the escape room, the haunted house, and other times Halloween at work went wrong (or right)

by Alison Green on October 31, 2024

Happy Halloween! Here are some of my favorite stories about Halloween at work that you shared earlier this week that didn’t make it into my column for Slate on Monday.

1. The escape room

At Old Job, the position that I and the majority of the department held was rather soul sucking. The supervisors all banded together to create a Halloween themed party throughout the day that people could join when they had a free moment. They played kids’ Halloween movies on the projector in the conference room, and they created an escape room where you had to find the key to unlock the door and get out with the fastest time (was supposed to take ~10 minutes). You could play as a group or alone. I only mention these two activities because together with them and a department policy that no one could have their phones on them, they created a problem.

The supervisors in the room watching the movies became so engrossed in these films that they hadn’t watched in 10+ years that they stopped doing any work. They also entirely forgot about who was in the escape room. The person who made the room was a puzzle enthusiast and went off the deep end for the escape room. I did it with three other people, and it took us nine minutes (we all like the puzzle stuff). It was taking most people ~15-20 minutes. One person, the department problem, went in alone. Everyone forgot he was in the escape room. The supervisors were watching the movie and didn’t hear his pleas to be let out. He couldn’t message anyone to be let out either. After two hours, someone finally noticed that the timer was still running and opened the door to a totally destroyed escape room and the problem employee laying on the floor in defeat.

We weren’t allowed to have escape rooms after that.

2. The M&M’s

A company I worked for went all in for Halloween. Each department picked a theme to decorate their desks and wore costumes. There was a competition with prizes. Most of us in accounts were Type A ladies who shared a brainwave and completed each other’s sentences, etc. We decided to decorate our department like Candyland and dress up as M&M’s. The Candyland deskscape was magnificent and all of us showed up on October 31st with either a store bought M&M costume or a colourful sweatshirt with an M on it … except for our one new colleague. He showed up dressed up as Eminem. The look on our faces and his face as it dawned on all of us that we had verbally communicated all of the ideas, and he hadn’t put the candy and candyland theme together and literally thought we were all dressing up as Marshall Mathers!

So we decided for our contest presentation of the theme he would rap along to “Lose Yourself” while throwing out Candyland cards like money and we would all dance like his backup act while walking through the board game we’d built in our department. It was so amazing and we won the contest. People were laughing about it so much, and still talked about it years later.

3. The costume

My mom used to take the day off and then tell people she went dressed as the Invisible Woman.

4. The haunted house

The building my office was in had an empty office floor, and for reasons I still don’t understand one of my coworkers got permission to turn it into a haunted house for our Halloween party. I don’t think he did anything for a month but work on it. There was a reception area that was a graveyard complete with a smoke machine, then you turned into a hallway with a bunch of scarecrows, one of which was headless and “came alive” to attack people. Then the grim reaper chased you into a room with clowns screaming about haunted dolls. The final room was a butcherer shop where a large man with chainsaw menaced you.

We were a fairly stodgy engineering company. This was supposed to be something fun for people to check out during the Halloween potluck lunch break. I was the scarecrow that came alive and since I was in it I didn’t realize what a masterwork of lighting and perspective the setup was. While we preformed, I noticed people were screaming a lot, but it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized how badly we freaked our coworkers out. What I thought was a goofy and fairly obvious set up was actually so well done that no one had realized I was a person until I moved, several believed I must have dropped in from the ceiling and wasn’t part of the display they saw when the entered the hallway. The other rooms were less jump scare and more straight-up scare, but the costumes had been elaborate so no one could recognize their coworkers. Already freaked out people were suddenly faced with their senses overloaded. People in the later half of the walkthrough told me people straight up ran through it, trying to get out. Our chainsaw guy was almost punched by a few people.

We were never allowed to have a haunted house again.

5. The health insurance announcement

I first joined my current company during the pandemic, and we were all remote. So for the first company party they threw after the plague (Halloween ’22), they went all in. The venue was a medieval castle. There was plenty of food, an open bar, and a costume contest with a cash prize.

It was midnight when the winner of the contest was announced, and people were already, um, a little out of sorts. For some reason, HR chose that moment (remember, past midnight during a costume party with an open bar) to announce that our health insurance was being updated and is now completely paid for by the company, with the most extensive coverage available and no costs for the employees.

Readers, everything went wild. People cheered, toasted and celebrated like we’ve won the lottery. Someone snatched a bottle of vodka from the bar and showered us with it like a F1 winner with champagne. Another person tackled our poor HR rep (a 4’11″ woman) to the ground, and several others piled up on top of them. In a matter of seconds, everyone was lying on the floor, drenched in vodka. There were a few bruises and nosebleeds, and some costumes got torn, stained, or both.

The cherry on top: HR also decided to give us our insurance member cards at the party, after the announcement. It should go without saying that several people lost theirs, some never even got them, and the company had to re-issue most of the cards. Apparently, the cleaning crew found a bunch of damaged insurance cards at the venue the next day.

Best company party I’ve ever been to.

6. The makeup

I was in my mid-twenties when I decided to try my hand at wound make-up. Nothing terribly grisly; just a gash on my forehead and some bruising that, if you looked too closely, probably had some sparkle to it because I definitely used eye shadow. I worked for a warehouse club at the time (think Costco, Sam’s, BJ’s, etc.), but I wasn’t customer-facing really, and since I was going to be spending the day in a tiny closet of an office by myself counting cash sent over from cashiers, I didn’t think the wound make-up would be a big deal.

Except that it was apparently more convincing at first glance than I realized. The first manager to see me that morning panicked momentarily because he thought I’d been injured, and, later, a coworker saw me and blurted out, “WHO DID THAT TO YOU?!” I ended up removing everything within the first couple of hours of my shift. (And I’m glad I did! Like, I wasn’t OFTEN customer-facing in that role, but I did have to help on the floor sometimes. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.)

7. The competition

Halloween got out of control and crazy competitive. Consumer products development/sales in California. Costume contests (group and individual) with management voting and giving prizes, cubicle decorating contests, catered lunch. The group costume contest got so competitive that teams started planning months in advance (like, around Christmas, no joke) and would start fake rumors about their team’s theme to throw off the competitors. One team had a professional costume designer do theirs each year (oh the outrage!). It eventually evolved into the teams performing a skit, song, or dance in order to win. One year my team practiced a song and dance for a month after work (off-site of course… secrecy) leading up to it.

After about 10 years of escalating insanity and competitiveness the whole thing was scrapped because it had become such a distraction.

8. The pumpkin carving contest

We had a pumpkin carving contest between departments, which went off nicely enough. Except we forgot how much the office cat loved pumpkin. And I mean LOVED pumpkin. Everyone’s jack o’ lanterns had chomp marks within hours. At the end of the day, all teams were supposed to either take theirs home or put it outside in the garden to compost. One team forgot. The cat ate three-quarters of it overnight. We gave them litter box duty as penance.

9. The Entomology department

The Entomology department of a big university had a yearly costume competition where everyone dressed up as different insects. One year, an employee of the neighboring and sometimes rival Ecology department showed up with an absolutely massive homemade fly swatter.

10. The coworker costumes

For close to 15 years now, dressing up as one of your coworkers has been a Halloween tradition where I work. It actually started when someone came dressed as me the first year. A year later, I waited until I saw what a coworker was wearing that day, got a co-conspirator to bring a matching outfit, and sat down next to them. People have worn the CEO’s face printed out as a mask. Nobody’s ever gotten offended by it, it’s just a strange tradition now. I think it has more to do with the culture and the intent than anything else … our clones are in a spirit of fun and respect.

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      1. Elizabeth West*

        He has, as far as I know! He’s still on Twitter, being adorable and supporting worker rights and unions. <3

    2. e271828*

      Came here to say #8 has big Jorts energy!

      BUT my own definitely not orange cat went nuts for pumpkin this year, I think the absence of brain cells is the important cat trait here.

      1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

        I wish all cats liked pumpkin – I spent several hours trying to get my very disinterested black cat to pose with one for Halloween. After a couple of sniffs she was utterly over the whole idea and I have a lot of photos of a cat walking away.

      2. Worldwalker*

        My pumpkin-crazy cat was extremely intelligent (he understood object persistence, for instance) and also possibly the laziest cat to ever live. Hold out a treat for him and his attitude was “What, you expect me to move my head a whole inch? Just for that?

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          That reminds me of our old labrador. He probably would bother for a treat, but if his toy was two inches from his foot, he’d call you to move it to him. We used to tell him, “get it yourself” and he would give us this look of absolute horror, as if we’d told him to do something utterly impossible.

          He used also pretend he didn’t see cats because he seemed to think he was expected to chase them but that was just too much effort, so he’d turn his back and resolutely stare in the opposite direction.

          1. Quill*

            Love laboradors. Won’t move 5 inches so you don’t get kicked in the face repeatedly by the baby trying to learn to crawl. But will sprint across the house for one popcorn kernel they heard bounce out of the bowl.

    5. Literally a Cat*

      I don’t know if Jean would allow him to chomp on all pumpkins. Or she’d really encourage that.

  2. Arrietty*

    I choose to believe that numbers 1 and 4 are from the same office, in an ever-escalating cycle of terrible ideas being optimistically approved once and only once.

    5. Bob the Sourdough Starter*

      #1 is why I will never ever ever ever do an escape room.

      Hell no.

      I’d have been scream-crying in hysteria.

      2. No Lizards Allowed*

        The door has not actually been locked in every escape room I’ve ever been too–that would be a safety hazard. You were just trying to solve a series of puzzles in the fastest possible time.

    1. Mad Scientist*

      Ditto! There’s something that feels so distinctly 2022 about it. When things started opening up again and it started to feel like the pandemic was finally “over”. Lots of us acted a bit emotionally rabid in those days… This story would be hilarious any year but it feels especially relatable and poignant for 2022.

    2. Ali + Nino*

      Honestly if an employer offered me that insurance coverage I would react the same way, Halloween party or not!

  4. Jessica*

    I have never more seriously considered subscribing to slate! if these are the outtakes, the winners must have been ON FIRE. seriously, there were 10 stories better than #2 (the m&ms)?? Inconceivable.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Not necessarily! The ones in Slate were there to illustrate various points; the ones here are solely for entertainment value. (Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still subscribe to Slate!)

    2. High Score!*

      You can read 3 slate articles (I think it’s 3) before they make you subscribe to see if you like it enough to pay for it.

      1. Phony Genius*

        This week’s article was put on Slate Plus, which give no free articles. Just a couple of the opening paragraphs unless you subscribe.

    3. Bob the Sourdough Starter*

      If you can afford it, do. It’s a good community.

      (Alison, I’d love an AAM plussie badge here to support you!)

  5. Danger Cupcake*

    Re 4-

    In college I was a friend of a student co-op house. New members every year had to plan and host a (dry) Halloween party as a light hazing ritual. It was always fun, but one year was… different.

    No one was allowed inside, initially. This was in the US south where weather wasn’t an issue, but it was annoying to have to wait to be brought up in groups of four or five by a dude dressed as Captain Planet, through the upper story (the house had an external staircase for fire safety).

    At last it was my turn for Captain Planet, and when he opened the door the upper hallway was a very convincing zombie apocalypse. Members were staggering out of rooms to attack, there were strobe lights, the soundtrack was just screaming. As it rarely came up, I hadn’t mentioned my incredible phobia of zombies.

    I ended up kicking a member IN THE FACE in panic and racing to the downstairs through the internal staircase to the actual party, which was fine. Worse yet, turns out the member I kicked was the beloved baby cousin of my boyfriend at the time. He came downstairs the next morning with a black eye and a sad story about how some mysterious person KICKED HIM IN THE FACE.

    I did not fess up. I am 5’3 on a good day and no one would have believed my fight and then flight response literally projected me into the air.

    1. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      I am picturing a cartoon cat jumping straight up in the air and running in place for a moment before starting lateral movement. I love this story.

    2. pagooey*

      My small college would bus in kids from local foster and group homes, to trick or treat on campus. One year, I worked with a group that set up a (much jankier) haunted house in a dorm basement. It was very minimalist; our Wolfman was just an exceptionally hairy hippie youth who took off his shirt and crouched in a decomissioned fireplace, genially saying “Raahhrrr” at intervals. So: janky. But apparently quite scary enough for elementary kids, because one little girl shoved our Dracula in the chest with both hands and knocked him down, into the footlocker he’d been rising out of as a coffin. He got stuck, and lay there kicking like an overturned beetle as the kids ran screaming past.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        This is hilarious, and it’s a shame nobody in any of the films about Dracula thought of this!

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        Little kids will get scared at the merest suggestion of something!

        Back in the day I did a kid’s play featuring a dragon as a character. This was a tiny little black box theater where our “special effects” consisted of a piece of flash paper for a magical scroll–we clearly weren’t going to be producing any Ring Cycle Fafnir level type of thing.

        The “dragon” was, literally, a stagehand waving a board with two pencil-size flashlights attached to it around inside the cave lair at the back of the stage, while the voice was the actor with the deepest bass intoning into a microphone offstage. That was it.

        After EVERY SINGLE SHOW, at least one parent would approach us and apologetically ask that we show their child how the dragon was done and reassure them that we didn’t actually have an enormous, scaly devourer of men tucked behind the flats. The most common thing I heard was “I’ll never get them to sleep tonight if they don’t see it was made up!”

        2. Grimalkin*

          Getting away from the original prompt some, but that reminds me:
          When I was a fairly young kid, my parents got tickets for a play version of Beauty and the Beast. Fairly good seats, apparently, and somewhat expensive because of it, but they wanted to spoil me (hey, I’m an only child). And to be fair, I was hyped. Super into the idea. (Still love Beauty and the Beast today!) I was excited beforehand, and when we got there…
          …all the way until the Beast first came on stage. At which point I got scared and hid under the seat. For the rest of the play.

        4. Professional Staff*

          My prize possession at age 5 was the fake fingernail the actor who played a really scary witch gave me when I was too scared to meet her and she wanted to show me the witch wasn’t real.

    3. AnneCordelia*

      My high school church youth group was given charge of creating a haunted house for the church Halloween party, with very little adult oversight. So we decided that a baby doll hanging from a noose would be a hilarious decoration. When the adults did finally come to look, they were …Not Amused, and we were forced to take it down.

      1. Funko Pops Day*

        My childhood church in the Midwestern US had a basement section that had a thick concrete and iron vault door (we assume it was a fallout shelter at some point, but by the late/post cold war was used as storage and meeting rooms). My most traumatic haunted house experience was going to the youth group haunted house that took place in that section of the basement. For YEARS I was mildly freaked out any time I had to go into that part of the basement.

        1. SarahKay*

          For a few weeks a friend and his wife were staying in a house belonging to a recently-deceased aunt, so still fully-furnished. It was a big house with a huge basement that was full of Stuff. Old ornaments, old appliances, all sorts of things – it had a very ‘junk shop from a horror story’ feel to it.
          Included in those things was an old 1980’s rotary telephone that they assumed was merely more of the Stuff, and thus non-functional.
          Friend found out that it was NOT non-functional when he was down there one day and it rang. Friend’s wife found out about 10 seconds later when friend screamed, and practically levitated up the stairs in horror.
          I nearly fell over laughing when I heard about it, but having later seen the basement for myself, I actually have quite a bit of sympathy for friend’s scare.

        2. Tinkerbell*

          My church had something very similar! The church was built on a bit of a hill, so one whole side of the basement was a giant, basement-scented windowless concrete bunker with a door to the fellowship hall on one end and stairs up to the narthex on the other. Every year, the youth group made a “haunted house” for the littler kids to walk through and held a Halloween party in the fellowship hall with less scary activities like bobbing for apples, a beanbag toss, etc.

          The year I was finally old enough to be in the youth group, someone got the bright idea of putting a bunch of cooked macaroni on the floor of the “haunted house” so it would make weird sticky noises as you walked through it. Whoever thought of this obviously hadn’t cleared it with the janitor, as the mushed pasta stains in the narthex carpet didn’t ever really go away until they renovated that whole section of the church. We weren’t allowed to do the “haunted house” any more after that.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Is being occasionally assaulted by customers considered an unavoidable occupational hazard?

        1. Worldwalker*

          When I volunteered in a charity haunted house, decades ago, the guy who turned around and cold-cocked one of the actors left in handcuffs. “Cold hands” left in an ambulance.

          To be fair, what they had her doing was a bad idea: She kept her hands in ice water, and then put cold fingers down the neck of the last person in line as each batch went through. It was only a matter of time before she was going to spook the wrong person, someone whose response is on the “fight” end of “fight or flight,” and eventually she did.

          I didn’t have any input on this — I was just a volunteer guide, leading people through the scares.

        2. goddessoftransitory*

          Nearly so: you’d think that people voluntarily going into that setup would get “it’s scary,” and the good ones make sure that guest understand the rules and boundaries. But sometimes someone just FREAKS because they weren’t expecting whatever happened and lash out reflexively.

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            I will admit being disappointed the guides kept people from heading towards the floor one year when I had my very realistic very large polyethylene snakes in my act. Yes, yes, I understand the safety issue, but I wanted my coup, dammit! Like the year my husband was a four-armed gravedigger with an *extremely* realistic half a rubber rat (though he got hammered with a spike heel by a frightened teen holding it in her hand that time, so I suppose it was just as well).

          2. probably not a robot*

            The haunted house we used to go to in college had a little prerecorded announcement with the rules about not touching the staff, some brief discussion of flashing lights, smoke, etc., and the ominous warning “Dan WILL touch you.” “Dan” turned out to be a costumed person on stilts, wearing long, long prosthetic hands/fingers, who would briefly follow groups, sometimes leaning over walls to drape their fingers over the whole group. Dan was absolutely terrifying, but being forewarned put it into a category of scariness that I don’t feel the need to physically defend myself from, for me. I do have a fight-or-flight response that sometimes defaults unhelpfully to “fight” in confrontational scenarios, and because of that I will likely never be going to a haunted house where there’s more physical contact than Dan WILL Touch You (apparently there are some extremely hardcore local ones where a group of people will jump out and seize you and tie you up — no thank you!) but that particular case my fear just manifested itself as an obnoxious and constant patter of bad jokes.

        3. Quill*

          Not if you learn to dodge.

          I didn’t get in any trouble during my 4 year stint as things such as: a disembodied head guarding the fire escape, a satanic schoolgirl, and a living wall. We did have someone pee their pants in the strobe light room, which put an end to the strobe light room permanently.

      2. Danger Cupcake*

        Because of this exact experience I decided to not go to pro haunted houses. Even if this was a surprise haunted house about my specific phobia, I don’t WANT to kick innocent people’s faces!

  6. Forested*

    #5- To be fair, that’s how I would also act if my company announced that they were covering my insurance premiums. Shizz is EXPENSIVE.

      1. Flor*

        I suspect it’s not the US, based on the reference to a medieval castle. Places like Germany and Ireland have private health insurance but it’s very different from in the US.

        1. Chauncy Gardener*

          Oh yes it is. The company just has to want to do it! I’ve worked for several companies that do, but then again, I’m in charge of finance and HR. Bwahahaha!!

          1. Flor*

            I wish my American workplace would do this! I’m in Canada, where most employers who offer health insurance cover 100% of it, but when my employer was acquired by a US company that dropped to 75% and I’m still salty.

          2. Lizzie*

            Yup. When I first started at my job, coverage for individuals was fully covered by the company. Now they pay 90% of the premium, which is still very generous.

        2. londonedit*

          We (UK) have a basic private health insurance plan through work, which the company pays the premiums for. It basically only covers seeing specialists or having surgery or whatever – you have to be referred by your GP but then you can ‘go private’ instead of using the NHS. It costs us about £15 a month in extra National Insurance contributions because it’s a taxable benefit, but it’s not a bad deal really. There is a £100 excess for any private treatment, and it only covers emergency dental surgery rather than regular private dental treatment, but it’s useful to have it there in case you need it!

      2. Funko Pops Day*

        My (US) company has a couple of no-employee-premium options, one that’s a traditional high-deductible + HSA plan, and one that has *free primary care visits* (not just preventative, ALL visits with a PCP) plus partial coverage of other kinds of healthcare (though also a very high overall deductible). It’s AMAZING, especially with a young kid who’s at the doctor frequently, as is the way of young kids.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        Every US company I’ve worked for (that had any benefits) has fully covered the premiums for quality, low-deductible health insurance for the employee. Covering your family or getting out-of-network non-emergency coverage was extra.

        Insurance premiums went up so much this year that my current employer tried to pass some of that on to employees, but that change didn’t make it through bargaining. There’s power in a union, people!

        1. Grimalkin*

          Unions are definitely powerful and important, but I wonder if some of this is also a big company/small company difference. My employer only pays for part of our health insurance premiums (about half)… but we’re also a small law firm. Like, about a dozen people in the firm max, kind of small. Couldn’t really have a union for our specific firm alone even if we wanted to (though that doesn’t rule out industry-wide ones or the IWW of course).
          Were your employers all fairly large companies, by any chance?

        2. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Trying to find people who are *in* network is not always easy, especially in a smallish rural town where the one hospital has bought up all the practices.

    2. Love me, love my cat*

      I want to know what company this is! I want to apply there. For the insurance, and for the fun. But openings probably only happen every 30 years or so.

    4. Office Chinchilla*

      I was thinking “they’re acting like the won the lottery because they basically did!”

  7. FricketyFrack*

    We’re not having a costume contest this year and it seems like no one cares to dress up if there’s no prize. Only my office and one other small group dressed up and everyone else either didn’t bother or just wore a vaguely Halloween-themed shirt or something. I’m so bummed. Then again, the last (non-Halloween) contest we had got suuuuuper competitive and resulted in an unexpected amount of drama so maybe they figured we can’t be trusted.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      Husband has just clad himself in fake spiders and webs while wearing zombie makeup–I settled for my owl socks and earrings.

    2. allathian*

      Well, I don’t blame your employer for wanting to avoid unnecessary drama. What did you dress up as?

  8. Elizabeth West*

    I’m in the office today. I don’t think anyone here bothers with Halloween. :(

    I completely forgot to wear my ancient Hallmark Halloween pin (a tiny haunted house with a bat pull string, which, when pulled, makes a little disc with ghosts printed on it revolve at the top of the tower). I do have my WWDITS “Bat!!!” pin on my lanyard. And my Miss Minutes pin, the scariest character in the MCU!

    This morning, I saw a full-on ghost on the subway and an adorable baby on the bus wearing a pink coat with ears on the hood. We’ll see what I run into on the way home, haha.

    1. Expelliarmus*

      Same here haha! It’s also Diwali today so I’ve been mostly focused on celebrating that anyway.

      2. Arrietty*

        One of our neighbours had a great Halloween Diwali mashup of decorations on their door. The children looked surprised when I wished them happy Diwali, while giving them sweets for trick or treating.

        1. Ari Flynn*

          I happened to be taking a class in Indian dance during Diwali one year. I was delighted to find out that the intersection of Halloween and Diwali is MASSES OF CANDY.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          Ha, it’s from like, the 1970s but I saw at least one on eBay. Google “Hallmark Halloween pin haunted house”!

    3. Rainy*

      That pin sounds AMAZING.

      I’m dressed as Louise from Bob’s Burgers and I made one of the faculty with an office across the atrium from mine scream-laugh when she saw me bopping down the colonnade to the washroom like it’s a normal day.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I love the costumes the Bob’s Burgers kids come up with every year, especially Louise, who is allowed to watch movies far too old for her.

      2. Elizabeth West*

        I’m so mad that I forgot to wear it. I can only do it once a year!

        By the way, there was a cat in the hat and a skull on the bus going home. I was super glad when they got off, though; it was two teenage boys who could not stop scuffling and talked IN THE LOUDEST VOICES POSSIBLE. >_<

    4. Adds*

      I work with my husband. I remembered it was Halloween and grabbed my sparkly witch hat out of the closet and put it on. I walked out into the garage (where we work) and my husband looked at me and asked me wtf I was wearing.
      “It’s Halloween, babe.”
      “Oh. So it is.”

      Your haunted house pin sounds amazing. :)

    5. Don’t make me come over there*

      I stopped at Trader Joe’s over lunch today and the staff were almost all dressed up! No gaping wound makeup, thankfully

      1. Lost My New Band Name*

        I went to to the coffee stand drive through across the street today, and when I pulled up I was busy looking at the chalkboard to see what I wanted to order. Then I was trying to find my punch card and payment. When I finally looked up to answer her “What can I get you?” I did a double take. She was dressed like a dying bride, with blood spatter and a fake nose bleed. I cracked up laughing, and placed my order, with a “Hold the blood spatter, please!” It was kinda gross, and cool at the same time.

    6. Worldwalker*

      Years ago, at a Halloween road rallye, one couple had a baby in a homemade pumpkin costume — the kid wore the lid as a hate. It was so cute; I think they won best costume that year.

    7. Syfy Geek*

      I rocked the skulls/gothic look for the week and thought I’d go low key for Halloween. Long black skirt, black sweater, striped stockings and mid calf lace up boots. I laid on the green eye shadow and even used it as blush to be the Wicked Witch on her day off. No one got it until I started carrying a broom.

      Went to the restroom and realized the green on my cheeks neutralized my rosacea and gave me a really good normal complexion, but no green!

  9. Pandas*

    #4 reminds me, the situation was a bit different but when I was in college some of the RAs turned a community room into a haunted house. It was a freestanding building that backed up to a forest. They had groups enter from the front, and then leave through the back into the forest. The inside of the building was so amateur and unscary that it lulled us into a false sense of security, so we absolutely lost it when a guy in a mask with a real chainsaw jumped out of the bushes at us. The guys in our group took off running into the forest and it took them a few minutes to sheepishly make their way back. That was one way to make it both scary and low budget lol.

    1. Ama*

      #4 is the reason why I absolutely refuse to go in any haunted house no matter how amateur or how much I am assured that “it’s not really that scary.”

      When I was 12 I had to be taken out of the emergency exit of the haunted house that our local fire station put on (thankfully, being the fire station, they of course had an emergency exit). The whole event was aimed at children and it wasn’t even poorly lit or had any jump scares — but I am just one of those people for whom the anticipation of something *maybe* happening is the worst part. Had there been an actual jump scare in that house I’d still be mad at my parents for encouraging me to go in.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I love that one! And I don’t even care about Eminem or M&Ms in the least, I just love the play on words.

    2. Certaintroublemaker*

      It must be something about Accounts, because our Accounts people always did the best group costumes, back before we all went remote. Love this Eminem and M&Ms story so much!

    5. Blue Horizon*

      When I got to the part about Eminem walking in, I was thinking: That’s funny! You can make that work!

      …and they did! Very satisfying conclusion.

  11. Bronze Betty*

    When hubby and I were in college, he was in a band and thus working pretty much every Friday and Saturday night, so he missed nearly all of the campus parties. At one of the Halloween parties, whenever someone asked me if Jim was there, I said sure, but you might not see him. Yup, he was the Invisible Man. (This only worked once.)

  12. Baked Alaska*

    I thought nothing could top #2 and then I read #3.

    And I very much hope that ‘we were never allowed to have another haunted house/escape room again’ becomes the Iranian yogurt of AAM.

    Happy Halloween to all who celebrate!

  13. ThursdaysGeek*

    I worked at a company that had a bioassay rad lab. That means they took human urine and fecal samples and checked them for low-level radioactivity. That also means you could not gross out the people who worked in that lab.

    I remember the year the sweet older lady came dressed as “Miss Fecal”. She was dressed in brown, had the sash and crown, and had glued candy corn to her brown tights.

    3. Tammy 2*

      I just want you to know that I appreciate learning a new word today, but I 100% read that as “bioassery” the first two times.

    4. Anblick*

      I used to work at a company that tests stool samples for indicators of potential colon cancer and the one year I was there on site, in person for Halloween, I went as a Stool Sampler. I made myself a coily little poo hat, got a plastic tray, and bought a pack of those little plastic things they use to keep pizza boxes from squishing the pizza and spray painted them brown. Boom. Stool samples. I still have some sitting around in my home office.

      1. ThursdaysGeek*

        I love it! I like puns. Like when I went as the Ghost of Christmas Presents: sheet with eye holes, and little fake christmas presents pinned around the bottom.

    5. Reluctant Mezzo*

      I used to be a nurse’s aide and used to play gross out in an office against a former ER tech. We could clear that place in five minutes.

      I laughed myself sick hearing about that outfit.

    1. meow*

      I don’t think I’ve ever worked in an office without one! How can you get anything done with all the mice running around otherwise?

      1. Wilbur*

        Mousetraps and you hire someone to fill all the gaps and cracks use to come in. As someone with cat allergies, I can’t imagine working in an office that had one.

        1. meow*

          nonsense! That’s taking jobs away from hard-working cats with kittens at home to feed. And when they eat the mice, it’s eco-friendly and sustainable, not like those chemical-filled traps.

      2. Reluctant Mezzo*

        One of our factories had a problem with feral cats. They got rid of the cats…and now have to deal with the mice and rats. Oops.

    3. LunaLena*

      Cats can have all sorts of jobs these days! There’s even a train station in Japan where the station master has been a cat since 2007; the first one, Tama, passed away in 2015 but she had an apprentice (Nitama) all trained up and ready to go. Nitama is currently the station master of Kishi Station with station master-in-training Yontama.

      1. Arrietty*

        There’s a train station in Yorkshire (England) which had a station cat for many years. I think there may even be a commemorative statute now.

        1. Felix Appreciation Society*

          You mean Felix! I can’t believe I’ve seen a reference on AAM to the lovely train station kitty I used to pet on the way to work!

      2. Airy*

        My favourite part of this story is – if you know Japanese numbers, you’ll notice the gap between Nitama (Tama 2) and Yontama (Tama 4). This is not because tragedy befell Santama (Tama 3). She was sent to another station for her training and the staff there loved her so much they wouldn’t give her back.

        1. Literally a Cat*

          I just cannot get over that he’s hired for mousing, but known for shitposting these days.

      1. Spazzy Cat*

        My husband works for the government. They have several office cats in the warehouse, and mechanic shops.

    6. GammaGirl1908*

      I have a dear friend who is a veterinarian, and everywhere she’s ever worked has office cats. There is also an art supply store near me with a resident cat. I’ve heard that a lot of bodegas in New York City have resident cats. Those are three very specific types of businesses, and I’m not sure how it would work elsewhere, but that’s at least a non-zero number of office cats.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        There are a number of warehouses and similar that have working cats, who have an important job keeping down the rodent population. Not to mention the ubiquitous farm cat.

      4. Grimalkin*

        Our local hardware store had a resident cat for some years. Might still be there, might not; it’s been a while since I’ve visited. But seeing the cat always brightened up my day.

        1. anxieties, attack!*

          If it’s Francine, she’s still there! If not, I hope the other hardware store cats are doing well too <3

      5. MM*

        Bodega cats are a real thing, and it’s an eternal disappointment to me that none of my local bodegas have one.

    7. Farmers bar your doors*

      My local shelter has a program where offices can foster cats while they’re waiting to be adopted!

    8. Tired*

      More importantly in the UK there are several cats in government offices (old buildings prone to rodent issues) most notably the 17 year old Larry at number 10 Downing Street…

      And Oscar at Holmfirth Police Station is worth a follow if you like cats at work content.

    9. Not always right*

      I used to work in the office at a lumber company that had lots of kilns to dry the green lumber. We had a plethera of cats everywhere. Before firing up any of the kilns, the lumberyard workers would have to walk through the to make sure there were no cats in them. Thankfully, while I was there, no cats were trapped in any of the kilns; however, one day after leaving work, I had opened the back door on my car to throw my jacket and purse into the back seat. (It was cold that morning, but warmed up during the day). Before I closed it, a co worker started talking to me and we chatted for about 10 minutes. I then had to go pick up my husband (we only had one car at the time). We stopped for gas, and I went to get my purse. Lo and behold, one of the kittens had sneaked into the car. I brought her back the very next day. JK! We brought her home and our kids named her 8ball, because she was black with an orange triangle on the top of her head. Yeah, I know, but they were 2nd and 3rd graders. LOL

    10. Count von tshirt's phone*

      OP here. Someone dumped her in our garbage bin in a box and she just kinda stayed. Her official job was CMO (chief mouse officer) but she was also great for morale. The office was a call center / retail distributor so she wandered around the warehouse a lot, but mostly stuck around the office. We had people there from 5 am to 10 pm so she’d be alone for about 8 hours. She’s retired now. The business closed during COVID so I took her as part of my severance package

  15. Librarian*

    I love the fly swatter story.

    When I worked in a university I dressed up as Death one year. (Think Seventh Seal, with white makeup. I used the costume in college when I gave a talk on the Black Death.) One of the faculty dressed as a witch. We made a great pair.

    Now I work in a hospital. I don’t wear that costume around here.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      Hee, that reminds me of the Halloween episode of Home Movies!

      “Melissa, you shouldn’t be walking around a hospital dressed as Death!”

      1. Reluctant Mezzo*

        I saw a great toon on FB–Death is going to an old lady’s house. She greets him happily and throws him some candy.

        “Wait, I’m not actually in costume–” Holy ****, she’s giving out full size Snickers bars. “No problem, Margaret, we’re good” as he walks away.

    2. Steve for Work Purposes*

      I once won a costume contest dressed as Death & Taxes – I had a grim reaper outfit, complete with scythe, and I carried a briefcase in my other hand and wore a black lanyard with a photoshopped namebadge from the “Infernal Revenue Service” – wore it all around campus that day as well, got a lot of laughs.

      This year it snuck up on me so I threw on a Doctor Who scarf and multicoloured scarf and called it good, and brought some candy into the office for my coworkers (which was very well-received).

  17. Expelliarmus*

    #10 reminds me of how in my old high school, there was a Social Studies teacher who would always wear a polo and khakis, with a light blue polo being particularly common. Every year for Halloween, at least 10 teachers (mostly the Social Studies department) would dress up as her, and I remember group pictures (including her, of course) being taken for the yearbook most of the time.

    1. Chocoholic*

      When I first started at my current job, a group of people got together to dress as one co-worker and they encouraged everyone to participate – basically the costume would be khaki pants and a white button down shirt. I didn’t do it because I didn’t know him well and I was kind of afraid of participating in something that would be offensive to him.

      That day, 5 or 6 people dressed as him, but HE came in dressed as someone else – which was hilarious. All unbeknownst to each other. He gave the woman he was dressed as his costume, which was a long flowy skirt, and she continued to wear it as regular clothes.

    2. Silver Robin*

      We had a professor in grad school who always wore black slacks, white collared shirt, and a tie. Only the tie would vary from day to day. He taught a class we were all required to take in our first semester.

      Each year, for Halloween, we would dress up as him for the lecture that was closest to the day. There are now a series of photos somewhere in that office showing this year by year.

  19. Yes And*

    Honestly, the one that seems most ripe for going horribly wrong is #10. Especially if the office is not homogenous by race, I can see this one turning into an HR nightmare so fast.

    A little off topic, but it’s situations like this Slate article that make me think the online publishing model is broken, or at least missing out on a huge opportunity. I would gladly pay a buck or two to read this one article (especially if Alison got a piece of it), but no, I’m not going to commit to $5/month because I want to read one article. It seems like they’re leaving money on the table.

    1. Wilbur*

      Check your local library! Mine has several online resources for newspapers/blogs, including Newsbank. You can read Alison’s Slate articles on Newsbank. Libraries have tons of online resources.

    2. Aggretsuko*

      Yeah, unfortunately “micro payments” didn’t catch on. Probably doesn’t make anyone enough money.

      1. Timothy (TRiG)*

        The main problem is that the payment gateways charge a processing fee, and for a micropayment, that’s basically most of it.

    3. Bob the Sourdough Starter*

      I was waiting for the terrible punchline for #10 but it seemed to have gone well!

  20. Peregrinations*

    #9 reminds me of the time that a professor showed up to a grad student Halloween party as a pollinator, complete with a vibrator on a cord around his neck. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was a professor who was dating one of his students at the party, while also sleeping with and/or harassing other students of his also at the party. Not awkward at all!

      1. AGD*

        Professor here, and YEP. The point at which this got problematic was “showed up to a grad student Halloween party”. Faculty members with boundaries don’t do that!

  21. Ally McBeal*

    #6

    For Halloween my freshman year of college, a bunch of us (mostly theater majors and/or theater nerds) decided to go as the cast of Les Miserables. I was young Cosette, so I learned “Castle on a Cloud” and had one of my girlfriends do my face & body makeup to look like a bruised-up urchin.

    Halloween was a Sunday that year, so we went to the 5pm student Mass before heading out to dinner and parties. Most of us were in choir, and the guy I had just started seeing was the student choir director (and was not part of the group costume). Those of us in the choir who were NOT part of the group costume found my makeup so realistic that they started sidling up to me and making sure I was safe, that my proto-boyfriend hadn’t done this to me. I ended up standing behind some of my taller friends while we were singing so that the other congregants couldn’t see me and have the same reaction. Looking back, my outfit probably wasn’t dirty enough to complete the whole urchin shtick.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I think that seeing someone is injured probably bypasses the logical part of the brain and goes directly to the group-survival part (unless it is very clearly fake). It’s likely they weren’t understanding the bruising as part of a costume at all, and wouldn’t have even if it were clear you were wearing a costume.

  22. LookAtMeI'mTheManagerNow*

    Wouldn’t Without Me have been more topical?

    Well, this looks like a job for me
    So everybody, just follow me

  23. SansaStark*

    I once convinced a coworker to come to a Halloween party with me right after work. She didn’t have time to figure out a costume, so she went home with me and put on my most iconic “SansaStark” outfit (I had this polka dot shirt that I looooved and wore often), poufed her hair like mine, donned my work nametag, and headed out dressed as me. She was the hit of the party as she kept yelling about her lost phone (my 2012 signature move).

    1. MuchAdoInTheShadows*

      Not for halloween but my alma mater does a huuuuuge, multi-day, locally famous trivia/scavenger hunt/Do Weird Tasks For Points competition every year, and once we were challenged to send a representative to Contest HQ dressed as our team’s favorite Trivia Master… well, as it happened, my roommate was a Trivia Master that year. So I went up to our room and just put on a bunch of her clothes. I was not the only person who showed up dressed as Roommate (there were far more teams than trivia masters), but yeah we did win that round.

      1. Silver Robin*

        I feel we might have gone to the same university! that task was not there during my tenure, but it sounds about right for the vibe XD

  25. JustaTech*

    # 10:
    We’ve done this a few times at my work. Once was a sweet homage to a boss who wore the same thing every day: it wasn’t until his entire 8 person team was standing in a group around him that he noticed that they were all dressed up exactly like him.

    One time was dark and bitter, but still meant in a nice-to-coworkers way. We’d had a lot of people leaving for a new rival company, and our team was way, way down on people. So we decided that our group costume would be to dress up as our former coworkers who had left the company (voluntarily, not laid off). To help people figure out our theme my boss had their old ID badges printed up full-page size and we wore them around our necks. The sad thing was that was the least of the gallows humor that year.

  26. whimbrel*

    The flyswatter story at #9 appeared in my head as if it were illustrated by Gary Larson and it was DELIGHTFUL. Thank you, OP 9!

  27. Miss Muffet*

    I used to work at a children’s hospital, where Halloween is basically a national holiday. There’s a costume contest for each of the units that everyone comes to watch. It gets more competitive every year, especially as there are two units who typically switched offf years coming in first. So there’s always the pressure to one-up your performance from last year. One year we had a circus theme and had actual circus performers come in and teach us some basic moves/tricks, and then a couple of them joined us in the contest itself. Boy did we get accused of “Cheating” for including our ringers!

    2. Nightengale*

      Would you believe, I rotated through a pediatrics unit on Halloween during medical school and no one dressed up? It was a small unit with usually only a few patients, mostly babies but still. A few of the nurses wore themed scrubs or earrings but no actual costumes. I had one in my bag but was afraid to put it on if no one in charge was wearing one.

      Thankfully I ended up in a pediatric residency program which did Halloween right.

    1. Certaintroublemaker*

      I would have lying on the floor, too! Really glad everyone didn’t leave that night leaving him in there.

      1. Immediately No (Escape Room Version)*

        I am claustrophobic and probably would have kicked the door down in my panic.

    2. Nannerdoodle*

      EHS was in an entirely different section/floor of the building. There was no voice of reason/safety involved in this.

    3. Roland*

      Completely wild! Like, no emergency exit, sure, it’s probably just in a normal conference room and not a special facility for escape rooms. But just…. don’t lock the door??? I’ve run rooms with friends before and it literally never occurred to anyone to lock the door because why would you lock the door???

        1. Curious*

          isn’t having a conference room — or any room in an office other than a closet — that can’t be unlocked from the inside something of a safety hazard?

          2. fhqwhgads*

            I was waiting for part of the punchline to be that it was unlocked, and he just assumed it was locked, and could’ve left at any time.

          3. Roland*

            good point, even weirder this even existed in an office space in the first place… all kinds of weirdness here.

  29. ReallyBadPerson*

    #10 reminds me of a Halloween party my family once attended, each of us dressed as our then 10-year-old son. We imitated his clothes, then printed out pictures of him and pasted them on paper grocery bags, cutting out eye and mouth holds and wearing them on our heads.

  30. Sled dog Mama*

    My work place does a costume contest by department. The last few years we’ve had great group costumes, a bowl of M&M’s (everyone wore a solid color shirt with an M on it), Lifeguards (red shirt and a whistle), during the pandemic we did 101 Dalmatians with everyone having a puppy nose drawn on their mask.
    Earlier this week we received the annual reminder that costumes must meet dress code, not interfere with ability to perform duties, scrubs must be worn in clinical areas, etc.
    This year the costume theme was Zoo.
    At least 6 people showed up in some variation of a onesie that covers hands and face. one showed up in a full on Gorilla costume and someone is an inflatable dragon.

    1. Murray*

      My favourite workplace costume situation was when everyone was invited to dress as Waldo from “Where’s Waldo?”.

  32. The Not-An-Underpants Gnome*

    The year I dressed as a demon child for Halloween was the first time I used spirit gum, since I had horns that went on my forehead for it (a lot of my coworkers at the time had toddlers and thought my costume was HILARIOUS).

    That was also the year I discovered it was possible to spirit gum your hair to your skin. Oops.

  33. Impending Heat Dome*

    We have a meeting room nicknamed “The Pumpkin Room” because one year (pre-pandemic) we had a pumpkin-carving contest during work hours, and as a result that room reeked of raw pumpkin for *days*. So now it’s the Pumpkin Room.

    Subsequent pumpkin-carving contests asked that people do their carving at home and then bring in the finished pumpkin.

  37. Worldwalker*

    I used to have a cat who loved pumpkin. I found out when we were cleaning out our pumpkins preparatory to carving, and I left the room for a minute … came back to find the cat chowing down on the pumpkin guts. (carefully avoiding the seeds) He went after that pumpkin like most cats go after kitty treats. (which, by the way, he disdained) After that, we always saved him some. Thankfully, he never managed to actually bite the resulting jack-o-lanterns — after we found out how much he loved pumpkin, we kept them out of his reach while working on them, and they went out on the porch for display.

  38. Yasmin Kara-Hanani*

    #3 reminds me of my senior year of college when my suitemates were throwing a Halloween party I knew I wouldn’t be up to. I told people I’d be going as Carmen Sandiego every time the subject of the party came up and on the night of the party my suitemates agreed to reply with something like, “I heard she’s heading to an island nation whose nickname is the Emerald Isle” or “I’d look for her in a landlocked country in Eastern Africa” every time someone asked where I was.

    1. Jess B*

      This is so clever and funny!
      And it gave me a great idea for how to structure the clues in a treasure hunt I want to create for a friend of mine, thank you for that – and for reminding me how much I loved the Carmen Sandiego games when I was younger. I’m going to see if there’s any way to still play them, they were so much fun, and I need a hobby.

  41. Boring Halloween*

    I love reading all these stories of people going all out, American culture is something else. We had a desk decorating competition at my office yesterday (England). About 20% of people joined in. Mainly with a few cut out bats pinned to their dividing walls. It was “judged” at 3pm but I don’t know who won as it wasn’t announced. No one planned anything more than a week in advance and there were no songs or dances.
    My office is pretty boring.

  42. Dog momma*

    These are all fabulous, very good imagination & some quite artistic. Except#1. Did the problem employee have a nervous breakdown? Bc ” forgot he was in there ” seemed deliberate to me..bc he’s a problem. Did HR get involved? Does he still work there? Really want an update

  43. Sure Jan*

    Vodka isn’t carbonated so how the heck do you shower someone with it it like champagne at an after-party?

  44. TeaCoziesRUs*

    #2, you win the Internet today!! I love how y’all were able to flex and embrace the mistake… and now I’ll have Lose Yourself stuck in my head all day. I’m not mad about that, it’s my chance to flow.

  45. Claudia Jean*

    The last one reminds me of a yearly event at my college we called Bizzaro. The last night our campus bar was open of the year (I went to school in Wisconsin so we had a school sponsored bar that never carded anyone lol) everyone went and had to dress as someone else from the school. People would enlist roommates or partners to steal people’s clothes sometimes. It was always a blast!

  46. SB*

    I’m so happy for the people with free health insurance that I’m practically in tears. I would have responded the exact same way…not on purpose, but immediately injuring myself and going to the doctor :D

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