People Share The Most Evil Thing They Witnessed Their Company Do

It’s no secret that companies strive to be at the top of their game. While being financially successful is their goal, it’s also important to have a great work environment. Being able to have a string of happy associates will lead to bigger results. In order to accomplish this, a strict set of guidelines is in place to prevent any wrongdoing on the job.

While most companies abide by these rules, others will secretly break them whenever they can. It could be something as simple as denying service to select customers. It can also be working their associates to the bone with zero pay. While most employees think about filing a complaint, they fear for their job. Many higher ups can easily have someone blacklisted in their field for standing up against their behavior.

In the end, these bosses will always be caught red-handed for their unusual activity. Some of their actions could lead them behind bars for a long time. After removing the bad seed, the remaining staff will try to reclaim their great reputation in the region.

These individuals saw their companies do some of the most heinous things ever. Some of them were, unfortunately, a part of the madness against their own will.

As expected, these people managed to escape before things got worse for everyone involved. When its all said and done, their integrity was more important than a few dollar bills. Fortunately, a plethora of companies is being called out for their horrible actions.
46. She Was Giving Away Private Information About Students

“In the year before I started grad school, I took on a position (unofficially/off the books) as a local professor’s assistant. She had me grading homework for one of her classes, which I was uncomfortable with-after all, I only had a BA and I had no affiliation with the university where she taught-but she insisted that all professors hired outside graders, so it was okay.

So alright…but then she wanted me to record the grades too, and she sent me an Excel spreadsheet that included all of the students’ full names and student ID numbers. I was really uncomfortable with that and for good reason. As it turns out, it was a huge violation of FERPA, a nationally enforced policy which is meant to protect student information. (I’d never heard of it before, but now that I am pretty advanced in academia and very familiar with FERPA, I am even more appalled.) I quit immediately.” deleted
45. This Son Felt Entitled Ever After His Dad Sold The Business

“Worked at a gas station in college.

The manager was the son of the owner and basically got to come and go as he pleased. He had it pretty good. The store was open 6am-11pm. He would stroll in around 8-9am and take care of a few things. Most days, he was out the door by 1 pm at the latest.

Then his dad sold the store. He stayed on as the manager but he suddenly had new rules he was expected to follow. He had to drive around town twice a day and report the gas prices from a half dozen other stations in the area (which he never did and always forged).

He was expected to work 50 hours a week and, when new ownership found out he was barely working half as much, they made him start clocking in and out despite being a salaried employee.
Well, that lasted maybe two days and he started forging his timecard. He would come in around 8 am, leave at noon, and come back at like 6-7pm just to punch out. That lasted maybe a week and then he started asking employees to commit his timecard fraud for him. He would have someone clock him in around 6 am when the store opened, and he would call the store around 5-6pm every day and ask someone to clock him out.

Looking back on it, I’m more bothered about it now than I was at the time. I didn’t even realize I could have easily been fired for helping him commit fraud like that.” mikevanatta
44. The Job Was So Stressful A Woman Died

“I work in retail which is stressful when you’re understaffed. The store manager combined three departments to one manager and he had a heart attack in our dairy cooler. Recently, we have been assigned more work areas than a human can possibly do without the help of *****. Some people were getting an estimated 21 hours of freight in a night.

One lady died yesterday from the stress. Her ***** sugar was going crazy from the stress (she stopped taking her meals and breaks trying to get her work done) and fell into a coma. Our store is covering both accidents up.” [deleted]
43. You’re Fired For Being Sick…

“My wife’s company just revised their sick leave policy. If you call in sick 3 days in a rolling year, you are put on disciplinary action. If you call in sick 6 times in any 12-month period, you are fired.

My wife works for a hospital. One that is forcing their employees to come in and take care of immunocompromised patients while sick and contagious.” JorusC

42. They’re Covering Up A Death They’re Responsible For 

“I work for a major automobile company in India, and they do these routine tests with their automobile on a poorly maintained test track.

So one day, because of schedules or urgencies or whatever, they think it’s OK for two people to use the track at the same time….in opposite directions. So, here are these two drivers ripping their vehicles to the absolute max, unaware of the other’s presence. Inevitably there is a head-on collision and one of them dies instantly. I thought this would be all over the news but not a sight. They somehow managed to cover it up real nice. The worst thing was they asked us, the employees, to donate to the deceased’s mother because he was the only one supporting her.

I don’t know, to probably shut her up or something. It was really ***e*d up. The track was closed down after that for a couple of months. But normalcy resumed and I don’t think anyone in the company even remembers what happened. Part of the story that really disgusted me is that they had to ask for donations from US? Like what the **** man. He was on duty and died. And somehow our sympathy is exploited to shut the family up. There could have been a lot more angles to this, but from what I know it didn’t seem like something right to do.” deathkilla92
41. They Were Cutting Pay From Everyone

“I worked for a company that would always break the law when it came to pay.

They wouldn’t pay overtime, and even though you ‘got a raise every year’ that capped off at $12 an hour, ONE DOLLAR more than you would make after training. I spent months on call 24/7 without getting paid a cent for it. And not that I feel like they owe everyone a Christmas bonus or anything, but they would outright say they couldn’t afford to give one while having their meetings in a Vegas penthouse suite. The owner drove around in a Tesla and once took his wife all the way to Ireland to see a concert. And I swear one of the managers went on a vacation every month.

Meanwhile, they couldn’t get away with not offering overtime pay any more, so they decided to cut everyone’s hours to 35 a week just in case they went over a bit, so it would still never go above 40 hours a week where overtime would kick in. In the end, they fired me for a client’s mistake, admitted it but with the pathetic excuse that the client ‘wanted me gone’ (they never bothered to correct them) even though that was my last day working that account anyway, and then got bought out. No idea if it’s still run in such a disgusting way since then or not.” LazagnaAmpersand

40. Their Boss Nearly Caused A Gas Explosion

“I used to work for a small communications company that would install phone systems and networking related systems like fiber optic lines in and between buildings.

One day we had a big job in a neighboring city: install a fiber optic line between two elementary school buildings. The owner and a few guys went up early in the morning, a ditch was to be dug and I was to come up a bit later. It was a normal school day and classes were in session.
When I did arrive, I saw a ditch starting at one building and ending abruptly in the middle of the schoolyard at a hole that had just been dug out around something. Surrounding the hole was everyone from our company and some guy in a yellow vest and hard hat, all looking at something in the hole.

It turns out that the guy in the vest was the call-before-you-dig guy that had just arrived shortly before me. Apparently, my boss got impatient waiting for him to arrive and started digging the ditch without knowing areas to avoid in the schoolyard. The thing they were looking at was a yellow natural gas line that my boss had just narrowly avoided breaking open. A little deeper and it would have ended entirely differently.

There are lots of stories of disregard like this from this guy. Eventually, this guy sold his company and, last I heard, is now involved in home construction.” Blauheit
39. The Manager Lied About Their Hiring 

“When I turned 14 my first job was at McDonald’s.

A few months in and they had a hiring fair. They put up posters on the walls of the restaurant, and even posted some directly on the front of each cash register that said: ‘We’re hiring’ One day during the fair, a lady came in who I recognized from the neighborhood. She had a mental disability and I always saw her working at different places around the area. She would also come into the restaurant every now and then. Anyways, she came up to me and asked if she could speak with my manager. I said yes of course, and got my manager.

The lady told my manager that she was looking for a job, and asked if they were hiring. My m****** responded, ‘No, we aren’t hiring right now’ and she said this from behind one of the registers, with the ‘We’re hiring’ poster stuck to the front. She asked again but received the same response from my m******. She left looking very disheartened. I felt so terrible.” deleted
38. Not Bothering To Recall Vehicles

“I work for a major car company. A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.

Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one. You wouldn’t believe the number of accidents that occur.” O_Hai_Thur
37. Selling Failed Door Controllers

“A company I used to work for would sell a product that was still in development. In one case, we did not even have a prototype built at all. Just concepts.

This would not be that big of an issue, except they were RF door controllers that locked in order to keep Alzheimer’s patients safely in the assisted living home.

We would provide wireless tags for the staff to place somewhere on the resident’s clothing. When they got about 10 feet from any door, a magnetic lock engages and sends the ID of that person to the computer.

We were installing them and testing them in the field before even proof of concept between the controller boards, software and database was ever done. My job was a combination of field tech, tech support, and customer training. When I realized what we were doing, I quit and dropped a few anonymous emails to our clients.

We had some pretty bad failures. One in the midst of a blizzard in Canada.

Several in New York and New Jersey during a terrible winter. Fortunately, no one died. I used a combination of the extra relays in the keypads and a bit of bypassing the logic to fail the doors safe in a few cases. There was a manual override for the staff, as well as a fire panel connection that killed all power to the locks in case of fire. So the bypass was not a danger.

Scared the **** out of me thinking of how many residents were out there behind experimental, untested ‘protection’.” deleted

36. Forcing The Elderly To Spend More

“I don’t work there anymore (quit after two weeks), but I worked for a place that sold prescription savings plans to elderly people.

They were pure evil, our job was to try to get elderly people to cancel their insurance and switch to our plan, which was a very sh*tty plan that would end up costing them a lot more. And of course, once they switched and found out how sh*tty we were, it is very hard for an elderly person to get back on their regular insurance. I had elderly people calling me up in tears. I just couldn’t handle it. I have never wanted to set a building on fire more than when I worked there.” hoikarnage

35. Lying To Cover Up A Burn Accident

“I got second degree burns to 10-15% of my body when a coworker wasn’t using a machine properly and left me to find out his errors.

Management didn’t fire him. Management lied to upper management about the incident to protect themselves. Management also incorrectly filled out the Worksafe forms to get away with what is mentioned above. The best thing though? I can’t even sue because Australia’s workplace laws gloss over burn injuries that don’t leave you charred black.” ***************
34. This Family Was Using Christmas To Pocket Money

“The family restaurant (not my family) I used to work for had a free meal for the poor on Christmas Eve and they had Santa and gifts for kids, which sounds very nice of them, but really it was mainly just a scam.

They would put little signs on all the tables and start taking donations in November. They would accept food and toys, but they always pushed people to donate cash. They claimed it was harder for them to get the things they really needed otherwise.

The thing is, they didn’t need or use the cash for the charity dinner. All food and toys were donated and the workers were all unpaid. They scheduled their entire staff to work that day, but wouldn’t pay them (yes, that’s right, on the schedule, no pay). They never bought anything themselves. The owners pocketed all the money. I’m talking thousands of dollars.

They also went shopping in the donated gifts for presents for their grandkids, and let their kids do the same. They pretty much always had gifts left over but would get pissed if we told any customers that after the fact because they were worried people would donate less next time.

In the end, people still got fed and kids still got presents. But, when you see a family you can tell is not very well-off donate $20, $30, $50 because they think they are helping those less fortunate, and you know the cash is going straight to feeding the owners’ gambling problem, it eats at your soul a bit.” ReallySeriouslyNow

33. Creating An Unsanitary Dessert

“Worked for a catering company a few years ago and we served the 50th college reunion of a school in Boston.

It was a three-course meal and we thought we were done when we finally finished serving strawberry shortcake to each of the guests. The catering staff went on break and started devouring the leftover food from the event after we got the ‘all clear.’ Then someone comes in and reports to the manager that our extra VIP guest (the host of the reunion) was complaining that she had not been served dessert. So our manager goes into panic mode, searching for shortcake, but it was too late-the employees ate them all. He stands in the middle of the kitchen and screams ‘I DON’T CARE IF YOU HAVE TO **** IT OUT ON A PLATE, SOMEONE MAKE ME SOME ******* DESSERT.’ All the employees are frozen at this point so the manager takes a dirty martini glass from the sink, fills it with whipped cream and garnishes it with a blueberry and a mint leaf.

He rushes out of the room and serves the ‘dessert’ he just made.” fortitude52
32. He Refused To Sell A Laptop Because The Customer Didn’t Buy Warranty 

“At a previous job, I was selling a laptop and my manager asked if the customer got the warranty, I said no. He then took a box cutter and opened the box and told me to tell the customer that this was the only laptop we had left and we aren’t allowed to sell previously open/owned laptops. All because he didn’t want it to hurt our numbers. (We get bonuses for selling warranties.) I felt all dirty inside and no amount of salt baths will ever rid me of that feeling.” Frosmor
31. Hiding Someone’s Medical File For Months

“Purposefully removed and hid a military member’s 18-year medical file for a period of months, because they believed the military member was ‘faking’ illness to get out of redeployment.

This caused the military member to be unable to be referred to specialists, caused major delays and sometimes cancellations in scheduling appointments and basically kept his illness in-house. The medical record was miraculously ‘found’ sitting square on the middle of the front counter of the battalion, the day after the member had surgery to remove the brain tumor that had been making him so ill.” wimwood
30. He Made The Dangerous Decision Of Switching Up The Customer’s Orders

“I worked as the graphic designer for a tool manufacturing company a while back. (They have since closed the location I worked at.)

The tools in question were made to be used in industrial conditions to drill and refine holes in metal.

We had two grades of steel: high speed, and cobalt reinforced. The cobalt reinforced steel is used for jobs where the tool needs to hold up under extremely high duress, high speeds, or hard material. Each tool is etched with the material and size (length and diameter).

I overheard the plant manager talking on the phone to our inventory staff. Apparently, we were running low on the cobalt reinforced steel in certain common diameters, and a shipment was not expected for at least a couple of weeks from the supplier. My ***pie*ce of* *** manager told them, very matter-of-factly, that they should just etch the high-speed steel tools to say they were cobalt reinforced and ship them anyway, rather than delay the customers’ orders.

I hope to god that nobody was killed because of the catastrophic structural failure of tools that were not designed to do the job they needed them for…” JaxenGrey

29. Shutting Down Cars For Payment

“My last employer was one of those subprime auto lenders. We would put one, sometimes 2 GPS tracking devices in vehicles. One is attached to the starter, the other is hidden in the engine compartment for tracking only. If you don’t pay your bill on time and avoid our calls (which will happen 15 times a day), we would disable the vehicle, keeping it from starting whether you were in your driveway or at the grocery store.

Imagine going shopping, coming out with $200.00 in groceries, and your auto lender is holding your car hostage till you pay up.

If you think you are smart and take out the device that shuts the vehicle off, the device you don’t know about will lead us right to your car and it will be repossessed before the end of the day

Also, interest rates of 29.99% were standard.” Muchhappiernow

28. Gaining More Money From Patients

“The company I used to work for was in the healthcare industry. That company asks hospitals if they can sift through their old bad debts that they have already written off (meaning that these hospitals have already been reimbursed for these bad debts from taxpayers) and start contacting patients, trying to recover these debts for which their credits have already been hit.

These debts are settled and done, the hospitals have written them off as losses, and the patients have already had their credit wrecked.” generic__comments
27. Delivering Phones That Can’t Stop Beeping

“I work for a major fiber optic internet company. We provide internet/tv and phone. Anyone who knows the technical aspect of fiberoptic internet knows that you need something called an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) for the fiber line to direct the feed to the video, data and phone ports and also to transfer video, and an (if your internet is set up for it which it typical is) MOCA (media over coax).

The ONT requires light power and so you have a power supply unit in your house called a PSU/BBU(the BBU stands for Battery Backup Unit).

So, this is where the evil comes in. The point of the BBU is it works as a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) containing a rechargeable battery inside that keeps the phone line working for 6 hours or so in case of a power failure so you can use the phone in emergencies.

BUT, if the battery is dying or dead, it beeps…loud and every minute. It costs 50 dollars for us to send you a new battery to replace.

You don’t actually need a battery in the unit, but taking the battery out doesn’t stop the beeping, it continues to beep, switching to a ‘battery not detected’ alarm. There is a button on it that says ‘Alarm Silence’ but that stops the beeping for one hour.

Some techs are instructed to install these units in peoples bedrooms (or in some cases are forced to because they don’t have garages or have inside ONT placements with apartments with a VDSL [Very high-speed digital subscriber line] setup). It’s so f*cked up and customers get so so angry when they find out they have to pay to silence a stupid alarm.

When my brother-in-law got (insert the trademarked name of my companies service here) the first thing I did was go over and take the BBU apart and clip the wires to the alarm speaker.” JazzFan418

26. Forcing Workers To Come In Even When They Were Sick 

“I previously worked at a restaurant/coffee bar that was trying to cut back on expenses-including the discounts that it gave its employees. The discounts could not be revoked without disciplinary action, so they found creative ways to get people in trouble.

Once, a single mother was scheduled for a day she was promised off the day before and not informed or called.

When she didn’t show, her discounts were revoked and her hours cut-hours she needed to feed her child, btw.

Another time an employee tried to call in sick. She was asked to come in anyway. She continued throwing up at work. Manager told her to ‘******* up and try not to puke on a customer.’ When she couldn’t take it and went home after prolonged vomiting, her discounts and hours were slashed as well.” philosotea
25. He Was Deciding Who’ll Get Medical Treatment And Who Won’t 

“EMT here. A private EMS company I used to work at. An employee had an asthma attack as she was about to clock in.

She collapsed and lost consciousness. The medics that were at the station with her saw and started emergency care. They notified their dispatch of the situation and that they would be in route to the nearest hospital shortly. The dispatching center said they could not transport and said to call 911 and leave her outside for them to get her. They then asked if they were in route to their non-emergent routine dialysis transfer.

Another incident at the same company with an office employee at the headquarters. A girl started having substernal chest pain radiating down the left arm and shortness of breath-classic heart attack symptoms.

Employees said to get a medic and get her in the unit to start treatment, the owner comes out of his office and says she can’t go anywhere near his ambulances and to go outside and call 911. Turns out it was a heart attack.

After both of these instances, the state EMS board was notified of these events by multiple employees. The state responded that they could not do anything as the owner has the right to choose who he will and will not treat, that as he was not state-owned he had no duty to act. Ethically reprehensible? Yes. Illegal? No.

That man is evil and I denounce him and his company every chance I get.” silentsnake7

24. Restricting Patients’ Visits

“Work for a multi-physician specialty medical practice. We only see handicap/group home patients one day a month. We can’t schedule any ‘regular’ patients on that day because it would be a ‘disturbance’ to have to sit in a waiting room with someone who is mentally handicapped. The appointments are always on Thursday mornings. If someone can’t come on a Thursday morning, we are told to simply repeat to them that is all that’s available until they give in, because their insurance only pays us $28 for a visit so why should we be flexible.

It usually takes months to get an appointment because that one morning a month fills up fast. If we schedule a group home patient on a day other than the monthly designated time, we get a serious reprimand. I hate taking those phone calls and lying to people while not being able to help them at all. I hate that I work for people who treat people like this.” Klahug
23. They’re Trying To Sneak In Extra Charges

“I used to work for an industrial supply sales company. Our job is numbers-driven. My district was given a new district manager who was every kind of slimeball you can imagine.

He would ask us to bill customers for a product that wasn’t delivered. Overcharge and wait for them to catch it in order to see what he could get away with. The UPS shipping that cost the company $5?would result in a $20 charge for the customer.  He is breaking Sarbanes-Oxley regulations every quarter just to make his numbers look good.

I refused to partake in any of it and reported his actions higher up the chain of command. I was terminated last September and am still unemployed. He falsified my termination paperwork after I refused to sign and I have now lost my Unemployment Insurance because of it.

I’m currently trying to gain employment with my branch’s largest customer for no other reason than to convince them to drop this company as one of their core suppliers.” deleted

22. Casually Transporting Hazardous Items

“Worked in clothing retail. Some of our jeans were found to contain carcinogenic dye, and we had to box them up and put them in the back room until we could send them away. No problem. We put away like, four, maybe five boxes.

Almost a year goes by and those jeans are still out there. Finally, the head office sends through a list of instructions on how to label them in order to send them away.

Thing is, the instructions are really sketchy. They weren’t sent using the official HO email, and they explicitly tell us not to inform the delivery driver what is in the boxes, that we can’t use the usual delivery labels we use, and not to write anything about ‘RECALL’ or ‘HAZARD’ or anything of the sort on the box.

Anyway, delivery driver rocks up and he immediately knows what’s up because we aren’t using the labels we’re meant to be using. He tells us he can’t take the boxes, and we say fine. We’re casual. The boxes sit there a bit longer and our area administrator gets on us to force the delivery guy to take the boxes.

I do a little research. Carcinogenic jeans aren’t meant to be transported in the regular delivery truck, our company has got to pay for a different service because they’re classed as hazardous material. The company wanted to save money on the products they’d already lost money on by sending it through the regular delivery channels.

Eventually, the area administrator had to come in and pick them up himself. I wish I had told the delivery driver so he could’ve reported the company to his company.” vividlyvisceral

21. Asked To Clean The Pool During A Thunderstorm

“I worked as a lifeguard in HS. For the most part, management was all great.

One day around closing time we had a monstrous thunderstorm. I mean multiple flashes of lightning within 2 miles of us every minute. We had finished cleanup (which in itself was unsafe since we had to go outside to do it), except hadn’t gotten the toys (noodles and those foam balls) out of the pool. I was the most senior person there (other than the manager) and decided that we’ll just leave the toys. The only two ways to get them out was to either get into the pool or to use a 20-foot metal pole with a hook on the end to get them.

Either method was too dangerous to do during a thunderstorm just so that the pool will look neater. The manager caught us leaving and told me cleanup wasn’t finished, there was still stuff in the pool. I told him that I’m not risking my life for some foam toys, and he then told me to have the other guy do it. I just walked out instead. I’m not 100% sure whether he was actively unethical or just dumb, because I saw him with the hook as I drove off. I got written up for it.” deleted
20. She Wanted All The Homeless Out Of The Store

“I worked at a coffee shop where the owner said in a meeting that we were to kick out any homeless people.

I wanted to clarify (for the newer staff there) and said, ‘just the ones that hang around all night and don’t buy anything-if they want to buy a coffee and warm up it’s fine.’ No, she wanted us to kick out anyone who looked homeless because it didn’t look good having them in the store, even if they wanted to buy something. My store kept serving our regulars, regardless of where they had to sleep at night.” KiltedLady
19. She Left The Rabbit In The Freezer

“In the pet store, I told my manager that a young rabbit had a runny nose. She told me to put it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.

The rabbit would have to be quarantined for a week, during which it couldn’t be sold, and we’d have to feed it and give it a dollar or so worth of antibiotics. On the other hand, if it died within thirty days of our purchasing it, the distributor would refund our money or replace the rabbit for free. I refused. I later found the rabbit in the freezer. I quit the pet store and now sell guns for a living. My coworkers, customers, and employers are much better people than anyone I ever met in the pet industry.” TryCoserious
18. They Wouldn’t Allow House Keys Until Payment-Despite A Contract

“Worked as a leasing consultant in college.

Student housing. We pre-leased apartments for about 11 months before our big wave of move-ins before the new year started. We had a lot of low income/first generation college students come in and lease with us, and they bring their parents and family members with them for support and to celebrate such a milestone in the family. Anyways, we had a program where if the kid was getting financial aid through the school to assist with housing, we would postpone their first rent payment until the university issued them their financial aid checks. These usually come within the first two weeks of the semester.

When the resident got their check, they had to give us 3 months rent in one go. Super common in college environments and is sometimes the only way a low-income student can live on campus.

Anyways, corporate comes down about two weeks before move in to make sure that everything goes smoothly and ‘finds out’ that we have been having these kids and their families sign these documents agreeing to postpone their first rent payments until they got their financial aid. We literally had hundreds of these kids who agreed to sign with us because we had that program. Corporate told us to get on the phones and call every single person and tell them that that document they signed with us (in some cases almost a year ago) would not be honored and that they would not be allowed to get their keys and move in without money up front.

Move in was in less than two weeks! BULL. SH$T.

I told my boss to have me do anything else. Work with the maintenance team. Go out and market. Anything. I just couldn’t call these people and do that to them. He threatened to take away my commissions if I didn’t. We got into a shouting match while all my little sheep coworkers made those phone calls. I quit and so did another coworker.” Axinyew

17. Never Telling The Driver About A Scratch

“When I was a teenager I was a valet, and one day got into a minor accident with another valet while parking a car-we turned into each other impacting at the corners of our bumpers, unable to see each other because a different valet had illegally parked on a curb in the lot.

We brought the cars back to the front and found some little scratches and damage on both vehicles. Nothing serious, but still.

When the lady came to pick her car up, my supervisor instructed me not to tell her about the damage if she didn’t notice it. She got her kid in the car, then walked around to the driver seat and handed me a dollar as a tip. I turned to the supervisor with my mouth open, but he gave me a stern head shake…and she drove off none the wiser.

It was just a bumper and just some minor scratches/dents, but still…it really upset me.

I always avoid letting valets take my cars unless it’s required these days…I’ll park it myself thank you.” Shedanigans

16. They Fired Him Even After He Improved 

“I was launching a startup and I was training the General Manager of this new facility. We’ll call him Jim. My boss (and his boss) shared with me that Jim is a hard-working guy, but he’s just not cut out for it and that we will be replacing him once we reach steady state. I understand that not just anyone can take on this type of role, but my job was to develop him. So my thinking was: ‘Why am I investing all of this time and effort into a guy that isn’t going to be around for the long term?’ So, it kind of sucked.

Jim was working his a*% off. He was trying his best, and he was genuinely making progress. I still had hope that we could get him to a point where we could change my boss’s mind, or maybe even find another role for him. After all, he had the right attitude, he just didn’t possess the right skill set yet.

We were working long hours (as with most startups), and with that came a lot of sacrifices-missed dinners with his wife, working weekends, having to deal with really difficult situations at work, etc.
Then one day, Jim and I were on a call with our boss (who was at the corporate office) and going over some strategy and general plan of attack details.

My boss tells us that we are going to be changing over to a new software system that evening and that we would need to be on hand to test and make sure it transitions well. Jim tells us that his son has been home from Iraq (military) all week and that he has only seen him in passing. He hasn’t been able to talk with him or spend much time with him. He said that his wife had a going away dinner planned for the whole family at their house, and that he really wanted to spend the evening with his son and that he was already in the dog house with his wife.

In fact, he came in about 2 hours early that morning to make sure he could get out on time.
I said that I could handle it and that it’s really only a one person job anyway. My boss said that he knows it’s a one person job, but Jim really needs to be there so he knows how to do it in the future. (This type of thing only happens every 3-5 years and Jim won’t even be here the next time it happens) I could see the anguish in Jim’s face. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Jim said, ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.

I’ll be here.’

We didn’t get out of work that night until about midnight. His son left very early the following morning. I kept telling him ‘get out if here. We’re almost done, I’ll tell Bob (my boss) that you were here till the end.’ But he kept saying, ‘Nah, I need to know this stuff.’
He got up early the following morning and took his son to the airport. The 30 minute drive to the airport was the last time he ever spent with his son. His son was killed in a roadside patrol about 2 months later.

Jim was not the same after that.

He was coming into work late, sometimes leaving work early. I could tell that every day was a struggle just to keep focus and keep it together. His appearance declined, wrinkled clothes, often unshaven, looking like he was going on no sleep. It was awful watching someone go through this. I told him at one point to take a few days off, regroup, and spend some time with his family. My boss agreed with me and approved it. But by that time, he sensed that our boss was not his biggest fan, and he wanted to prove he could do it.

Realizing that other people were noticing his struggle, he made a marked improvement. He was on time every day, he started to dress better, he was always clean shaven, etc. But mentally you could tell it was all a facade. He was just putting his best foot forward. But still, he was getting things done. The business started to level off, things started to run smoother, the long hours weren’t necessary anymore, and even our boss commended him on his good work several times.

Once we reach steady state, that’s when I would hand over the keys to the operation and go back home.

We were nearing that point, and I thought that Jim might just survive this thing. And he may have…
But a guy had left the company about two years earlier as an Operations Director, we’ll call him Rick. He was a stud. Very very good at everything he did and he made it look easy. He left to start his own consulting company which failed, and he wanted to come back into our company. Rick contacted my boss (a VP) and asked if we had any openings. As fate would have it, he had moved about 45 minutes from this new operation and didn’t even know we had started it.

My boss offered him the General Manager position (Jim’s position) even though it would be lower than where he was when he left. And he accepted it. When I saw the paperwork come through, he was making about $50k more than Jim was making. We wanted him back, and we were paying through the nose for him. He accepted the offer because it was so close to his house.
So, I had to fire Jim. It was the hardest firing I’ve ever had to do. I knew that even though Jim had improved, he couldn’t compete with Rick and would likely never be on his level in his entire career.

So I couldn’t even begin to fight for Jim to keep his job. Knowing everything that he had been through, knowing that I knew this would happen all along, and knowing that he had done a good job and that he was finally in a place where he could reap the rewards of his sacrifices…I had to sit across from him and tell him that he wouldn’t be working for us anymore.

I have never been the type to pawn off things like this on other people. I never say: ‘Sorry, but my hands are tied,’ and blame tough decisions on other people or on corporate.

I have always seen it as my responsibility to deliver news even when it’s uncomfortable, and take it on the chin. But this was the one exception.
I know it probably makes me sound weak, but I actually cried. I let loose in a way that is very uncharacteristic of me. I told him: ‘These ****** guys screwed you, and they don’t ****** deserve you. They use us like tools and throw us away as soon as it’s convenient.’ Jim and I cried together like idiots, then we went to the bar and drank whiskey until we couldn’t stand up.

That was on a Friday.

My boss called Saturday morning and asked how things went. I told him, ‘Terrible. But it’s done.’ He told me that Rick would be coming in on Monday and that I would need to transition to him over the next month or two. I said: ‘I can’t. I’ve got to go home. I’ve seen my wife and kids probably 8 days out of the last 6 months. I can’t do another 2 months.’ I spent the rest of the weekend in NY. On Monday, I gathered our employees and informed them that Jim was no longer with the company, and introduced them to Rick.

I told Rick the situation and apologized for my early departure and by lunch, I was on a plane home. I was searching for new jobs on the flight.

3 weeks later I took a position with another company. That was about 3 and a half years ago. Bob apologized profusely and agreed that we went too far this time and that we can’t always keep pushing. He still calls me occasionally to see how things are going and if I would be interested in some position that he has. I guess I’m the new Rick.” B0h1c4
15. Lying About Where Their Product Is From

“We would get machine frames from China or Taiwan.

Machine controls from Japan or Germany. Slap the two together with a little bit of wiring and calibration and then slap ‘Made in the USA’ stickers on the back. Then when I went to IMTS, a major convention for our type of machines, he told me to tell potential customers that we got the frames for our machines from a foundry in New Hampshire.” deleted

14. They Believed Roaches Were Completely Normal

“Worked at a popular wing place a little while ago, there were cockroaches everywhere, crushed into the pepperoni, out in the dining room, in everything. The boss and manager said if we didn’t feel comfortable serving that food then to get the *** out.

All the other employees said cockroaches are in every restaurant in America…*******, they’re not in clean restaurants.” RhythmGirl
13. Giving Someone Access To Every Apartment

“I worked for a property management company for apartment buildings. One of our buildings was on a master key system. Very expensive to implement. I found out that one of the previous managers had lost the tenant key for an apartment and had just made a copy of the master key instead. This tenant, unknowingly, had the ability to access any apartment in the building. When I brought it up to my boss, he told me to keep it quiet.

The first job out of college and my boss made it very clear he valued loyalty, so I did. When he quit, I told the company owners (who also owned that building) what had happened. Two months later I was fired.” MarauderShields618
12. One Manager Nearly Let A Dog Die

“While working at an airport, we had a shaggy midsized dog that was to be put into the cargo for a flight but the flight was delayed due to a mechanical issue. It was just dropped off sitting in its (not very well ventilated) crate on the ground next to the baggage belt loader.

It was 100+ degrees out that day and the plane’s APU (auxiliary power unit) wasn’t turned on so no cool air was flowing through the cargo compartment. I asked my crew chief what I should do about it and he told me to just leave it there. I wasn’t satisfied with that so I went out and flagged down a ramp supervisor who also told me to just leave it there. Again, no one seemed to understand how this heat could affect this poor dog stuck in that stupid crate. So I told the supervisor that I needed to speak to the manager on duty immediately.

He came over, I explained the situation, he too told me to just leave the dog where it was to bake in the hot sun. I had done everything I could through the chain of command and had no other option but to pick up the crate and walk it into the break room where the AC was cranked so this dog wouldn’t die.” Black_jello
11. This President Wanted Their Hard Drives Destroyed

“As an Application Development Manager for a company that was getting investigated by the BSA, I was asked by the President of the company if I could write a virus that would destroy all the hard drives so they wouldn’t get sued.

And…I can write that and I did write that and I ran that. And it was awesome. The entire company slowly melted down while I pretended to be freaking out along with everyone else. It truly was awesome. Oh…we also mysteriously had copies of everyone’s hard drive data folders due to the ‘new backup software’ we just recently installed prior to the disaster. How handy.” katpurz
10. Riding Through A Heavy Snowstorm 

“I used to be a double tanker semi-truck driver for a milk hauling company.

There was a bad snow storm during one of my shifts and the route was taking much longer than expected.

When I arrived at my last dairy farm of the night my dispatcher/boss texted me insisting that I overload my truck because they were worried they wouldn’t be able to get someone else out in time to haul the rest of the milk.

This would have been highly illegal and dangerous, especially hauling an overweight truck in a snowstorm. I was already driving illegally because I was on shift for over 24 hours (max hours for a driver in one day is 14 hours with the exception for a 16-hour shift once per week) and my boss refused to send someone to meet me/switch shifts.

I refused to overload my truck, stating that it was dangerous and illegal. Luckily the whole conversation was over text so I would be able to prove/defend myself if any backlash would arise from me disobeying my boss’s orders.” Tessbott

9. Cleaning With Watered-Down Solution

“When I worked as a housekeeper at a casino (don’t ever do this, even in your most desperate time of needing employment) we were basically asked to turn a blind eye to the fact that our superiors were way over-diluting the disinfectant cleaner we used to clean the bathrooms with. Major major OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) violations there.

They watered it down so much that it went from a very dark pink to a pink so light it almost looked like straight water half the time. Before I quit, I submitted an anonymous tip to the OSHA violation thing they have online. I never found out if anything happened from that but it was just disgusting considering thousands of people use those bathrooms every day.” rileyjw90
8. Throwing Out Untouched Bread

“Worked in a cafe franchise that made their own bread from a central bakery. One day, we received our usual delivery, but when I opened the box containing our buns, I noticed that they were half the size they usually were and we couldn’t sell them.

Now, we could have sent it back, or we could have tried to sell them at a lower price, or donated them. Apart from their size, there was absolutely nothing else wrong with them. But the owner didn’t want to bother with the hassle so I was instructed to bin the whole batch. 2 boxes with almost 100 buns. Straight into the trash. Thinking about it still makes me sick till this day.” CrimsonPromise
7. Canceling Lunch On Everyone

“Was working in an office with about 12-15 people, and suddenly it’s lunchtime again. Boss offers to buy lunch for everyone, so I go around and take orders.

I call it in: great, it’s like $220 bill. Cool, see you in like a half hour. Fast forward 20 minutes, a vendor shows up with a tray of subs, leftover, I’m sure, from some event. Boss says, oh, ok, just go ahead and cancel that order. Um…**** no. I’ve worked food service, no way. So my coordinator does. Never have I heard such an angry line chef on the phone. I think the office got banned or something over there.” RodPaulson
6. Illegally Throwing A TV In The Trash

“I worked in the electronics department in a big box store, and shortly before inventory, we were going through all the dead stock in the back room.

We had a TON of old display TV’s (I think close to 10) that we couldn’t sell since they were either burnt out or damaged in some form. The store manager didn’t want to have to pay to take them to an electronic recycling place, so instead, he wanted me to sneak one into the trash compactor each week, and that way nobody would notice. I refused to do it and got written up, but I still take that as a win since there are cameras in our back rooms, and there’s no way I’m going to be filmed illegally dumping electronics into the garbage.” DootMasterFlex
5. Putting Donated TVs Up For Sale

“I used to work in a nursing home, when a resident would pass and the family came to collect their belongings, people would often donate the TV for any future resident who doesn’t have one.

They would always be told that it will and often ‘I think I know someone who will be very happy to have this.’ The nursing home manager would then put the TV up for sale on Craigslist and pocket the money. If that wasn’t bad enough, she even put it into the employee handbook that TV donations should never be turned down and the fact that they are sold shall never be revealed to residents or their families.” MeEvilBob
4. Avoided Paying Their Coworkers

“The company I used to work at hired me as a technician (even though I was an engineering graduate) but would not sign off my experience as engineering which is necessary for the professional exam.

They placed me on a public job which is supposed to receive a prevailing wage (x3 hourly pay) but decided to then classify me as an engineer to avoid paying me the increased wage and pocket the larger than usual difference due to some loophole. I put about 1000 hours into that job for a total of ~$30,000 of stolen wages from me. I quit that job without moving on to another job because I couldn’t work for a company that undervalued their employees. Still unemployed, but happier than ever.” dehdjer
3. Overcharging For A Phony Website

“I worked for an ‘internet marketing’ firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, which, in general, is full of shady business schemes.

This company’s scheme was in online payday loans.

How it works: when you apply for a payday loan online, the site/company you think you’re applying to is not actually the one giving you money. You enter your personal info, credit info, work info, bank account info, etc, and whoever owns that site will bounce your application down a pingtree of possible lenders who pay a commission for bringing them the loan. Obviously, the first lender in the tree pays the most money, but only accepts the best prospective clients. The second lender’s standards are a little lower, the third even lower, and on down the line…until you got to the company I worked for, who accepted ANYONE, regardless of creditworthiness.

Now, how could they accept all these sh*tty loans? Great question. Because they weren’t loaning money.

What they’d do was build a landing page that looked vaguely similar to the dozen or so payday loan pages the customer had just entered his info into (including bank info) but instead of getting a loan, the customer was actually signing up for a monthly subscription to a ‘payday loan resource center’ that charged ’em $20-$40 a month for access to all the ‘incredibly valuable tips and info on getting a payday loan.’ Of course, the customers had no idea. After 3 years and a million or so customers, I think the website for the resource center had been visited less than a hundred times.

So, not only were they selling a ****** product to unknowing customers, but they were selling to people who could absolutely LEAST afford it: people desperate enough to apply for a payday loan.
Anyhow, the FTC (and regulations) eventually caught up to them, but not before the owner had built an $8 million mansion in Paradise Valley, and at the end of the day he had to pay some piddling fines and that was that.

My takeaway from the experience is that the FTC is actually just a roomful of lawyers with very limited resources (especially for internet stuff), and they really only go after you if you’re high profile, or if there are enough potential fines at stake to make it worth the years-long expenditure of manpower and money.

If you’re enough of a sociopath that you can sleep with the knowledge that you’re actively making people’s lives worse so you can drive the latest S Class, then keep your scam under ~$10M and don’t get a bunch of press. Worst case scenario: you’ll catch a little fine, and maybe have some ugly google results, but you’ll have a shiny new mansion.” johnbroca7
2. Lying To Their Students’ Faces

“I got a job teaching English and Psychology for a private school a few years back. The people in charge of that place were downright vile.

Since it was private education students had to pay for the courses.

Seeing an opportunity, the administration started setting up the courses so it was all but impossible for the students to pass, which would force them to pay extra to take the course again. We weren’t allowed to give students anything more than the most basic explanations of the material, and we couldn’t tutor them at all beyond that. A student was struggling? Good. The school would make an extra few bucks. Any teacher caught tutoring a student would get in massive trouble.

They also lied about the school’s accreditation (although not nearly as bad as some of the other private schools I came to be aware of while teaching).

They had the basic accreditation, so our graduates (if anyone was lucky enough to graduate from our program) would qualify for most public universities in the United States. However, we were missing some pretty serious things such as accreditation through the UC and NCAA. Of course, we said we did. And any faculty member caught telling anyone otherwise would lose their job.

We had students lose college scholarships and sometimes college admission because we had told them they would still be able to play college sports after taking classes through us. This one girl, she was an incredible kid. Really promising athlete.

Kind to everyone she met. Smart as ****. She ended up losing a full ride scholarship and housing three weeks into her first semester of college because she had been lied to about whether or not the school was NCAA accredited.

After about a year there I started trying to do what I could behind the scenes, sending messages to the parents of new students from an anonymous email account to warn them about what they were getting into. But it wasn’t enough to stomach working there. I ended up leaving for a retail position because I was so desperate to get out.” broganisms

1. Reposting Unwanted Photos For Money

“I used to work for an Internet Reputation company.

Basically if someone posts something bad about you online then you pay us to ‘hack’ it down, or hide it in the back pages of Google by building positive websites to optimize to the front pages and push it to the back.

The only good thing about the company was the things we couldn’t ‘hack’ to get taken down and we had to build hundreds of websites to push to the front. These websites can be anything such as hobbies, education, work history, anything that will make the person or company look awesome.
The bad thing about the company was everything that could be taken down for a fee, was something that was either put up by my company in the first place, or my company would just pay the site owners a commission to remove the post.

People would pay $500 per mugshot site or thousands for more ‘difficult’ ones, and as soon as one mugshot would be taken down they would upload them up onto five other sites so a person would have to drop a few hundred or thousand more.

Worst job ever, my sales dropped after a few months because I felt bad and they ended up firing me.” bartallen4790
Have you ever worked for an unethical employer? Share your stories, we’d love to hear from you!