Worst or craziest co-worker/employee stories?
I'll go first. Although I have many, this is one of the most recent. I work as a night lead and am over about 15 kids. All under 18 years old. (YAY ME) most of them are good hard workers who don't cause issues and listen. HOWEVER. This last summer there was a group of 4 boys that were all best friends to some degree. Every single task i would assign them "Why do we have to do this? This is stupid" etc etc. Then while I was walking around with everyone they would openly and loudly make fun of me and their fellow employees. Whatever their just teenagers, they aren't hurting anyone so its fine.
Well this continued for a week. Every single day. I'd catch them on their phones not working, then id catch them separated with each other doing other task, or making fun of other people. My passive comments to get back to work just never worked so I pulled all 4 of them aside and got after them. Talking about being respectful and treating this like a job and not an after school activity and that I was genuinely sick and tired of their attitude.
That worked for about 2 days before everything went back to the way it was. I tried to separate them, that just turned into them finding me and questioning every decision I've ever made as their manager, talking trash on me to all their co-workers. Just on and on and on.
I took a week vacation to be with family and the stories I heard when I came back... ugh. Running down the hall at full speed pushing each other in spinny chairs, highest levels of disrespect to team leads, throwing toddler level fits when told not to do whatever they want. I came back, yelled at them again and I felt like it was slowly going insane.
We were stripping the wax and then rewaxing the cafeteria when I received a text from the Color Guard coach regarding sweepers "Car Surfing" in the school's parking lot. After some investigation, I learned that the 4 boys were involved. So I called one of them and asked about the incident and to be honest. He lied. When I pressed him to be honest, he said one of the other boys was the one car surfing. I legit ran out of the building and headed towards them. While I was walking over, I received another text from the Color Guard coach mentioning that there were 2 sweepers on the car. I then confronted the 4 boys (one being a team lead) and again asked them to be honest with me. They again lied 3 more times before the first boy sheepishly responded that there was another one of them on top of the car as well. I told them to gather their things and to leave the school immediately.
I emailed Admin and the Facilities manager (my boss) and then let the boys go.
So yeah. That's been some of the worse as of late.
Posted Oct 10, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC