it does that VERY effectively.

  379. Little Miss Sunshine*

    Many years ago I was working for a horribly toxic manager. I was young, but going through an entire bottle of extra strength Tylenol every month to manage stress headaches, and I often vomited on my way to work from stress. When I finally secured an offer from another department, I couldn’t wait to tell the jerk I was leaving. A colleague was in his office with the door open, and I knocked, stuck my head in and said, “Hi. Just wanted to let you know that I accepted an offer from another department and the manager will call you to negotiate my transfer date.” Then I went to lunch. I never gave him a chance to respond, and I never set foot in his office. He was definitely the bigger jackass though; he screamed at my new manager for “stealing me”, gave a financial award for a project I completed to my replacement who was hired after I left and the project was already completed, and he NEVER spoke a word to me again. We continued to work for the same company for over a decade until he was laid off.

  380. Working Granny*

    Age has no boundaries when it comes a to lack of professionalism. I work for a manufacturer of EV charging stations. I was in the lobby when my husband pulled up to pick me up and the company COO was there. He said “So Working Granny, when are you getting an EV?” I replied “I guess as soon as you pay me enough to buy one!” For some reason he didn’t seem amused.

    2. Beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

      My first office job, I was tremendously underpaid as an Executive Assistant (though I didn’t realize by HOW MUCH at the time…literally got a 33% raise when I was laid off and took the first job offer I got and I think I was underpaid there as well). But, everyone at the company more or less knew we weren’t being paid well and the wage gap between the average employee and upper management was gross.

      Anyway, I lived in a not-great part of town. Like, my apartment complex was okay mostly, but I was in high-crime area. My boss (the COO) asked whereabouts I lived and I guess was concerned enough to bring it up occasionally in the context of “When are you planning on moving?” The answer “When y’all pay me enough to find a different place” was met with very awkward silence.

      I don’t regret that, though. That dude was an ass in more ways than one.

  381. Rock Paper Scissors*

    When I was interviewing for my first jobs out of grad school (STEM / lab rat) in the first years of the Great Recession, I really had no idea what “business professional” for offices in NYC looked like. Being naive, I listed to my parents who advised me to dress straight out of the 80’s: skin-tone hose, kitten or peep-toe heels, polyester skirt suit, pearls, my long hair in big curls from hot rollers, makeup with an emphasis on blush. And, coming off the subway in July/August, I must have looked like I was melting. Surprise to no one, I did not get offers from big-name management consultancy firms that needed polish for client meetings.

  382. Library Fairy*

    When I was sixteen, my cell phone’s voicemail message was me singing “hi, you’ve reached the voicemail box of [name], please leave a message at the sound of the tone” to the tune of the song “Lollipop, Lollipop.” This was fine until my first job called and had to leave me a voicemail about how I had missed a private swim lesson I was supposed to be teaching. I was so humiliated by both the voicemail and the mishap that when I called the family whose lesson I’d missed to apologize and reschedule, I sobbed through the phone call. Several levels’ worth of yikes! No wonder they didn’t hire me back the following summer.

    1. Nannerdoodle*

      Oh this unlocked another memory. When I was a teenager (starting at 14) my voicemail message was “Hello you’ve reached My Name’s phone, my name’s phone, my name’s phone. Leave your name and number at the beep so I can call you back” to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb. I forgot that was my voicemail until I was 19 and applying for jobs between my freshman and sophomore year of college. One of the interviewers was laughing on the voicemail they left and said something along the lines of how they were taken off guard by my voicemail message. I thought I was going to be swallowed by the earth when I remembered what it was.

      1. Con Dar*

        This made me laugh out loud, thank you!

        Also, I’m 43 and my current voicemail says something along the lines of “You’ve reached Name at Number. Feel free to leave a voicemail, or just text me like a normal person in 2022” LOL.

        I was getting a bunch of wrong number voicemails with the default robot greeting that comes on the phone and this is just what came out of my brain when recording a greeting. Obviously I’d change it if job hunting, but the rare few who leave messages usually have a chuckle and comment about how they’re “old” and want to leave a voicemail for me instead.

  383. Off Plumb*

    Two that still make me cringe:

    1. First post-college job. Not my first professional setting, but the first in which I was wearing long flowy skirts. And I was just… completely clueless about opacity. They looked fine to me! (Spoiler: they were not fine. People generally thought I was being provocative on purpose.)

    2. I was chatting with a new coworker about allergies. (He had recently moved, and I live somewhere that’s notorious for seasonal allergies.) We were both 30-something professionals with advanced degrees. I knew perfectly well how to behave. I commented that I wished I could scrub all the gunk out of my throat with a toilet brush. A little graphic, but ok. Except, without even thinking about it, I mimed. the. action. Mouth open, hand curled as if holding something and moving up and down. He didn’t visibly react, and I moved on as if I hadn’t accidentally demonstrated a sexual act at work, and I left that job ten years ago and am still embarrassed (and relieved not to have gotten a call from HR.)

    2. Shira VonDoom*

      oh nooooo, haha. as someone from the Gulf Coast who LOVES long gauzy skirts, I know this pain well. and then I moved somewhere cooler (boo), but also windier, and have had re-calculate my wardrobe not only for being more insulating (ugh layers, LOL) but also for the possibility the wind WILL flip my skirts over my head.

  384. LavaLamp(she/her)*

    I feel a little badly for this one because I don’t like saying these things in general, but here’s the story.

    I briefly worked at a small construction firm and I don’t drive yet, I do understand some about cards. One of the field guys was complaining about one of the company owned trucks needing to be taken into a mechanic and I asked what was wrong with it. He went on a rant about how would I know and women shouldn’t drive and just general sexist bullshit. I got annoyed with him and told him that maybe women would be better drivers if men like him stopped lying about what six inches looked like. The rest of the shop thought it was hilarious and he turned more shades of red than I knew humans were capable of and the manager also called out his bullshit when she was back in the office. I kinda hate that I had to go there but I guess fight sexism with sexism sometimes works? Because of the nature of the shop no one thought I was being unprofessional, but I still kinda cringe even if it was funny in hindsight.

  385. Noelle*

    I just got back from my very first big-girl business conference. It went fine, except… The company hosting the conference took all the attendees out for dinner, and I ended up sitting next to the CEO of the host company. I decided to order meat skewers, only to realize as the food arrived I had NO idea how to eat them in polite company. I decided to push each piece of meat off with my fork and eat it that way. This worked OK, until I got to one massive piece that was thoroughly stuck on there. I steadied the skewer with my hand and pulled harder with my fork… this piece of meat FLEW to the other end of my plate and knocked some garnishes off, right in the CEO’s direction. If the CEO saw it, he didn’t say anything, but I’m almost certain others at our table did.

  386. KayDeeAye*

    I am actually not sorry about this, but it was definitely unprofessional, so…maybe I should be.
    Years ago I was the editor of a statewide newspaper, and working for me was Wilberforce, an excellent writer, a hard worker and really good guy. We’re still friends, actually. But jeeeeeeeez, did he produce a lot of words. One deadline day, he is working on a feature story when I find out we are really tight on space, and I tell him there is literally only one spot in the paper where his story will fit, and that he has a maximum of 23 column inches.
    Which, by the way, is still a lot of inches.
    Wilberforce whines a bit but goes on with his work, and near the end of the day, he tells me he’s finished. He adds that he thinks it might be a little long, but he’s made some notes at the top of the story file to let me know easy places to make a few cuts. He leaves for the day.
    About an hour later, I start to copyedit the story and…it’s 36 inches long. That’s *13 inches* too long! And Wilberforce’s stories always have complicated transitions and so on, so they are difficult to cut. And those suggested cuts? Yeah, they are good for about 1 inch, and no I am not kidding. It takes me a full hour to cut the remaining 12 inches, and I’m steaming the entire time. But I am, I admit, slightly cheered when I realize that those cuts are gonna really piss Wilberforce off. Share the wealth, that’s what I say.
    So I come in the next morning, and I can tell that Wilberforce has discovered alllll those cuts, and I can tell that he is furious. There is steam coming out of his ears. But he lets a few minutes go by before coming into my office and saying, in a would-be calm voice, “So, why did you cut my story?”
    “Because it was 13 f*ing inches too long, Wilberforce,” I said in a very calm and quiet voice. I very seldom drop the f-bomb, and I don’t really recommend it, but I did then and I am not sorry. “Why did you cut my story?” indeed!

  387. Brunscelli*

    As a slacker student, I worked in the I.T. help office at my university and requested the solo overnight shift with the hopes of getting paid for not doing much. Serves me right because, after a month where I was lucky to log a single call in a week, something in my brain broke. I built a scale model of Stonehenge and the surrounding countryside out of a pile of new faculty laptops. My humorless boss walked in just as I was fashioning little druids out of toilet paper tubes. I didn’t get in trouble, but I was -very- well supervised from that point onward.

    1. Migraine Month*

      That is wonderfully bizarre! All the I.T. help office at my university did was play WOW whenever they weren’t on a call, so kudos for creativity.

  388. Sandy Eggo*

    In my first office job at age 22, in trying to make friends, I somehow fell in with the bitterest, most unhappy duo that worked there. At first I happily traded complaints about one thing or another, but soon enough realized that these two were toxic and I needed to extricate myself. I spent less and less time talking with them and soon befriended a nice, normal person who became my work buddy. Fast forward a couple of months, and the toxic twins were let go. I was at my friend’s cube when they stormed out of the VP’s office after being fired. I instinctively ducked. My friend said “here they come” and I panicked. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled under his desk to hide, but they made a beeline for us. The louder of the two stuck his head under the desk and said, “Well, they got me. You better watch out or they will come for you too.” Thankfully that’s the last I ever saw of either of them. I actually worked there for several more years and learned a huge lesson about choosing work friendships carefully.

  389. Mr. Random Guy*

    I have several examples, but my most memorable is probably the cockroach incident. After chasing a roach around my office for several minutes (after it had already caused panic in multiple other offices), I finally trapped it in a tissue. For some reason, I then chose to walk with it through the main office area. My coworker who had first spotted our insect invader asked what I would do, to which I proudly bellowed “I’m gonna flush it down the toilet!” All my coworkers, several customers, and my boss heard, and the coworker just stared at me. I wound up just quietly slinking out the back door and letting the roach go, but I did not hear the end of that one. Still better than when I caught a moth in my shoe, but that story is longer.

      1. Mr. Random Guy*

        To clarify, I dropped it a significant distance from the building. I did not just let it go right outside or still inside the office if that’s what you were thinking.

        1. KayDeeAye*

          No, no – I understood that it was outside. But…it’s a roach. Unless there’s a rich source of garbage or something out there, it’s going to head inside. I would have flushed it. But I appreciate that you were in a tight spot! “I’m gonna flush it down the toilet!” isn’t something one hears very often from one’s coworkers. :-)

  390. Chickaletta*

    In my 20’s, I had a semi-permanent job with a company through a temp agency. I had been there about two years but was bored out of my mind. I could complete a week’s worth of tasks in about an hour, no exaggeration. It was pretty bad. I was getting depressed about my life and the future outlook of it and just hated that job, even though they were happy with my work and assumed I was a busy little bee.

    Instead of talking to my manager, or contacting the temp agency to explain what was going on, I decided that I had enough in savings to quit, travel to Australia for a month, and find myself. I booked a ticket and the next day packed up my office and went home – without saying a word to anyone. I called the temp agency the day after that to let them know I had quit. Two weeks later I was in Sydney.

    Plot twist – a year later (having enrolled in graphic design school, my new inspiration in life), the temp agency reached out to see if I was available for work at the same company, same job. Apparently, my replacement was incompetent and they kept asking for someone like me again. In need of income until I finished design school, I accepted, got a light scolding from the temp agency to come to them with two weeks’ notice next time, and got my old job back. Wasn’t so bad because at least there was a light at the end of the tunnel that time. And, I learned, some bridges apparently just don’t burn down.

  391. Manchmal*

    My senior year of high school I was a barista at one of the big-box bookstores. It was during the holidays, and I’d donated blood earlier that day. That evening we were swamped with a big line. We were running out of everything including lids for the to-go cups. I gave a couple of lattes to a couple, and the woman hands me back her cup, noting that the lid was dirty. I gave her the last lid I had, and she looked at it and said that this one was dirty too. I said, you know, it’s just cocoa, it’s not going to kill you. (The bin of cocoa we used for mochas was stupidly right behind the lids). She asked to speak to a manager.

  392. nnn*

    What I’m most impressed by in the makeup story is they would usually put on eye shadow at home, but they also had an eye shadow palette and blending brushes in the office.

    Which means that they deliberately acquired duplicate palette and brushes!

  393. kmd*

    So, not new in my career, at all. Been at this job 13 odd years. I am a woman in a very male dominated industry. I had to leave work in the middle of the day for a doctor’s appt. Got some not great news from the doctor, while getting texts from my manager, so I was in a bad mood already. I was coming back in the building, through a basement entrance, next to the mailroom. And right as the elevator doors begin to close, I overhear the white male mailroom worker, talking to the only female mailroom worker, teasing her about how she was unqualified to do the job, because she isn’t strong enough. And…something in me snapped. I hit the button to open the elevator doors and screamed angrily “What the F* did you just say? “ Then I came out of the elevator, like I was going to get him, all 5ft 0 in of me, glaring at this huge guy, just screaming, “No, what the F* did you say to her?” Guy was bewildered, and she had to calm me down, saying they are friends and it was just a joke, and i shot back over my shoulder “ We don’t put up with that s* around here” and got in the elevator and left.

    Once I calmed down, I thought Oh No, I am going to be in so much trouble for doing that. So I promptly walked myself to my boss’s office, and told him what I did. To which he responded, I really wish you hadn’t told me that. And my response was, well, if he reports me to HR and they come and tell you, I don’t want you to be blindsided by it.

    Luckily, no one said or did anything about it. But whenever i saw that female mailworker around the office, she always gave me a knowing smile, like she knew someone had her back.

  394. TK*

    I used to work in a government department that oversaw student grants, around 14,000+ applicants a year. There were specific criteria to be eligible, which included means-testing on parents income.

    We had an applicant write in to complain that we weren’t giving them anything, and on review I found the reason to be was that the income was 3x the maximum to be eligible. But I had to respond in writing, so used the following.
    ——————
    Further to your recent correspondence, I am
    unable to increase the level of funding available to you at this time. As I am sure you are aware, the
    course for which you are applying for has a specific income cap, and having reviewed your application it is
    known that your assessed income exceeds the maximum to be eligible.

    Only if there is a significant change in your circumstances will we be able to reconsider your application for
    finance. The support available for students is very limited, and the legislation is in place to ensure
    funds reach those most in need.

    ———————————

    Now read the first letter of each line…

  395. Mizzmarymack*

    In the early aughts, after Google image search was a thing but before safesearch was a feature, I was a fresh engineering grad.

    As part of a cost estimate I was checking, it had linear feet of flashing. (I now know that flashing is a strip of sheet metal used to keep water from getting in where different materials meet, like a roof and a wall)

    My technologically savvy self typed “flashing” into image search and, well, the obvious happened. I think I startled or screamed – as one does when one is flashed – so my co-workers started getting up to see if I was OK. My computer was a giant tower with the power button right in the center – which we were never supposed to turn off – but I put that thing through force shut down before anyone saw my screen. (I think.)

    I still had to explain what had happened, but at least there were no “visual aids.”

  396. Naked If Cape Ability*

    I have plenty of memories of unprofessional behavior in my early years, but only one I’m willing to dwell on for long enough to write up. In my first professional job in a small research library, I had to fulfill a request for an article that happened to be from Playboy. The only possible local source was the university library, but in order to get it from there, I’d have had to either ask a student assistant to procure it from behind the circulation desk—which even I knew was out of the question – or go myself to the library, which was not near our work site.

    Full-text sources were only just starting to be available online, and we didn’t use them very often, because at that time, they were fairly expensive and also provided only plain text. But this was our best option. We all found it hilarious that we were providing something from Playboy (albeit on a current events topic that was in the researcher’s field) in this format. So, as a group –I think the head librarian was even laughing about the situation but probably not in on the caper—we decided to send the print-0ut with a centerfold of a not-exactly-stick figure naked lady, together with a stripper-sounding name and a list of turn-ons and turn-offs.

    Fortunately, the researcher also laughed (we wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t had a good sense of humor), but then he brought it down to ask for an autograph from the artist. Although numerous people had input into the content, I drew the picture, committed it all to writing, and buttoned it up in a package for him. So I signed it, and he said he was going to put it on his office wall. I have often wondered if someone more straightlaced in the hierarchy ever saw it and shuddered at the unprofessionalism of the library staff…and noted my signature. I wouldn’t do anything that inappropriate now, but standards for this kind of workplace behavior were lower then, and I only half regret it.

  397. StayAwkward*

    I went to school for film & tv production and was interviewing for my first real job on a film. The job was in the art department and the art director, an Oscar nominated art director, asked me if I knew what “clearances” were. Professionally, they are approvals to use things on camera; however, I thought this was a perfect time to make a joke and said, “my favorite kind of sale!!” then laughed. I can still recall the awkward silence from him. I did not get the job.

  398. Zeus*

    In a job interview, I mentioned that I had picked up some basic signs in NZSL, and demonstrated them to my interviewer. Hello, how are you, you’re welcome, thank you…except I got flustered and started my hand too low on the ‘thank you’, and ended up essentially flipping the interviewer off! Oops!

    1. Zeus*

      For context, ‘thank you’ is a flat hand raised up, palm towards you, with your fingers by your chin, which you then move away towards the person you’re thanking (a bit like blowing a kiss). Flipping off is a similar motion, but starting under the chin.

  399. Not the shining example I thought it was*

    My first office job was at a small company that frequently had to contact other, larger companies to obtain specific client information. Providing our services often took longer than strictly necessary, and I saw a lot of areas in our workflow that could be improved. I took initiative to improve things where I could, such as streamlining forms, re-organizing file systems, clearing backlogs, and creating resource documents. All of these were genuinely beneficial and generally appreciated. My new employee training packet provided a ton of extremely useful information for others coming in to my role, and filled a critical gap as there were zero training resources or processes in place before I created it. It was, however, written with a mixture of disdain for a specific few of my coworkers, frustration with the interactions we had with individuals at the other companies, a complete lack of familiarity with this style of writing, and a desperate need to entertain myself. It showed.

    Because I saved a version of this training document as the shining example of my work product from that job, I can offer direct quotes from it:
    -“This training packet is relatively new. It outlines the processes, but the best way to learn the mechanics of the job is to actually do it.”
    -“A new order may take as little as two weeks to complete, or as long as a year. The average is about three months, but it varies by the client’s situation, the type and complexity of the equipment, and the competence of individuals in this and other companies.”
    -“In the interest of keeping orders from escaping to the planet of runaway socks and ballpoint pens mentioned by the great xenologist Douglas Adams, always enter a note in Tracker describing your actions with regard to an order.”
    -“There are many different ways to obtain proof of payment and receive said payment, depending on the client’s situation. It’s exactly like Choose Your Own Adventure, but with more paperwork and fewer monsters.”

    The place was and seemingly remains deeply dysfunctional, so it’s anyone’s guess whether they are still using this training packet, or if they never used it at all.

    1. KayDeeAye*

      You know, that doesn’t seem that bad to me. Writing a training packet in such a way that it might be actually interesting to read is actually a great idea! The only one that seems truly problematic to me is that “competence of individuals” line.

  400. Button Pusher*

    Many years ago, I was the Assistant Director of a childcare center. It was located in a building that was over a 100 years old. It had been used for multiple different places including a meeting site for during the war the early century as well as a hospital for the criminally insane. As such, there were buttons that looked like doorbells labeled ‘Emergency’ from 70-80s throughout the building.

    I used to close down the building with a handful of staff. After two months of working at this center, I knew there was no security system for the building other than locking the front door. I questioned my superiors and coworkers about these buttons and building history. I had made the assumption that I didn’t think these buttons worked. I encouraged one of the closing staff to push it and she refused. I being a young 25 year old I was, I pushed the button. (What’s the worst that could happen pushing a button older than me?)As I do this 15 minutes before we closed the center, immediately a loud screeching sound began emitting by our front door. Of course I assume that the police or the fire department was going to be arriving. I go and I look outside slightly panicking, but no one arrives. I get my cell phone to call my Director who does not answer. I call the regional director who also does not answer. I had to eventually call the owner who I had only met twice at that point. He informs me to go ahead and cut the wires to box making sound since no one was going to be coming. Side note, I am pregnant at the time. I called my boyfriend who comes down and cuts said wire for me.

    A month later my Director gives me my 90-day review. She gives me a glowing review EXCEPT I’m “immature” due to his incident. As a result, she decides not to give me a raise.

      1. Baby Yoda*

        Agree. Had a similar incident– worked at a bank for 7 years (not on the teller line) before learning how the silent alarm was triggered. Had the cops swarming the place.

  401. I wish I could have redos….*

    Was at a company conference (internal personnel) quite a few years ago. I’m was over 50, so no excuse on being young and naive. We all had some drinks. One of the other employees confronted me and asked me why I didn’t like him. I proceeded to tell him exactly why I didn’t like him. I had two other employees I worked with trying to drag me away. He complained about my comments to the powers that be. We were all flying out the next day. However, before going to the airport, I apologized about what I said, and he then informed the powers that be about that too. But I still had to see them all at the airport the next morning. I’m retired now….

  402. Charles R. Thompson*

    I worked on a high and heavy rigging crew in a nuclear containment room. The foreman was an idiot that would walk up unannounced a throw signals to the crane man, 70 ft above without our knowledge. It got real hairy.

    One day we were raising a 10 ton support beam in a narrow chimney, high up.

    The foreman came along on the ground and started throwing signals contrary to our safety.

    I kicked a two pound piece of concrete on his head, watching it fall to see if I got him. He took most of the impact on his helmet and took the hint. He left me to do the signals to Lenny the crane man after that.

  403. Boss lady*

    This was 25 years ago and I still feel bad thinking about it. I was making ends meet in college working as a waitress. For context, at
    the time I was very overweight and I identify as female.

    Some young women came in and ordered dessert. This was an ice cream restaurant and the wait staff usually had to make the sundaes ourselves.

    As I set her ice cream down in front of her, one of the ladies murmured something that sounded like “mumble mumble SO FAST.” I asked if they needed anything else, they said no and thanked me. Proud that I had impressed my patrons with such prompt service, I replied with “And thank YOU for the compliment!”

    Know where this is going? It was several minutes before I realized she had actually been saying “I’m going to be SO FAT.” I’m not sure how I was able to bring myself to go back to that table.

  404. SmoothViolet*

    In my first full-time role there was a particular woman who I regularly emailed. I noticed she’d changed her name, so I specifically emailed her to congratulate her on her marriage!

    She graciously informed me that she changed her name for the opposite reason (divorce). I was embarrassed as it had never occurred to me that there could be other reasons for a name change. I was young and naive.

  405. Student Placement Girl*

    Casual Friday at a city council which, as it turns out, is not that casual. It was my first professional job. My title was not “Graduate Position” or even “Junior Position” but just “Position.”
    I wore jeans and my university hoodie… and learned pretty quick why that was a bad decision when a customer referred to me, in front of my manager, as “that student placement girl.”

  406. Lizzo*

    When I (cisgender woman) was fresh out of school and interviewing for my first job, I met with the hiring manager, then preceded to meed with hiring manager’s Grandboss (department director). Grandboss asked me that good ol’ interview question: “What are three things your friends would say about you?”

    I don’t recall the first two things on my list but the third thing was, “They’d say I have the balls to do anything.”

    To which Grandboss responded, “Really?” And I with a completely straight face and boundless enthusiasm said, “Yep!” Meanwhile I was having a minor internal meltdown and feeling very confident that I had just bombed this entire thing.

    After meeting with Grandboss, I went back to the hiring manager’s office to wrap up and revealed what I had said to Grandboss, and that I was mortified, and could the hiring manager please apologize for me? (I mean, what I said was true, but clearly this was not a thing to mention during the interview…at least, not with that sort of language.)

    Reader: I GOT THE JOB.

  407. Judging Your Grammar*

    I have two:

    1. Quit a professional job by leaving a handwritten note on the boss’ desk before she got to work … and then I just left. Totally left.

    2. Put in two weeks’ notice at my first job out of college (lasted six months). Faked being sick my last day so I wouldn’t have to see my dreadful colleague. Came in after hours and dropped off my ID badger, etc.

  408. Lizzo*

    Another one (different job): A colleague and I (both in our early 30s) sometimes liked to play catch on our lunch hour during the summer months. Why? Who knows–that’s just what we did to get outside and blow off some steam.

    In any case, one day I was on the elevator headed out for my lunchtime game of catch, and I already had my mitt on and was fidgeting with the softball. The CEO got on the elevator a couple floors down. Doors closed. He looks at the mitt and says something about “an interesting way to spend your lunch hour.” Without thinking, I responded with, “Well, it’s either this or I punch people in the face to deal with the stress. Throwing a ball around seems like a better choice.” There was a brief pause, and then a nod of approval.

  409. ManicPixieNightmareGirl*

    I was planning a romantic get away for myself and husband. Our first alone together since having a baby. The destination had several beaches and one famous nude beach. I mentioned the destination to ac co-worker who was from there. And he volunteered to advise on the planning. My first question was to ask about the beaches I had been looking at. Did I ask about the many regular beaches I’d researched? No, no I did not. I asked about the nude beach. And then froze while he stuttered. And then pretended not to have known it was a nude beach. As a final insult, it was too cold to go to any beach. My whole body still cringes to this day.

  410. Nameless in Customer Service*

    Since crying is the Worst Thing You Can Do At Work I think I’ll tell a story about a time I cried at work.

    I worked in a school as the Receptionist and General Dogsbody, and we had Parents’ Night on Thursday. I had spent the whole week before making packets for all the families.

    On Monday when we had the Admin Meeting, the Comms Director, freshly hired from college by the Headmaster, said, “why don’t we completely rearrange the packets, adding these articles, taking out these forms, and putting them in this kind of folder rather than that?” I opened my mouth to ask who was going to help me, realized I would get scolded for asking, and shut my mouth again.

    I spent Tuesday and Wednesday frantically printing, copying, and reorganizing the packets. I skipped lunch and all breaks both days. A teacher complained to the Headmaster about me because I was using the copier when he wanted to. The Headmaster came down, looked at my desk, and said, “You should be further along with those by now.” I opened my mouth to tell him that his prize protege had decided to completely redo the packets, realized I was going to cry, and ran for the staff bathroom.

    On the way I ran into the Comms Director who physically stood between me and the bathroom, said, “who’s at the desk? What do we pay you for?” and wouldn’t let me past.

    I ended up sobbing at my desk, and getting written up for it. Which of course according to many Stoics, was absolutely and totally all my unprofessionalism and had nothing to do with anything anyone else said or did.

    I stayed two hours late at work on Wednesday to get all the packets done, and cried myself to sleep that night, and no one thanked me. But Parents’ Day happened without a hitch.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      friend, that was not a YOU problem. those people were awful. I’ve fully been at a desk rage-crying before, and the only person who was unprofessional in that scenario was my boss.

      I’m sorry you went through that, and I hope you’re somewhere less awful now.

      1. Nameless in Customer Service*

        Thank you, a lot. This is a really kind and cheering response and a pleasant surprise.

  411. Kensie*

    During an internship, one of the owners of the firm I was working asked if I was ok- I must have had a look on my face. I responded “oh I’m fine, this is just really boring.” To one owners (of which there were only two)! Worst thing was, it was a GRAD SCHOOL internship… I definitely should have known better.

  412. Walk On By*

    During a particularly boring and torturous national training for my job, during which I was struggling so hard to stay awake, I fell asleep. And, by that, I mean falling from my chair into the aisle in full view of the entire class. Fortunately, the instructor was such a snore that I don’t think anyone noticed. I immediately returned to my seat and, curiously, had no further troubles staying awake. To this day, I’ve never heard a word of it from anyone in the class.

  413. The first time I've told this story*

    30 years ago, I was in my early or mid 20s, teaching high school. My disorganization caused a number of problems.

    I assigned my students a project which involved writing about their early years, and bringing in a photo of themselves as a child. One student brought in a black-and-white photo, telling me to be extra careful with it because it was the only photo she had from her childhood in the Philippines.

    That week I collected about a hundred photographs. I lost exactly one.

  414. Lunita*

    I was in the first full-time job of my career and in an entry-level position. My and my counterpart attended an annual industry conference that had a happy hour afterward with open bar (beer and wine). I drank way too much and ended up spending the night at my coworker’s mom’s house (separate rooms) to avoid driving home. Was sick in the morning. Went to work the next day and got called out by our admin staff for wearing the same clothes. Doh! Was hungover all day.

  415. Cats Are Really Fuzzy*

    I got reprimanded for juggling too loudly at my desk . Everyone would always come over to my cubicle for lessons and entertainment, and I guess I didn’t realize it but we were SUPER loud, and it drove my next door cubicle buddy crazy (and rightfully so!). However, someone on my team got really offended that I was reprimanded, and encouraged me to juggle even louder!

    I now work from home so no juggling lessons for now .

  416. Raine Wynd*

    My most unprofessional moment: tripping over my own feet and hitting my head as I walked out of an interview that, up until that moment, had been going well. They checked on me to make sure I was okay, but I was pretty sure I lost that job.

  417. ResourceFairExtraordinaire*

    My boss had a habit of micromanaging. She was overly involved in projects when I didn’t need her assistance, and mysteriously absent when I needed help. One minor project was overhauling a terrible poster board that we would drag to resource fairs. It was covered in posters from other agencies, so people didn’t know who we were. I set out to make one that looked polished and actually told people about our office. (I was usually the person staffing these events, and it was honestly embarrassing to display.) I repeatedly emailed her for feedback about the new content without any response. One day, I temporarily put items on the board to figure out placements before handing things off to our graphic designer. It was *only then* that she came into my office to provide un-constructive criticism. “What is this? What is that? I hate this! I hate that!” After years of micromanagement, it was the tiny straw that broke the camel’s back. I blew up, yelled at her, and charged out of my office, slamming doors on the way out.

    I’m not proud of it, but I did get the polished, professional poster board that I wanted.

  418. Cats Are Really Fuzzy*

    THE CAT CORNER
    I almost forgot about my Cat Corner. Alison, just like you I am a huge cat fanatic. I had received a canvas portrait of my cat for Christmas, so for some reason I thought it would be a brilliant idea to hang it up in my cubicle! Then my colleague gifted me a massive cat statue that she wanted me to put next to the cat portrait. Then another colleague gave me a cat pencil case. This is where things started to get out of hand. I realized that I had some cat mugs at home I could bring in and add to the Cat Corner. One of the mugs said “You’ve CAT to be KITTEN me right MEOW.” Then there were cat stickers. A cat notebook. A cat tablecloth. Everyone wanted to make a contribution to the Cat Corner! To top it all off, my colleague literally grew me a CATNIP PLANT FROM HER GARDEN that was absolutely perfect as the centerpiece. I’m not into gardening, so I didn’t know how to take care of the plant, and so the catnip grew seriously out of control! So I went on vacation, and when I returned not only am I greeted by a giant face of my cat, but now there is a massive overgrown catnip plant and catnip leaves scattered around my cubicle! I wish I could say this was decades ago, but it was actually just a few years ago. Thankfully I’ve since matured.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      honestly that sounds charming. However, I am also a cat person and therefore biased, LOL

  419. ShitTalkingBehindThinWalls*

    My boss kept bringing up reassigning my favorite part of my job responsibilities to someone else so that I would have more time to do other things, even though I repeatedly told him I’d like to keep the task. So one Friday, he said goodbye to everyone around 5pm, but another woman and I had to work late. Around 6pm after everyone else was gone, I went on a long vent to my coworker about my boss’s disorganization, how he never completed projects on time, how he wanted to take away the best part of my job, etc.
    When I finally finished, I needed to go into another room to grab something… and there he was. Just sitting in that room, at someone else’s desk. The walls were thin, so he definitely heard me. I walked behind him to grab what I needed, walked behind him again to return to the original room, and then whispered (mortified) to my coworker that he was there. A few minutes later, I walked past him a third (!!) time to leave for the night. We did not speak that night, and neither of us ever brought it up.

  420. JagoMouse*

    So many young people’s foibles. Of which I had several myself. But the best/worst one came much later on. I swear I’m red just typing this.
    Listed company, new-ish CEO. I work for the CFO and we’re off to pre-record the required Market Update before releasing it the next day (recording it means you don’t have the stress of doing it live). The CEO was a little under the weather – from enjoying too much wine the day before. So I was a bit amused and not particularly sympathetic when he tanked the whole recording (my CFO did brilliantly).
    On the way back to the office, the CEO is putting on a fair show of shaking it off and laughing at being hungover today. He then says something about performance anxiety…well, my brain must have thought it was having a conversation with my husband so I blurt out “I hear that’s a common thing in men of a certain age”. To the CEO. In front of my boss and another member of staff.
    I think was red for the rest of the day. Thankfully they all saw the funny side of it (and possibly a new side of me!) but I don’t think they’ll ever let me forget it.

  421. Uncle Sam Nomad*

    My first post college job, I was a bank teller. We had a guy come in, and I followed procedure but didn’t tell him what was going on or why, and the guy got pissed and told his boss, a major customer of ours, who also got pissed.

    I got called in to talk to my grandboss, and as she’s upset with me, I (22 yr old dude) told her (middle aged, woman) to “calm down.”

    Knowing what I know now about how women are treated in the work force in general, etc., ooh, it still burns that I even said that.

  422. Anon Pleez*

    -Used a mechanical pencil to clean the grit and lint out of my watch in a 4-person meeting
    -Looked for split ends and picked dandruff out of my hair in meetings

    (Really, working from home is for everyone else’s benefit…)

  423. Who needs shoes?*

    Editor at a huge mass market romance publisher. It was a big anniversary year for the company. All the editors had had to attend a week of events and training and brainstorming and then go to the Romance Writers of America conference (multi day, exhausting, working from breakfast meeting to pyjama party). Tons of authors staying in the same hotel for days, so they all knew who the editors were.

    On the last night there was a big fancy party. And we were TIRED. So afterwards a bunch of editors holed up in a bedroom, kicked off our high heels and uncomfortable tights, and ordered pizza. When it came, I volunteered to fetch it from the lobby. Could I be bothered to put my heels back on? No.

    Which is how I found myself in the lobby of the New York Hilton for this major professional event, surrounded by about 150 beautifully dressed authors and senior editors at this huge professional event, carrying a stack of 8 pizza boxes and wearing a cocktail dress and BARE FEET.

    2. Baby Yoda*

      I’ve been to those conferences as an author and I would have LOVED to talk to you when you were comfortable (and had pizza!)

  424. frida*

    This is probably minor compared to others but it still makes me cringe: I came out of college (a tiny liberal arts school no one had ever heard of) thinking I was a genius and I spent the first few months of my first Real Job acting like I was above it all. The head of my department was making a big company-wide push to use Google Docs (instead of printing and hand-marking stuff) and hosted lunch-and-learn events to train everyone on GSuite. I was still at my desk when one of these sessions was about to start and she asked if I was joining. I just sort of scoffed and said my college had used GSuite so I didn’t need training. I didn’t realize until much, much later that she clearly knew my department didn’t need the training (we already used GSuite for everything), she just wanted butts in seats to prove her case to higher-ups and the holdouts. Ugh. How I wish I could sit down with my 22-year-old self and tell her having a BA in English and an office job in NYC doesn’t make her Master of the Universe.

  425. Hayleox*

    I dunno how unprofessional this really is, but this seems as good a time as any to post this. I work as a cashier mainly, and our store sells lots of little stuffed animals. My first week on the job, someone left a pocket-sized cat stuffie at my register, and I became attached, and eventually bought her. Now I bring her in every day and put her at the corner of my counter. Maybe it’s a little peculiar of me, but I’m a pretty good employee I think, and I feel I am entitled to one eccentric behavior tyvm.

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      listen, that’s adorable…and frankly much more restrained than I tend to be, anytime I’ve worked retail, LOL. I always end up finding things I “need” while I’m working.

      anyway, I work in a law firm, and there’s a HIGH degree of eccentrism in our offices. You’re doing fine.

  426. Ingemma*

    For most of my undergrad I worked TERRIBLE hospitality jobs.

    One summer, a friend and I both got jobs at a really weird crepe place in the touristy part of town. Provincial minimum wage was like 11.25$ at the time, and the guy who ran it would pay us 7$/hr cash under the table. The place ran with one cashier and the owner. My friend and I were splitting the days, so either she was at work or I was.

    This job was obviously… not enviable. The only contact we had for this guy was the landline at the store. One day, my friend quit. In order to do this, she had to call while I was on shift. A little awkward for me, but what can you do.

    I was determined to find literally any other job before I quit though, so I kept at it. Until a couple weeks later, I went out drinking with the same friend who had quit. I tried to cut out early, because I had work the next day. She and her boyfriend convinced me to stay out with them on the basis that ‘I needed to quit anyways, so I should get very drunk with them, and then call and quit in the morning.’

    My only objection to this was that I did not personally want to have to call. So my friend decided to sweeten the deal by offering to quit ON MY BEHALF. Because I was a complete coward, I thought this was a FANTASTIC idea. So I stayed out drinking.

    The night ended with me going back to the friends boyfriends house for a nightcap, and which promptly resulted in me sleeping with his roommate. The next morning, my friend burst into the roommates room to wake both of us up by yelling ‘I pretended to be you and quit! You don’t have a job anymore!!!’

    I was very relieved. But also, what the hell kind of decision making is that. (Also the poor roommate in question was very baffled by my choices)

    1. Shira VonDoom*

      honestly, sounds like that boss deserved it. I hope you had a lovely night and much better employers henceforth, LOL

  427. TheSheriff*

    Place I worked for did an “anonymous” poll for us to review our own managers. My manager got a bad score and pulled us all into a room, showed each “anonymous” answer on a deck slide and demanded to know who gave that answer and what exactly that meant. As a total coincidence (right) he decided that we all needed to be together more often to build team spirit so revoked our WFH rights.

    So every morning I went into the office and on arrival I would turn on, on one of my monitors, a big countdown (like this one https://time-stuff.com/timer-fullscreen.html ) set to 8h. As soon as that beeped, I’d be out the door.

    Also, the team did some team building alright. We spent quite some time playing snooker in the break room in the afternoons.

  428. Turingtested*

    From my food service days:

    I was 23 and walked into the kitchen to see the very elderly and well used toilet brush sticking out of the chili pot that was in the sink. I grabbed the brush, held it up and marched around screaming “I don’t want to be a c word but who in the f washes dishes with a toilet brush?” Finally someone timidly said “it looked like it could really scrub and I was going to wash it afterwards.” My response “What the f is wrong with you?” They left crying. Later my boss confronted me. I said “Did you know they were washing our chili pot with the toilet brush?” He said “What the f?” No further action was taken.

  429. Luna*

    Not sure if it was unprofessional, but it probably came across like that. During a job interview, I asked about the hypothetical scenario of a customer handing over a note with their phone number and such, like, how to deal with that. And then my anxiety kicked in and I became absolutely focused on that topic, asking more questions about where the line goes from “is this okay at work?” and “at this point, it’s your personal business, and we don’t care what you do, as it’s your off-the-clock time”.
    Didn’t get the job, of course, and I’m wondering if my odd fixation caused by anxiety was a reason for it.

  430. rollerskates*

    At an interview in my early 20s, I was asked “how would those that know you describe you?” Rather than spinning out some boilerplate but acceptable answer along the lines of “really organised and reliable, such a hard worker, etc etc etc”, I answered “well, I guess they’d probably describe me as pretty sarcastic! And also quite nerdy, heh!” The interviewer was silent for a few seconds and then clarified, “…sure, and what about, in the workplace?”

    Even if they had wanted to know more about my personality rather than my work persona… “sarcastic” and “nerdy”??? That’s the first thing you have to say?? Way to come across as completely unbearable, me.

    1. Dinwar*

      I mean, sarcastic and nerdy would be a selling point for my group. My office has a number of pictures of dragons, fairies, and such messing with sampling equipment, made by field teams at lunch breaks. A coworker has photos from the Hubble in his. And if you removed sarcasm and swearing from our language we’d probably only say about fifteen words a day. It would definitely be a good cultural fit!

    2. Luna*

      Unless you’ve worked alongside friends before, I would presume your work and personal persona are different enough that your friends would have a somewhat false image on their idea what you’d be like at work. Though I don’t mind sarcasm and nerdyness at work!

  431. Roo*

    I used to have to take cash and cheques to the bank. At one time there was an extremely attractive young man working on the enquiries desk and it always gladdened my heart to see him. One one occasion I was staring in his direction and when I got to the counter I absent-mindedly fumbled in my bag and put the paying-in book and cheques on the desk. There was a moment of silence and then the bank lady said “Umm… we don’t accept those…”

    It was a sanitary towel.

    That was over 20 years ago and I still get an occasional shudder when I think about it.

    1. Roy G. Biv*

      Hilarious!

      I once accompanied a coworker to the bank at the ground floor of our office building so she could write a check for cash. (in the days before ATM’s) She pulled her checkbook and what she thought was her fountain pen from her purse, only to realize it was a tampon without the wrapper. We both froze, she shrieked, and we bolted for the door, whereupon I laughed until I cried. After we composed ourselves she tried again, this time with the pen in hand. The bank guard kept an eye on us, but the bank manager, a woman we knew by name, asked for a recap of the story, and she also laughed until she cried.

      I don’t miss that job, but I do miss the daily shenanigans.

  432. Another_Anon_For_this*

    My best and worst moment are the same!
    I had worked with a sales guy that was the stereotype to the max. Rude, overbearing, obnoxious, heavy drinker, his stuff was the only thing that mattered. He would routinely call me to do something, would forget about and berate me because I did exactly what he asked for.

    The revenge:
    Whenever he would need a reason why something would work, I would just mix in Star Trek technology terms. i.e. “The process failed because the Heisnberg compensator couldn’t connect to the subspace Jeffries tube.” The he would pass it on TO HIS CUSTOMERS. They totally thought it was hilarious. I found out later that his nickname before this was “The guy in the suit who doesn’t know anything”.

  433. Dragon_Dreamer*

    I hope I’m not too late!

    I was once setting some laptops out on the Salesforce as demo machines, when my manager walked by. He watched me attaching USB alarms and keyed locks with a steel cable tether on each one.

    Him: “Why are you wasting time with those locks? Just put on the alarms and be done with it!”
    Me: “May I demonstrate WHY that is a bad idea?”
    Him: “Prove it.”

    So I walked casually up to a laptop that only had the USB alarm, and in one smooth motion, unplugged the power cable and alarm, turned, and ran for the door at the other side of the store, yelling, “FREEEEEEDOOOOOOM!”

    I stopped before reaching the door, then looked back at him. “That’s why we use both.”

    He was annoyed, but gave me no more flak about the cable locks. He did tell me, “you didn’t have to yell that.”

    Me: “Yes, yes I did.”

    Cue catbuttface from him for the rest of the day. :>

    1. Dragon_Dreamer*

      salesFLOOR, I’m not sure what autocorrect was thinking. I’ve never even used SalesForce!

  434. Silver Linings From Dreamland*

    Eavesdropped on one of my team’s meetings when I notified them I’d be taking a sick day.

    Made sure to join by zoom DOT us instead of the meeting link (as that would open the desktop app).

    No one suspected anything though- they were mostly confused. Maybe a couple were a little creeped out and our Team Lead asked the “ghost” to identify themself but luckily another coworker was also out sick and yet another didn’t join for whatever reason. That person’s a little kooky so they sorta assumed it was her.

    Meanwhile, I was dying of laughter and saying to myself “Joke’s on you!”

  435. Cosmic Cetacean*

    The first job I had after high school was a summer position at the library of a very prestigious public policy college. My mom used to work at one of the college’s other libraries and pulled some strings to get me the job. The summer I worked there happened to also be when the Democratic National Convention was hosted in the same city. All sorts of big names were giving speeches at the school (including Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama) and various politicians’ employees/interns were using the library to work 24/7. Unfortunately, I was also using that time to experiment with my sense of personal style. My favorite outfit to wear to work involved a short cheerleader skirt, seamed fishnets, and platform-heeled Mary Janes. I was in a very public-facing role and talked to patrons all day in these ridiculous outfits.
    The position also involved being alone all day at the circulation desk with basically no oversight from my supervisor, so nobody ever said anything to me about the dress code the whole time I was there and it never occurred to me that I should dress differently.

  436. Poirot's Mustache*

    I was in a job interview and they asked me about my attention to detail. I said I thought it was good and gave examples of my editing experience. Then they pulled out a copy of my cover letter and showed me that I had misspelled the name of their organization. I did not get the job.

    1. Luna*

      Oh, man. Since a lot of my applications are done online, I send my CV as a PDF file. I had a typo in the name file for quite a long time, until I finally noticed. It was such a small typo, your brain automatically fixed it when you read it.

  437. Kate in Colorado*

    Mine falls in the category of “looking back I cringe but no one thought anything of it at the time- which was the problem.” I was brand new at a job where I worked in the organization’s central office where HR also worked. I was having lunch with some employees from HR and they were being snarky about how other new hires showed up to orientation without their identifying documents (like their SS card or passport). I wondered aloud if some of them had never started a new job before and out loud it sounded horribly snarky as well. I was horrified at myself because that is not who I am, but the HR team loved it. “Oh, we’re going to like you!” the HR director told me. I didn’t like how infectious their attitude seemed to be, and I didn’t want to be like them so I kept my distance until I quit a couple of years later. I noticed high turnover in their department. Wonder why.

  438. Annie*

    I was running an onboarding session for about 4 new staff members about supervising our after-school program for at-risk teens. One of the new employees asked what the process was if a student came to the after-school program smelling like weed (a reasonable question because that did happen sometimes). I responded “Spray them with Febreze.”

  439. Esmeralda*

    I worked as an assistant in an academic dept at my college while an undergrad.

    One fine day, I had a big stack of papers to photocopy, as well as a lot of filing, typing, etc (I’m an old, I was excited to have a selectric). I saw an older woman in the hallway, took the stack over to her and said, Could you give me a hand photocopying these, I have a ton of work today. She looked at me and said, coldly, I’m [Name], Associate Professor of [subject]. So no, I will not be doing that for anyone.

    Yeah, I thought I was a feminist …. it was a good lesson.

    And I avoided her ever after.

  440. Heffalump*

    I once told a female coworker that a garment she was wearing was “very sexy” in the presence of some other coworkers. She wasn’t visibly offended, didn’t freeze me out afterward, nothing. No repercussions, not even a slap on the wrist from anyone, nothing. This was in 1977. I’m sure that if I were stupid enough to do such a thing today, I’d get a talking-to, minimum. In hindsight, a real “what was I thinking?” moment. All I can say is I was young and ignorant.

  441. EmbarrassedAnon*

    One of my early jobs was at a relatively casual nonprofit where I was the youngest person on staff. I developed a terrible crush on another staffer and, being both new to the professional world and the romantic one, frequently made a fool of myself.

    The height of this was the time that I tried to get them to notice me by reclining alluringly on the conference room table in such a way that everyone going into the kitchen would pass me. There were a number of problems with this plan, including that I was putting my butt on a table where people eat, that I was waiting around for them to pass instead of doing work, that I thought the position was in any way appealing or flattering, and of course, that I thought the office was the place for this at all! They never did walk by but numerous other staff members did, including several who asked if I was feeling okay and needed help.

    Years later I did end up in a short relationship with this person, but I’m pretty sure the table had nothing to do with it…

  442. Queen Triton*

    Worked as a college lifeguard and would regularly do my homework/reading while there were people swimming laps in the pool (not only unprofessional but INCREDIBLY UNSAFE…all I can say is that I was following the example of my coworkers, which is still not an excuse, but I did not originate the practice).

  443. Notmypanties*

    I bike commute to work, so I have to change clothes in the office. There is a change room, so I only ever showed up on my floor looking professional, but I had my biking clothes in my backpack. Well, one day when I was pulling my laptop out of the bag, my spare underwear took a ride out with it and I didn’t notice! A co-worker came to talk to me, paused awkwardly and then said ‘ummm, you have……. a panty on the floor”. I swept it away immediately but I still think about it and die inside.

  444. ImAGoodNurse,IPromise*

    When I first graduated with my nursing degree I mostly worked night shifts where you could be a bit less professional, as very few people were around and most patients were sleeping. We used to pig out on Doritos and candy to stay awake. Not long after I switched to days and was placed in the Charge Nurse position (I was about 23), but I didn’t change my snacking habits. One day I had to page a physician to discuss a patient issue. After I send the page I took a huge bite of candy, and my mouth was still super full when he called me back. I couldn’t swallow it (it was Nerds) so I tried just talking with my mouth full. He said he couldn’t understand me and thought our connection was bad. I had to duck under the desk and spit the mouthful in the garbage. The whole thing was witnessed by another patient’s family member. I learned to find more appropriate ways to get my sugar fix while on shift! Hard to convey that you are a good, knowledgeable nurse with a mouth full of candy!

  445. Christiana Carter*

    This experience wasn’t exactly my fault, but probably still falls under the Memorable Moments of Unprofessionalism header. My office (a relatively stodgy marketing agency where I, a young lesbian with a shaved head, did not fit in at all) hosted a white elephant gift exchange for Christmas. When it came time for me to open my gift, I was shocked to open a small box and discover a two golf-ball-sized shiny, metal balls. My only experience with balls that looked like those had been in, shall we say, a much more erotic context. I was too shocked to say anything and there was dead silence for a moment as everyone waited for me to say thank you for the gift. Then, one by one, my colleagues began to realize that I had never seen baoding balls (Chinese stress balls) before, but certainly HAD seen the other kind of balls before and began cracking up into mass hysteria as I tried to formulate a response to the gift. Finally, the colleague who had gifted me the balls explained what they were and I too was able to laugh a little at the mix up. But I was certainly not laughing as hard as everyone else at that moment, lol.

  446. Fact or fiction*

    My first job at 16 was as a library shelver (best job ever, love that Dewey decimal system). The shelver demographics had a wide range, but the 4-8pm weeknight shift and 1-5pm weekend shifts were all high schoolers like myself. I knew our break was supposed to be 15 minutes in theory, but my 17-year old shift leads often pushed it to 30 min. By the next year, the standard was 45 minutes, and eventually we got in the habit of taking Taco Bell field trips on Saturdays for an hour lunch. Fully 25% of my shifts for a good two years were spent on break. I always wondered why the check-out staff gave us the evil eye…

  447. TMI*

    Once, my 25-year old self had an exciting interview to be the assistant of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning author who also ran a foundation. His hiring director’s first question at the interview was, “Tell me about yourself.” To which I replied, “Well, I was born in Montana, then I moved to Indiana, then…”

    I’ve since learned to streamline my interview answers a bit.

  448. Still Cringe*

    Ignoring that I quit my first full-time job after less than a year so that I could go back to school for a degree that would not make me more employable…..I then worked part-time as a graduate student in a university advancement office and I just didn’t like it. It was boring, I worked in a hallway, and my boss was ‘mean.’ I was also in my early 20s and pretty obviously going through undiagnosed depression at the time. Instead of giving any notice, I just stopped going in. I called from my cell phone and said I had to go out of town to help my parents. And just never returned. I felt like a genius for using my cell phone because it was the early 2000s and I still had a landline but she couldn’t tell I was just calling from my bedroom a few miles away. For a long time I was afraid I’d run into her in town or that it would show up as a job in a background check even though I never listed it.

  449. Triphazard*

    I was due to get married (many moons ago) and was also part of my first big project alongside colleagues from head office, so was feeling a little pressure to be seen as professional, value add, competent etc. In the course of the meeting, there were the usual wedding pleasantries given as I gave my apologies for missing the next meeting – all very lovely.
    Unfortunately, as I opened the door to leave, everyone once again gave congratulations for my upcoming celebrations and for some reason, my brain decided now was the perfect time to take an early holiday.
    Instead of something pleasant and grown up sounding like “Thanks very much”, I instead looked at a room full of lovely and fairly high-ranking people, said nothing, turned to leave, tripped and launched myself head first over the threshold and into the corridor wall, headfirst.
    Whilst both the project and (more importantly) the wedding went very well, there was a dent in that wall as evidence until I left the company 3 years later.

  450. Cynical Librarian*

    I was a bright eyed young marketing associate in my second job post-college. It was a new job with a successful pay bump and I was moving up in the world of academic publishing! (snort) As the list owner for a very successful and well known international law publisher, right after I started I flew to DC for a conference where I would be talking to law students/international lawers/etc. I also had a very bad cold. But! I was going to put on a brave face! I was going to market those books even through my Nyquil haze. This older gentleman came over and started talking with me. He was a gem of a human, we hit it off and while I was super foggy I said the following to him – “You are just amazing! I want to stick you in my pocket and take you home with me!” He laughed and said he was much too old but I was an amazing young lady going places.

    Later that afternoon one of my coworkers who had been in the field a long time took me aside and said, “You really bonded with Sir Ronald.” I must have looked slightly confused because he followed up with, “You know, one of the senior members of The Hague.” So yes, I told a extremely well-respected legal expert admired the world over that I wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home with me. I am going to blame the Nyquil. I still cringe and laugh every time I think about it.

  451. Pam Poovey*

    I regularly knit and crochet during work calls. But in my defense, either a) my camera is off or b) I’m holding it low enough that no one can see. It helps me concentrate! I have ADHD and occupying my hands with something that doesn’t require my focus (I stick to simple patterns) allows me to pay attention when I’d otherwise be tempted to pick up my phone or something.

  452. Controlling Controller*

    When I worked in public accounting (first professional job out of college), the firm had a policy where if you worked longer than 10 hours in a day, they would pay for your dinner. It was meant to be sort of a bonding experience for teams out at client offices, where they might expense pizza and wings so people could eat while they worked long hours. I shamelessly took advantage of this, sometimes taking myself out for a fancy dinner on my way home, sometimes just going to the grocery store and buying a “meal” (ie a bag of frozen shrimp and pasta ingredients), and engineering my hours to make sure I’d have at least 10 that day by working an extra half hour to be at 10.25. I submitted all my receipts and no one ever called me on it, but looking back I cringe when I think about what the admin people must have thought when they processed it… I was definitely taking advantage of a generous policy.

  453. Got the Rejection Email by the Time I got Home*

    I was interviewing for an internship while in college, which was probably gonna be in communications but that was still to be determined. The interviewer asked if I had any experience working in social media. I tried to say in a clearly-joking way, “Well, I’m a millennial, so yes” but it seemed like they thought that it was a serious answer. I don’t know if it was a bad delivery, the fact that I’m on the cusp of generations and they considered me Gen Z, or something else, but they didn’t seem amused, or to even register that I was making a joke.

    I tried to recover, but I think the damage was done.

  454. christmasmistakes*

    This is the cringiest story I have. My very first full-time job ever (third party collections call center, it was awful, I was desperate), which I had been in for two months at the time, was having an ugly sweater contest for Christmas. I was too broke to afford to buy a whole new sweater, but I did have a plain black sweater, basic sewing skills, felt, and scissors…so I decided the correct option was to cut out various Christmas shapes out of the felt and applique them onto the sweater–as I wore it–while taking and making calls. I need to stress that this was not an impromptu thing–I went to the store, purchased the felt, brought it to work the next day while wearing the sweater, and did this. My 20-year-old brain’s logic was that no clients or consumers were ever in the building (call centers!) and thus they could not see me, so what did it matter how I kept my hands busy while talking? I vividly remember my supervisor saying “are you sewing on my time clock right now??” and I, obliviously, said “yeah, why?”

  455. CattleNotPets*

    As a fresh-faced 20-something sysadmin at a small company, I was making a splash by writing IT policy documents. Think password complexity rules, personal use of company email, use of unauthorized software. That kind of thing.

    I had a few coworkers that got into the habit of leaving notes on my office chair when I was away from my desk. These notes were short, generic IT-related complaints with NO name, signature, or contact info. Imagine coming back from a bathroom break to a post-it on your chair that says “Email not working”.

    In my infinite (and immature) wisdom I decided the best solution to this minor annoyance was a new official policy. I researched how law enforcement agencies take handwriting samples, found a copy of the FBI’s official handwriting sample form, and attached it to a very formal-sounding email. I instructed every employee of the company to complete the handwriting sample form and submit them to the IT department so I could identify the owner of each unattributed note left at my desk.

    My boss, the head of HR, was not amused. The people who left the notes thought it was hilarious. They never left another un-signed note again.

  456. Ella*

    Right out of college, I joined a very small group made up of several coworkers and my immediate supervisor who were about 10 years older than me, as well as our Baby Boomer boss. We worked in academia-adjacent research so we had the eternal need to look up science articles. Boss would never just Google them, he would always email me to send him a pdf of these articles, complete with the full author list and the title/journal title. To anyone in this field, you can really just Google them in a minute or two. Our institution had access to any journal you needed, so lack of article access wasn’t an issue. He would send up to 10 emails a day requesting pdfs, which would have just been Googled, saved, and printed off in half the time. Finally he came into our small group’s shared office and started questioning me how I found everything so fast. Jokingly I said “Well it was just magic honestly. I’m a witch”. Which left us in blank, awkward science for a minute and I realized he legitimately wanted to know and glib, non-funny millennial humor was maybe not appropriate. I learned small and large lessons about appropriate office hierarchy at that job.

  457. What Angelica Said*

    This is in academia, where our boundaries are a bit… loose. I’d just returned from a trip to Amsterdam and had brought back some anatomically correct (male) licorice to share with my coworkers. We were passing the bag around and giggling like 12 year olds when the president of the college decided to stop by for a wholly unexpected visit. I got flustered and could only think to splutter “Quick, hide the penises!!!” Not words I ever imagined myself saying, much less at work.

  459. Urbanpixie*

    When I was in grad school, I was also teaching a couple classes at the community college and I was in my 20s and pretty wild at the time. I would often see my students at clubs, bars, raves, Burning Man, etc. I was at one rave and a student came up to me and my friend who was intoxicated said something to them about me being on ecstasy and I was like, nice seeing you byyyyyy, and pulled my friend away.

    If a student added me on Facebook I would accept the request. Once I had an older student (he was about my age) ask me out on Facebook after the semester ended. I turned him down but said I would try to set him up with one of my friends (he said he was having issues meeting anyone intelligent) and we had this weird awkward time where the three of us went out gambling and drinking then all came back to my apartment and he started playing guitar to us. Then, my other friend came by and announced that she was almost ready for Burning Man, she just still needed to buy water and drugs (this guy also was very anti-drug).

    I used to assign my students to do a little experiment and this one guy turned in a paper about some study he did where he had his roommate smoke weed (this was when it was still illegal in all states). In his Methods and Materials section he was like: “My roommate, a bong…” I guess he thought I’d be okay with it but I did tell him he needed to redo his paper on something legal.

    Also another time I was teaching class and I was wearing these threadbare hand-me-down pants and I reached down under the desk to get a piece of chalk and my entire pants split up the back, oh and I was wearing a thong. I don’t think anyone saw anything since I was under the desk and luckily I had a sweater with me so I kind of scooted over with my back to the wall to grab the sweater from where it was so I could tie it around my waist to cover my butt. I said “um, I just split my pants” since I figured it was apparent what was going on and this hippie girl said something like “happens to everyone, man” then I taught for the rest of class, just keeping my back to the wall.

    Oh and also I used to grade papers drunk. I was such a generous grader though anyone could pass as long as they took the tests and handed in the paper. I always got glowing student reviews. In my 30s, when I became a lot more responsible, and a much better teacher, and an actual grader, my student reviews dropped A LOT.

  460. voluptuousfire*

    Long story short, I had a small company renege on a job interview but didn’t tell me. I ended up finding out after I emailed them to confirm since they hadn’t responded and the interview was the next day. There were some crossed wires (I applied to them online and they ended up doing some sourcing on Monster and found my resume, not realizing they had spoken with me) and I got a really nasty response to my inquiry. Apparently, they thought my response showed I was not detail-oriented because I misspelled the person’s name (something like Kara but I spelled it Cara) and they “trashed my resume.” That was their actual response to me!

    Anyhoo, I responded with a really strongly worded email back, calling them out for their lack of professionalism, I was glad they rejected me, they probably are a horrible place to work for if they treat candidates this way, how do they treat their employees, etc. I didn’t get a response but if that happened now, I would have let it go and left a scathing review on Glassdoor and added the person who responded to my internal shitlist and kept an eye on them on LinkedIn. 

    The response to my email was really vitriolic, which was so odd. I work in recruitment now and I’ve been addressed by so many different names over the years by people not paying attention, it doesn’t phase me. Why get so angry over a mistake?

    1. voluptuousfire*

      I just balk at how I handled that. Just move on from the jerks! I remember being seethingly mad over it.

  461. Spooky All Year*

    I’m very late to the thread. This happened earlier this year, six months into my first job out of college. I was examining a sample of a competitor teapot to compare to ours, and one of the service techs I work with a lot on samples wandered over to take a look. He inspected it and said “[Brand] Commercial, huh? That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    I’m not cishet, and present as a butch lesbian with a buzzcut. I’m also mostly in groups where gay jokes are positive and common and “that’s so gay” is a compliment. I looked up from the teapot and blurted out “Damn, that’s saying something, you’ve heard me talk.”
    He looked very uncomfortable, laughed slightly, and left for a moment before coming back and apologizing for the inappropriate remark. Not the most professional way to handle it, but I’m rather proud.

  462. Oh dear*

    When I was 16, I was a filing clerk in a law office and had a crush on one of the senior attorneys. Whenever he’d come to the file room (copiers and paper were there also), I did what was considered subtly flirtatious at my public high school: I’d squat down to “retrieve a file” from the lowest shelf so that he’d see my exposed thong. He never said anything and I still blush thinking about it.

  463. Mignonne*

    I feel like I’m a little late to this party but I have one to add here!

    One time I was doing a phone screen with an outsourced HR company for a small vets office and we were discussing difficult people and how to handle them. Somehow my mouth was faster than my brain and said something along the lines of “oh you just have to remember sometimes people are grumpy because they have to poop!”

    Poop. In a job interview. I instantly thought I blew it until the interviewer laughed her ass off. I somehow also got an in person interview and ultimately didn’t get it because it wasn’t a fit, but HR definitely loved me after that and may have made a future person to add to my network.

    Win?

  464. hopeful ex librarian*

    i had a first-round phone interview for an adult services librarian position a couple years ago. one of the questions they asked me was something like “explain a time you received feedback/constructive criticism and how you dealt with that.”

    my actual answer involved a time when i yelled at a library patron and my manager and i had a Serious Talk about how to NOT do that in the future (the patron was hard of hearing and also refused to do what i was telling him/wanted me to do it for him. it was a perfect storm and the issue my manager had was with my tone). we talked about it and all was fine after that (altho i did cry in said convo).

    obviously, this really doesn’t make me look good, so i tried to use other examples, times when i received feedback about an item i had cataloged or promotional materials i had to edit. i also explained how i would generally handle the situation (see where my boss is coming from, etc).

    they were not having it and kept asking for more in-depth answers no matter what i said (they kept saying stuff like “we can’t do anything with (example given).” honestly, usually interviewers accept a “this is what i’d do in this situation….” answer if i’m blanking (or haven’t experienced the situation myself) and we move on. i’m not sure if it’s the perfect answer, but i’ve never had anyone ask for anything more specific.

    sooooo i told the patron story. i made sure to stress what i learned from the interaction and talking with my boss (including a closer library that offers one-on-one computer help, which my library does not have the staff for).

    i did not make it to the second round.

    and that interview, to date, is my worst one. i was really, really nervous, and that question (and the interviewers not accepting anything i said) did not help. looking back, i should have better prepped for an answer like that, and def not given the answer i ultimately did give. i still cringe thinking about it.

  465. My husband is a cop with guns and irony*

    The job before the last job I had before this one. Dear Reader, I was well into my 40s. And ripe with that wonderful ‘I really don’t give a [booty] what anyone thinks of me’ attitude some of us get as our fertility declined. Fair trade! But. I am and have always been a tax-and-spend liberal, skeptical about modern interpretations of the 2nd amendment, 1st amendment (corporations are people, man!). My Uber boss, a named partner at the small firm I paralegal-ed for, was/is a self-described libertarian with lotso guns. I was much more vocal (and certain) then that there is no such thing as a libertarian. I had no guns. He liked me because at least I was thoughtful about my passionate opinions, and we had lots of really good conversations.
    Until the day I shared my can’t-get-to-sleep-so-plot-your-response-to-life-threatening-implausable-scenarios fantasy of repelling a midnight street attacker by slashing at his neck with backward motions with a small Swiss army knife blade as he had his arm around my neck from behind and a gun to my head (I’m not describing this right – it worked in my lucid dream!). So, right. Normal conversation. We haven’t really discussed that most women have fight back scenarios, but I figure, he’s old enough, has daughters etc. and might get that is a thing.
    Where I lost him (and probably my job – things got hard after) was telling him the END of the story, where I’m beset by the press who want to hear from the middle aged woman who fought off and injured an armed assailant, and I say, on camera, with an icy demeanor, “Guns are for pussies”. I don’t know why I said it. I could see on his face I’d crossed a line an employee-woman-middle-aged-freakin-LIBERAL should not cross. With a named partner in his 60s who was always polite and thoughtful in his words.
    I was approached by a recruiter shortly after this and fled. I’m still embarrassed, and I often wonder how he’s adapted to all the changes we’ve seen since 2015.

  466. spaceinyerface*

    I used to smoke cigarettes and would often smoke in my car with the window rolled down on my breaks. Oh but what if it was cold or raining, you ask? Why then I would simply smoke WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED UP, just leaving the tiniest little crack for ventilation.

    In my (limited) defense, I grew up with a parent who smoked in the house so I couldn’t ever smell cigarette smoke, even before I started smoking myself. I look back on it now and am so embarrassed to think of how badly I must have reeked- I can’t believe no one ever said anything to me about it.

  467. Leslie*

    I went to work for a non profit, remotely,in 2017. I went all the way to DC to be trained. When I arrived to the three day training I realized that I was not right for this job. In fact, nobody from my area of the country, who was interviewed and was flown in, was right for the job. As we trained, the woman who interviewed and hired us, kept dropping bombs, in the form of our responsibilities once we returned home. I finished training and went home, a very rural area. Miss Interviewer, now my boss, kept tabs on me with weekly phone calls, check ins…she would give suggestions on how to meet the job responsibilities. I finally told her…it’s not going to happen out where I live…it’s impossible. She told me to PRETEND I WAS IN PHOENIX, AZ.

    I chuckle now when I think of it. My sister said at the time “wow, can we all just pretend we are in Hawaii all the time?”

  468. Vio*

    I printed out a “WARNING: Contains nuts” sign and put it on our staffroom door. my co-workers did find it funny but we had to take it down.

    When my depression was really bad but hadn’t yet been diagnosed I was trying to jobsearch and somehow got an interview at a cafe. They asked what I knew about the (international chain) company and soon realised I knew very little. At the time I didn’t even know they were international and when asked how many cafes/shops they had in the UK I guessed something like 20. It turned out to be several hundred. The interviewer made a big speech about how I was not going to get this job and really should make sure to research in future applications and work on confidence and other things (I forget all the details, it was probably a long list). I left feeling rather confused about why all the criticism didn’t hurt when it really should have. That realisation eventually led to a diagnosis of depression. By the time I was well enough to job search again I was able to learn from the experience.

    1. Luna*

      I realized how bad nightshift was messing with my physical and mental health, when I was handed the paper telling me I was being let go that I didn’t even end up getting teary-eyed, despite having been previously unemployed for a long time. I was just that dead inside.

      Though I will say I don’t quite understand why employees, or potential hires, have to know much about the history of a place. Like, a tour guide of a historic site, I can understand; you need to know the history to do a guide well. But if it’s the history of how the place came to be… does it really matter? Especially if the history is not important t anyone but likely the owners of the company, and isn’t even part of your job duties to talk about?

  469. Dani*

    I was sitting down at a formal dinner and my boss came over to talk to me. She bent down and put a hand on my shoulder and my brain at age 19 processed this as attempting a hug. She was not. I hugged my boss and I will never stop cringing about it.

  470. Somebody Call A Lawyer*

    Ohh, have I been waiting for a time to exorcise these demons.

    1. At an office event, in an absolutely misguided attempt to be chatty, I pointed at a colleague — a poor, much younger man about whom I had gone around blabbing about my runaway crush on him to other colleagues — in front of his boss and said, “Oh, I dated someone their age for years.” He was horrified and spluttered out, “Why on earth would you say that?!?” I, um, was not new to the workforce at this time.

    2. I wanted to call out sick for my retail job, so I used my roommate’s lighter foundation to make myself look pale and rimmed my eyes with red lipliner. Then I showed up behind the counter, slumping over and moaning about how I didn’t feel good.

    3. Around 1999 or so as a junior staffer, I handwrote and distributed “Sexual Harassment Bingo” cards during a sexual harassment seminar to the other junior staffers. We will are giggling about it beforehand. Someone did manage to get bingo, but didn’t yell “Bingo!” At the time, I wished I had had the wherewithal to yell it out for them. At this time, I do not.

  471. JustMe*

    In my first job, I would walk around the office in my socks. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. A few years after I left that job, I was slightly mortified when a coworker mentioned it as a “unique quirk” he remembered about me.

  472. BeenThereGotTheTShirt*

    I was a temp at a small cable company office in my mid 20s. There was a guy who worked there that thought he was pretty funny. He’d sneak up behind me while I was working and tip my chair backwards suddenly and it would make me “EEEP!” and flail. I hated it. He was newly married, but loudly said all the time that he wasn’t looking to have kids any time soon. I secretly signed him up for new parent info on tons of baby product websites. Soon, diaper coupons, formula coupons, baby lotion samples and the like began showing up at the office addressed to his attention. Not very professional way to handle the situation, but as a temp, I didn’t really have much other recourse.

  473. HippieTeacher*

    I teach in a hippie alternative school. We’re a lot more… Casual than a typical public school.

    We also do a lot of outdoor / nontraditional activities, which is how I ended up throwing out my back rockclimbing with kids (I am not athletic at all).

    And thus I once taught a middle school class lying down on my back on the ground because that was the only way I could be comfortable. Kids were on their best behavior.

  474. Reluctant Mezzo*

    Someone tried to ‘borrow’ my Betty Boop coffee cup and I made sure everyone knew it was mine and I Wanted It Back, no questions asked. I do kind of wished whoever had it had cleaned out the dead oatmeal first, but eh.

  475. Slothy*

    I worked as a contractor for a government agency in my mid-20s. We had to write weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports. They more or less rolled up into each other, but the required format was just different enough for each one (prose, bullets, prose in a specific template) that it was annoying to do. The reports went to our company and were shared with the agency. One week, I decided to write my report as a Shakespearean sonnet. I spent way too much time on it. My bosses thought it was funny and forwarded it along in its original. Somehow it also made its way to our contracting officer at the government agency. Luckily, he thought it was funny, too, but the home office people at the company that employed me told me to never do it again.

  476. Nervous Nellie*

    When I worked at a very small company (too small for FMLA), I arranged to take two weeks off (unpaid) so that I could take care of my father. Before the two weeks were up, the company emailed me to let me know that I was fired. They asked me to mail them my office keys. I didn’t mail them. I let them think that the keys were lost in the mail.

  477. BeenThereGotTheTShirt*

    I was working at a library where staff had to use a key, not a card, to open the door to get into the staff workroom area. I was carrying a large armload of books I needed to take in the back. I really should have had a cart, but I guess I thought I could get by without one. There was a guy there, he thought he was very funny (I don’t understand “pranks” I guess). I had carefully balanced the large stack of books so I could get my key, turn it in the lock, and pull the door open just a bit so I could release my key before entering. This guy happened to be right inside the workroom door while I was doing all this. He saw me struggling with the barely open doorway, and pulled the door shut in my face with a “ha, ha!”

    I temporarily forgot that I was standing in the public area of the library and loudly exclaimed at him through the door, “DON’T BE A D*CK!” Fortunately for me, there weren’t many people there as it was after the storytime rush and before the after school rush. I didn’t get in trouble, but I disliked that guy until he got fired.

  478. Butterfly Counter*

    I’m a lecturer in a university. Last semester, I taught an online graduate class and had one problem student. She did not turn in anything on time all semester, most of which were discussion boards where there should be some back and forth between students. She often would just post several weeks later and expect full credit. She always had excuses that I believed for the lateness (death in the family, taking care of a family member with Covid, working other jobs that suddenly had overtime, etc.), but besides not turning in anything on time, she also wasn’t equipped to be a graduate student. We are a research-heavy university and she was confused about what a peer-reviewed journal was. I think she could have figured it out, but there was just so much going on in her life she didn’t have time. She also was terrible at the internet and this was an online class.

    I warned her that while I could be flexible with some of the missed work, she was incredibly behind and that she should seriously consider dropping the course so that she didn’t have an F ruining her GPA. She refused, stating she would get an A in my course, which by this point was impossible. And she took great offense to me suggesting she drop the course, especially since she would have to pay to take it again. I worked with her as much as I could and asked coworkers for advice, but everyone knew that this was just going to be a problem.

    Toward the end of the semester, she said she caught pneumonia. I worked with our staff to pave the way to a medical withdrawal for her, which would mean a FULL refund of her tuition for the class. I let her know that she really needed to do this because she was about to fail my class.

    She refused, still offended that I suggested that she should drop and she assured me that she would finish the class strong.

    My unprofessionalism: when I got the email from her saying that she was not going to take a medical withdrawal, I stormed into my chair’s office and started ranting about this student and how she was going to fail my class because she wouldn’t listen to me. My voice was very loud and I believe I pulled at my hair to show how crazy she was making me and I pantomimed shaking sense into her. All the time, another faculty was there in the office watching me come unglued.

    My problem student finished out the semester just as I expected: turning in late, bad work and failing my class.

    But in nicer news, the professor that witnessed me losing my mind in front of my chair has been super friendly to me ever since.

  479. CJ*

    in my first job after study i had a FB account and there was a game i played that required collecting items every hour (the more you collected without missing any the better the reward) so I’d leave FB logged in on my work comp and leave what i was doing in the lab every hour to click the items. Fortunately my supervisor was very kind when pointing out how that looked but i cringe about it now

  480. SixTigers*

    I was afflicted with one of the worst managers in the world. A small example: She would ask me to change something in the reports I created, and then, when the first changed report landed on her desk, she would SIGH, come over to my desk, and with ostentatious patience ask me WHY I had done such-a-thing in the report — which was what she’d told me to do three days before.

    She also insisted that I sit in her cubicle while she worked, because she “might want to ask me something.” And there I’d sit while my own work piled up and she took her own sweet time leafing through the report folders, and every time I tried to get up, saying, “I’ll let you get on with that, then, and — ” she’d say, “Oh, no, I might need you. Sit back down.”

    My ‘favorite’ part was when she’d ask me questions that required long involved answers, and not listen. I knew she didn’t listen because I’d insert test remarks like, “then the information goes around the mulberry bush three times and ends up in the XYZ department,” and, “then the report swims the English channel and ends up in a black hole, where it’s posted to the accounting ledger.”

    She NEVER caught any of it, ever. And I daresay it was grossly unprofessional but I don’t regret a moment of it.

  481. Hapax Legomenon*

    Back when I was youngish and still adventurous, a friend offered to help me move overseas from the US. I decided to pay her a visit and see if life in another country was for me. Originally I was supposed to visit for two weeks, come back and think about it, and if I decided I wanted to stay I would make the appropriate arrangements. Well, I got there and decided I didn’t want to come back at all, so a week into my vacation I emailed my boss and said I wasn’t coming back because I was moving to Germany. My mom had to return my work equipment for me. Later I learned that the entire company thought I had faked a move to another country to avoid a coworker I’d dated for a few months.

  483. Gracely*

    I got an advance digital copy of the final Harry Potter book on the Tuesday afternoon before it was released, and I stayed up literally all night reading it (like until 6am). Emailed in sick shortly after finishing it (because there was no way I’d be functional on no sleep, and I didn’t want to give up a vacation day).

    Thing is, I worked for a library at the time, and my boss probably would’ve totally let it slide or even counted it as work because *of course* you read the entire last HP book immediately if you get it days before almost anyone else. But I wasn’t allowed to share it, so I also didn’t want to have to tell my boss he couldn’t have access to it.

  484. Morgan Hazelwood*

    I had (have? not sure if he’s still here, he switched to a different office in a different state) who literally had a pillow in his cube. His workload was light as he was getting spun up on projects, but it was NOT a good look for an underperforming recent grad. I mean, he would rest his chin on it while reading documents on the computer, too, but…

  485. gltonwry*

    I set my group rolling screen-saver as “You don’t really blow. That’s just an expression.”
    I was young and working in TV:) Most people thought it was hilarious.

  486. What the What*

    Several years ago my Significant Other hired an acquaintance fresh out of college. The new hire had some industry experience based on co-ops, etc. They seemed a little green with professional norms but overall seemed like they’d be coachable and could be a valuable asset to the organization. Imagine our surprise/horror (WTAF) when the new hire asked my SO if they could HIDE UNDER MY SO’S DESK AS THEIR SAFE SPACE. As you can imagine that request was shot down. This was one of many similar issues and my SO’s managerial skills were really tested. The new hire built a lot of industry-specific skills but all the drama/neediness negated any value they brought to the organization. Thankfully they moved on.

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