Ask a Manager

Let’s discuss animals at work! We heard last week about someone who accidentally went to work with a bird on her head, and we’ve heard in the past about someone who couldn’t get to work because of aggressive nesting geese, we’ve fielded some drama about bears, and we’ve of course had myriad stories about dogs at work (peeing, barking, rampaging, attacking, being ridden, and exacting revenge).

So: What run-in’s have you had with animals at work? Please share in the comment section.

Last week we talked about people who found themselves in a hole and just kept digging. Here are 15 of the funniest stories you shared.

1. The lunch

Early in my career I was interviewing for a position after having just left a bad company (I had to play games to get my paycheck, and then they bounced said check and got mad at me for mentioning it, and I wasn’t allowed to take lunch ever). When talking to the interviewer, she asked me something about what I was looking for in a company and I said, “At my last job, I wasn’t allowed to take lunch, so really, just lunch.” I meant it as a joke, but the interviewer didn’t get my sense of humor and just calmly assured me I’d get to take lunch. I could have just let it go, but I didn’t. I constantly kept bringing up that I wanted lunch as if all of a sudden she would understand that I was being funny – she did not. She even brought me over to the kitchen area to show me that this was where lunches happened and that there was no ban on lunching.

I did not get that job. I cringe every time I think about it. I have gotten to have lunch at all my jobs since though.

2. The bluff

In my very early 20s, I applied for a job which involved looking after a website, mainly front end work – creating content, uploading it, and doing some light editing, which was totally in my comfort zone. I realized I may have been out of my depth when the interview confirmation two days before reminded me to bring screenshots of my website with me (this was not mentioned before). Rather than accept that this job was possibly expecting more tech knowledge than I could provide, I panicked and flung together a WordPress in about an hour.

I arrived, did a committed if weak presentation on the four blog pages I had cobbled together, and then the questions began. it swiftly became apparent they were looking for a combination web developer, filmmaker, editor, and communications officer. Rather than acknowledge this and leave gracefully, I simply lied. Professional video editing software which wasn’t mentioned in the job description? Well, I’ve seen someone using it and had a 90-minute tutorial on it one time so sure, I would say I am very confident and experienced with it please don’t ask follow-up questions (they asked follow-up questions). Have I worked with international students? Yeah, loads! (in the sense that there was an Italian person in one of my undergraduate presentation groups.) I distinctly remember getting confrontational with one of the interviewers who challenged one of my mostly fictional answers. I kept seeing outs and just refusing to take them. I don’t why; by this point I didnt even want the job, I was just gripped by a mad desire to “win.”

The interview ended quickly and I didn’t get the job, but I do feel a little better that they re-advertised the post with a much amended job description.

3. The bluff, part 2

Two jobs ago, I somehow missed a very important email. I said I didn’t get it, but when I went back and double checked, I HAD gotten it, I just overlooked it. But I didn’t admit that, and kept saying I didn’t get it.

So my boss said, “If you didn’t get the email, maybe you should contact IT, because we don’t want a widespread issue.”

Rather than saying, “Oh look! I found it!” I went ahead and reported the issue to IT.

They worked on figuring out the issue, and I said nothing. They had me send and receive emails to others and all seemed fine so they didn’t know the issue and it kept getting escalated. I said nothing.

Finally one of the techs decided to check my inbox (I guess they gave me the benefit of the doubt, or else they could have done that first, I suppose) and found the email. Also they pointed out it was clearly marked that it had been read.

I pled complete innocence and denied that I had ever seen it before.

My boss never said anything but I’m sure she must have known I was just elaborately refusing to take responsibility.

Ugh. I still cringe.

4. The novel

My very first job interview was for a fast food restaurant in a mall. The manager interviewed me at a table in the food court, which, combined with my inexperience, must have made the situation feel more casual than it was, because at one point he asked what I did in my spare time and I launched into a longwinded description of a novel idea that I was brainstorming at the time. He tried to move on to other questions, but I’d assumed that the hobby question meant we’d proceeded from the interview into small talk and really wanted to talk more about my novel, so I kept going.

I didn’t get the job, and only ever wrote like one scene of that novel.

5. The driver

Many years ago, a coworker and I were driving to a somewhat remote construction site. We’d both been there before and he was driving. About halfway there I realized he’d just missed a turn and let him know, suggesting we turn around.

“No. I don’t turn around.”

“…excuse me?”

“I don’t turn around! We’ll get there this way!”

The big problem was the turn he missed was over a bridge, we were now on the wrong side of a river. Since we had to wait for another bridge, we got there over an hour late and he peeled into the parking lot at 30 mph, which was a big deal because it was a construction site with an incredibly strict speed limit of 15 mph. The project manager who we were meeting had been in the parking lot waiting for us and saw us arrive in a cloud of dust. He was kicked off the project.

6. The unicorn

For years, I worked in a landmark building in a major American city with very strict security protocols. We all had a badge with our photo and name on it that was verified by security every time we entered the building.

One Halloween, one of my colleagues came to work dressed up as a unicorn. He walked into the building with a full-on unicorn mask that completely covered not just his face, but his entire head. Security stopped him in the lobby and told him he needed to take the mask off before he went any further. My colleague refused to remove the mask, and instead showed security his badge with his name and photo. Security said, “That’s not enough. You need to remove the mask so that we can be sure that you are the same person in the photo.” My colleague continued to refuse.

This went on … for a while. Eventually building security called our office to explain the situation and asked for our help in resolving it. But it was no use. My colleague refused to remove his mask and refused to leave the building. At one point, he suggested taking a new security photo with the mask on so that his physical presence would match his security badge.

He never made it up to the office, not just on that day, but any day thereafter. He was fired for being a dick to the building security staff and showing terrible judgement for a simple request. He had always been a little weird, but I never expected him to die on the hill of wearing a unicorn mask into the building.

7. The oversharing

In college I applied for a part-time job at a slightly higher-end retail shop. The store manager interviewed me. She asked about my goals and for some reason I was honest about not wanting to work in retail forever. (I barely avoided using the word stuck!) It was like I had lost control of my body and mouth but my brain was still in there trying and failing to slam on the brakes. She politely asked for clarification and I stomped on the accelerator and said that I had an exciting career in front of me using my degree, and that I didn’t want to “just” do retail. She was gracious about my poorly hidden (and long since corrected) judgment of retail careers.

Somehow I was offered the job, but I was so embarrassed I made up a fake internship and declined the offer. I ended up getting a way worse part-time job and never shopping at that store again.

8. The “professional”

I had a new hire who didn’t make it to his third week. The role was entry-level office job — we’d show you the practices of the industry, but candidates had to come in with a familiarity with the MS Office Suite. This requirement is stated in the job posting and in the interviews, but it’s an basic requirement in my industry. This is important.

My new hire, let’s call him Fergus, is struggling by the end of his first week. He can’t complete the basic training tasks. Finally I assign him the most basic task I can think of — update data in a few PowerPoint slides with pre-made charts. This should have taken five minutes. After an hour, I go check on him. I am stunned — he is typing in updates into data labels, not editing the actual data, and he’s confused why the chart isn’t updating. He’s been doing this for an hour and never sought assistance.

I regain my composure before he notices and calmly ask him how much experience he has with PowerPoint. He admits that he’s never used it before. I ask why it was listed on his resume if he’d never used it (yes, it had been listed on his resume), and he says, “I knew I could figure it out” (spoiler alert: he could not). I explain that this is a basic requirement for the job. I tell him that I can do an intensive remedial course for him and that he is required to be in the office on Friday for the training (it’s a hybrid role; everyone is local, but wfh is offered at manager discretion).

He decides not to come into the office on Friday because he’s “too stressed out” and wants to work from home. When I call him, I get a full rant about how my expectations are “too high” and he is a “professional who knows what to do” and who am I to be “policing his work and giving him orders and assignments.” Y’all, I’m his manager and my job is to give assignments.

I immediately relay this conversation to my director, who goes to HR to talk about the best way to terminate this guy. No need — within an hour, he sends a long email to the director and HR complaining about how self-righteous and bossy I am, and how he simply can’t work under these conditions. He complains that I provided inadequate training because I expected him to know common Powerpoint functions without showing him. He proposes that he no longer have a manager and that I put together a six-month training program to teach him how to use Powerpoint.

My director fired him on the spot.

9. The software

I used to work for a nonprofit where cutting corners was very typical. We used a terrible proprietary software that our CEO’s kid made in coding class in high school. Our tech guy, Mark, was basically responsible for keeping it functioning by running out new patches and recoding it whenever it crashed. The guy’s life was hell but he did the best he could.

We got a new staff member, “John,” and he really hated the software and assumed most of the issues were Mark’s fault. Mark was in an office on the other side of campus so he never met Mark in person.

We had a vendor coming in to look at our tech. John mistook Mark for the vendor and gave him a full tour of the software, calling it dog crap and saying that he spent most of his day “wanting to punch Mark in the face” and that Mark was a “F*cking idiot.” Mark just smiled the whole time, despite most of us trying to interrupt John.

Just then, the vendor comes in and goes, “Hey, Mark!” I’ve never seen someone wilt the way John did.

10. The battle of wills

I’ve got kind of a double-digger story, because there are two people determined to get their way at any cost: we announced a managers meeting to roll out a new program that is being implemented. Nothing super difficult, but our owner, Brenda, wanted to have all the managers together to discuss it. One manager, Steve, hated everything about the idea. He didn’t want to go to a meeting, he didn’t want to learn a new system, and he would just continue managing his area the same way he had been, thank you very much. I empathized but said it was mandatory. He said he refused, and nothing would change his mind. I went to Brenda with his concerns and she said if he did not go to the meeting and start using this method, she would consider that to be his notice that he no longer wanted to be a manager and his title and pay would reflect that choice. He begrudgingly agreed to go.

The meeting was being held off-site at a very high-end restaurant with meeting space. We had been very clear about the dress code, but Steve showed up to the meeting in ratty jeans and a hoodie, with the hood up. He looked so bad that a staff member of the restaurant literally thought he was a prowler. I suggested we just send him home then, but at that point I think it became a matter of principle for Brenda, who said he was going to stay and complete the training no matter what. He did stay for the day, but was completely obnoxious. Some of his tactics:

– He refused to watch videos – making a point to deliberately look away from the A/V equipment if a video was playing. When Brenda called him out on it, he faced the TV but covered his eyes.
– Everyone was emailed a handout that they were supposed to complete over the course of the meeting with their division goals and other things. They were supposed to complete it and email it to Brenda, who shared it with the group via the A/V setup. She opens Steve’s handout without looking at it first, and there on the enormous screen was his form, where he filled in every single open field with “This is stupid and a waste of my valuable time.”
– In a brainstorming session, he would make outlandish suggestions like “go to space and sell to aliens” or “discover a previously unknown species of underground earth dwellers and use them as cheap labor”, and when our boss called him on it he would very sanctimoniously say, “Remember, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, Brenda.” This was hilarious, but not helpful.
– He would derail discussion by belaboring every single point. Almost anything anyone said, he would pick it to pieces. I was trying to keep things moving by saying “we’ll come back to that later, Steve” or “we’re not getting quite that granular right now, Steve” or “if you have questions, write them down and we’ll come back to them,” but it was happening so much that I was exhausted and resentful.
Everyone was irritable and nothing was getting accomplished and everything was taking forever. The entire meeting just turned into a strange battle of wills between Brenda and Steve. And yes, it was ridiculous, and yes, multiple people tried to speak up about it and nothing changed, and no, it was not reasonable, but that is just how some dysfunctional workplaces are, and all you can do it just deal with it. Or leave – which was what Steve chose to do. He quit the next day, and enough time has passed that the story is kind of funny now. And every now and then someone will very deliberately use “go to space and sell to aliens” or some other little bon mot from that meeting. That is Steve’s legacy.

11. The ground beef

My team once found some signs that a product my company made could struggle to work well on very fatty foods. At a meeting to discuss this, the product’s lead designer (who was constantly bragging about what a perfect product he’d designed) kept denying it could be a problem with the product. Page after page of data supporting our claim and he just kept making up less and less plausible explanations: we mislabeled our samples, we didn’t do the testing correctly, we were trying to make him look bad. Finally he claimed, “Well, I can PROVE it works with high-fat foods because we tested it with 50% fat ground beef!”

If you pay any attention to food regulations, in most states (including ours) that’s well above the fat percentage you can sell in ground beef. We called him out on it and he said that he had got a special deal from a small local butcher (note: still not legal) and that HE knew how to talk people into doing what he wanted, and he wouldn’t tell us where he bought it because it was a secret. That’s right, he made up an imaginary butcher who sold him imaginary beef.

We eventually came up with a solution for the issue, which was obviously caused by fatty foods. He’s no longer with the company but for a long time we’d joke about, “Oh, I can get that from my butcher. You wouldn’t have met him, he goes to a different school, but he really exists.”

12. The mistake

My coworker was fired from a very-hard-to-get-fired-from job because he just could not admit he was wrong. Call him Wakeen.

Wakeen did a slightly dodgy thing. I’m going to have to change the situation a bit for anonymity but let’s say he submitted some work expenses that were in violation of the expense policy. Not a crime, but objectively something he shouldn’t have done or at least should have checked up on. Someone noticed and called him on it.

At this point Wakeen could have said “oops, sorry, I misunderstood the policy/mixed up my receipts” and no one would have thought twice about it. Instead, he claimed that someone could have broken into his computer and submitted those expenses under his name. He attempted to get the IT department to wipe the logs so no one could check. I don’t think he went as far as blaming a specific person, but he did try to claim that it could have been any of a number of people that he worked with, and they couldn’t prove it was he himself who submitted those expenses.

As is often the case, the cover-up was much worse than the crime. The fact that he was trying to get other people to alter logs, and also throwing his colleagues under the bus, meant the whole situation spiralled up the hierarchy and eventually he was fired.

To reinforce the “I am never wrong” attitude, he asked at least one of his now-ex colleagues for a reference.

13. The refusal

During Covid, my company cut our pay and hours to 75% across the board. My area of work wasn’t impacted by Covid, and it was during our busy season, so I ended up working up to 65 hours while only getting paid for 30 to meet client deadlines. I was pissed, and decided my act of resistance was to refuse to sign the letter acknowledging my pay was cut.

The deadline passed, I ignored a few reminder emails and then HR began reaching out. Unfortunately, the way they reached out was to just slack message me “Hi MyName” and not provide any context. This is still my biggest work pet peeve, so I dug in even more and decided I wouldn’t answer until they sent me a message saying what they wanted. They never did and just messaged me “Hi MyName” every day for at least a month, and I ignored every single one.

Finally, after six weeks, I got an “action required” email from HR, cc’ing my boss and our regional manager from HR, saying that I needed to sign ASAP or else. By that point, said boss and regional manager had gotten me moved back to full pay, so I didn’t even have anything to be mad about anymore. Fortunately, they were both entertained by my antics, and also told me to cut the crap and sign it, which I did finally.

14. The betrayal

A while back, my husband received a message on LinkedIn from someone he went to law school with, “Draco.” The message was calling for everyone he was vaguely connected with to boycott the law firm he was currently working for because they were sneaky, underhanded, untrustworthy, and betrayed him. Naturally we went to his profile to see what was going on and he had made several long posts. To sum up, Draco had gotten engaged to a fellow law student while they were at school. After they both graduated, they got received jobs at her father’s law firm. Within the first six months, he got in trouble for trying to throw his weight around (“do you know who my father-in-law is”) and got shut down. Then Draco went to his father-in-law-to-be who, instead of protecting him, “betrayed” him and after he “stood up for himself” fired him. So he sent around the LinkedIn message telling people to boycott the place.

Draco made a post a few days later claiming he went to his fiance and told her they had to make a stand. She needed to quit her job at the firm and go no-contact with her father until he apologized and gave Draco a job again. She refused, which showed she was just as untrustworthy as her father. Over the next two weeks, Draco made several long rambling posts about how you can’t trust anyone, he wasn’t going to take it or be silenced, and bashing people for not helping him review bomb his former job on Glassdoor and Yahoo despite the messages he was sending people. Again, all of this was on his professional linkedin profile.

Draco’s last post was that he had flown back to his hometown and was going to live with his father since his fiance broke things off with him (also a betrayal) and the apartment was in her name. Someone, presumably his father, then deleted all the posts and closed his LinkedIn profile.

15. The cover-up

I worked on a team of four, where I was the techy gal on the team, whereas others, especially Fergus … just … couldn’t. Since he was also the most senior, he was constantly frustrated and angry when the tech stuff didn’t go his way and left him looking like a moron.

Anyway, one day he claimed that some information was wrong in a system. This system was cloud-based. I knew how to access the source of this information and also how to access all activity that occurred — along with usernames. I told him I would look into it for him, and found that the information was actually correct. I said, “Fergus, it looks to me like there are 10 llamas there, just like there is supposed to be. Could you have looked at the wrong column?”

NO. He WAS NOT looking at the wrong column, he claimed. IT WAS WRONG!

Okay, so I went in to look at the history, and in between the time when I said, “Okay, all looks good” and his claiming that he was absolutely right in the first place, he had gone in and made a change to make it look like he was right all the time! However, he didn’t realize that this history button existed and that he could be found out.

So I said, “Hmm, it looks like you made this change a minute ago. It shows your change at 9:32am, with your username.”

He insisted he did no such thing.

I was going to shrug it off and just correct the problem, but he then started to really double down on his being right and his NOT MAKING THE CHANGE.

The interaction ended with him saying that my internet was different from his internet.