Aimeé
The weirdest thing about co-workers is that we probably spend more time with them than with our actual friends or even our family members. It’s very easy to become embroiled in the lives of strangers who happen to sit in a chair next to you eight hours a day. Then you change jobs or they do, and you never see them again.
What to do with all the information you’ve acquired about them? Well, you could share it on this r/AskReddit thread started by u/lokicoyote who asked, “What’s the strangest, non-sexual thing you’ve ever learned about a co-worker?”
Some of the stories are sweetly wholesome, some involve murder and incest. All are very strange, but probably still not as strange as some of the stuff you have yet to learn about the person in the next cubicle.
1.
I worked at a record store in my early twenties. There was a guy about the same age maybe a bit younger then me. Really nice dude, he was always well dressed, blazer, khakis. The rest of us just wore jeans t-shirts. He always seemed slightly more professional then us.
I went to his house once after work. He lived with his mom, which was fairly normal for people I hung with as most of us were university kids. We were hanging in the piano room, he was showing me some songs he was working on. He went to get us drinks and came back with his in a sippy cup. Like a kids sippy cup. I asked why the hell was he using a sippy cup. He said he spilled a drink in the room the last week and now his mom makes him use a sippy cup. —poridgepants
2.
I once asked a coworker if he had any big plans for the weekend and he said, “just getting ready for Presidents’ Day” I thought this was strange but upon further questioning it turns out that he and his son (kid was in first grade at the time) celebrate Presidents’ Day in the same way that my family and I celebrate Christmas. my coworker started this tradition because he and the kid’s mother have always split custody on major holidays so they have all these cute traditions surrounding Presidents’ Day instead.
Festivities include reading children’s books about the presidents/us history in the weeks leading up to the big event, brining out the “Presidents’ Day mattress” from storage and decorating it and then “Monty the Presidents’ Day moose” brings his son Presidents’ Day presents the morning of. I think it was one of the sweetest yet weirdest stories I’ve ever heard. Plus I imagine his son knows substantially more about US history than any of his peers. —hedgehoglady
3.
In one of my jobs in high school my boss came in to work looking shell shocked. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he had just learned that his biological parents were siblings. (He was adopted, and didn’t know his actual parents.) —BobbyBobRoberts
4.
I had a co-worker that did 15 years in prison for murdering his wife. Super nice guy…Never would have known unless he told me. His daughter, (from the murdered wife) was one of my subordinates and they were actually close. Very strange deal. —WheezinThaJuice
5.
A female coworker had an Instagram account with over 40,000 followers… for her guinea pig. —Tree_Eyed_Crow
6.
My buddy paid a prostitue to clean his house naked. It would have been ok if he woke me up and told me before leaving for work. —baadboy1
7.
She was 25 and in medical school, so she was obviously a very responsible person. She also had a midnight curfew that was strictly enforced by her sister who was in law enforcement. Needless to say, when we talked about dating, she had never been on one —cheezwiz62
8.
When he was 20 years younger he got slightly wasted with our king when he bar-hopped with him and a few friends. The king’s bodyguards didn’t notice that the king went to a different pub with them. After an hour or so, the bodyguards finally found them and barged in the pub in full panic mode. The king was enjoying his precious beer in the meantime.
The guy is not a guy that makes up stories, so I believe him, especially in the way he told me. —fabales
9.
I work in technology, a co-worker makes “pimp suits” that are bullet proof. —BelieveHIStory
10.
One of the nicest people Ive ever worked with, I caught crying because it was the anniversary of when his father killed his mother in front of him when he was six. Very sad. —Whompman
