People love to complain and being the boss means hearing ALL the grievances. There’s not a job in the world where customers don’t whine about employees and workers don’t b*tch about their peers. Sometimes a complaint comes through to management that’s so ridiculous that it simply can’t be taken seriously… but maybe it should.
Redditor u/Less_Net4087 was curious about the times when the wildest complaints actually turned out to be true:
“Employers, what the most insane complaint you’ve had about an employee that turned out to be completely true?”
Employers, keep an eye out for these 20 red flags next time you get a crazy complaint about an employee.
1. The Bleeder
“New hire. Kinda weird, definitely suffering from a lack of social skills. Fast forward a few days, and a customer comes back to return a piece of merchandise, claiming when they got home there was blood on it. We looked. Yeah, that was blood. We looked up the transaction. Only about 45 minutes earlier. New hire had set it up. Went to find him, but he wasn’t in his department (not necessarily a big deal, we had to go back into the warehouse for stuff all the time). Went to find him. There he was, in the warehouse. Cutting his wrists with a razor blade. Bleeding all over the place.” –Osiris32
2. The Nazi
Had a complaint that someone was driving one of our machines with a giant swastika on the side. Never in a million years… went down and there it was. Person was fired immediately but he didn’t care. –plz-dont-ban-me_
3. The Orgy Thrower
“I was the head night auditor at an upscale airport property. Had a youngish night auditor who put a room into out-of-order status and let his friends in to party and have an orgy that he joined during his lunch break. He got caught because of a noise complaint. Police called, he was fired and blacklisted from being hired back.” –Faethor_Ferenczy
4. The Ball Licker
“Had a coworker who always had a really strong stench and thought it was just bad BO. Turns out she was addicted to mothballs and was licking them during working hours. The chemicals give off an unbelievably strong smell through your skin. We got complaints about her odor but didn’t take them seriously (thought people were just being assholes) until someone saw her actively licking on the job.” –sleepylun3
5. The Felon
“Hired a guy on a trial basis. He was super polite and careful when speaking to me, but several of my female employees told me when I wasn’t around he was creepy. After about 5 days, one came to me and said almost verbatim: “I think he’s a rapist.” She just a had a gut feeling about him. So I ran a background check on him… yep, he was a convicted rapist.” –ThriftStoreUnicorn
6. The Dumpster Diver
“Once had a co-worker selling shrimp from the dumpster. Picked them out after brunches. Popped a few on a skewer, and sold them in the bars that night. Got caught in a bar with the manager, and the CCTV caught him dumpster diving. They had him arrested.” –pineapplewin
7. The Facebook Ranter
“Working in a bank. Had a teller (about 19 year-old) get pissed about the way a customer (retail store owner) would send in her deposits at the drive up window. The teller complained about the customer on Facebook! Tagged the lady personally, as well as the store! Customer called the bank and told me, furious of course. I told the customer we would investigate, I asked the teller. She straight up admitted it, and says “What’s the customer or Branch Manager going to do about it? My Grandfather is friends with the bank President.” I called HR and Bank President on conference. Girl lost her job in under 15 minutes of me receiving the call from the customer. Breach of customer confidentiality in banking is a MAJOR law violation.” –guessdragon
8. The Blatant Moron
“Employee said he was sick and then came to same restaurant for dinner as a customer.” –whos-tryna-PIPE
9. The Bank Robber
“Had an employee that was actively robbing local banks on his days off. I believe he hit 8-9 different banks before he got caught. Found out about it during an early am FBI raid of the employee locker/break rooms done in conjunction with a raid on his house. To say it was a shock was an understatement. He wasn’t even top 20 of my list of potential felonious employees.” –naptrapped
10. The Phone Sex Bandit
“I (HR Head) got a call from a “sex chat administrator”, informing our official account is unpaid. They will take legal action if we don’t pay immediately. I thought it was a joke. Anyways we did get a legal notice! Then legal and HR investigated. The “sex chat” company sent a phone call copy. As soon I played it, my HR lady screamed- I know this guy, he works in supply chain!! Later on, we realized we had a employee who used to make phone “sex chat” calls using our company landline. We politely told him to pay up and settle the matter. Then issued a final warning letter.” –ridersofthestorms
11. The No Show
“There were multiple complaints about the one lady who never showed up for her shift, and when the supervisor looked into it, nothing would happen. Eventually it came to light that the woman didn’t exist, and the supervisor had been collecting her paychecks for almost a year.” –kurtn0tk1rk
12. The Faker
“Many years ago, the bookshop I worked at hired a new employee with terminal cancer – very sad, since she was quite young. She wasn’t around too much due to the chemotherapy etc., but when she was in she worked in the children’s department. She was actually a pretty good children’s bookseller, and was a huge fan of a fairly major American children’s author; she ran the UK branch of his fan club and knew him personally, he occasionally flew her out to the States for events. One day, she wasn’t in, and all employees were called to a staff meeting. We were informed that she had passed away. There was a lot of sadness; her close colleagues were devastated. Only… a few days later one of our staff happened to go into a branch of McDonalds in a nearby town. Guess who was working behind the counter? Go on, guess. Turns out she was never ill. She had made the whole cancer thing up, as well as faking her own death, for reasons that we never really fully understood. The general consensus was that it started out as a way to connect with her author hero and kind of spiraled from there; in the end she couldn’t handle living the lie any more and so… just up and had her mother tell people that she’d died. And then got a job in Mac D’s a few miles down the road, and was surprised when she got found out. That was a pretty what-the-f*ck sort of experience for us all.” –vaz_de_firenze
13. The Terrible Thief
“On his second day at KFC, he tried walk out with two buckets of chicken and ran right into our boss.” –Impossible-You-4679
14. The Pedophile
“I work at a major retailer in Australia. Back in 2015, we got a tip from an anonymous customer that one of our managers was a pedophile and had groomed this customer’s daughter years back. No one believed it at first, and the higher ups did an investigation just as a formality. Turns out, TBs of child porn was found in his possession, including some photos that he had taken himself. After that we all had to undertake mandatory training on what to do if we suspect pedophilia in a coworker.” –LankySandwich
15. The Dognapper
“So I worked retail and we got this guy named something like Gus. My boss tells me, “Hey this guy’s got anxiety, go easy on him OK?” And so I was like, okay that’s cool I get it I can relate. I do everything I can to help him make sense of the infernal godforsaken hellscape that is retail. It starts off with little forgivable things — forgetting a task here, forgetting things there, accidentally giving the wrong info and things like that. You know, newbie retail stuff like that. He quickly devolved in popularity as his complacency grew over time and his helpful attitude shrank. What ACTUALLY got him fired is the one day he brought a dog and a super expensive dog collar into work. He claimed he almost hit the dog on the way to work and it was running around wild, etc etc. He tried to sell the dog collar to a customer, then tried to “adopt out” the dog to a coworker. This coworker was competent enough to take the dog to a vet whereupon they found a microchip and contacted the actual owners. THAT’S where the fun started. It came out that Gus never found the dog at all. He straight up KIDNAPPED this dog from his neighbor and tried to pawn it off, knowing full well what he was doing. The guy lawyered up immediately, tried to sue Gus and threatened to sue the store and the store manager if Gus wasn’t fired. Suffice to say, Gus was gone the very same evening. Nothing else came of it, but we talked about him for years and years.” –DEEPTHROATHOTDOGES
16. The Lazy Pee-er
“She was peeing on the chairs in the office. No, she didn’t have any sort of health issues. She just didn’t feel like walking to the bathroom.” –tempthethrowaway
17. The Sneaky Alcoholic
“Used to work as a night auditor at a hotel and one day I was told one of the daytime workers was fired. She was this really sweet older lady who worked part time and it was really hard to get fired there so I was very curious. Several customers had complained, concerned that there was something very off about this woman. She was slurring and just seemed very off that day. Management was concerned, at first thinking there was a medical issue. After a few more incidents, they checked the cameras and found out she was taking shots of vodka throughout her shift. Like, an absurd number of shots. I can’t remember how much, but I remember being rather impressed that she could function at any capacity.” –EndyBendy33
18. The Stamp Scammer
“I knew a guy who worked at subway back when they gave out stamps. Basically for every six inches of sub you bought you earned a stamp and once you filled a card with 8 stamps you could get a free six inch sub. So this guy started only giving stamps to customers who asked for them. If they didn’t ask he pocketed their stamps and grew a sizable stack of complete stamp cards. Then over time he started cashing them in. When a customer paid with cash he would ring it in as a freebie, place his own completed stamp card in the till, and pocket the cash. Customer got their sub, subway’s till was balanced, and he had an extra five to ten bucks in his pocket – everybody was happy. He worked there for a few years and word was he racked up a few thousand dollars running this scheme. No idea if anybody complained, or if he was ever caught, but he did buy a motorbike.” –gutterferret
19. The Stalker
“That the guy was stalking a female employee. It was a 24 hour retailer and she was a morning shift and he was night shift so I just thought there was no way they knew each other. Then one day I was filling in for a different manager and he came into the break room and was taking pictures of the morning shift schedule. I asked him why and he told me some story about another employee just wanted him to send their schedule etc. I came in on my day off later that week during day shift and caught him staring at her from a different aisle while she was stocking. She had no idea, he would follow her home and watch her house and all that. She was 17, he was 38. I called the cops and had him escorted off the property and helped her get in touch with the right resources for a restraining order. He ended up violating the order multiple times and is in jail last I heard.” –KnockMeYourLobes
20. The Spoiled Brat
“Had a new hire (as in less than a week on the job) at a movie theater, where I worked as a supervisor, throw a very loud, unbelievably childish tantrum in front of a lobby full of customers because her direct supervisor asked her to sweep up some popcorn that a customer spilled. She kept screaming “I ain’t cleaning up someone else’s mess! Make them (the customer) do it!” She was 24 years old. The meltdown she had when she got fired for her tantrum was nuclear, with lots of screaming & threats of how her parents were going to “call the company and get all your a$$e$ fired!”. The next day someone claiming to be her dad did call & tell us that we “are going to rehire my daughter & apologize to her and fire (named her supervisor and manager) or else.” but nothing more came of it, the top manager just laughed & hung up. I’ve yet to ever see such an epic, entitled tantrum before or since.” –FarmerTex