ask the readers: what past work behavior do you now cringe over?

by Alison Green on October 25, 2018

A reader writes:

The more I read your column, the more I cringe because I recognize various periods in my work life where I did the sorts of things AAM readers write in about without realizing the impact my actions may have had. Eek. And since your post soliciting weird intern stories, I’ve been wondering about other AAM readers’ stories re: mishandling work situations and/or being the weirdo at work beyond the intern stage. 

I guess the idea of a group confessional appeals to me, because if my newfound embarrassment can amuse others, it could take the sting out of not being to change the past.

This seems perfect for a Thursday “ask the readers” question. So, have it: What did you do at work in the past that you now cringe over?

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  1. TatttoedInDC*

    I remember wearing some very tight/short dresses as a intern with a blazer on top (zip, ponte) and thinking that made it 100% okay… and I wasn’t even somebody who went out to clubs so had that stuff in my closet, I just bought it at F21 and thought it was fine! *cringe*

    1. Fuzzy Pickles*

      Oof… I did that too, not as an intern but because I forgot to do laundry. It ended up looking like a clingy pencil skirt. I got compliments from female coworkers but I still cringe because… well, it’s a club dress!

      1. Van Wilder*

        I used to wear 4 inch heels that I couldn’t even walk in. Some of my female managers tried to encourage me to get sensible loafers like they had but I just thought they were so old and I was just too cool for them.

        Fast forward 12 years: I have one pair of flats and one pair of sensible pumps under my desk, and wear sneakers for the commute.

    2. Emi.*

      I wore a spirit jersey and leggings to work. It was casual Friday, but I was a civil servant, not an intern … and they were really tights.

    3. Cassandra*

      I had a wardrobe semi-emergency while temping: a calf-length skirt of mine had a slit in front that opened to knee-length… until the seam holding it closed from the knee up started unraveling at work. I got a talking-to about it, and was too embarrassed to explain that it hadn’t been intentional!

      Still cringe about it.

      1. Bagpuss*

        I had something similar – I was doing what was effectively an informal internship during my summer break from university, and trying to look profession I bought a suit which had a narrow, wrap-around skirt. Unfortunately it was cheap and they skimped on fabric. It was fine when I was standing up.
        As soon as I sat down it gaped, showing everything up to mid-thigh.
        I ended up aiding the first aid box for safety-pins to hold it closed.
        I was mortified, and furious at having wasted money I didn’t have to spare, on something I couldn’t wear.

      2. Kelly AF*

        When I was a 19 year old college student and part-time bank teller, I had very little money for the “professional” clothes we were required to wear…. and then I gained the Freshman 15.

        Yeah, I got written up for wearing “belly shirts” to work and I was WAY too embarrassed to admit that they hadn’t been belly shirts when I bought them!

        1. Oh. I won’t.*

          I went to a job interview flashing serious cleavage that hadnt been there 30lbs ago.

          Im forever grateful that my new boss hadnt lost the point blank Chinese style of feedback. “You are showing too mich cleavage. Dont wear that shirt again.” It was a great real world example of having people know your abilities giving you a chance to correct stuff. I doubt they would have chanced it on a stranger.

          1. kdoo*

            I also got an embarrassing talk from a manager about too much cleavage. It was a pretty casual dress environment for an office and I never really noticed my shirts were too low. I’m sure it was awful for my male manager to pull me aside and tell me there had been “a few complaints”. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye for weeks because I was so scared of which people disapproved of my clothes.

          2. Anon-y-mouse*

            I find this stuff pretty weird and sexist. It makes me pretty disappointed that this kind of body-shaming and slut-shaming sexism continues to perpetuate itself in “professional” environments under the guise of “feedback” about what it means to dress “professionally” and also express a feminine gender identity.

        2. MissHoneychurch*

          Yes, I’ll forever cringe about the talk I got in college about the tank top I wore to my campus job. I had gained some weight, too. I still also remember a much thinner girl wearing tank tops and not getting that talk…

      3. Anon for this*

        Not me, but a former coworker wore a goofy-looking sweater dress that stopped at the top of her thigh – really, really short, so not really a dress. She wore white tights and boots with it. She used to sit like a guy with her knees wide apart and one day had a huge tear in the seam of her tights. It was where underwear would normally be, but I guess she didn’t wear any because it was a peep show. I still can’t unsee that!

        1. Van Wilder*

          I’m guessing that was not an accident. Too many mistakes had to be made to get her to that point. Maybe she enjoyed the thrill, with or without knowing anyone had caught on.

          1. Anon for this*

            Good point. Never thought of it that way, but now that you point that out, she was probably trying to show “it” off. I’m so naive sometimes.

          2. amanda*

            Gosh I hope people didn’t assume that about me recently… I work in a teaching field where we spend a lot of time on the floor with students, so appropriate dress is often a long tunic and leggings. I had a pair of leggings that split near the crotch (somehow I didn’t notice in the morning, or they hadn’t split yet at that point) and, thinking I was covered by my thick leggings and tunic like always, I sat “criss cross applesauce” – after that group activity, an adult came up and politely whispered I had a hole and I was mortified!

            It certainly wasn’t to “enjoy the thrill”even though my knees were wide apart – and I hope other women with wardrobe malfunctions get similar leeway.

      4. Office Gumby*

        I learned the easy way to always carry a needle and thread in my wallet. Many’s the time I’ve rescued a wardrobe malfunction–mine and others.

    4. chocoholic*

      Back in the mid-90’s I had what I thought was a cute outfit – a shorts suit :0 It was a blue plaid color. I am tall and have long legs, and the shorts were really just….too short. :o This was a job that *did* require pantyhose to be worn, and I thought I was so fashion-forward when I wore regular shorts with hose under them. Oof. Oh my.

          1. MaybeJustAPrude*

            I work with some women who’ve started in the last year and wore short shorts to work over summer, including denim shorts that are arse-cheek baring. We *do* have a pretty casual dress code… but maybe there’s a line..?!

        1. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins*

          Our dress code was last updated in 1994 and it states “…formal shorts may only be worn with a coordinating top..”

          2. Glitsy Gus*

            Formal shorts! It’s like the Fug Girls wrote your dress code! Does it also say “anything worn by a Peldon sister is not permitted.”

          3. Van Wilder*

            Omg I wish! I was really trying to bring trouser shorts to the business casual world circa 2006 but it didn’t seem to take.

        2. Business Shorts*

          In Australia in the 80s and early 90s it was pretty common for men to business shorts, short-sleeved shirts and knee high socks. Things have become a lot more conservative since aircon has become standard for all offices…

          1. Clay on My Apron*

            That sounds like the Aussie equivalent of South Africa’s “safari suit”, which popular in the 70s, and is now only seen, I believe, in very small towns. The shirt and shorts are made of the same fabric in either brown, green or pale blue. And the socks are the same colour. My name links to a family snap with dad and son wearing matching outfits (not my family snap I hasten to add).

            1. PhyllisB*

              I remember visiting San Francisco in the seventies and seeing men wear suits (jacket, tie, ect.) but the pants were shorts!! Never saw that anywhere else.

      5. MJ*

        I know this was inappropriate but honestly it also just sounds SO CUTE.

        (hi can you tell I work from home and can wear whatever I want even when I’m in the office ;) )

    5. Kramerica Industries*

      Been there. I thought that just because a skirt passed the fingertip rule (like in high school), it was long enough…

      1. Coconut Oil*

        I did that too, I remember checking in the mirror every morning before work and touching my toes to make sure I count see my underwear. Anything with a blazer was work wear. I could die now.

    6. pony tailed wonder*

      I had heard that a little black dress was appropriate for every occasion so I wore a black mini dress with black stockings and heels to my first day at work at a library. So if you have ever had to shift books around and reshelve materials at every shelf level, you know my embarrassment.

      1. Snack Management*

        Love it! One of my first jobs was in a library and I remember learning that lesson about proper attire for shelving (the biggest eye opener was the mistake of the half shirt with a little midriff exposed that became super embarrassing when it shifted while putting books on high shelves).

    7. DataGirl*

      I went on vacation to Spain and bought this outfit- a bright purple mini skirt and what amounted to a tube top with a silver collar around the neck. Totally thought it was fine to wear to my office job. >cringe<

    8. Allison*

      Yeah, I did that too. In hindsight my button-down blouse from H&M would have been fine had it actually fit, and some of my dresses were too short as well. What I don’t understand is why no one said anything to me. I was an intern, clearly new to the workplace, trying my best with what I had, and I might have been embarrassed if they’d mentioned it, but it would have been *so* helpful to know that stuff early on!

      1. Parenthetically*

        Well, as we frequently see around here, most managers seem not to know how to discuss appropriate dress issues! Bless ALL our hearts, really.

      2. Say what?*

        Or it could have been that they cut you some slack if it was an unpaid internship with the thought “She’s doing what she can with what she has but money is probably a little tight for a formal wardrobe.”

    9. Chrysanthemum's The Word*

      At my first job out of college, I would wear my tall platform goth stompy boots to work on casual Friday. I thought it was totally appropriate to wear what I was wearing out that night to work because it was “casual to me.” *cringe*

    10. Kate*

      I have the opposite cringeworthy story. My office was/is a very conservative, pantyhose type office, but it was also freezing cold and I hated wearing heels.

      So I wore dress pants, cowboy boots, and a giant Cowichan sweater everyday.

    11. EddieSherbert*

      My first job had a “no blue jeans” rules…. I thought I was SO CLEVER getting around that rule by wearing various colored jeans instead of anything actually professional (bright red, bright blue, mustard yellow… at least black jeans were subtle…).

      1. Bee*

        Hah, I do this now. But to be fair, it’s a casual office where the “no blue jeans” rule is pretty arbitrary, and my boss wears stretchy pants on a regular basis, so. It’s not like I have to wear dress pants, and blue jeans have a certain casual air that changing the color actually does diminish.

        1. Bee*

          (Also, we share office space with another company in the same industry, and they can all wear jeans, and the industry in general is very jeans-welcome, and we get very, very few visitors, so this is really about my boss’s preconceived notions and not about the inherent casualness of denim. I could look perfectly appropriate in dark jeans, a nice top, and a tweed blazer, but no.)

      2. TakingTheFifth*

        Our office has always had a rule about no jeans except on Fridays. Years ago my boss (who was in her 40s, not a naïve intern) got into a protracted battle with her boss. She wore jeggings under tunic tops & insisted that since they weren’t actually denim jeans she was abiding by the dress code.

        1. amanda*

          I would fight this battle! I work in special ed. at a school where we aren’t supposed to wear jeans except special occasions. My students crawl on the floor, spit on me, run away, spill things constantly – I think I have earned the right to wear my navy blue/olive/tan jeggings with a nice top, especially considering something is going to spill on them by the time the day is over! Technically, we all follow the same dress code and I should get in trouble. If admin ever addresses it, I’m fighting for a clothing allowance!

      3. Amethyst*

        Every so often in my call center, they’d re-read the dress code and decide to enforce bits of it, but hadn’t gotten around to that one. My first supervisor told me “Black jeans are okay”, so I wore those to work for 4 years.

        PS: My Entry is from the previous job where I repeatedly wore my favorite torn up re-patched college jeans as a receptionist temp. They probably showed a third of my leg, and most of that above the knees.

      4. ElinorD*

        I temped for about a year after I graduated from college in the mid-90’s, and I wore black jeans to work thinking, “my shirt is long enough that no one will notice.” They noticed. They were really nice about it, but I’d still like to kick my younger self.

      5. MM*

        Lol, I did this when I worked at a grocery delivery company. There it was really more like evading a high school dress code, though–it’s not like customers were seeing us, we worked in a warehouse, it didn’t actually matter at all except to the degree that the managers wanted to feel like their discipline over us was meaningful. (What was meaningful was the scanners on our arms telling them if we took unauthorized breaks between picking orders, or the cameras making sure they could know if somebody shoplifted. The rest was all weird psychological crap.) I found every possible way to wear my uniform shirt other than actually just wearing the thing the way it was intended.

    12. Punk Ass Book Jockey*

      I would wear a cardigan or blazer over my “going out” shirts (usually sparkly and low cut) to make them business casual. *cringe*

    13. Where’s my coffee?*

      Yes on the clothing. I remember outfits that make me cringe now. But I also remember when I began to realize they weren’t ok but I just had NO money for clothing.

    14. CynicallySweet7*

      I had to talk to an intern who dressed similarly. I wasn’t her manager or anything, but her manager was 2ce her age and male, and wasn’t comfortable having that conversation. The conversation was soooo cringy. I did not practice what I was going to say at all, just blurted it out when we were alone in the bathroom. At one point I think I said something about not flashing her *waves hand at chest area* at work. Not anyone’s finest moment, least of all mine…also when I asked her where she got her idea of what business casual meant, she said Suits (from TV)

        3. Ann O.*

          I had forgotten, but yes, at my first corporate job I had an Ally McBeal style suit that I got at a Forever 21 type store. I felt so grown up and responsible in my suit. Ah, the cringe!

      2. Artemesia*

        I was the highest level woman in our operation for many years and always got stuck having this conversation with staff or interns who were not dressed appropriately because the men didn’t feel they could do it. Not fun but easier than the hygiene talk. With clothes it can be ‘looks great, but not the right setting for it’ — with hygiene, there is no pleasant way to spin it.

      3. SS Express*

        TV shows present such a terrible example of corporate attire…and yes it’s fiction, but it can be misleading to people who don’t have any real-world experience, especially when fashion blogs and magazines hold up those same shows as examples of how to dress for work (in fairness, fashion editors probably don’t have typical corporate dress codes either). I’ve seen so many listicles and “shop the look” pieces about Suits – Rachel’s low cut shirts and super tight skirts are bad enough but Donna’s cocktail dresses, while gorgeous, are just ridiculous. Bold colours yes, backless dresses nooooooooo.

      4. Itsa Me*

        One of my (male) co-workers was trying to address dress code with a female employee who was showing a very large amount of cleavage. He wasn’t sure what to say and so mumbled, “You need to put those away.” We now have a rule that a same-gender manager addresses sensitive issues like that. Lol

    16. Shark Whisperer*

      This whole thread reminds me of the interview for one of my first real jobs. It was an entry level position at an environmental non-profit. When we got to the end of the interview and the interviewer asked if I had any questions, I said, “Yes, what do I wear to work?” To the interviewer’s credit she laid it out for me and hired me. It was a silly question for me to ask during the interview, but I am glad I did. I avoided a lot of mistakes on this thread that I’m sure I would have made otherwise.

      1. jay*

        A good interviewer would realise that sometimes people early in their careers need guidance. I wouldn’t judge anyone for asking that (well, as long as they were new to the working world) and would actually appreciate that they were self aware enough to consider it.

      2. Rebecca in Dallas*

        I think it’s perfectly fine to ask that in an interview! Some places are business casual, or business, or casual, or casual Fridays… and you can’t always tell by what the interviewer is wearing. (We are business casual but I always try to dress a bit nicer if I’m interviewing someone that day.)

      4. MM*

        I don’t think this is an inherently silly question! Though it can be presented differently. But especially in slightly ~alternative work environments, and just in general nowadays, it can be hard to know. I had an interview a couple of years ago where I went in in a suit, and everybody in the office was wearing a button-down and slacks, no ties, etc. So one of my questions to my interviewer was, “Is the office always this casual, or is this special for [Friday, a holiday, I can’t remember what it was but there was something about that day that made it plausible it was unusual]?” I was really grateful to get the answer! And I still got the offer to fly out for a finalist interview. (As it happened, a different issue arose and caused me to decide the job wasn’t for me.)

      5. Observer*

        Not a silly question at all. At least you realized that you had a gap in your knowledge and were willing to address it.

        As you said, it kept you from making some embarrassing (and possibly costly) mistakes.

    17. Alex the Alchemist*

      Same. I also wore super short-shorts to a work picnic when I was a 19-year-old intern. I truly didn’t realize how short they were until I got there and was like, “oh.”

      1. sheworkshardforthemoney*

        I was chronically late by 15-20 minutes almost every day. I was living with my first boyfriend and he ran late all the time for everything, he just didn’t care. BUT he insisted that we leave together for work even when I was ready to go.
        So I slowly adapted his cavalier attitude to being on time and surprise, surprise my contract was not renewed even though my work was good when I finally showed up. Lesson learned, don’t be late ever.

        1. puppies*

          Yes same about the lateness! I’m so into being punctual and professional now but when I was in my 20’s I was chronically late to my job and then wondered why they hated me so much

          1. octopod*

            Oh gosh, I’ll never forget strolling into the office late one morning, and the Big Boss had gathered all the admins together to collectively chew us out for being late all the time. She went down the line and everyone had excuses like missing the bus or bad traffic or whatever. Eventually it was my turn and she turned to me and said, “and you! What’s your excuse?” And I held up my bagel from the cafe down the street and said, “Breakfast!” Even as it was coming out of my mouth I knew it was deeply stupid.

        2. Ego Chamber*

          Dude, what the actual fuck. You do not have enough context to call that out with no other details.

          I’ve dated people (and had roommates and family members) that were late everywhere because they just had no concept of time somehow—including the late roommate I was giving rides to who refused to leave earlier and got really pissed when I stopped giving him rides after getting fired for my 3rd strike late. Get me fired once, shame on you. Get me fired twice…

          1. Jennifer Juniper*

            This sentence triggered alarm bells for me.

            “BUT he insisted that we leave together for work even when I was ready to go.”

            The guy knew the commenter was going to work. Yet he made the commenter wait until his late ass was ready to go as well. Unless he had the IQ of soggy lettuce, he also knew perfectly well that being on time is a basic requirement of work. That, plus his refusal to let the commenter leave the house when they needed to, scared me.

      2. sheworkshardforthemoney*

        Same here! I have a photo of me at the office picnic wearing baby blue short-shorts and knee high socks. My idea of casual. I was fine with the picture at first and years later I found it and thought OMG. Lucky for me it was the only copy.

    18. Kelly AF*

      I regularly wear thick ponte leggings to work. (I’m wearing a pair now, in fact!) What do you guys think? Work appropriate or not? (I’m an analyst in the marketing department of a bank. Some of the men wear suits — like the CMO and the guys who work with sales, and the women wear anything from lovely skirt suits to leggings and flip flops. So I’m not worried I’m violating a dress code or anything, but am I making myself look very casual or unprofessional?)

      1. WizzardOzz*

        I think it depends on what you wear over the leggings. I’m not a fan of leggings, but as long as the rear end is fully covered I find them perfectly okay for a casual work environment.

      2. Birch*

        I think this is what I wear? I have a pair of what I call pants that are thicker than leggings but cut like leggings and with a stretchy waistband and no pockets. IMO if they fit you well and don’t show cracks or pantylines they’re OK in a more casual office. I usually wear mine with blousier blouses and cardigans so it’s not a ton of a** in anyone’s face. I think if you pair them with nicer shoes, a nice blouse and a nice blazer you can get away with them looking like very tailored black trousers.

      3. Lily B*

        A rule for leggings that has served me well, is that they’re fine in casual work situations *as long as your bum is completely covered up*, like by a tunic top or long sweater, or shorter dress. Otherwise they do tend to look a bit unprofessional.

        1. Parenthetically*

          This is also my rule. I think a nice tunic/cardigan/leggings combination, especially with a belt, can look very office appropriate. Just keep the booty under wraps.

      4. Prof. Kat*

        I think they’re fine! I wear thick ponte legging to work (academia, but a fairly traditional, conservative field), but I generally follow the “cover your butt” rule. I usually throw on a long cardigan or blazer to balance it out.

      5. attornaut*

        I dress super casually at work (so this would be fine for me) but I a) work in a casual office, and b) have put in the years building up a professional reputation, so am at the point in my career where I feel like, I’ll wear what I want and if they don’t like it, trust me, some other company will accept it just fine.

      6. Charlotte*

        I’ve been looking for work appropriate ponte leggings (I have a very casual office). Where do you get yours?

        1. Kelly AF*

          Old Navy, Target, Eloquii, Torrid…. I really like leggings! My name is a link to the Old Navy pair I’m wearing now.

          I only like ones with the center seam in the front or front and back. For some reason, those read as less legging-like to me.

            1. Ego Chamber*

              Fwiw, Torrid markets themselves as a plus sized retailer but their sizes go from 10 – 30. I buy my size medium s/o things from Torrid all the time and we’ve never had issues with fit.

        2. Amanda*

          Loft! Wait until it’s an extra 40-60% off clearance. I have some with some cute seaming. I don’t work in a business environment, but I wear them for church.

        3. Gnome Ann*

          Charlotte, I’ve found a few different places – Amazon actually has a house brand called Daily Ritual, and they have the ponte leggings; for a different (not necessarily better) feel, try americangiant.com. Lastly I’d point you to Betabrand – they have pants in this material in a few different cuts. They’re all extremely comfortable and look a little more professional because they have fake pockets, belt loops, and a fake fly with button.

        4. lurker*

          Kohl’s Simply Vera Wang line works well for me. Also J. Jill, if you can spend a little more or wait for a sale.

      7. Maple*

        In general, as long as your butt is covered, I think they’re fine. Unfortunately, my officemate has not gotten that memo.

        I remember reading a rule on the “Go Fug Yourself” website years ago that I took to heart and have used as a guiding principle on the matter:
        Leggings≠Pants

        2. lurker*

          I’ve noticed that the very thin, very close-fitting yoga/exercise leggings, often without a behind-covering shirt seem to have become the most default form of “pants” for young women at the college where I work (possibly even more common than jeans). I’m wondering if style norms will change as this generation enters the workforce.

          1. Dahlia*

            I’ve been in the workforce for many years and work at a pretty high level job and this is what I wear on my days off. At work- tailored suiting and sheath dresses. My days off- leggings which cover everything (no panty lines, thick and opaque) and which I consider pants (no need to wear a top that covers my butt- regular tops). For those of us who have been wearing these since high school, we probably aren’t going to change now.. these are the jeans of our generation!

          2. Ego Chamber*

            If you want kill leggings forever, repeat after me: “OMIGOD, I LOVE YOUR STRETCH-PANTS!” Repeat it again every time you see someone wearing leggings and I swear the trend will eventually die.

            1. Loud Noises*

              This made me laugh but even if someone said it to me every day I would definitely still rock my leggings everywhere but to work.

              1. Say what?*

                Same, I’d flash a smile and walk away in my leggings. It’s a staple that allows me to be anywhere (playground, living room floor, up a tree) with my 3-year-old. I’m not giving them up. Sorry.

    19. Ghost Pepper*

      Same here. I remember wearing a tight, white, sleeveless, ribbed shirt with a burgundy bra underneath and the straps would visibly veer to my shoulders. Another time I (regularly) wore suit blazers with nothing underneath but a bra. Not to mention the skin-tight pants and button-ups I would wear, where the last button was right above where my bra-line ended. These are just examples. It’s not I was even trying to make a statement or “attract a man.” I just thought it looked cute at the time. (smh)

      2. Life is good*

        This reminds me of my very first big-girl job at 19. I wore a burgundy sweater with a white bra. We had pictures taken that day for a promotional ad for our grand opening and when we looked at the newspaper the day it was published, there I was with a perfect outline of the bra showing through the sweater. I was mortified. Don’t have white bras anymore.

        1. MM*

          I haven’t bought a white bra since I was a tween. I don’t know why they make them. Even under white clothes they stand out!

    20. Serin*

      In retrospect, when I got my first job, it would have been perfectly fine to ask my parents if they could take me shopping for work-appropriate clothes, but it didn’t occur to me. It was 1986 and I’d spent the last four years in leggings and big sloppy Shaker sweaters.

      I managed to assemble enough clothes that I never had to wear the same thing twice in one week, and I think mostly it was all neutral enough not to draw too much attention to how small a collection it was. But I had this one drop-waist dress in a tie-dye pattern (… 1986 …)

      One of my co-workers, in passing, mentioned to me “that dress that you wear every Thursday.”

    21. MCL*

      This was in my early 30’s (!). My academic department was all-hands-on deck on a Sunday (we are not open on Sundays). This is the only time I remember this happening, but it was because an outside accreditor was coming to assess our department and for some reason Sunday was the time that we had to meet up with the accreditation team. I was so pettily annoyed about coming in on a Sunday that I wore ratty weekend jeans, and a football team t-shirt. My department chair didn’t say anything to me directly at the time, but I could immediately tell that she was not pleased, and everyone else had pretty much made an effort and dressed nicely. I really had embarrassed myself because I was the only one who had under-dressed, and I had only hurt myself. My chair brought it up only one time, several months later, but it did let me know I had made a lingering negative impression and I never pulled a stunt like that again. I should have absolutely known better – we’re a pretty casual work environment, but that would have been one of those days where everyone stepped up their outfits a notch instead of down several notches. Cringe!

    22. OP*

      Omg, yes! A couple days ago, I was remembering the olive green and yellow patterned polyester micro mini I wore at my first legal secretary gig. Sadly, that was not my only, or worst, wardrobe malfeasance (think men’s v-neck undershirts without a bra, sometimes without a jacket, yikes). High fives to all the office fashion don’ts here!

          1. OP*

            Can you describe the sweater? With all the unisex dress options these days, it’s not registering as cringey to me.

            1. Not So NewReader*

              I am picturing something like my father’s old sweater. The first thing you notice is the sweater screams, “I am 70 years old.” The next thing is that it goes around me twice. Then there’s the sleeves. If I roll the cuffs up four times, I can actually use my fingers. I look like I am already to do fall yard work.

    23. Save your forks*

      I wore a super-short jersey H&M dress (not even very flattering) to my first real office job where I had very little interaction with anybody. My boss e-mailed me from the next office over to say “That dress is very cute but not appropriate for work.” I melted in shame. This was the same (hourly) job where I regularly showed up 1.5 hours late and thought that because my boss never said anything about it, it must be OK. I think she e-mailed me about that one too, probably after the tenth+ time I did it. Hoo boy…

    24. Cookie Monster*

      I remember wearing a pleated plaid skirt, like what a private school girl would wear and it getting a lot of attention. Also, I remember wearing a satin dress that I also wore to a wedding and not thinking anything of it…

    25. Anon nonprofit worker*

      LOL, so guilty of the same thing. My very first job out of undergrad: I remember my first manager never said anything about it which reinforced it being “fine” in my head, but literally the day the assistant manager took over she pulled me aside and said that my clothes were not appropriate.

    26. Sam Yao*

      I had absolutely no idea how to handle myself at a workplace. At one summer job in an office during college, I: wore all my flowy goth clothes, hung up artsy 1940s photos of movie stars and a Cthulhu for President poster, sang loudly in the hall, and was surprised when I was not asked back the following year. I am mortified at all of this now, but man, if somebody had been kind enough to take me aside and sit me down and explain professional norms, it might have made a huge difference.
      I struggled for a long time with undiagnosed/untreated mental illness, too, and had a couple of nervous breakdowns that made me behave WILDLY unprofessionally. I was rightly fired for those, but once I finally got treatment and medication, it’s all been OK.

      1. Samesies*

        Oh, thank you for this, it reminds me so much of my first office job out of post-secondary. I thought I was being “quirky and fun” and was also dealing with some personal stuff. I was let go during my probationary period. I’m still mortified 20 years later.

    27. Temporarily nameless*

      Oh, god, I definitely did this. I even got an inkling of it while it was happening at that job–I came in one day a bit more conservatively dressed, and somebody (clearly trying to encourage me in the right direction) said “You’re looking more professional day by day now!” to me. I absolutely understood what they meant by it at the time, but I didn’t do anything about it.

      In my defense, though, I was in the grip of an eating disorder at the time and incredibly obsessed with how newly thin I was. All I wanted to do was wear the things I’d always felt I wasn’t “allowed” or “able” to wear before (and it was never really SUPER revealing, just some shorter skirts than advisable, usually with long sleeves). And I was 19. Still. I cringe when I think back on it.

      (There were a million other things I did wrong at that job, honestly, mostly nothing to do with my clothes. I still reel that I got a good reference out of it. I think it was because it was a job they usually filled with grad students and I was an undergrad, so they decided to be forgiving of immaturity and blame it on themselves for making an exception, especially since the substance of my work was good.)

    28. xms967*

      Augh. I remember thinking I had a small enough chest that I could get away with not wearing a bra to work. Spoiler: This was false from start to finish.

    29. Elle*

      Oof. I did kind of the opposite. I interviewed for an internship at a startup on a Friday and everyone was wearing jeans. Thinking, hey, this must be startup culture! I blew all my new ‘work wardrobe’ money on some slightly dressy jeans and casual tops to go with them.
      Showed up my first day, a Monday… everyone was wearing dress clothes. It was only then I made the Friday connection. But then I had to keep wearing the jeans until my first paycheck cleared 3 weeks later. I felt like I could melt into the carpet every day I had to go into work and sit down next to people in dress pants. In retrospect, I should have just explained the mix up to my boss.

    30. BigHairBigDreams*

      I had an intern who would wear *slightly* longer tops over tights as if the tights were leggings or pants. It’s possible that the tops were actually tunics meant to cover her whole backside (still would have been too short), but this particular intern was tall, and the tops usually ended mid-bottom like a regular shirt. You could see her underwear through her tights. It’s worth noting that we were not an office that allowed leggings as pants either. It was odd and nobody knew how to handle it.

      For context, we were a small, incredibly unorganized, and inefficient nonprofit, so the junior staff–myself included–who were 21 and 22 year old were responsible for managing interns around or just under the same age. We were also a feminist advocacy nonprofit that honored a fairly casual dress code (as to not police what women wear) and this particular intern had openly shared her struggles with body image tied to her experiences as a survivor of sexual assault. Needless to say, we had NO IDEA how to have a conversation with this intern about her frankly inappropriate clothing.

      I cringe when I think about it. We never said anything, and I regret failing my intern in this way. She most certainly went on to other organizations that had less casual dress codes and likely a less gentle, for lack of a better word, approach to correcting her behavior.

      Learning lessons.

  2. ELK*

    Was executive assistant to the president of a local college. She left for a business trip, after sternly telling me that I needed to be more proactive “managing” the things in her office (like Christmas cards, etc.). So while she was gone, I rearranged the items in her desk drawers. I don’t think she ever got over the shock of finding that I had straightened out her entire desk, and I sure wish I hadn’t done it. I believe my time was limited after that. But on the other hand – it was a good job but she was a terrible boss, and in retrospect maybe it was, after all, not a bad idea. Never mind! :)

    1. Snarkus Aurelius*

      This is why you tell people what to do, not how to be. Telling someone to be more proactive is meaningless unless you follow it up with specifics!

      You may regret it, but I think she got what she deserved.

      1. Lance*

        No doubt. Make it actionable and to the point; being vague like that, well, she got what she asked for.

      2. AnotherKate*

        “Tell people what to do, not how to be” is probably the best managerial advice I’ve ever heard. (Probably not bad for teaching or coaching, either).

      3. Not So NewReader*

        Yep, people don’t do what you WANT, rather they do what you SAY. It’s a good idea for bosses to think things through. I was helping my MIL. She said to vacuum the way I do at home. She was beside herself that I did not move all those heavy pieces of furniture. I vacuumed the way I do at home.

    2. kittymommy*

      LOL, this is awesome! I have a boss who is always saying that he wants me to keep him more organized, so I started with his desk that has mail he hasn’t gone through since 2016. That did not go over well, but he hasn’t mentioned the organization idea again!

    4. ThankYouRoman*

      I’ve had messy desk bosses I can imagine this happening to. I used to have to watch out for coffee cups that would start to grow if it were up to the boss to deal with. The other stuff, that wasn’t touched lol

  3. Official Rabbit to the Queen*

    Ugh. Early in career I told a coworker about comments boss had made about coworker’s recent project/performance. Learned that one the hard way.

      1. Not A Morning Person*

        Just guessing, but the boss was probably unhappy that the opinions were shared with the employee; and the employee who was critiqued was unhappy hearing it from a coworker.

      2. Official Rabbit to the Queen*

        Open floor plan, the boss was ‘letting off steam’ by holding address the general room, but not anyone specifically. (So the boss wasn’t expecting me to do anything with the information, other than be part of the audience). Young me wanted to warn coworker about the hidden storm. Coworker felt they had done nothing wrong and was instantly angered by boss airing her dissatisfaction to the room in general. It was a hornet’s nest that I had kicked over.

    3. chocoholic*

      At my husband’s first job, the boss told him he was going to be laying off a co-worker. Before he told the co-worker. He was not sure what to do with that information. Thankfully, he took my advice, which was to do nothing with it. That boss was crazy though, and he learned all kinds of information about others that he should not have learned.

      1. Rika*

        I used to work for an organization that did that as a rule. More than once I was in the awkward position of knowing about someone getting fired before the person concerned. It got particularly uncomfortable one time when the person actually came to me for emotional support, because they were fearing for their job. I knew they were being let go and had to keep my mouth shut while trying to comfort them!

        1. Torrance*

          Yikes. That’s something I’d definitely find hard to deal with. Keeping your bosses’ secrets makes you a good employee, sure, but withholding information like that– I don’t think I could do it. Most people I know are one or two paychecks from losing their homes, their cars, their dignity. Giving people time to find new jobs or the ability to get out of a bad situation before having to tick the ‘have you been fired’ box seems like the right thing to do. :/

        2. Artemesia*

          Yes but then you were also in a position to be able to say — well when I get nervous about stuff like that, the first thing I do is get my resume in shape and begin thinking about what I would do IF it happened. Things are a little shaky around here and all of us would probably be well advised to think about what out plan B is.

      2. Charlottemousse*

        I worked at a place like that out of college. The office manager told me that the assistant was going to be let go. It didn’t happen for another 6 months after that was said, but it was really awkward for me to know that! I said nothing to the assistant, though.

      3. Not So NewReader*

        I think I met this boss’ sibling. My own boss would spill the beans on everything, speculate about people’s sex lives, their mental health, their finances and so on. I just assumed she was talking about me the same way behind my back.

      4. SusanIvanova*

        Best Boss Ever called us together. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but IncreasinglyDysfunctionalCompany wants to cancel our project (which was near completion and highly anticipated by customers) and reassign you to maintenance programming. They don’t want you to know because they think you’ll quit. I’ll help you with your resumes.”

        This was at the height of a tech boom; recruiters were already circling our company like vultures spotting a dying cow. And I’m not dissing maintenance programmers – they just have different skills and interests from project designers. They wouldn’t like our job any more than we’d like theirs.

  4. Amber T*

    I had so many ideas! That I wanted to share! Everyone was inefficient! And if they did it this way it would be better!

    Thankfully I wasn’t *obnoxious* about it (I don’t think), I just made a lot of suggestions that were met with some stares and “you’ll see why we do it this way.” And I did. And it makes sense now!

      1. Amber T*

        It seemed inefficient to my then-untrained eye – I didn’t realize *why* we had to do everything a certain way, which seemed silly. As someone who implements a lot of the rules now, I totally get it.

        1. Birch*

          I find this dynamic really interesting. I’m co-managing some young people now with Lots of Ideas and Lots of Ambition but no drive to do the things I’ve actually asked them to do. I have always had tons of ideas but I would have NEVER said them to anyone, done anything without explicit permission, or made unsolicited suggestions about processes because I would be sure there was a reason they were done that way that I wasn’t qualified to know about. Personality differences?

            1. rogue axolotl*

              I don’t think it’s generational so much as dependent on what messages you receive prior to entering the workforce. Even as an intern I was pretty conscious of my place in the hierarchy and was pretty cautious about making any suggestions (sometimes to a fault), and I only graduated a few years ago. I’m actually not sure where I picked this up, maybe from service jobs where I was never treated with any respect. But I can see how someone might have a hard time transitioning from a school environment where your thoughts and opinions are always encouraged to a work environment where you have to be a lot more strategic about how to deploy them.

            2. SusanIvanova*

              Only in the sense that every new generation goes through it. Where do you think all those well-meaning grandparents got their “gumption” ideas from?

          2. Amber T*

            I was in the middle really… tell me to do X and I’d do X, but might I also suggest trying to do Y instead because that seems quicker? And have we ever tried to do Z? And I’m not involved with Project A at all, but from my limited perspective, if we try D and E instead of B and C, that might more efficient (again, with 0 knowledge of why anything is done).

            Now I’m at the point in my career where I’m comfortable bringing up with my boss suggestions, mostly because I’m better at asking why do we do X and why can’t we do Y, and I have a greater understanding of a lot of our company, our industry, and my role itself overall.

          3. Justin*

            It is taught, young people are told that they need to be proactive and willing to speak up and improve things…and those are good traits but I think younger people don’t know exactly how to do it.

            1. Artemesia*

              They should all be told — do it the way they tell you and then after you have that under control and see how it all fits together THEN think about trying shortcuts or suggesting new approaches that might save time and money.

              People get really ticked at the newbie who makes the dead obvious suggestion which often is ‘the way we used to do it and it lead to the Carstairs contract disaster that cost the firm half a mil.’

          4. Not So NewReader*

            Personality differences?

            I think that goes to what you have seen in life. If a person has examples such as being told in front of an entire class that they are stupid, etc., then that person might be less apt to speak. But there are other reasons why a person would not speak up.

            As far as Lots of Ideas and No Drive, in some cases that could be because it’s not their specific idea that you are talking about. I caught myself in this pitfall. I had all the energy in the world for my ideas but other people’s ideas left me tired and deflated. On the good side of this story, is that I caught what I was doing, and took deliberate steps to stop. Once I started my new habit, I realized how many other people get caught in the same pit. It’s pretty easy not to realize what we are doing in these cases.

          5. MM*

            I’d bet educational differences, which may map onto generational differences to some degree but not universally. For example, I was taught from the earliest age that participating and doing my part meant contributing ideas and engaging in discussion. It took me a while in my first professional work environment to figure out that the boss didn’t actually want to hear what I thought about the massive off-site strategy meeting just because I’d been in the room. (I was an intern; specifically–I’ve had a few different kinds of internships–the low-level, warm-body kind.) I really wasn’t trying to give him my thoughts because I thought I knew something everybody else was missing, or that I knew better than anyone; I just assumed that if I was present for a discussion, I was expected to reflect on it and express the resulting thoughts. That had been my life experience up until then. (I was 18.) He was very polite about it, but nonetheless I did figure out from his reserved reception that actually my thoughts were not something anybody was looking for–though I didn’t figure it out on the spot or even right away thereafter.

          6. JB*

            I’ve seen this happen. One time I was in the middle of performing a certain task for my work. The task required a very specific procedure, had no margin for error, and was enforced by actual laws. If someone failed to follow the procedure they would probably lose their license. So we’re in the middle of the procedure, and the supervisor is walking us through the steps, and all of a sudden the (least-experienced, least-educated, least-competent) new guy says, “I think we should do it this way…”

            And we all just stared at him like, “What… The… F***…”

    2. Key lime pie*

      I was this young professional, too. Except, in retrospect, I was often obnoxious. Cringe cringe cringe. I had a great supervisor/mentor who, again in retrospect, was a freaking saint. My penance is that I now manage young professionals and am on the receiving end of, “Why are we doing this the stupid inefficient way when we could be doing it the way I learned in grad school/ the way we did at LastJob/ the way I dreamed up on the bus?”

    3. Cassandra*

      Nod nod. I did this in a blaze-of-(in)glory exit letter.

      I do know better now. I should have then.

      1. Drago Cucina*

        Yeah, tell us how bad we are always makes us want to hire someone. {Insert big eye roll here.}

    6. Faulty Knees*

      So glad to see that it wasn’t just me. “At my old job we…”
      My manager suggested to me that I learn the way they did things, and once I had it down, then bring up ways to improve. It was a good lesson that I’ve been able to pass forward.

      1. Jules the 3rd*

        Yep – learn the rules and reasons so that you can really see what’s important and what’s fluff.

  5. Justin*

    I dressed really poorly (wrinkles etc), though I did that outside of work too. It was not a good look (literally).

    I was hungover a couple times when I worked in Korea but that was both acceptable and encouraged at my school, so….

    1. Cosette*

      I definitely went to work at least a little hungover at least a few times… Dear Younger Me: Don’t do that!

      1. WhoopsThereItIs*

        About a month into a new job I had a few too many glasses of wine and no food at a farewell party for a colleague. Needless to say, I was in no shape to be in the office the next day, but I was horrified that everyone would know why I took a sick day (WHY do they have these parties on anything other than Fridays??). So I went in – and got sick in a trashcan and in the subway. I managed to somewhat hold it together at work, but definitely had more than a few “are you OK…?”s!

      2. Random Commenter*

        I definitely did that. I went to work after having slept only like 2 hours, too. And then I was annoyed at my boss for treating me like it was any other day, and actually EXPECTING ME to do WORK when I clearly was TIRED.

        Jeez.

        1. Cookie Monster*

          Ahhhh. I went out after work WITH MY BOSS and stayed out too late drinking and missed the last train home. I was on vacation the next day, so, I went back to the office and slept under my desk (!!) where I conveniently had a sleeping bag stashed that I has won from a vendor and hadn’t brought home. I woke up when the fax machine started going off in the morning, got up and hopped the train home…

      3. Katie*

        My very first office job I went to hungover pretty much every single day (3 days a week) for the first 6 months. All my friends worked in bars, we’d only just graduated, so I thought this was normal and acceptable. My manager would ask pointed questions but my naive ass just thought she was jealous of my incredible social life. It wasn’t till I got put on a PIP at my 6 month review that I realised she actually wanted me to stop. Like, DUDE. I’m so mad at myself for being such an idiot, but I’m so mad with her too for not just saying after like 3 weeks very specifically to stop coming to work hungover, when I clearly wasn’t getting it.

        1. Beth*

          I had a job working at a dry cleaners my senior year of high school. During the week, it was 3-7, no problemo. Saturdays were really bad, though. I had to work at the main store, (which was 15 minutes further out) from 8am-2pm. Not once did I show up sober, and many times I hadn’t slept. There was a guy on the same shift that operated identically to me. So, when we got there, whoever was worst off could go and take a nap in the giant carts of clean but not pressed clothes for an hour or so, then we’d switch off all day. Customers thought that there was only ever one of us there.

    2. Dankar*

      I called out with a hangover when I was a graduate assistant. My supervisor , who was not that much older than I was (and had actually been an assistant before moving up), just said, “Sweet. See you Monday.”

      Not my finest moment, and not something I would ever do again!!

    3. TakingTheFifth*

      One summer I had a job in the admissions office of my college. I kept a pitcher of screwdrivers in my fridge at home & sometimes worked the post-lunch period drunk. Nobody noticed.

      1. Catleesi*

        The pitcher of screwdrivers too me WAY too long to figure out. I was not picturing cocktails, and it was a very confusing mental image.

    4. Kelly AF*

      I was doing a weekend training in DC for a part-time job. I got crazy-drunk on Saturday night, got up first thing Sunday morning to walk from my hotel to the training, barfed real quick on the lawn of the Chilean Embassy, and showed up to the training on time and ready to work. (I don’t think I’m welcome in Chile, however.)

      Ah, to be 25 again!

      1. FaintlyMacabre*

        I love the idea of your face plastered on a sign at all the entries of Chile with the words “Deny Entry. Barfer.” all over them.

        1. Kelly AF*

          That is EXACTLY how I’ve always pictured it.

          I must have triggered some sort of alarm, because a security guard popped out to check on me while I did that holding-up-a-finger thing that means “just a minute!” (not the other holding-up-a-finger thing) while I puked and tried to figure out why it was red! (Don’t eat red velvet cupcakes when you’re drunk if you don’t want to panic yourself the next day.)

    5. fwsezdjhtyc*

      i don’t iron my clothes and no one seems to notice. it’s too much effort when they’ll just get worn.

  6. INeedANap*

    So, my only defense is that this was my first job ever.

    I was 16 or so, working at a locally owned casual restaurant by a lake. I was kinda useless to begin with, not a great worker. On July 4th I was scheduled to work and they had stressed to me it was very, very busy and I needed to really bust my butt that day.

    That morning, some friends asked me to go to a local beach town. I asked my mom to call in an excuse for me because I was too embarrassed to do it myself. Ditched work and went to the beach.

    My mom never called in for me. I got sunburned.

    Showed up the next day after pulling a no-call, no-show, on the busiest day of their year, sunburned from having a fun day out while they all had an even more miserable day than they would have due to me not showing up.

    I still cringe with shame thinking of what they must have thought of me.

    1. seller of teapots*

      I kind of love your mom in this story. I’m definitely filing this away for future use. (My son is 2.)

    2. Amber Rose*

      I definitely called in sick to work once from the middle of a party. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear it, but I was fired not long after. I was 14 or 15 at the time working at a theater, so it’s not like it haunts me, but I still shake my head thinking back on it.

    3. saltheartedbarmaid*

      Oooof, I worked at a cafe my senior year of high school, and that summer I decided I deserved a week off to spend with my friends before we all went off to college, so I pulled THREE no-call no-shows in a row.

      Two years later, I desperately needed a summer job, so I went back to that cafe and basically prostrated myself in front of the owner and apologized. They actually re-hired me, but for the 6 – 11 AM shift only. One of the co-owners refused to speak to me after all that time. What a mess.

    4. Amber T*

      I flat out told my boss at old retail job that I wouldn’t work Black Friday. Not negotiated, not asked, just said I wouldn’t. Thinking back, it was a really dysfunctional place (that was a ton of fun). She didn’t schedule me, but wow, what an ass I was.

      1. Zona the Great*

        Nah—more people should put their foot down in this way. Otherwise we end up with Black Friday on Thanksgiving day.

        1. Iris Eyes*

          If there’s a corportate office they are the ones deciding the hours not the Store Manager who is in charge of covering those hours. And the powers that be aren’t going to accept “but everybody refused to work” as an excuse. They are just going to say get out or get your people under control.

          1. Marina*

            I mean… that’s how collective action works, though. You do have to be a little more organized than “everyone decides on their own that they don’t feel like working” but “everybody refused to work” is why we have overtime laws. The costs of hiring and training aren’t negligible, even for low skill jobs.

          2. Observer*

            They may say that – or they may realize that this costs more than it’s worth. And if it happens multiple times, then SOMETHING is going to change.

            If enough people kick up enough fuss, bosses wind up listening or they pay the cost one way or another.

        2. zapateria la bailarina*

          i was hired as a holiday temp at a big department store. it was made clear that i would be required to work black friday, which i understood and agreed to. they scheduled me to start at 5pm on thanksgiving day. i spoke to my supervisor and complained since it wasn’t what i agreed to and i would be having thanksgiving dinner with my family at that time, and she basically said too bad. so i finished my shift, walked out to my car, called in and quit with no notice. they told me i would never be allowed to work in any position in their entire parent company ever again and i said, no problem, see ya never!

          i understand the black friday thing (kind of) but when it starts on thanksgiving day, during the time my family would be sitting down for dinner, i’ve got to draw a line.

          1. Ego Chamber*

            You made the right decision (f#ck ’em). I only wonder whether they intentionally didn’t tell you about working on Black Friday Eve (that’s what my last seasonal retail job called Thanksgiving) because they were having trouble finding someone that would work that day, or if the evening before was just so part of Black Friday to them that it didn’t occur to them to be really, really clear and say “You’ll be required to work Black Friday Weekend, which begins on Thursday evening.” Either way: messed up.

        3. Observer*

          The thing is you don’t just refuse to work – you get together with your workmates and refuse as a group.

      2. MM*

        Meh. At my last hourly job, we were asked for our availability on the application. I put down, among other things, that I could work Friday or Saturday nights but not both. After a few weeks, they started scheduling me for both (and Sunday mornings–though the Sundays themselves were fine, it was something we’d agreed upon as a way to get me paid more–but Friday night plus Saturday night plus Sunday morning, when a night shift can end and 1am and a morning shift starts at 7, is a no). I protested to them verbally several times. I warned them that if they kept doing this I was going to not show up at some point. And then finally one Saturday night I “called in sick” and they had to handle their shit themselves. I still have no regrets.

        (I suppose I should note that I was pulling way more than my weight at that job and that’s probably part of why I got away with it–they knew damn well they needed me and it was worth putting up with one shift’s worth of truancy–but still, ugh. I didn’t like being put in a position where the only way to get a reasonable outcome was to be a jerk.)

      3. laughingrachel*

        Eh, I think that’s pretty common in retail and food service. Those jobs are pretty notorious for ignoring availabilities and overscheduling people into burnout – at least in most places. I worked at a family-owned bar/restaurant/brewery for 4 years while I was in college. Because of high turnover inherent in a food service with mediocre management by the time I was there for a year, I was the most senior waitress and I was highly reliable (never called in sick, never came to work hungover) and one of their best servers. I basically picked my own schedule by just telling my manager when I would be working and about any schedule changes – I never asked because to me it was non-negotiable. I always prioritized my schooling. We had a lot of students that started working there who wanted 15-20 hours and got scheduled ~37 hours every single week, some quit, some made it work, and a solid amount just dropped out of school because they couldn’t handle it. You have to stand up for yourself a lot in those types of jobs because your managers absolutely will not and they’ll fire you the second you’re not useful to them anymore anyway.

    5. DCGirl*

      My sister skipped school to go to the beach and came home beet red. Mom was not amused.

      When I worked as a bank teller in college, I was once hauled off the teller line at my branch one Monday morning, thrown in a cab, and sent to another branch post haste. All three tellers had gone to the beach together the day before, gotten severely sunburned and (apparently) deeply hung over, and all had called in sick. I arrived to find the branch manager manning the one open teller window and a line of pissed-off customers snaking out the door.

      1. Lance*

        Oh boy, that must’ve been fun. The wait to see a teller can already be long enough with a short line…

        1. DCGirl*

          The manager hadn’t been a teller in a while and was a bit slow. Between the two of us, though, we eventually got it under control. I was told those three tellers got a stern talking-to when they returned to the office the next day.

      3. Jennifer Juniper*

        I worked the polls in June 2016. I did curbside assistance, which is helping elderly/disabled voters vote in their cars. The shift was 15 hours long. I was supposed to be outside the whole time. I forgot my sunscreen – and it was the first day I’d gotten any sun that year.

        Fast forward 10 or 11 hours. My co-workers noticed I looked like the catch of the day at Red Lobster and pulled me into the shade, then inside. *shakes head at self*

    7. DataGirl*

      My first job, I left work early with a headache. I really did have a headache! But when I left I felt better so I went to my friend’s house then we went out to party and I didn’t get home until past curfew. My parents were waiting up: my mom had called my work for something and found out I left “Sick” but knew I didn’t come home- boss found out that I had not gone home sick. I was in trouble on both sides.

      1. Kelsi*

        I faked sick a lot as a kid, so I knew the routine of making sure I didn’t do anything that made me appear to be too healthy. That stuck so well that even when I was living alone in a different state from my job, the most I EVER dared to do on a sick day was drive to the grocery store for medicine and soup. I was always convinced my mom would appear out of nowhere and go WHY AREN’T YOU AT WORK? (And I still feel guilty when I stay home, even though as an adult I take, you know, vacation days instead of sick days when I just don’t want to go in)

        1. lonestarbrooklyn*

          So much this! I faked sick all the time, including getting to school and deciding to bail and suddenly “coming down with something.”
          Now, when I’m sick I don’t post *anything* on social media, even about being sick, to avoid saying something that might be misinterpreted, and I similarly don’t even run sick-person errands.

        2. Amber T*

          Adult me is still so paranoid about being seen at CVS or the grocery store when I’m out sick. I could have nothing in my fridge and my thought process is “oh well guess I’ll starve” before I run out and buy food (before I remember take out is a thing). I still follow the rule that if you’re too sick to go to school/work, you’re too sick to do anything fun… I really need to realize that picking up meds isn’t “fun” but kinda necessary, and I’m not under house arrest.

        3. OP*

          This whole sick thread is amazing.

          In college, I was new to faking sick (no pesky parents to get past), but I hated calling out because I never knew how to convincingly sound sick. Cough? Put on a gravelly voice? Pinch my nose while talking?

          So instead, before I showed up to work the counter at a vegetarian restaurant, I patted my roommate’s face powder (her skin was way lighter than mine) all over and drew red lip liner on the insides of my bottom eyelids. I stood slumped behind the counter, moaning about how I didn’t feel great and moving very slowly when I was asked to do anything. They sent me home pretty quickly. I’m surprised they didn’t fire me right then. Anyway, I wish I had a photo, because there’s no way it looked legit.

          1. Jake, but not from State Farm*

            I JUST did the holding my nose trick myself last month. Never occurred to me before that. Not sure how well it worked but work never said anything.

          2. Beth*

            I had a friend in college that was an amazing makeup artist, and she could legit make me look like I was deathly ill. She’d even grease my hair up to give me bedhead. She really was an artist.

        4. rogue axolotl*

          I also feel guilty whenever I’m sick, despite the fact that I usually just have to take the day unpaid anyway. I didn’t fake sick when I was a kid but my mum always accused me of faking so I guess it stuck anyway.

        5. Arya Parya*

          A few years ago I threw my back out. I couldn’t sit without pain and couldn’t stand for very long either. Since my job couldn’t be done laying down, I was home sick for nearly two weeks.
          One of the things the doctor told me to do, was go on walks. This would help strengthen my back again and would keep everything at least a bit mobile. So every day I went on a prescribed walk around town, each day a little farther. This felt so wrong, especially when I ran into someone I knew. When one asked if I had a day off, I really didn’t know what to say.

      2. Not So NewReader*

        One place I worked, if you called in sick then went to the mall you would find most of upper management shopping, too. They did not see a problem with shopping while on the clock and did it routinely.
        Needless to say the bosses were laughed at and make jokes of all the time.
        For my own part, if I called in sick even just a mental health day, I went back to bed. No worries about running into people any where.

    8. Doug Judy*

      When I was a teenage I worked for a big retail store. Store closed but there were things we needed to do before we went home for the night. My boyfriend and I had been fighting and I was sooooooo upset, so I just went home. And then never went back because I was too embarrassed.

    9. Sevenrider*

      I called out sick to a retail job when I was 18 saying I had been in a car accident. The real reason was because I used to get horrible, cold sore type breakouts that were hugely embarrassing. I later found out I was allergic to sunlight and at that time in my life, I never wore sunscreen. My manager ran into my friend and asked how I was doing. My friend knew nothing about my “car accident” and told my manager I had never been in an accident and was fine. When I finally went to work a few days later my face still looked so bad that my manager took one look at me and said “Oh wow, you really were in an accident.” She sent me home to recover and I didn’t have to go back until I was fully healed. Thank goodness I don’t get those type of breakouts anymore and I wear sunscreen religiously.

      1. Not So NewReader*

        Good boss, she filled in her own blanks perhaps incorrectly but she came to the right answer any way. I am glad you are not dealing with that so much any more.

    10. PSB*

      That reminded me of something that happened in a previous job. It was one of those call centers that was more like an extended high school, culturally speaking. Most of us were in our early to mid 20s and it wasn’t exactly the kind of place that inspired much loyalty or professionalism.

      One of the guys I worked with desperately wanted to go to the lake with some friends. I don’t remember if his day off was denied or it was too late to request it or what, but he ended up calling in sick and going to the lake. He was riding a jet ski when another boat or jet ski crashed into him.

      He lost his leg. On a sick day.

      I don’t know if anyone ever said anything about calling in sick, but he kept his job and worked there for several more years. And I guess maybe he wasn’t completely wrong since he did end up in the hospital that day.

      1. OP*

        Holy crap. That sounds like a scene from a movie. And yeah, I can’t imagine giving someone beef about a sick day when they return to work missing a limb.

      2. RabbitRabbit*

        That happened to a classmate on senior skip day, except I think water skiing and getting run over by that/another boat was involved. IIRC he managed to keep the leg but wasn’t at graduation or anything like that. Spending your post-high school summer in intensive recovery could not have been fun.

  7. RJ the Newbie*

    My neverending tendency to put being liked over being efficient. It kept me from career growth and affected my self confidence for too many years. So over it now.

    1. Wicked Witch of HR*

      This is so funny to me because for me it was the relentless drive for efficiency at the cost of relationships that I had to overcome!

      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        Same! I like to think I’m pulling it back to a more balanced approach, but I will still choose efficiency/project success over someone liking me as a person.

        I have said some truly cringeworthy things to coworkers over the years, though, and am totally that person who rolled my eyes or muttered, “Fine, I’ll just do it myself”, or flat out told someone they were doing it wrong. On the up side, when I see people on my team making the same mistakes now, I can give them the been there-done that-try this instead speech from a position of credibility!

    2. Mallory Janis Ian*

      Oh god, me too! I do still keep in touch with several people from each of my last few jobs, and I’m still invited to team building events for my most recent previous job, so I guess I’ve succeeded in being well-liked. But I cringe about how long it took me to change my focus from ALL relationship focused to at least some task focused. I mean, I always got my work done enough that nobody hated me for that (except maybe one or two hardworking, task-focused people who wondered how they were working so hard and I still had better relationships with people), but when I think about how much I would procrastinate actual work and focus on chatting with my coworkers — ugh! Even in my work focus, I would prioritize the tasks that would make people like me above those that more urgently needed to be done.

    3. Clay on My Apron*

      I was a people pleaser with (undiagnosed) ADHD. So at one point in my career, in an effort to make myself invaluable and highly regarded, I’d agree to anything that was asked of me (poor impulse control) resulting in an impossible workload that I couldn’t possibly deliver on. And without the ability to prioritise, plan, and all that. I was frequently having to tell people that there’d be a delay. Luckily I stopped doing that but it took me a while to recognise my behaviour and do something about it.

  8. Master Bean Counter*

    I picked side in an office clique one week into a job. Yeah, I ended up on the wrong side of office politics.

    1. Faulty Knees*

      Same! So easy to do. Especially when nerves and inexperience are in play. I look back on how I behaved with some of my office “friends” and cringe. The gossiping, bad-mouthing, slacking off. The completely inappropriate conversations on company IM. God I hope those never surface.

      Oh – And the shorts that I tried to pull off as a skirt. Ew.

    2. Kelsi*

      Even when I wasn’t picking sides, I definitely cheerfully blundered into some major office politics back in the day. EVERYBODY was mad at me lol. That was when I learned to ask “Is this public knowledge yet, and if not, am I supposed to pretend not to know?” about things other people told me.

    3. Prof. Kat*

      It’s honestly a relief sometimes that my field (academia) is widely known for horrifying office politics, because it has (so far!) helped me avoid this kind of thing many, many times in my 3.5 years as a faculty member. Not to say that I haven’t made a few enemies — it’s honestly unavoidable — but it helped that I had some idea of what to expect. My Ph.D. advisor was really honest and open with me about the crazy departmental politics at my alma mater (like a faculty member suing the university repeatedly, losing repeatedly, and taking out his dissatisfaction on his colleagues), and it definitely prepared me for dealing with all the bickering over territory and grudges and whose turn it is to teach which class.

      1. Robot With Human Hair*

        I worked in academia for 17 years (started when I was 20!) and you’re not kidding. It’s a minefield, but after enough time, it almost becomes a game, balancing on the tightrope between all the different “factions”.

      3. ElinorD*

        Yes – I work in academia after many years in corp America (banking, communications, etc) and I am always stunned at what people get away with. Including my supervisor.

  9. Jennifer*

    Sent emails making fun of the boss. In my defense they were really funny and would crack everyone up, but I didn’t think about the fact that my boss could see them if he wanted. One of my coworkers printed an especially funny one (!!!!) and left it on the printer where another manager saw it. And that was that.

    3. karou*

      Oh yeah, I made the mistake of writing complaints about another department in email to one person, and then the chain ended up getting forwarded to said department. It’s a hard and embarrassing lesson to learn to never put certain things in email!

      1. Jennifer*

        Yes! I also learned to read the entire email chain before forwarding or sometimes just starting a new one. I’ve read ones where people were talking crap about me somewhere in the middle. I laughed so hard.

        1. Madcap*

          Oh gosh, the other month the research fellows association at the medical center where I work sent out an anodyne e-mail to their distribution list inviting members for donuts and coffee for research fellows week.

          One of them was salty about a recent (and admittedly poorly thought out) IT policy change that would make it a lot harder for a bunch of the fellows to do work.

          So naturally he wrote a five-paragraph rant about it, addressed it to the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and Dean of Research, and hit “Reply All.”

          Three or four of the other fellows hit ‘reply all’ to say “I’m with stupid,” which was bad enough, but they never noticed that the original ranter added the CEO, CAO, and Dean of Research to the “To” field.

          So a whole bunch of them were spamming the CEO and CAO of a multi-site, 50,000+ employee research institution with unprofessional griping about an IT problem, and carbon copying about 500 other people to watch the train wreck.

      2. Prof. Kat*

        Oh man…my husband learned this lesson recently, in a weird backwards way. He emailed a particular team to say how impressed he was with their work on a specific project. The email got passed along to some higher-ups to say hey, look what a great job we did! Except the higher-ups (correctly) read between the lines, realized that my husband was praising one team because all the other ones sucked, and then came down hard on those other teams. It kind of needed to happen to fix some systemic issues, but everyone knew it was my husband’s email that kicked it off, so he was inundated with sad people who wanted him to reassure them that THEY weren’t the problem, right? (Except they usually were, so…)

    4. Lady Blerd*

      Similarly, I replied instead of forwarding my thoughts about a colleague to another colleague (or better yet, keep those thoughts to myself). To this day there is a part of my extended network that I’m frozen out from because of this.

  10. Adlib*

    At my first job out of college, I griped openly about not being invited out to lunch with management and some others. Person I was griping to told my boss who yelled at me after they got back. I cried, and she started crying while/after yelling at me. It was pretty immature of me, but I learned to keep things to myself after that. I’m still cringing to some degree.

    1. Adlib*

      Oh, and I’m on the fence about this one, but once I wrote up a scathing complaint post about a coworker and posted it on an anonymous (now-defunct) website, and the owner found out because he tracked our internet usage constantly. That was on my way out of that job although I didn’t know it at the time.

    2. Roja*

      I can’t say your boss comes out of this looking great though, to be honest. Yelling at you and crying seems really excessive for a conversation that should have boiled down to a few stern sentences.

      1. Adlib*

        True, this was probably 15 or 16 years ago so she was much younger than I am now and not much older than me at that time either. I’m sure we’ve both grown tons since then!

    3. ella*

      Oh man, I didn’t think I had anything to contribute to this thread, but you just reminded me of the time I totally invited myself along to an out-of-office lunch that was probably intended to be managers only. My boss didn’t say anything to me about it being inappropriate, I only realized in hindsight.

      1. OP*

        I love this! Were you able to enjoy the lunch? I hope they took you somewhere delicious and/or high-end.

  11. WellRed*

    At my quick print/copy shop job, I would feel personally annoyed if customers (there was a regular one in particular) wanted to speak with my boss instead of me (I’m capable! I can help you!). I cringe because I let it show in my voice and he eventually said something to the boss.

    1. Amylou*

      yeah that’s annoying at first! This also happens if you’re in low-level sounding office roles (“assistant” in the job title)… I got over it/stopped caring, and I would just forward the email / (fake) transfer the call (yes, it works wonders) to my manager while doing an evil laugh at sender thinking “he’s gonna tell you EXACTLY. The. Same. Thing. Or refer you back to me.” If they’re happy to waste their own time getting an “authoritative answer”, please do!!! :D

      There’s just something pleasurable when boss will email back and cc you: “Amylou in Cc will assist you with this”

    2. WS*

      One thing I particularly enjoy about having all-female management is when That Guy only wants to speak to “someone in charge” or “someone who knows all about this” (i.e. a man) it’s straight to the next woman. At least they’ll now usually believe a woman on the phone who says she *is* the manager!

  12. Escapee from Corporate Management*

    I avoided speaking with anyone senior to me unless I had to. I did not want to look like a “brown-noser” or “suck-up” to my peers. What I missed was that other colleagues were finding mentors, learning about leadership, and building advocacy for their future roles–all while continuing to do their jobs well. And the “cool kids” who studiously avoided having contact with senior management? Many got stuck in their careers.

    Nowadays, I tell people early in their career to NEVER turn down a networking opportunity. You can avoid being a suck-up AND communicate often with your leadership

    1. BF50*

      I did this too. Not because I was trying to be a “cool kid,” but because I was treating management like my parents and/or teachers.

      1. Alienor*

        One of my no. 1 annoyances at work is colleagues in their 20s interacting with me like I’m their teacher or their mom. I don’t know if I did the same thing when I was their age or not, but if I did, I wish I could issue a blanket apology to everyone who was my current age/level of seniority at the time!

        1. Ri13*

          As a woman in her 20s, I can report that the opposite- older coworkers at internships treating me like I’m their child or student- is also extremely grating and hard to get around. I try to ask everyone similar questions- how was your weekend? how was x thing you attended? did your child’s dance recital go well?- and the number of times I get condescending replies as if I’m a cute lil puppy doing a trick is far too high.

          1. Offlebump*

            If a colleague asked me something like that, I would be startled that they were that tuned into my life, a bit put off, and I’d have to scramble to find a polite response, because it’s just not a wavelength I’m prepared for at work. Maybe what reads as condescension comes from something similar.

      2. Mallory Janis Ian*

        I didn’t know how to act around management when I first started working in my late teens / early twenties. I was still stuck in the mode of “all adults are parents or teachers” and it was so awkward to relate to non-peers. Now I treat everyone like we’re all the same age, whether they’re twenty years older or younger or whatever. The only time I really notice an age difference is when I can tell a really young coworker is treating me like I’m the office old lady.

        1. Artemesia*

          It is shocking when that finally happens isn’t it? I was ALWAYS the young bright thing, usually working with somewhat older men who enjoyed having a young bright thing around. And most of my career I was the only woman in the group or one of a very few. After a few decades of course inevitably one is no longer the young bright thing — but the sudden realizing that you went almost seamlessly from youthful and bright to old crone

          2. SpellingBee*

            Oh yeah . . . I still remember when I first realized that grown-ass people in my workplace had been born AFTER I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL. I felt so incredibly old.

    2. P*

      Yeah, early on I had the notion (spurred on by an internet “friend” that later turned really ugly) that doing things for one’s own benefit (ie, volunteering to have things to put on a resume) was selfish/dishonest/disingenuous etc.
      Now I see how redic that is; as long as you are doing a good job volunteering, it doesn’t matter if it’s for 100% altruistic love of [folding towels for hospitals] etc, or because your school required you to, or because you wanted experience in Y before you pursued a career in Y, or because you thought it would help your application for [competitive thing]. The volunteer places still get a good volunteer, the people are helped, you get experience and maybe do something you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of. So it’s JUST FINE if it’s for resume fodder etc as long as one does a good job.

      1. Kelsi*

        I think this is a good way to approach life, honestly. Your motivations–good or bad–don’t matter in the end. Your actions matter. If you half-ass your volunteer work because your heart isn’t in it, the problem still isn’t the motivation, it’s what you actually did (i.e. a bad job).

        1. P*

          One of the first major volunteer gigs I had at the behest of a high school requirement ended up being helping paraplegic people eat. (there were a variety of things to chose from and I picked that one, but I wouldn’t have done it without the impetus, it just wouldn’t have been on my radar and I already had a several hobbies I was working at) It was still an amazing experience I remember to this day; ultimately beneficial for everyone even if the initial motivation was not purely voluntary.

      2. TootsNYC*

        in fact, often that’s part of the bargain the charity place is making with you: You give us work, and we’ll be a reference for you later, and maybe teach you some stuff along the way.

    3. Tara S.*

      There can be value in not spending too much time with higher ups, especially if there’s a gender thing going on. All it took was one joke based on a rumor about my college boss sleeping with students and I made a point to try and never be alone with him. (He was fine as far as I know, I never saw/heard anything definitive that makes me think he would actually do that, but the point is the joke/rumor was enough for me to be cautious.)

      1. SS Express*

        I think that’s pretty harmful advice that disproportionately affects women, who are already at a disadvantage.

    4. Oh, naive me*

      I was in the same boat as you in Old Job. I remember seeing a Junior Teapot Coordinator getting coffee with New Teapot Sales Manager and thought “I have no idea why they are together, their jobs have nothing to do with each other.” *shrugs*

      Fast forward a few years, according to LinkedIn, Junior Teapot Coordinator is working at another teapot company as Teapot Sales Coordinator and then moved up to Teapot Sales Manager.

  13. jay*

    I was temporarily sitting in the senior admin assistants desk while she was on vacation, logged on as her, performing receptionist duty. I decided to rearrange all her shortcuts.

      1. Jadelyn*

        I’m…not entirely sure that your youth and naivete would’ve saved you if I’d been that admin. *eye twitching*

      2. sub rosa for this*

        I did something similar, at the wise old age of 27, and (in retrospect) not for good reasons.

        It was pre-Windows 95, and I was by default the office IT expert (very small company, and I was the only one who knew about “turn it off and back on again”) and I had figured out that our desktop computers were networked.

        So I got into the VP’s Control Panel every day and changed something – background, text color, whatever – until he tried to delete the Control Panel from his system and ended up borking everything.

        I felt justified by the fact that he was a VP at 22 (son of the owner, natch) and I was a $4 an hour temp barely struggling by, and the company had made a string of broken promises to me about permanent jobs, more hours, higher pay, etc. that had resulted in nothing.

        But still. I was SUCH an idiot. *sigh*

    5. Not Tom, just Petty*

      There was a letter like that here. A LW said that his coworker was showing him a process but he didn’t like the way she accessed the print command, so he deactivated keyboard options or something. Yeah, that’s a big one. As Alison writes, “don’t mess with someone else’s flow.”
      of course, sub rosa, or sub(mit) alisona, I put linked together all the paper clips (a good few BOXES) at my internship in college because I thought it would be funny and I’d be “ha ha, oh THAT guy, hilarious!” Which is also Latin, for douche.

      3. Tara2*

        I remember that! I think it was that she was using capslock instead of shift, so they disabled the capslock button.

      4. Mallory Janis Ian*

        I worked at my small-town DMV between my junior and senior year of high school. My high-school aged coworker and I thought it was hilarious to link together all the paperclips in the office so that when our bosses went to paperclip a customer’s papers together, they would pull up a six-foot long chain of paperclips. They kept telling us to quit doing it, and the more they told us to quit and got aggravated about it, the more funny we thought it was. I bet they were glad to get rid of us that summer! Although they did have me back the next summer . . . but I didn’t do the paperclips anymore, because my new coworker wasn’t as “fun” as the old one, so I no longer had a partner in crime.

    6. xarcady*

      I was out for a day once, and someone’s computer crashed, so they had him use mine.

      He used my computer for 7 hours, max. He did the following:

      Hid the task bar.
      Deleted shortcuts.
      Moved contents of several folders to the desktop and then deleted the folders.
      Renamed my computer. (Why?)
      Viewed p0rn.
      Downloaded malware and a virus.

      He also stole a pair of scissors clearly marked with my name, rearranged things on my desk, and yes, messed up my chair.

      I was his manager. It was his first job out of college. His performance review was in 2 weeks. We had a little discussion about professional norms.

      1. KE*

        I’m sorry, you waited 2 weeks and THEN had a conversation? I feel like the inappropriate website(s) should have resulted an immediate dismissal… Was he fired?

        1. Xarcady*

          I was not allowed, by the owner of the company, to fire him. He got a talking-to from her the day I came back. And I was allowed to use this stuff on his performance review.

      2. The Tin Man*

        At least you were his manager. And you seem to have learned why his computer probably crashed…

      3. MusicWithRocksInIt*

        Did it shadow how you viewed him forever? Because if someone did that to me I would quietly resent them for the entire time we worked together. And I’d call them something like ‘shortcut hater’ to my husband.

      5. ShameFace*

        I once snuck into my boss’s office and switched the mouse from right hand to left hand commands. I also changed her “pointer” from a regular arrow to an arrow that left a trail whenever you moved it. Thankfully I never got caught, but what was I thinking?!?!

      6. JSPA*

        At least he didn’t convert your keyboard to Dvorak. I have a…friend?…who does that when he’s spending a few minutes on people’s computers “because he can’t use QUERTY.” And he doesn’t change it back after, because “Dvorak is better, you should learn it.” Pretty sure he’d do same at work (if he worked).

        2. Flash Bristow*

          Oh, this made me laugh (in a frustrated way) because today I looked at a note I typed on my phone last night and could not make head nor tail of it. I figured I must have been very tired!

          Then I realised that somehow the keyboard map had switched from qwerty to Dvorak…
          Given that autocorrect “helped out” in making complete words, I have no hope of ever working backwards to figure out what the note was even about.

          Keyboard maps are a thing! And now I know :)

      1. OP*

        Ha! If you do that, you may have to go back in time and give past me several good talkings to, and possibly some pink slips as well, though I never did the “change someone’s short cuts” thing. Then past Jay and I can go job search together!

    9. Robot With Human Hair*

      This actually just happened at my job recently. My colleague was out on paternity for an extended time and the person covering his inbox rearranged ALL his folders and existing emails. And deleted existing folders. A system that he had authored meticulously over the past six months.

      He was…not happy.

      1. BritCred*

        A temp once covering me rather than keeping emails would print them, delete them and reply on a fresh email.

        I had the record of being able to track down any customer complaint or issue going back over 5 years and any remittance in an instant due to my filing system for clients… Properly organised with sub folders and all. The next audit was hell because this temp decided following the existing system wasn’t her thing. And she didn’t even tell the line manager who’d pointed out I kept and filed everything she was doing it!

    10. PANTSorGTFO*

      Oh my god. This is the first comment I’m legitimately horrified by.
      Did you keep that job after that?

  14. Shameful*

    I was that intern, going up to my superiors with laundry lists of all the ways they were maltreating us. All my fellow interns and contributors to the list would be nodding angrily behind me, until the superior – who usually looked rather like a parent-figure due to the disparity in age – told us what’s what. They would wilt, and then I’d wilt, and we all slunk off in shame. I grew up, of course, ended up managing and learned how truly awful I’d been.

  15. Mrs Selfridge*

    I actually set my boss up on a blind date with my friend. And I wasn’t friends outside of work with my boss either. I just knew they both liked the same style of music/dancing.

      1. Mrs. Selfridge*

        It did not go well. It was awkward all around. Don’t know why I even thought to do it (This was the only time I have ever set anyone up, and have no idea why I would even do that? Like a stranger had stepped into my head). Have no idea why the boss said yes – we weren’t friends, never became friends. It remains one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done, and a I feel bad for putting my friend in that situation.

      1. OP*

        Yes, yes, yes. Oh would I love some specifics.

        Btw, Mrs. Selfridge, re: a stranger taking over your mind, your description may help explain some of my weirdo behavior. Because I think I’ve sometimes erred on the side of “must be creative/assertive!” and then overcompensated by becoming someone I’m not and overshooting norms, thereby ending up making things worse than if I’d done nothing at all.

  16. DeeShyOne*

    When I was new to the office culture, I thought that impressing any authority meant I had to challenge them in EVERYTHING. I wish I could go back in time and slap some sense into myself.

    2. chocoholic*

      I, once (or possibly more than once) as an HR Assistant, sent a scathing email to department heads about the attendance policy they were not following with their employees. I had no authority over them at all. I am surprised I was not disciplined for that. They, predictably (to today’s me, not former me) did not respond well to that. It was my first “real” HR job – I think I was all of about 23-24 at the time. Yikes.

  17. ThatGirl*

    I was sort of a self-appointed style enforcer on my team of editors at my last job, and while I think there was some value in that, and as far as I know nobody ever thought poorly of me, I now cringe at some of the phrasing I used, such as “gentle reminder”….

      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        OMG, I have found my people. I HATE “gentle” anything in business emails. HATE. We are not fragile children, and if plain old “as a reminder” or “please remind your teams” is too strong a language, the organization is probably not a great fit for me.

      2. Lissa*

        The one that makes me twitch is “PSA” unless it’s actually from some sort of government organization lol.

    3. On Fire*

      Oh, ugh. One of our attorneys at OldJob was fond of issuing “gentle reminders,” usually about things that one person had screwed up, but they decided to reprimand the entire staff. Or about things that nobody could possibly have known (think: new policy), so it should have been new info, not a gentle reminder. More than one person muttered about what he could do with those reminders, and it was… NOT gentle.

    4. Who Knows*

      For a minute I thought you meant in regards to what people were wearing and I was like DAMN girl!

      But I am the grammar police too. I get it.

        1. Clay on My Apron*

          I used to correct grammar and spelling in documents that I was supposed to review for content. I had no idea how obnoxious I was.

          1. zapateria la bailarina*

            if you’re reviewing for content, wouldn’t you need to also review to ensure it’s all correctly spelled? i don’t think this is obnoxious, sounds like part of the job. if that content is going on the website or in a printed brochure, you definitely don’t want spelling mistakes!

            1. JD*

              Not a pro, but my understanding is that content editing and editing for grammar/spelling/typos are different things. Basically, you don’t want to correct the grammar of a sentence you might have to take out entirely. It’s like how you wipe off the kitchen counters before cleaning the floor, the reverse order is just more work.

          2. PhyllisB*

            This reminds me of when I did some temp receptionist work at a radio station. I was asked to type up the copy for the on-the-air ads. If there were misspellings I would go to whoever wrote the ads and say “This says….don’t you mean….?” They would always say “You’re right!!” and apologize, but if the word meant the same but was just spelled wrong, (dol when it should be doll) what did it matter, and WHY did I think it was my place to correct it. (Cringe.) Now if it was going out in print that’s one thing, but these were being read on the air. I can’t believe they actually liked me.

  18. Detective Amy Santiago*

    Had a verbal altercation in the middle of a cube farm with a coworker I felt was being disrespectful.

    1. Adlib*

      I’ve kinda done this at one job. I yelled at the person in the cube across from me that I didn’t care about what he was yammering on/bothering me about, and the entire place got quiet. Everyone agreed he deserved it and were stunned because if *I* was yelling, it must have been pretty bad.

      1. Cosette*

        Yep! Mine was on the phone with the manager at another location but when everyone in the cube farm (or at least close enough to me to hear) heard my voice get loud and say, “No, you listen, Andy!” they knew it was serious! LOL I don’t actually regret doing that because with some people you have to push back… he was one.

      2. JD*

        I did this once in fourth or fifth grade. The entire class stared at me. (I was always the quiet one.)

    2. TCO*

      Oh, I did something similar! My coworker and I were having a tense disagreement (ten years later I still think I was right!) and we had the discussion right in the middle of an otherwise-quiet cube area. It must have been so distracting and awkward for the people around us trying to quietly focus on their work.

    3. Ladybugger*

      I’ve totally done that and I didn’t love it but I did ask him to leave and we’d discuss later and he wouldn’t (!!!) so I feel like he earned it.

      That workplace was really dysfunctional in a number of ways.

    4. Save your forks*

      You just made a memory resurface! Had a verbal telephone altercation with my MOTHER at my cube and then cried at my desk. Cringe, cringe.

    5. chickaletta*

      I did this once. I didn’t handle this person well at all, she got on my nerves like nothing else. In my defense, though she got into arguments with a lot of people. There was a well-known altercation she was involved in over a parking spot, she was constantly on the phone with HR over this and that, she openly made fun of coworkers when they were out of the office for the day (so they couldn’t overhear what she said about them), and she got kicked off her roller derby team for being too mean. So, I feel slightly justified.

  19. Nimbus*

    I was demoted during a re-org in mid-May of 2002 (kept a job, but was no longer a supervisor of six) and subsequently refused to go to the national trade show/convention in June, in New York, where I was supposed to work in our company’s booth. Non-refundable plane and hotel reservations had been made for me. I said my attitude about the company was not good at the time, and I didn’t feel like I was a good representative for the company. They did not press the point and they didn’t fire me. In fact I still work there. I don’t know if I had guts or was stupid.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Wow! I assume your attitude towards the company has changed since you’re still there 16 years later…

      1. Nimbus*

        I was a single mother of a nine-year old at the time so I just hung on, kept my head down and did the job they kept me at. Soon I joined a new team forging a new business line and have thrived in that area. So I’m at peace. In retrospect, I think they really DID value me, since I wasn’t shown the door at that time!

        1. PSB*

          I really needed to hear this story today. I’m in a similar(ish) position right now and really struggling with whether to stay or leave.

        2. OP*

          Wow x 2! I wonder if your honesty about where you were at — and that you expressed concern for how the company would come off had you gone — served you well. It probably says something good about your company that they took it in stride; after all, it makes sense your morale would be down after being demoted. Impressive all around.

  20. Snarkus Aurelius*

    1) Every single day of my restaurant job in high school. I’m so embarrassed that when I see these people now, I look the other way. Managers who oversee high school kids need extra pay. We were obnoxious!

    2) Not understanding why people didn’t like each other. I assumed everyone had to like each other to work productively. Not so! I remember saying, “If two bosses could get in a room and talk it out, we could move forward!”

    3) The way I used to dress. Sure I didn’t make much money, and I was on the heavier side, but I could have dressed so much better.

    4) Allowing my two bosses to manipulate me and believe everything they said. I said good morning once to the CEO, and they flipped out and said I was annoying him. They didn’t want me to have any contact with him. When I quit, I apologized profusely, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. Awkward. I should never have taken anything they said at face value.

    5) Not pushing back. Those same two bosses used to trash me up and down during performance review time, but on paper, I always got the max marks. I should have probed more and asked them about the wide discrepancies and contradictory feedback.

    1. Key lime pie*

      Re: 2) if it makes you feel any better, my previous manager with 20+ years of management experience still handled conflict that way. Two team leads with serious conflicts over resources and priorities = “It’s a personality conflict! They have to learn to get along.”

    2. Stained Glass Cannon*

      #4: Ouch! I fell for that once – sub-boss told me the grandboss didn’t like staff reaching out to him directly, even though I had been instructed to report directly to him because my department was supervisor-less at the time. I got confused and thought that meant I wasn’t allowed to ask *anyone* for instructions or feedback…that did not go well in the long run.

    3. OP*

      Oof, restaurant jobs. A coffee shop coworker and I got bored one day, and decided to see the weirdest non-espresso espresso we could make. (Lotion chai, anyone?) Cringing now and forever about the health inspection implications of this. Can’t remember if we’d been drinking (I don’t think so), but this was definitely a place where on the job drinking was happening on the reg.

  21. BadWolf*

    In my first job fresh out of college, I was tasked with scheduling a series of teleconference meetings for training from different areas. This meant I was to create the meeting invites, provide the meeting details, phone number, etc.

    I asked my manager something like, “Isn’t there an admin that’s supposed to do this?” To which she said no, we just set up our own meetings.

    I realize now that I sounded like a total snob. Fortunately, she did not hold it against me.

      1. Jake*

        I actually had to use that line on an admin I’d hired that didn’t want to do data entry for about 45 minutes a day.

  22. Red Reader*

    Temp job. The manager had just told me that they expected to keep me for another six months or so. Then I got home and had an email from the temp agency letting me know that they didn’t need me anymore, have a nice life. I responded with a lecture on professional behavior and how it was wholly inappropriate to I don’t even know what I ran on about anymore. Bless her, the placement specialist didn’t respond at all, and I even worked through (a different office of) that agency again later. I wouldn’t have blamed her in the least for blacklisting me. (In my limited defense, I was 19 and it was the first job I’d ever had that wasn’t retail.)

    1. Queen Anon*

      Well, in your defense, that was unprofessional and wholly inappropriate of them! If things had turned around that quickly – literally in less than a business day – they owed you a face-to-face conversation. I think it was inappropriate of her not to respond as well. That said – yikes! I’m cringing for you about your response because I can imagine that it may well have also been unprofessional and inappropriate and probably embarrassing to remember.

      1. ACDC*

        Yeah I can’t blame you for this one. Once a temp agency sent me on an assignment to do “data entry.” There was no data entry; I was put in a basement closet and told to clean up the old equipment. There were many dead animals. I called the temp agency after an hour and said “yeah, I’m leaving…” They had the balls to get upset with me for lack of professional behavior.

        1. Jadelyn*

          The agency I worked at tried to get snotty with me when I left a placement after the first day, because it turned out not to just be a call center (which I’d already told the agency was a very, very bad idea for me – I’d worked in call centers before and it had done terrible things for my mental health), but one of those “appointment-setting” outbound call centers that preys on seniors in particular. I nope’d out, told the agency exactly why I wasn’t continuing with that placement, they tried to get on me about it, I flat refused to reconsider or go back in there even if it meant they never found me another placement again, and surprise surprise, a few months later that company was raided and shut down for fraud. After that, the agency relented and started placing me on jobs again.

        2. AnonEMoose*

          I once had a temp job checking people in for a conference. The people running the conference got upset when I insisted on taking a lunch break (this was a full day job, so a lunch break was kind of important).

          I called the agency at the end of the day. The agency was not happy to hear how the client had treated us, and asked why I hadn’t called earlier. But to their credit, they did understand when my response was “I needed the money, so…”

        3. WellRed*

          I got sent via temp agency to do data entry. Instead, the company wanted me to use a label maker (punch in each individual letter) to make labels for literally thousands of file folders.

      2. Red Reader*

        Yeah, it wasn’t handled well at all on their end either, but my indignant nonsense definitely did not help matters :) and I feel like, even the best possible response she could have given probably would have just stoked my ire, wrath and idiocy even more, hah, so the quiet “bless your heart, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t even see this” that is my own headcanon version of what happened is perfectly acceptable response in my book, no matter what her actual thoughts on the matter were.

    2. tink*

      I got set on a temp position with a specific end date and no talk of it being temp-to-hire or long term temp, so when nobody mentioned anything about my time being extended I packed up my few personal items and didn’t show up after my end date… apparently I was on the temp-to-hire list but that news hadn’t filtered down to me yet, and I was pretty embarrassed once I got calls asking where I was at.

      1. AMT27*

        That seems totally reasonable! If you knew the job was ending and no one bothered to tell you it might not be… what else would they have you do, continue showing up after your job ended? When you might want to be working another gig so you could get paid?

      2. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

        Gaah, I did something like this once,too! And I was over 30 and should have known better. So many things in my life would have been better if I’d had the sense to show up the next week and wait to be told they didn’t need me, instead of just assuming that the time frame they gave me when I started was set in stone!

    3. Blue*

      Two years into my first office job, I was job searching because I wanted to move to a different city. I get an offer (yay), but they take weeks to tell me the salary. Eventually, the hiring manager informally gives me a number, which was around the middle of the range I was hoping for. A couple more weeks pass, HR finally gets around to formalizing the offer and says that, based on salary history, they wouldn’t pay me more than the very bottom of my range. The hiring manager was like, “Whoops! But it *is* still within your stated range.” This was the latest in a series of red flags, so I was pretty pissed and sent back a stern email chastising her for how she handled the process and turning down the offer. I regretted it almost instantly (the email, not turning down the job), and am mortified in retrospect. She never replied, thank goodness…

      1. T*

        What they did was pretty shady, they offered the job with one salary then low balled you with the written offer. I think it’s a good thing you told them how they handled the hiring practice was pretty crappy, it’s a red flag that they would think otherwise.

  23. Ell*

    When I was a baby advertising account coordinator, barely a year or so out of college, I remember getting very stressed out when my manager didn’t seem to care about the things that were of DIRE IMPORTANCE to me. I would bug her constantly, until finally she sat me down and explained that her priorities were different than mine and her time more valuable, and that I needed to realize that things that I thought were very important were ultimately minor in the larger scale of the business.

    I was INCREDIBLY offended by this, and definitely frosty with her for a while.

    …several years later, when I’m now at the same level that she was and I have a direct report, I realize JUST HOW RIGHT she was, and that the little things that seemed so crucial are really minor and not worth the amount of bugging her that I did!

    1. Manders*

      Oof, yes, this was me! I always take deadlines really seriously, and I bugged the hell out of my boss when I moved from a job where deadlines really are set in stone to one where they were more like optimistic milestones.

    2. Anonymeece*

      Oh, this sounds familiar!

      It took me getting an employee of my own that I had a wake-up call and realized that my job is entirely my job; my job is a portion of my boss’s job. (I will say at least I got it eventually – said employee of mine never did!).

    3. Liz*

      I feel like I have that conversation with very experienced people every single day. Good on you for actually hearing it and recognizing that you are not the center of the universe — a lot of people never get there!

      1. TechWorker*

        I have definitely been like this – and probably have a tendency to still be a bit like it sometimes – I’m working on it! I think having more responsibility and thus less time to stress the small stuff may well mean I don’t really get a choice :)

    4. The New Wanderer*

      As a first year grad student, I asked my grad advisor (a tenured professor) to remind me of my project deadlines because I worked better with a little pressure from authority. He gently told me that managing my own deadlines was my own responsibility. Yup.

    5. A Tax NERD*

      I used to get SO annoyed when my supervisor in a tax clinic internship didn’t know every SINGLE DETAIL of my clients’ cases. We would meet twice a month to discuss the progress of my cases (usually 5-10 at any given time) and I would remember leaving his office every time fuming over how little he remembered about my cases. Although I did usually have to remind him of more relevant details as well (like what/why we were even appealing :/ ), some of the details I’d get hung up on were SO unimportant in retrospect (like the names and ages of a supposed dependent).

      I expected my supervisor to know every intimate detail about something that I spent hours a day working on when he only spent the ten minutes twice a month and also had 6 other reports with at least 10 clients of their own.

    6. OP*

      Oh dear. You just reminded me of the time I treated the writing of the annual team trivia quiz for a company outing as if it was of DIRE IMPORTANCE. When I kept bugging the senior staffer who had asked me to help out about when he’d review my draft, he said, “What is your damage?!?” Oops, um, nothing, I’ll just back out of your office quietly and go pour a pot of decaf on myself in the break room.

    7. +1*

      This was said to me at Old Job too, although I was not offended. However, I had a manager who was more “gentle” in her phrasing, and she left our the “my time is more valuable” part of the speech which helped in this case.

      I learned to wait for answers instead or follow up if I didn’t hear back from Manager about what I needed.

  24. CupcakeCounter*

    So much swearing! I have a potty mouth to begin with but when I get frustrated the shit-fuck-damns flow like water. OldJob was a nightmare so my boss had to mention how unprofessional it was on numerous occasions. The best was when I called a manager that was not mine a fucking moron after he proposed something that would completely screw me over. How I didn’t get send to HR is beyond me (wasn’t that young either…late 20’s/very early 30’s) but I’m pretty sure my actual boss smoothed it over by being mad at the suggestion on my behalf so my reaction didn’t seem so extreme.
    We both left shortly after that though so that is probably another reason he didn’t ream me out.

    1. Sampsonitte*

      I once told a manager (mine) to go F himself… in front of a customer. The customer was behind me so I didn’t know they were they when I did it. As soon as I turned around, I apologized profusely to the customer. She smiled and said, “I’ve always wanted to do that!” I did not get fired (for that).

      1. BF50*

        I told a supervisor he was a complete asshole. Why? Because he had asked me to do something that was part of my job instead of the other part of my job that I was doing.

        We actually worked better together after that, but yeah, not my proudest moment.

        1. Sampsonitte*

          I don’t even remember why I said that (probably more like screamed it) but he was a pretty bad manager and it was a pretty toxic place to work. I was young and didn’t know better.

      2. Foreign Octopus*

        I once told my manager that he needed to take management classes because the way he spoke to me was unacceptable (he was a hungover douche most of the time and I regret nothing).

      3. Lucille2*

        I did that too. I was about 17, working in a restaurant when I told the night manager to go F himself and walked out. I was sadly proud of that move until I grew up a little.

    2. Tangerina Warbleworth*

      First job at a non-profit: after getting off the phone with a student whom I thought had done something drastically awful, but which wasn’t, there in my little cube I mightily spewed, “F**K me up the a** with a sideways sword!!” Thank God my coworkers were either asleep or nonplussed. I guess Boss never heard about it.

  25. Elizabeth W.*

    Oversharing.

    I guess because you spend so much time with your workmates, it’s easy to think they’re friends. And it’s easy to get into personal conversations where you both talk about intimate subjects (health issues, crushes, etc.). But I have never had a coworker who ended up as anything more than a Facebook friend past our shared employment. Now this might be because I don’t have much in common with most people around here; I don’t work with the people I normally hang out with. However, some of these people know more about me than they needed to know (and vice versa).

    Sooooo next time, I’ll be the nice but mysterious one. I’ll work with you and go home; I don’t care about the rest of your life and you don’t care about mine.

    1. Magenta*

      Yeah I did far too much over-sharing, in a cringy showing off kinda way that I thought made me look cool. I’m sure it mostly made me look inappropriate.

    2. Seifer*

      My coworker is an oversharer. I mentioned something to our project executive about how this coworker is lactose intolerant and the exec laughed and said, “you guys know way too much about each other.” I paused for a second and said, “yeah… we really just know too much about him.” He got a kick out of that, but I was like. Cool, so I’m never talking about anything personal ever again.

      On the other hand, I kept in touch with one guy from my last company and he ended up bringing me to our current company with a huge pay bump. I completely switched fields so was very grateful to him. And he and his wife have become very good friends that probably know far too much about me, ha!

      1. MonkeySeeMonkeyDo*

        I don’t actually think that knowing a coworker is lactose intolerant is weird or means you know too much about them!

        We have occasional potlucks at my work and as a result I know that one of my coworkers is vegan, another is gluten free, a third has a very severe all encompassing nut allergy (it’s so bad that he has an accommodation that means no nuts in the office at all), a fourth is actually allergic to all dairy, and they all know that I’m allergic to bananas and avocados. At the end of the day all it means is that I always bring a vegan dessert made with non-nut based gluten free flour to the potluck. (links to my current go-tos in my name if anyone wants them! I substitute KAF measure for measure gluten free flour and they’ve always turned out *incredibly* well)

    3. JustoGusto*

      This speaks to me – I was always an oversharer at work, like you said, under the impression that my coworkers were “real friends”. In the end, it all imploded and I ended up needing to literally block those people everywhere online, block their numbers, and delete every instance of myself on the web (it’s like i don’t exist!). I’ve learned my lesson after that and so far I feel it’s been much better for my mental health, work life, and home life.

    4. Foreign Octopus*

      I was the mysterious co-worker at my last job in the UK.

      No one knew anything about me except that I was a university graduate, lived alone, and liked diet Pepsi.

      I had to take a personal call on the office phone once, as I’m useless with my own phone as I constantly leave it places and then forget about it, and the first personal thing they learnt about me was that my brother just tried to commit suicide in Spain (he’s fine now). So – go big or go home, I suppose.

    5. BookishMiss*

      My last job, I got dinged on my review for not sharing personal life stuff with co-workers. So I started sharing stories about my cat. It…sort of helped, but I left very soon after.

      Granted, in that office, there were no such things as TMI, boundaries, or professional norms…

    6. LessNosy*

      Oh, I was definitely an over-sharer. Granted, the coworker I overshared to has ended up being a great friend outside work, but I still cringe when I think about some of the things I’ve told her!

    7. OP*

      Yep. Fellow oversharer here. Oh, do I wish I could take back colleagues knowing about my hopeless crush on a coworker or my mental health issues. Oversharing was the complete norm at the previous job, where we’d all go out drinking together (and often sleeping together) all the time. Didn’t realize oversharing doesn’t travel well from job to job.

      1. Oversharing coworkers*

        THIS at my last job, only I was the one who felt my coworkers overshared. I was uncomfortable with how much people shared because I am a more private person. These are just some of the stories I remembered:

        I learned of things such as “I don’t like this other girl at my crossfit gym because of how she beats me at things and tries to talk to my husband. I have to protect what’s mine, you know?” It was not said to me but it was said within earshot of me by someone who had the same title as me.

        I knew this about a former supervisor: “My last relationship ended because the guy couldn’t say I love you except with a balloon on my birthday, which he brought to the office with music blasting from his cell phone. This was before you worked here.”

        A senior director once said to the entire office “I need to leave work early because my son got into a fight at school and the school is refusing to release him until I go down there.” Personally, I thought “I need to leave due to a family situation” would have sufficed.

        I heard stories about what was wrong with the toilet in someone’s apartment in MUCH more detail than “I had some plumbing issues with my toilet.”

    8. Jasnah*

      I definitely did this. Wayyy too much chatter all day, treated it like I was hanging out with friends. I reigned it in at my next/current jobs. I cringe thinking about it, but everybody makes mistakes, nobody’s perfect but how we learn from them is how we improve!

  26. Anon for this*

    My first job out of college was for a smallish nonprofit that had just turned their office manager into their IT manager as well. She didn’t really have any technology skills, but I see now that wasn’t her fault–this had been thrust upon her in a time of rapid organizational change and she hadn’t received any training or coaching in this area. I legitimately did know more than she did about IT (I worked tech support in college), and I thought our password policy was abhorrent (and it was–she set our computer passwords to really obvious things, we couldn’t ever change them, and they didn’t ever expire). But rather than let it go or ask her about it in a friendly way, I went straight to her boss, who was high-ranking in the organization, and reported my concerns. She rightfully redirected me back to the employee if I really thought my concerns needed to be addressed.

    It didn’t take me long to realize what a misstep this was: going over a co-worker’s head rather than first talking with them directly, and being dismissive and judgmental of someone for not having skills that they had no way of learning. She did eventually get some IT training and things got much better.

    1. Anon for this*

      Oh, and even worse, I think I forwarded one or two of the IT manager’s e-mails to my boyfriend to express my outrage at her lack of skills. You know who you shouldn’t mock over e-mail? The e-mail administrator (or anyone else, but especially not the e-mail administrator). I’m sure she never saw them, but I was dumb and mean.

      1. BF50*

        I tried to forward an email from an IT administrator to a coworker to say something along the lines of “Is he not effing listening or is he just effing stupid?” Only I didn’t forward it. I replied directly to him.

        I’m pretty sure all my IT tickets were then back burnered intentionally.

        2. KC without the sunshine band*

          I once replied instead of forwarding, trash-talking a coworker, meant for another coworker. When I realized what I’d done, I went to his office. God bless me, he wasn’t there. I sat down at his computer and quickly deleted the email. Thank God this was before email started coming to your phone. After that, trash talk became a strictly verbal activity.

          1. BF50*

            Oh my. I would have been terrified of getting caught

            It took me several days to realize it went to him and not my friend, so he definitely read it.

        3. partingxshot*

          Ohhh, I’ve seen this happen and it isn’t pretty. I work with students hoping to study abroad. A colleague sent out an email about an intercultural mini-course students could take prior to departure, and a student replied with, “First of all, I’m going to the UK and not to Uganda or whatever, so why would I need this?” It only got worse from there.

          Her excuse when it was clear we were considering kicking her off her program was essentially “I meant to send it to my friend.”

          1. only acting normal*

            Her complaint isn’t even valid. As reading here will tell people, there are lots of subtle and not so subtle cultural differences between the US and UK. (Hell, even between the constituent countries of the UK there are culture clashes.)

            1. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

              Yup. I didn’t do much research to prepare myself when I moved to the UK because we’re like, practically the same culture, right? I very quickly learned how stupid I was.

    2. JJ*

      I literally had a conversation today with an entry level employee about coming to me first with concerns instead of going to a director. I hope I am one of her embarrassing moments.

  27. Manders*

    I came into work after being up all night in the hospital while my partner had emergency surgery. In fairness, my boss was terrible about time off, but I wish I’d stood up for myself and decided not to go in. I also went into that job sick a lot and spread germs around the office, including some very bad colds, because I felt I couldn’t take time off.

    At the same job, I also covered for a coworker who was performing badly, then got resentful when she didn’t magically improve. We’d been on friendly terms when she was hired and I even recommended her for the position, but I really could not stand her by the time she left, and I did not do a good job of hiding it.

    1. Ennigaldi*

      Oof, I was afraid to call out sick at my first job, which was at a teaching hospital. I thought I was well enough one day to come in despite a head cold and didn’t want to miss a day’s pay, but as a secretary my desk was in the anteroom to my boss’s office. Little did I know, she was a cancer survivor and had a compromised immune system. She developed pneumonia! Later she told me she would have paid me to take the day off…

      1. Manders*

        Oof! My boss with the terrible sick leave policies was also a doctor. The medical field often seems to have a really screwy idea of when it’s acceptable to call out sick, so I totally get why you didn’t.

        I just remembered that I also stayed at work for a full day on the day a helicopter crashed right outside the building because I was afraid of losing the pay. My boss didn’t come in because of it and told his daughter, the office manager, not to come in but didn’t offer to pay me to take the time off. I really should not have worked that day.

      2. Just Employed Here*

        They really should have made the sick leave policy clear to you when you started, not only after you came in sick!

    2. jb*

      I did something similar — I had an outpatient surgery scheduled one morning (it was quick & minor but still required anesthesia!) and after it was over I went to work! I remember being in a meeting & someone asking me what was wrong because I seemed off and I responded with, “Sorry, I was under anesthesia this morning…” as though that was totally normal to do! But as a 22 year old who was still accruing PTO, it felt like the only option.

      1. kitryan*

        I came in to work after having an upper endoscopy. I was done with the procedure by 10 and wasn’t supposed to work until 12 so I tried to rest until then in the break room. But of course, I couldn’t relax and had a miserable day. Angry the whole day about having to be at work and that anyone wanted me to do anything. Didn’t they know I didn’t feel well? Ever since I’ve taken the whole day for the procedure and it’s much better that way (I have a condition that means I have to get my esophagus looked at every so often).

  28. TooCoolForSchool*

    In my first office job out of college I was very excited to have my very own cube complete with nameplate. At some point early on in the job (maybe even during my first week?) I decided I was cool and important enough to sit back with my feet up on the desk while reading some documents at the end of the day. My boss came around the corner, saw me, and said “you haven’t been here long enough to have your feet on the desk” before walking away obviously disgusted. I’m still mortified thinking about it.

    1. BenAdminGeek*

      Oh man…. I had a 40+ year old employee with 20+ years of professional experience do that in his first week, with headphones on blasting loud enough for everyone to hear. It was a sign of things to come…

      1. PSB*

        I’m 40+ with more than 20 years experience and, when I have a large enough cube, this is still how I review documents. Feet on the desk, docs in the lap, highlighter in my hand.

    3. Mbarr*

      Oops, I did that as a co-op once. A coworker asked me not to do that, and I had the gall to ask if he was kidding or not. Lesson learned!

  29. MJ*

    Early in my career, I wrote insanely long and detailed emails because I assumed everyone else loved reading long, detailed emails, too!

    I didn’t even realize it until one guy on my team, who didn’t have much of a filter, flat-out refused to read something I wrote just for him and responded, “why did you write all this?”

    (In my defense, I was a game designer and had to be ready to justify and defend every aspect of my designs. But I still cringe thinking back on it.)

    1. Cassandra*

      I was also hlepy in this particular way, until I got (bluntly, and in hindsight not-especially-professionally) called out on it.

      Live and learn, I suppose.

    2. Serin*

      I have a friend who used to bring me her emails for editing before she sent them, because her approach to organization was “it makes no sense to tell them which printer I recommend that they buy before I first walk them through ALLLL the steps I took to come to that decision.”

      1. Artemesia*

        One of my successes in teaching was getting undergrads to understand in professional correspondence that you start with the bottom line — in this case the recommendation for the printer and then unpack it if necessary further down the page or email or whatever. Or better yet in an attachment. Professional correspondence is not O’Henry.

  30. Sara*

    I still cringe over the interview I had in college for an internship. I hadn’t yet learned that you need to tailor your answers to the job you’re interviewing for, so when they asked what I saw myself doing after college I told them honestly that I was planning on teaching abroad after college and that I wanted to live in another country. They asked why I applied for the internship and said I needed a summer job.

    I did not get that internship. I did however teach abroad, so I did achieve my goals.

    1. Clay on My Apron*

      I interviewed for an entry level developer position and told the interviewer that I actually wanted to be an architect… The recruiter phoned me afterwards and yelled at me.

      Nobody had ever given me any coaching on how to behave in an interview, and I was clueless enough not to ask what I should and shouldn’t do. It was my first interview for my first job. Needless to say I didn’t make that specific mistake again.

      This is just one of the many, many posts that has prompted a memory of something dumb I did at work. Or in this case while failing to find work.

    2. EddieSherbert*

      Haha, for my first job (which I can’t believe I got), the CEO asked where I saw myself in five years… and I said “moving back to home state to be near family.” And then he said “I meant within the company.”

      And I legitimately don’t remember what I said? Because at that point I realized I had basically just told him I didn’t see myself there in five years and I panicked.

      Again, somehow I did get that job?

    3. +1*

      I remember hearing my old boss give a phone interview to someone and she asked the exact same question that was asked of you, why did they apply for a job there?

      I heard my boss’s side of the conversation: “If you are interested in PR, I would recommend you apply for those opportunities but there aren’t any of those opportunities here.” Old Job did not do PR whatsoever but was in a similar field under the umbrella term “marketing”

  31. lawyer*

    I wore a backless shirt to an internship at a political consulting firm in college. What was I thinking? I was generally fairly savvy about such things, even!

    1. fposte*

      For some reason this one especially tickles me. Maybe because backless shirts are weird to me already–it’s like you worked hard to find something nobody would even have thought to put in a dress code.

      1. Wicked Witch of HR*

        Oh this! You would be amazed at the dress codes I’ve rewritten to take OUT language like, “no heels higher than 2 inches.” “Open-toed shoes will always be worn with socks or hosiery.”

        They should tell us at some point in our lives to strive never to be the reason someone adds something to a dress code.

        1. SusanIvanova*

          Could be worse – your name could be permanently attached to the rule, like figure skating’s “Katarina Rule” about costume coverage.

      2. lawyer*

        It was the early 2000s and they were very popular as going-out tops (WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN A SIGN TO ME). This was one was actually super modest from the front – long sleeves and a boat neck – but the back was this corset-style lacing all the way down, only with skin under the lacing.

        I was fairly gothy and also kind of awkward and not good at being sexy, so perhaps the only reason I didn’t get a Stern Talking To was that they were just sort of embarrassed for me. But I could tell people were horrified. I honestly still can’t remember how I ended up wearing that…I had acceptable work clothes!

    2. Beehoppy*

      My new boss recently confided that one of the reasons she hired me was because I dressed so professionally for the interview. Apparently, the candidate the day before me wore an off the shoulder blouse with nothing over it.

  32. Zip Silver*

    Sleeping with coworkers is usually not a great idea. Luckily I discovered this when I was 17 and working retail, so the stakes were rather low.

    1. No Mas Pantalones*

      I was hoping I wasn’t the only one. I learned early too. Don’t get your sausage where you make your bacon.

      2. Middle School Teacher*

        That is the best version of this I have ever heard, I am DYING….

        (I am also guilty. University was a troubled time for me.)

      3. Former Retail Manager*

        Love the sausage comment, but I love your pic of the shoe even more. I owned a shoe that looked almost exactly like that in the mid 90’s and wore them all the time. Heck, I’d buy them again if I could find them now.

        1. No Mas Pantalones*

          Tell you’re wallet I’m sorry, because you CAN buy them now. Fluevog Original Munster. They’re the ones that made the same shoes in the 90s that Lady Miss Kier wore on the cover of Deee-Lite’s “World Clique” album. My friend had them in crushed purple velvet, which is what began my Fluevog obsession. There are a few different styles on the site. I’m also wearing the Munster charm on a necklace right now. I guess I’m a little obsessed.

      4. CmdrShepard4ever*

        But assuming both are pork/meat based I think it makes perfect sense to do that, why go to a different butcher across town, when you one have one stop shopping? I do agree with the point you are trying to make lol.

    2. Chrysanthemum's The Word*

      Totally with you on that one. Made that mistake in a job pre-20s and it turns out my coworker had a BIG mouth. The rub was my mother worked for the same organization, and had helped me get the position, so I was in constant fear that the chatter would get back to her. It was instantly regrettable but a lesson I’m glad I learned early.

    3. AnonEMoose*

      I feel fortunate that I figured that one out without having to actually go through it. I had the interesting experience of realizing that many of my male coworkers treated me with more respect than they did their girlfriends. Taught me a lot about what kind of treatment to accept from either a romantic partner OR a coworker.

      1. BookishMiss*

        Same. I learned that one vicariously, and have had it reinforced vicariously, and I am beyond grateful for that.

    4. JustoGusto*

      OK, first of all, “Don’t get your sausage where you make your bacon” LOL.

      This happened to me at work and in my defense, he is now my husband, but it completely alienated and divided anyone we thought were our “friends” as it made things awkward for them in the office, as well as resulted in their extreme judgement of us. Luckily this one worked out for the best but I still totally agree!

      1. AnonEMoose*

        It can and does work out, for sure. For me it’s just a “proceed with caution if you’re going to” sort of thing.

    7. JJ*

      Ugh, I did this at not one but two jobs.
      And I’m totally updating “don’t $h!t where you eat” with “don’t get your sausage where you make your bacon” because that’s amazing.

    8. SuperAnon*

      I’m still regretting that choice myself – it was a temporary summer job, but I dated the guy who had been my boss for the next two years. I thought the whole situation hadn’t ended too badly for me, until I realised I’d basically ruined that reference…

    9. Shark Whisperer*

      Eeeeee, I just literally cringed suddenly remembering that I did this early in my career. It was a summer job at a park in the middle of nowhere and there was very little to do. There was no real fall out besides another coworker who was also my age telling me that everyone thought I was a slut. :(

    10. OP*

      I did not learn early. And I did not learn that lesson multiple times in the same office either. Hoo boy.

      1. I've Got a Case of the Mondays*

        Years ago, I had a terrible, horrible unrequited crush on a coworker. I was young, lonely, and prone to falling for people who didn’t know I existed. He was funny and liked me. He was also divorcing Wife #1, dating other women, and eventually met and married Wife #2. He was also in a management role, and I wasn’t. I tried and tried to cover up my crazy feelings and probably wasn’t as successful at it as I hoped. I’m amazed I didn’t lose my job. I’ve seen him since then in another setting and on Facebook. I look at him now, cringe, and ask myself just what the hell I could have been thinking. (Plus Wife #2 is no more, and I think he’s moved on to another woman.)

        1. OP*

          Oh man, do I relate to unsuccessfully playing it cool around a runaway office crush. Part of me wishes the object of my crush would write in to AAM, because I doubt he was psyched about how awkward I made it for him.

  33. fort hiss*

    Trimming my nails while at my cashier’s station in the grocery store. In my defense it wasn’t the whole hand but just touch ups here and there when they got damaged. A customer service manager asked me what the heck I was thinking one day and set me straight… I don’t get the gross out factor really, but I know better that it bothers others nowadays!

  34. Too embarrassed to use my usual name*

    I was a file clerk for a local tax preparer and i used to snoop when i saw names i recognized. Sooooo much violation of privacy!

    1. Anon for This*

      I work in banking, and my very first banking job was at an institution where my in-laws had their accounts. I am ashamed to admit it, but I snooped on their spending and on whether or not they were paying their loans on time from time to time.

      1. SophieChotek*

        Of course now I want to know if they did pay their loans on time and if you approved of their spending habits, LOL…Not that it is remotely my business!

        1. Anon for This*

          Haha, I did find out that my in-laws were not so great at paying stuff on time. And on one occasion, when my mother-in-law was yelling at my brother-in-law in front of me because he missed a car payment and ranting about how paying your bills on time is part of being a responsible adult, I found myself struggling to bite my tongue.

      2. SS Express*

        I used to work at a local accounting firm where my parents (as well as aunt and uncle, friends’ parents, neighbours, owners of my favourite local restaurant, etc) were clients. It took all of my restraint not to snoop at people’s files, but eventually I had to lodge my parents’ returns and check them against the info in the system for errors so I saw it all anyway.

    3. Arjay*

      I worked at a drug store that sent film out to a lab for processing. There was this very cute, very nice guy who came in from the grocery store next door all the time and brought us his film. I’d browse through his prints when they came back. The worst part is that he came in one day when I was looking at his pictures behind the counter. He couldn’t see, but I outright lied to him that his pictures weren’t back yet, since I had them out of the envelope. Oops.

      1. CmdrShepard4ever*

        I worked at a store that had a photo lab when I was younger. I really wanted to work in the lab, but I was told I was not allowed because I was under 18 and the potential for seeing adult pictures that people may have developed.

    4. Justin*

      I did that at one place (not tax records but something else that I shouldn’t have) and then mentioned it casually to coworkers. I don’t know what I was thinking.

    5. Key lime pie*

      I had one job where we had access to the transcripts of pretty much all the university’s alumni ever, including a lot of famous people who are household names. I looked up all of them, because how do you not.

    6. yasmara*

      We got a VERY stern talking to about this when I was hired as a student worker in my college’s Office of Admissions. Lots of warnings about “you will be fired if you look up people you know in our system.”

      1. Liz*

        FERPA is a big deal. We typically don’t allow student workers/workstudy placements to access the student information system at all.

  35. OlympiasEpiriot*

    This isn’t all that long ago, I still work at the place and all that it taught me was that this is disfunctional.

    I was being “offered” a really insulting solution to a desk problem. I had been politely and appropriately asking for the (logically) appropriate solution for over a year. I lost it — at high volume, using the f-word twice, and at the person offering who was literally the top of our letterhead.

    I returned to my desk and to work, fully expecting to be fired before the day was out. Instead, someone in mid-management but with a lot of responsibility for the staff (not HR) came to me and said “We got you what you asked for…made it clear that people need what they need to do the job and that needs to be protected.” I was also instructed to move That Evening…so that it would be harder for Crazy Uncle At The Top Of The Letterhead to change their mind.

  36. Izzy*

    My clothes. I remember turning up to my first job – at a rather staid military charity, no less – on various occasions wearing items such as thigh-high suede high heeled boots, dresses with back cutouts, shirts that you could clearly see my bra through (when I remembered to wear a bra), a full-length faux-fur leopard coat, several different sequinned miniskirts, neon lipstick… I actually still wear all those regularly and think they’re awesome, but I now realise they may not have quite met the dress code.

    1. Kat the Russian*

      Your style sounds like you rock!
      Ooh, that’s my particular brand of offense as well.
      It was my first mission for the job I still have now, and I was sent to replace someone at our client’s office (Military! Government contractor!). The previous guy would show up wearing a ratty pair of jeans and the. same. hoodie. every. day. so I thought that it was cool to dress ‘however’.
      But that still didn’t excuse the time I showed up in a large tutu + neon orange t-shirt combo. I got a lot of friendly remarks from coworkers about how I must be worried about them not noticing me.

  37. hermit crab*

    About a year into my first professional office job, I was in a serious car accident in another state (in the ICU for a couple days, the whole nine yards). I sent a loooooooooong “here’s where hermit crab is” email to everyone I worked with, including our management, with all the gory details. I thought I was being all chipper and reassuring, but in retrospect there was absolutely no reason why my boss’s boss needed to know about my bleeding spleen.

    1. ZSD*

      Is “here’s where the hermit crab is” a reference I should get? It’s not easily coming up on Google.

    2. ZSD*

      Sorry, I just looked at your user name! I was envisioning a classic internet case in which someone overshared about the location of a missing hermit crab or something.

      4. President Porpoise*

        I thought she was in charge of the office hermit crab, and didn’t want the poor guy to starve to death while she was out. Still weird to send to boss’s boss.

  38. J*

    I had no idea how to dress when I started working (no one in my family had ever worked in an office), and a very limited budget. I basically thought that anything that was not jeans or shorts was OK, and I was making do with some of my college clothes even though I had gained weight.

    Eventually my poor boss, who was super sweet and supportive and had a daughter my age, had to call me into his office and tell me that I was not always dressed appropriately. I was truly clueless, so I actually appreciated him telling me, even though I’m sure he dreaded the conversation.

    I developed a very conservative work uniform after that.

  39. Bubbeleh*

    Bad manager moment: I watched a sales rep (from one of our sister companies) PET an employee that reported to me. He straight up caressed her head. She and I just gawked and watched him leave the room/offices.

    This was maybe 12 years ago, and I still am disappointed in myself. It was the utter shock of the inappropriateness of it.

    Now I’d like to think I’d say “WTF, dude! Hands off!” and report him to (our shared) HR and/or his boss.

  40. Où est la bibliothèque?*

    My first retail job (~16) I let a manager permanently take me off the register so that I was exclusively cleaning and stocking because the cash drawer came up short. The shared cash drawer.

    In retrospect, the jackass was absolutely covering for his girlfriend, who worked the same shift and wasn’t the brightest or the most honest.

    It didn’t occur to me to question it until like three years later when I was long gone from that job.

    2. Crystal Smith*

      So infuriating! When I was 17 and working retail, I got a write-up reprimanding me for the shared cash drawer coming up short two days in a row, even though I pointed out at the time that there were 2 hours that I wasn’t even working the drawer both days, so didn’t that mean it could have been someone else…? Then I went out back and cried so hard I started hyperventilating. The next day I came back and tried again to say that I didn’t think I should be accountable if I didn’t get counted out at the end of my shifts…and my manager said I’d already signed the write-up saying I understood and it was too late to take it back. I left the job to go to college a few weeks later and told them I’d never be back.

    3. AMT27*

      About the time I left a restaurant job (this was one of the last straws) I was told by the assistant GM that the cash drawer (I was the hostess that did take out orders, we had tons of them at lunchtime) was short $10 and I needed to pay it back. Which I responded to by refusing to do as he had been ‘helping’ me with take out orders, which meant HE was also in the drawer during that insane lunch shift and I refused to be held responsible if I wasn’t the only person with hands on the money. Totally reasonable response, except that I screamed it at him.

  41. The Ginger Ginger*

    I got promoted to a management position with no kind of training and very little oversight from my (remote) boss. No 1x1s of any kind that sort of thing. I was DROWNING in work, short staffed, overburdened, etc, and felt that all my input was being over-ruled or not even solicited for things like hiring my own staff or solving problems at my office (which to be fair to myself, was very true). I should have SPOKEN UP. I was so bitterly unhappy, frustrated, and stressed out that it actually caused some significant health problems. But I felt like I had to keep my head down and endure instead of bringing problems to my boss. In retrospect, yes, they didn’t equip me to effectively manage or succeed in the role they asked me to fill, but I also should have been much more proactive about raising problems with my own manager.

    1. OP*

      I so relate to this. When I did try to speak up, I was shut down a couple different ways, so I gave up. But I was only hurting myself. Hope you’re in a better situation now!

    2. aelle*

      My failure to speak up in my early years is coming back to me hard as I am currently supervising a recent college graduate with very much the same problem. We coordinate the work of tens of thousands of people to build our final product. We get lots of requests from lots of different departments. It is not a personal failure to tell someone, especially your manager, that you can’t meet their request because you are missing inputs A, B and C from department X, Y and Z. It is not doing anyone any favors to hole up, and hope that you can work hard enough all alone and meet their deadlines without anyone noticing how much was wrong on the way there. In fact, highlighting these issues early and often is part of the job!

  42. Comms Girl*

    Would things you did between jobs count? As in when I was looking for a post-internship job/second internship and decided “hmmm Place X is actually close to where I need to meet my friend afterwards, how about dropping this CV in person instead of just via email as stated in the advert? That will make them remember me!”?

    Sure thing, I did not get that position…

    1. EddieSherbert*

      Not me, but when I worked at a fast food place, we had a group of teenage boys go through the drive thru to drop off their applications! (spoiler: they were not hired)

  43. Rena*

    At 17, I threatened my restaurant boss that I would have to leave to find another job if she couldn’t give me a raise. I was a hard worker and I thought this was a credible threat. Also note that I didn’t ask for a raise first.

    Thankfully she just internally rolled her eyes, got me the raise, and gently told me later that was a terrible approach.

    1. Sampsonitte*

      I told a boss I would need to look for a better paying job and he gave me a raise and then told me it wasn’t a good approach. But I was young and stupid and it never even occurred to me to ask for a raise. I seriously was telling him I was looking for another job (not sure why i felt the need to share that). At any rate, it wasn’t much of a raise and I left within the year anyway.

  44. Anon for This*

    I came in to work on a Saturday morning once still drunk from the night before. I hadn’t showered before going in, so I am sure that I reeked of alcohol and possibly of vomit. My manager never brought it up to me directly (I was a bank teller, and somehow I performed my job correctly that day), but I am sure that she knew I was mildly intoxicated. I am still embarrassed about this to this day.

    1. Ugh, the cringe*

      Yeah, that’s mine, too. Once I got way too drunk at a work event that I was supposed to be staffing, and another time I showed up still drunk (different job). My early 20s were kind of a disaster, to be honest. Many years later and I still cringe.

      1. OP*

        [Raises hand too] A-list afterparty for a televised company event. Drunkety drunkenly chasing a couple celebs around like a kid playing tag on a playground. Cringe cringe cringe. The hard cringing I’m still doing for that could be made into a Fortnite dance.

  45. I Work on a Hellmouth*

    Just out of college I was working a very boring job at a law firm where I was supposed to manage files for one of the lawyers but often had very little to do. I was also DEEPLY disliked by his secretary, Agatha Trunchbull (she was very possessive of the dude and was proud of the fact that she had run off three young women before me), who tortured me daily. At this job every bit of billable time had to be accounted for in the company software system, and I had been told that for people in my position the descriptions were never read and we just had to put down SOMETHING. So, whenever I had time blocks where I literally had nothing to do I would (very, very stupidly) put down things like “Thinking of puppies” and “Imagining Agatha Trunchbull being eaten by a Canadian Trap Door Alligator.”
    Ultimately, this did not work out well.
    So, so embarrassing and cringe worthy and dumb.

    2. Equestrian Attorney*

      Oh man, this made me laugh so hard. I’m a lawyer who regularly reviewed time entries in my firm days so under my partner, this would have been promptly noticed and not gone well at all… but it sounds hilarious.

    3. Elizabeth W.*

      If I were the lawyer, I would have gently corrected you on your entries (“Please write something more professional”) and then shut my office door and laughed until I cried.

      1. OP*

        This makes me so happy. Because now I’m imagining my former bosses cackling uncontrollably after the stern convos they’ve had with me.

        Also now picturing the more professional version being “Imagining Ms. or Mrs. or M. Agatha Trunchbull being eaten by a Canadian Trap Door Alligator.”

    4. CheeryO*

      This happened at my last company! There were apparently several people putting descriptions down like, “Talked to dumbass at [regulatory agency]” or “Stared into space while the project documents were on my screen.” So at least you aren’t the only one.

    5. wafflesfriendswork*

      Kind of OT, but that reminds me of in my Intro to Chem and Physics class freshman year of high school, we had an ongoing assignment that was a journal with answers to questions from the book, stuff in class, etc. that we turned in at the end of each grading period. I suspected that our teacher didn’t actually read all of the short essay answers so once when I was struggling to finish it at the last minute before turning it in I filled those in with nonsense sentences. I honestly can’t remember if I was marked off for it, but I feel like she HAD to have known. I always thought that teacher didn’t like me but I think she was just not personable/thought I wasn’t reaching my potential (and she also knew my dad, who taught at the same school)

      1. jb*

        I did that in high school when my slacker AP government teacher forced us to write US News & World Report article summaries every week — he only looked at them long enough to confirm they were the appropriate word length & then moved on, so I started submitting the same summary each week & just changed the date. He never noticed, & I learned a valuable lesson on how to work smarter, not harder.

  46. Long Time Reader, First Time Poster*

    When I was in my early 20s, I partied lot. I went into work hungover at least once a week. I called out fairly often, and didn’t think anything of it.

    I still did my job well, and got good reviews, but I was SO cavalier about attendance. I definitely cringe about this now.

  47. an infinite number of monkeys*

    All my work team, from a nice respectable office job, was over at my house during the work day for some kind of… informal teambuilding? This was 25-ish years ago and I can’t remember why we even went there, but my boss and grandboss were in attendance along with 6-7 of my peers, and we were just all hanging out in my living room talking.

    I felt it would be appropriate to put on some Nine Inch Nails. You know, the album with “I Wanna F*** You Like an Animal” on it.

    Why? Why?? God, why???

    Welp, it was the 90s.

    3. Red Reader*

      Someone put the Vitamin String Quartet cover of that song on the laylist for my wedding reception. My grandmother thought it was lovely.

    4. Long Time Reader, First Time Poster*

      Hahahah I invited my work friends to a party at my house, I was a little nervous about crossing the streams between my friends and colleagues but figured I was a grownup and it was time.

      Everyone was getting along swimmingly when my friend Drew announced WOULD ANYBODY LIKE TO SMOKE SOME MARIJUANA? and I just about died.

      Fortunately, all of my work friends followed him out onto the deck…

    6. Somewhat Sane Cat Lady*

      This reminds me of a funny work story. My last workplace had a few posters up in our analysis/computer room that I never paid much attention to. However, one day I was sitting at a computer next to one and realized that there was a bunch of small text on it. I started reading, and the words were kind of depressing…things like “I can’t do this anymore”, etc. I’m laughing at this point because I have to figure that whoever put it up did not look closely at it first. I later found out from a coworker that the words were Nine Inch Nails lyrics. I still can’t believe that poster made it up, considering the admins in our department.

  48. Folklorist*

    OMG! I was just thinking about this this morning with the question about speaker phones in open office plans! (No, I didn’t do that, but almost as bad!)
    I somehow never internalized the idea that, with cubes, you’re supposed to politely pretend that you can’t hear the people around you and act like there’s privacy. I was sort-of friends with the guy in the cube next to me in one of my first jobs out of grad school, but I took it way too far–whenever he had a phone call with someone, personal or professional, I would use the topic to strike up conversation–even sometimes interrupting the call with my own comments or asides. I was new in town and pretty lonely, but it still makes me cringe to think of how annoying and intrusive I was! I no longer do this.

    1. Folklorist*

      Oh, man–following up on that, in the same job, I had serious verbal diarrhea sometimes. The worst was when there was a company-wide ice cream social, and they were giving out Magnum ice cream bars. I started talking to my (very conservative) boss about the marketing strategy for Magnum using the sexual overtones of Magnum-brand condoms as a play on the sinfulness of their ice cream, describing the branding techniques in-depth.

      It was one of those cringey conversations where I can hear what I’m saying from, like, an out-of-body experience and on the inside I’m trying to tell myself, “shut up shut up shut up shut up stop it right now” but my mouth was on auto-pilot. Said friend from above was there to witness it and he was giving me a horrified look the entire time. Eugh.

    2. BookCocoon*

      I wish I’d spoken up about a coworker’s phone conversations at my first professional job, even just to make comments like you did to remind her we could all hear her. She was part-time (thankfully) but it seemed like on the days she came in she would literally spend 75% of the time on the phone with her siblings either complaining about her other siblings or talking in great detail about her cat’s health problems.

    3. OP*

      This reminds me of the unintentionally hilarious Kickstarter for BloxVox (link to a CNET story about it in my name), a contraption meant to mute your conversations in open offices. Think Bane meets Hannibal Lecter crossed with Pam from The Office.

  49. Kara*

    Freaked out by the disgusting fridge in the break room, that smelled awful and had items that had expired over a year before I started working there. Came in on a weekend shift (everyone had to work the phones one Saturday a month, even though they didn’t really ring on Saturday) and threw away every single thing that was in there without telling anyone what I was doing. Bleached it, unplugged it, and left it open to air out for the rest of the weekend. Came in to people totally upset. Thankfully my boss was relived that someone had cleaned up the bio-hazard fridge, but my coworkers were pissed at me for months.

    1. Linda Evangelista*

      Honestly? You were totally right to do this. Nasty old food = mold = mold spores = horrible health consequences for people with allergies or who otherwise have health problems. People are welcome to be disgusting in their own homes, but not in a shared fridge.

    4. Sylvan*

      You did the right thing IMO!

      I tackled my bosses’ fridge a couple of times. I told them first, but it would have been fine if I hadn’t. Nobody wants to eat food that’s been sitting in a fridge-turned-garbage-can.

    5. BadWolf*

      Honestly, anything I leave in the fridge at work on Friday, I don’t actually want on Monday.

      Unless, I suppose, I’m storing a 12 pack of sodas or a bottle of salad dressing.

      But there’s a high risk of 5 year old sodas and salad dressing.

    6. Snickerdoodle*

      I’ve done this a few times. The mini fridge in the cat building at the shelter had tons of dead gnats and ice buildup in it, so I tossed the old sodas and spoiled cat food and wiped down the whole thing. I hope nobody was actually planning on drinking the sodas, but I was a hero for cleaning the damn thing. Also, at my old job, I was tasked with cleaning the fridge out, which pissed off a lot of coworkers, particularly the bad cook who would bring his failed experiments for everyone to share and didn’t want me throwing away his leftovers even if they got moldy. I would instead throw away small portions at a time so it would look like somebody had been eating it. I also threw away dishes and utensils that people left in the sink for days because I refused to wash other people’s dishes, meaning the kitchen had zero dishes or utensils by the time I left.

      The other fridge incident was more vengeful. I was working in a retail store in the mall with a tiny mini fridge intended for the eight of us who worked there to all share (no). A girl who worked there was one of those people who thought she could cook but really couldn’t, to the annoyance of everyone else. She brought in a plastic tub of gross homemade salsa one time together with a bag of tortilla chips. We all ate the chips, but nobody touched the salsa, which remained square in the middle of the mini fridge’s only tiny shelf for weeks. You’d think she’d have taken the hint and taken the container home, but nooo, she was determined to be “nice” and leave it till it was all gone. I finally lost it and tossed the damn thing one night while taking the trash out.

      When I came in the next evening, I walked into the back to put my coat and food away and found a LIVID rant taped to the front of the mini fridge in the bad cook’s handwriting. She raged about how she was JUST TRYING TO BE NICE and WE COULD HAVE JUST TOLD HER TO TAKE THE DISH HOME (we did) and how IT WAS A NICE DISH THAT COST OVER TEN DOLLARS (I saw an identical one in the grocery store for a buck fifty), etc., etc., etc. She finished it off with a “Please tell me if it was you. I won’t be mad, I promise. :) ” Suuuure. You just want to know whose tires to slash. The store manager politely wrote beneath the rant that she was sorry it happened and then called each of us aside individually to ask if we were the ones who’d tossed the dish. I of course lied, and the bad cook never found out who it was and quit soon after. THEN I told everyone but the store manager that it had been me, to much snickering. :D

    8. SusanIvanova*

      Some years back a Silicon Valley office building had to be evacuated after someone decided to clean out a fridge full of moldy food.

      “The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.
      Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment — she can’t smell because of allergies.”

      http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30720344/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/yuck-hospitalized-after-office-fridge-cleanup/#.W9Tery2ZMxc

  50. Lore*

    I had a temp job in an HR department where I finished a project they’d estimated as a month of work in about 8 days. They had nothing else for me to do, but for whatever reason refused to let the temp agency reassign me to another department (as was standard; I worked in five or six departments in that organization during my temping time). I asked for permission to work on my own stuff on the computer or read something at my desk (this was pre-smartphones and pre-all-content-on-Internet) and they nixed that too. So I started methodically going through every file on the computer. Which included a spreadsheet containing the salary of every executive, several of whom I’d worked for in other departments and had *strong* opinions about their competence. I copied it and gave a copy to my other friend who temped there.

  51. TypityTypeType*

    On my first full-time office job, which had a super casual dress code, the boss asked me not to wear shorts, though jeans were fine. Instead of saying “OK!” I argued that other departments on the floor were fine with shorts, and generally complained to everyone and made a massive stink about it. I also insisted on taking my lunch from 3-4 pm so I’d only have half an hour to get through before we closed at 4:30, and got all crabby and stompy when the boss said it was inconveniencing other people and not to do it anymore.

    So in general, I was pretty much a whiny, entitled nightmare the whole time I worked there, until I was inevitably fired. They were probably way too patient, actually; I still feel cringe-y thinking about how I behaved, decades later.

    1. The Cleaner*

      Oh gosh, the late lunch. I did that kind of thing when I first started working and absolutely thought I was 100% entitled to do so. Looking back, it was so terrible.

      1. Robot With Human Hair*

        Heh, I do the late lunch now (when I get to take a lunch, that is), but it works out well schedule-wise with my team.

    2. OP*

      The best of your story, and so many of the ones here, is that you’re totally not that whiny, entitled nightmare anymore. I love the hope it gives me for the kids I see when I’m in “ROWR, get off my lawn!” mode.

  52. Emma*

    Those knee-high, 4-inch stiletto heel boots I wore as an intern for a Congressman in Washington, D.C. ::Shudder::

    1. Taylor Swift*

      Oh man, the stuff interns on the hill wear, though! I guarantee that’s not bad in the grand scheme of things!

  53. Asenath*

    Most of my embarrassing behaviour occurred flailing around in a job I was really unsuited for and was eventually forced to leave. I realized later that most of the managers and co-workers had been patient and professional, and I had been truly a nightmare – but for a time I told myself all my problems were Someone Else’s Fault. I don’t want to go into details, but it is possible to learn from even the worst mistakes, and eventually put them behind you.

    I once got into a public shouting match with a co-worker (senior to me) over some work decision I disagreed with. Not a good idea. I hope I’ve learned to control my temper and my response to frustrating decisions I don’t agree with and can’t change since then.

    1. Sylvan*

      I’ve had the experience in your first paragraph, too. Some of it was other people’s fault (it included customer service and the customers were Not Great), but a lot of it was my own for trying to make such a poor fit work. Eventually my determination to stay in that job provoked such a mental illness relapse that I had to leave.

  54. Not So Super-visor*

    At my first job out of college, I was one of those jerks who would CC my manager and the other employee’s managers on almost every email if I thought that I wasn’t going to get my way on something. I legitimately regret this behavior.

    1. BF50*

      At my first job out of college, I sent read receipts on every single email that I sent out. I would hate 23 year old me.

      Then at this job, some idiot mansplained read receipts to me, suggesting I use them with customers. Um, I am all too familiar with read receipts, how they work, and how they should or should not be used.

  55. LQ*

    I still do this ALL THE TIME!
    Last night at the bitter end of the day my boss was talking to me about reorganizing and he was singing so highly the praises of a guy who is not that great. I tried to point out some specific things. I think the guy can do the work, but he’s not worthy of a tenth the praise. And after my bosses whatevereth sexist comment prefaced by I know this is sexist but I don’t mean it that way, I said to him…I think you like guy more than you should because he’s a dude. It totally stopped my boss in his tracks and I think he’ll think about if it is true. But I really …yeah…
    All the time.

  56. The sky is falling*

    As a teacher I was assigned to a new school. Before school started in the fall, I ran into my new principal at bar. At the time I smoked. She jokingly said her goal this year was to get me to quit smoking. I replied I’d quit if she slept with me…oof. When school started and I tried to apologize, she said she didn’t even remember seeing me out over the summer much less talking to me. She was a pro!

    1. SherSher*

      My eyes could not get any wider than when I read this!!! I’m still having trouble getting my eyebrows back down to where they belong!!

    2. Armchair Analyst*

      Yes, I didn’t know about that Generally Agreed Upon Fiction to Imagine that Something Never Happened until about 8 years ago, I attended a work event with spouses, and my co-worker’s husband was quite flirtatious and even a bit handsy – not inappropriate at a social event, even between two people married to different people, but definitely odd for me at a work event. The next day she just said, My husband loved the free booze and got so drunk! and since she said it first I just said, Yes! And we never mentioned It again.
      I hope they’re ok.

  57. Bear Rambles On*

    I used to be soooo bad at responding to clients’ emails and calls. I was perpetually behind in my tasks and so I never wanted to respond and have to explain. When they couldn’t get ahold of me, they would contact my boss and I would go dark on her too. This went on for years. I finally learned that I had to bite the bullet and respond even if I didn’t have a good reason for being behind. Of course, I was trying to improve on being perpetually behind in my tasks, so that made it easier.
    I also used to be really bad at documentation. I work in accounting so that is a huge part of my job. It has taken me years of effort, coaching, and getting medication for my ADHD to improve.
    The fun thing is that now I am supervising someone who has all of these same issues. Every time I feel frustration with her, I cringe thinking about making my boss’s life hell.

  58. Amber Rose*

    I spent a lot of time shame-avoiding work at my last job. I’d call in sick several times a week and then make up time on Saturdays and in evenings when nobody else was around so I didn’t have to deal with the pressure. Nobody told me not to so I figured it was fine. It was not.

    That job was extremely toxic, but I could/should have dealt with things better.

    1. Hapless Bureaucrat*

      Mine was similar, except I tended to just hide the mistakes and hope I could fix it before anyone found out.
      I couldn’t, of course.
      Also a toxic environment, AND I’d gotten too much into negative gossip AND I’d taken a position still under Toxic Boss but in the next room that I thought would give me breathing space. No, it just isolated me.
      Of all the mistakes I cringe about with that job, not leaving at least a year sooner is the biggest. It accidentally worked out in terms of my career now, but ughhh. Nope.

      1. Amber Rose*

        I have the same regret. The job started OK and only mildly toxic, but that last year was a gong show. I could practically see the noxious green clouds hovering around the building. I should have got the hint and got out much sooner.

  59. Contracts Killer*

    I was an admin before I went to law school. Consequently, when I started clerking and an admin in our section was on maternity leave, I offered to help cover some of her duties. YEARS after her leave was over, fellow attorneys would still bring me admin work to do and I could never figure out a way to stop it.

  60. ACDC*

    Internship… I was upset that I had to hotdesk while all other employees had permanent desks/offices/whatever. We had an available office that wasn’t being used and didn’t have any furniture in it, so I decided that would be my permanent home. I spent the morning moving furniture into the office and “customizing” my space, including extra chairs for when people came into the office to meet with me (WTF was wrong with me?!). I was setting up the computer when the CEO (my direct supervisor) came in and was like no….

    Thankfully he and I knew each other from a previous internship I did, and he had a pretty good sense of humor about it so I completed my internship and got a great recommendation. But good Lord that was bad…

    1. SherSher*

      Had a colleague do this in a new position. There was an empty office and he decided he should have it so he moved. The thing is, he used to work in the office that was responsible for office moves so he KNEW that wasn’t how you got it done. Also, his boss was pissed!

    2. Erin W*

      OMG, this reminds me that when I was intern I tried to steal a chair. They sent an email around– “this department got new chairs, so their old chairs are up for grabs.” I responded that I would take one. It was my last week at the internship. Later, my supervisor asks, “why do you need the chair?” I’m like, “I’m taking it home.” He says, “No, that’s not happening.” I legitimately thought they were just going to throw them away, so I could keep one. But that was not the case.

      1. Magenta*

        I would have thought the same though. When We got new office furniture I emailed the whole office offering the old stuff if they wanted it. I took a couple of chairs, as did others, one person took some desks, cupboards etc , this seems pretty standard to me.

  61. Quinn*

    Oh the shame. One time when I was a fresh and new manager, I asked a job candidate to give me a ride after we had an interview. I had been in a car accident a couple weeks prior, and my rental car coverage time was maxed out. I needed to take the car back that day before they closed or I’d have to personally pay for it (I was so broke at the time, I would not have been able to pay). Immediately after the interview, I asked her if she’d give me a ride. She was gracious, though I’m sure she felt extremely pressured to do it. Needless to say, she didn’t take the job. I saw her at a street fair a few weeks later and gave her a hug. Why or why did I do these things? I’m going to go hide for a bit.

    1. Quackeen*

      Oh, man. The new manager stuff.
      The first time I had to call a candidate and tell her she didn’t get the position (this was before email was a widely-accepted medium), I handled it so poorly! She started to cry and get angry on the phone, so I started to stammer how sorry I was, and it all just spiraled from there.

  62. overcaffeinatedandqueer*

    Complained in a foreign language about other workers/boring meetings. Nothing too awful, just like “Ich haaaase lange Meetings/[mitarbeiter] ist sooo faul,” But still. Never got caught, but oh boy, what a bad idea.

      1. EddieSherbert*

        +100
        In my college job, I worked with several people who spoke a different language at home – that I also speak. I just ignored their conversations and basically pretended I didn’t understand them… for months. Often while they talked about me. Or said horribly rude things about customers.

        And then someone I knew from school started working there who also speaks that language at home – the first time the others started talking about me in front of him, he literally just BUSTED OUT LAUGHING and was like “dude, she speaks Language!”

        It was embarrassing for everyone.

      2. Lalaith*

        My boss once told us a story – he speaks German with his family, though he’s lived in the US his whole life. One time, when he was a kid, he was in line at a grocery store with his mom, and some kid in front of them was acting up. Boss’s mom turns to him and says, in German, “If I were that child’s mother I would box him around the ears” (at least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, perhaps that’s a German expression). The mother in front of them turns to her child and says, also in German, “You should be glad she’s not your mother!”

  63. No One Important*

    My first job was in a small grocery store deli. One day I had to work alone and I had a cold. I took some cold medicine and went in to work. I didn’t realize how drowsy the medicine would make me. I went into the back room and put my head down on the table and went right to sleep. I was awakened by the sound of a voice saying, “Well, well, what do we have here?” I looked up and it was the owner of the grocery store chain and his entourage who had just come back to inspect the deli. I tried to explain that I was sick, but he wouldn’t let me speak. I guess the store manager must have stuck up for me because I didn’t get fired, but I never took meds again before coming to work! Not those type of meds, anyway.

    1. Linda Evangelista*

      Man, places that deal with food reeeaaalllyyy need good sick leave policies. Sorry you had to go in at all :(

  64. AMA Long-time Lurker*

    In one of my first “real” jobs out of college, I was given an office with a door because I had to take so many phone calls. TOO MUCH POWER. I sent so many selfies to my new boyfriend and more than once got into heated arguments with him which ended in my trying not to cry in the bathroom. How I didn’t realize that everyone could hear me is…still a source of shame to this day.

  65. Iden Versio*

    I applied for a job at a frozen custard store when I was 16 or 17. I really, really wanted a job so I could have some of my own spending money. My parents said that calling multiple times to check on your application would show initiative…so I called. A lot. Basically, I kept calling until they gave me an interview. Surprisingly, I got the job and worked there for about 3 or 4 years. I definitely do not recommend this approach, though. I cringe when I think about it. (Although to be honest, lots of things make me cringe about that job.)

  67. Aphrodite*

    Cringe? OMG, if only I only cringed. I actively die.

    I will share one: I was temping as the receptionist at a county agency for employment. Talk about a cesspool of toxicity. There was a manager, his assistant manger and about six reps. Combine that with my immaturity and you have a … well, weird story. I was temperamental. I showed it. One day the manager, who lived about 40 minutes away, decided to take the day and ride his bike in. He showed up around 10:30, spent time cleaning up and changing, went to lunch about noon for an hour and a half, and then left two hours early to bike home. Not his only too-lazy-to-work episode. Yeah, great work ethic.

    While no one found out about this until after I was fired, it turned out that the assistant manager, who had the opportunity because of the manager’s inattention, used her county credit card to spend freely on herself. A county audit caught this and she was fired.

    A rep was a serious boozer who liked to boast about it and to help pay for her habit, worked several nights a week at a sleazy bar. Wasn’t too awake on the main county job.

    I slowly discovered all this and instead of being smart and ignoring it, I grew angry. It affected my attitude, which was not hot to begin with. It did change, mostly with the discovery of the thief, after I had been fired by one of the enablers after several months. Later, I heard the county cleaned house. The independent office was consolidated and much tighter controls instituted. I heard this from one of the reps who actually had a work ethic but not a particularly strong personal one as he, firmly married, tried to take advantage of my depression over the firing and seduce me. What a fricking idiot.

  68. Temperance*

    At my first job out of college, our boss HATED me. She used to stick me with the worst assignments, and I would get my ass handed to me on the regular for things not being done (that my counterpart was supposed to do, and/or that I didn’t have time to complete with all the other stuff she was throwing at me, including her personal marketing crap).

    After a while, I started fighting back when she would criticize me. “You need to get the mail out by X time” and “the kitchen wasn’t fully cleaned when I came in this morning” were responded to with “well since Counterpart got to spend the day in the other office, I couldn’t get it all done and clock out on time” and “Counterpart was supposed to do that, not me, so you’ll have to reprimand him.” My favorite was when she tried to discipline me for not doing her Craigslist sales postings for the week when I was on vacation, and had told my coworker to do it.

    This did not endear me to JerkBoss. I ended up getting my revenge in the end when our Grandboss asked me to temporarily cover another office, and my inept colleague was stuck doing all the marketing and sales work for her in addition to the regular center work. I made the switch for quality of life reasons, and it hurt her sales numbers and productivity not to have a personal assistant any longer.

    1. Theory of Eeveelution*

      I don’t know, this just sounds like you were standing up for yourself. Your boss making you clean the kitchen is far cringier.

    2. Snickerdoodle*

      I GLORIOUSLY sabotaged an awful coworker like that once. She was lazy, incompetent, and angry; and she would spend her whole shift on her phone or listening to music, leaving me to deal with all the manual labor (it was a warehouse job) and scream at me over things that weren’t my fault.

      When I left the job, I knew she was going to have to do my job for a while because they hadn’t hired a replacement yet, so I was ready. I used up all the good packing tape and left only the cheap stuff that tore easily, hid the good tape gun and left out the identical-but-broken one, and unplugged the scale used for shipping packages. You had to restart the computer to reset the shipping scale, so I also changed the password on the computer. The whole thing took under thirty seconds and created HOURS of hell for her the first day on the job after I left.

      Yeah, it was unprofessional of me, but I don’t cringe one bit. :D

    3. LadyCop*

      I must be missing where this is a story of cringe worthy behavior, because you don’t sound like it bothers you now

  69. LEL*

    I did two terrible things:
    1) I was 19 when I started my first office job in one of those executive office suites. I wore tight tank tops with the shelf bra, the kind you get at Express. and then did suit separates (pants or skirt plus blazer). Nothing fit properly and everything was very tight. Thank goodness for the woman who later became my mentor and now my friend – she told me that it wasn’t appropriate.
    2) When I started slacking off working from home at a post-college job, my boss asked me to start working from the office. I cried and threw a tantrum (over the phone), forcing him to tell me that working from home is a privilege you get when you actually, you know, work.

  70. beanie beans*

    I spent most of my 20s and half of my 30s not speaking up for myself when encountering inappropriate behavior, or more specifically sexist behavior and sometimes sexual harassment.

    I hate to think of how many horrible things I let slide because I was too terrified to “cause trouble.”

    I’m getting better at confronting behavior more directly, but it’s taking practice.

    2. many bells down*

      My first job, at 16, was with a dog groomer. It was all women except for a school friend of mine who applied after I told him it was a good place to work.

      They sexually harassed him. Constantly. Things like sticking the hose dryer up his shorts and turning it on. We were both 16 and it made me uncomfortable but I didn’t realize it was sexual harassment until waaaaay later.

    3. Snickerdoodle*

      OMG, so much this. Mostly with one specific person whom I did eventually tell off, but I soooo should have documented, reported, etc. I didn’t want to cause trouble, etc., but our boss was also notoriously non-confrontational, and I knew I would have to escalate and, again, didn’t want to “cause trouble.” Meaning I had a LOT of trouble to put up with myself in the meantime.

      Years later, I DID document/report a creep, and it got dealt with swiftly and painlessly (for me, at least).

  71. Hello Sweetie*

    My first job after college, I worked as a research assistant for a medical researcher in the lab. I didn’t have much lab work experience, just the labs I did as part of my biology degree. In college labs, during long incubations it was was common for students to work on homework, both for that class as well as others, talk, read books. No one minded as long as you had everything ready for the next step.

    So when I started working in a lab after college, I always made sure I had a book for some of the longer incubations. The RA who was training me said nothing when I brought it out while waiting for a 30 minutes spin. Then my PI walked in, to ask us something, and I saw her hesitate when she saw me with the book. I immediately put it away, but just her look alone, I knew that that was not appropriate.

    I learned to make sure I had a list of small tasks – so if I had a 30 minutes incubation, I had something small to do. Like gather all the things that needed to be autoclaved, or update files, put in material orders.

  72. anon for this one*

    We had a company wide town hall where all the other divisions from around the world were listening in, so there were thousands of people hearing this. The town hall was being held in the US location, where I worked.

    The CEO had started his speech saying he knew times were tough and he understood our pain because he recently had to decide not to buy a third house, and also had to cut a couple premium overseas cable channels from his TV package.

    I stood up and called the CEO out on giving us the lowest salaries in the industry so that many of us at the lower levels had to work extra jobs just to make ends meet, but executives got six figure bonuses and retreats to the Caribbean multiple times a year. Bonuses were an open secret at the company, so I know my department head received a $90K bonus while I was living in a HCOL city making less than $30K with no raise or no bonus for three years. I told him not to insult his workforce by comparing his situation or our exec’s situations with ours, and if he truly wanted the company to be a “good place to work” like he said, he’d stop raising the cost of benefits without providing raises because each year we were making less and less because the company refused to pay us more and kept raising out benefits amount.

    I have never seen someone turn white with dread so quickly, and I have never heard a room go so quiet that quickly either. I was about 24 at the time, and while I don’t really regret calling out the CEO because I do firmly believe people in power need to be rightly called out on certain things, I do regret how unprofessional people thought I was at such an early point in my career. I did have a lot of people thank me, though. But I definitely cringe at how angry I was about everything then.

    1. Anonymeece*

      I can see where you’d be embarrassed, but maaaan, I wish I had been there for that. My boss one time was complaining to me that they might have to sell their second house and I have never bit my tongue harder in my life. To actually have said something is the stuff fantasies are made of.

    3. Jessica*

      I don’t care how “unprofessional” anyone thinks this is or that you posted it in this shame thread… you’re still my hero.

    4. Amber Rose*

      OK I get why this wasn’t ideal, but also you’re kind of my hero now and I think this was an incredibly awesome thing you did.

      If anyone should have been cringing through that, it should have been the CEO. What a butt.

    5. Theory of Eeveelution*

      That’s incredible, and I wish someone like you had been at so many of my past jobs…

      1. Matthew*

        & Alison, for a future Q&A – “What unprofessional workplace behaviour are you still proud of, and would do again?” Would love to read more stories like this.

      2. anon for this one*

        I got a lot of warnings from my then boss for being unprofessional. It pretty much soured the relationships between me and my current boss since she really drank the koolaid.

        My former boss (I had been promoted to a different team and I was sad to leave my former boss) congratulated me and said she was proud of me. And then told me her history of protesting “the man” when she was my age in the 70s.

        I stayed in the job for another year and a half before I moved on. I went to a different company in the industry where some of my coworkers had heard through word of mouth what I did.

    8. CM*

      You were 24 and you thought it was the right thing to do. Now you’re older and you see your public display of anger as cringeworthy. I have a feeling that you’ll circle back, and at some point you’ll stop cringing about this and will be proud of your 24 year old self without reservations.

      This is the kind of thing that everyone whispers about after. It’s so much more effective when brought up openly like this.

      1. Hey Karma, Over here.*

        I’m with you. I think the regrettable part is feeling bad about being young and indignant and acting on it is the real shame.

      2. anon for this one*

        I’m 32 now and I still go back and forth on whether to feel guilty or proud, and I know the former is because so many people told me I should feel bad about myself afterwards.

        It’s the same thing I struggle with when I do activism or speak up at work about my rights as a woman and LGBTQA+ employee. I know it’s a symptom of a larger social problem of making people ashamed for sticking up for themselves, which is a shame.

      1. anon for this one*

        Nope. They got worse. In so many different ways. There was a mass exodus when I left. I know a few people who still work there and they say it’s still a sinking ship.

    12. SS Express*

      This is amazing. If that’s unprofessional, it’s only because we weirdly think that behaving appropriately at work means tolerating utter bullshit and never contradicting someone simply because they’re important. I think his speech was unprofessional!

    16. Employee #52b59*

      Something similar happened with one of my direct reports at a company-wide town hall. The CEO went on and on about culture even though people at lower levels definitely saw a toxic culture full of backstabbing and snark, clique-like behavior. She stood up and asked if he was proud to be saying the exact opposite of what everyone else experienced.

      My boss asked me to counsel her on why that wasn’t an appropriate question…which I did, but I only counseled her for tone not substance because she was right.

    17. Sarah M*

      I love you for this. Please don’t cringe. You were very brave to do this, and he needed to hear it.

  73. Muriel Heslop*

    I was a HUGE oversharer of my personal life. I’m forever thankful to the office manager at my first job who sat me down and explained to me not to do that. When I seemed confused by this, she flat out told me I was making my (much older and more experienced) colleagues uncomfortable. Ever the pleaser I didn’t want to make people feel bad!
    In retrospect, I am so horrified and I hope I am that kind when speaking to subordinates about their professional conduct.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I have a coworker who is like this. I want to like her but she literally told me all about her abusive psychopathic ex-husband who is in prison right now in the first conversation we had. Now, I’m sorry she went through that and I know it changed who she was, but . . . she didn’t know me. We were at work. I don’t think she is the kind of person who uses sad violins to get attention but talking to her almost inevitably leads to all the things that aren’t going well in her life and her mental health issues. So now we’re not friends because I feel like I have to keep her at arm’s length to avoid being sucked in.

  74. Bunny Girl*

    Back when I worked in food service, my manager kept getting on my butt for me to do delivery instead of just working in the store. I point blank refused, but he kept nagging me about it. Finally I just decided “Well he can’t make me use my car if I don’t have one”. I lived in the next town over and I walked five and a half miles to go to my store. When I showed up, my manager told me that he really needed me to delivery that day because some people had called in. I told him I didn’t have a car. He asked where it was, I told him at home. He stared at me and said “don’t you live in the next town over?” and I said I did.

    I was an uppity little shit but he never asked me again and never brought it up. I don’t think that was very professional but it proved my point.

    1. OP*

      Thanks for the laugh! Sounds like it actually could go in the “unprofessional thing you did that you’re still proud of” comment section when Alison posts that one!

      1. Welp*

        Oh god, haha. Using a higher pitched voice, ending statements with a questioning tone, giggling at EVERYTHING, fake pouting… it was a lot. Looking back now, I’m sure I seemed like a huge hiring mistake, but I had no clue.

  76. mol106*

    I was one of those “In my old job, we did it this way” people. This was my second job ever. I stopped after a few months, but I’m sure my coworkers were mentally rolling their eyes.

    1. Mazzy*

      Ha ha I say this now, but I was at my last job for years and we lose money doing things wrong that they did right and did not lose money. So it makes sense. But when it’s someone’s first job they were at for a year? Yeah…

  77. Lady Jay*

    One of my very first jobs was as cashier at a local hardware/home goods store. I was one of those girls who *loved* all things LOTR related, the kind who would try to learn Elvish. One day when I was bored, I took a sticky note, wrote the name of one of the most obscure LOTR characters on it (seriously, the character only appears in, like, the Silmarillion) and stuck it over my actual name tag.

    Boss had to tell me to take it off.

    To be fair, boss handled it well, explaining why my real name needed show, and I did take off the sticky without complaint. I just can’t believe I was nerdy/clueless enough to do this.

      1. Lady Jay*

        Finduilas. I liked her story, I liked the way her name sounded, I had absolutely zero notion of the options of using her name as mine while cashiering. :)

    2. SherSher*

      I actually am amused. On SuperStore, Amy is always wearing someone else’s name tag, which I find to be one of the funniest things on the show!

    4. Elizabeth W.*

      We had an employee at OldExjob who legally CHANGED HIS NAME to that of a character in a sci-fi book series (it wasn’t LOTR though). I can’t even remember his old name now.

    5. The Other Katie*

      At one of my early retail jobs the breakroom had an assortment of abandoned name tags. The new store manager decreed that you had to be wearing _a_ name tag at all times, but was silent on whether it had to be your own. After that, if we forgot our name tags, we’d choose one from the box of abandoned tags at random. One of the parking lot guys, who was about 50 and a hairy mountain man, usually chose the tag that said Juliet.

    6. SignalLost*

      I worked in fast food in college. We were required to wear nametags, which I hate; too many people recognize me that I don’t remember and I don’t like adding to that panic by just giving my name out. For a while, I went by the name of a famous musician – we share the same first name, though hers is spelled differently. I just added her last name to the tag with our label maker. Later, one of my male coworkers gave me his nametag when he left. I wore that one till I left. No idea if that company now requires you to wear a nametag with your actual name on it now, and still don’t care.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        One of my coworkers in the college dining hall got the kid who had access to the nametag machine to make him a tag that said “Porn * “. And they let him wear it. Small school; we all knew each other, anyway.

      2. Qosanchia*

        At some point in my “illustrious” food service career, I started collecting nametags. My definite favorites were “Liz” (I’m a man who definitely presents as such) and “SUPERVISOR.” The latter was my actual title, but the label was so poorly sized and spaced on the nametag that it looked fake

    7. AuroraNorth*

      When I was a buser at a restaurant one summer, a coworker and I swapped name tags on the regular. We were both short women of similar build, dressed alike (uniforms), who wore our dark hair in a single braid, plus our names rhymed. Most of our coworkers didn’t notice or else they laughed. The only time the manager ever got on us was one day when we were both really bored and used our name tags as barrettes. Silly, but it got us through the shift.

  78. Anonymoose*

    Posting under another name for this, but at my second job out of college (not even with 2 years in the workforce) I was getting fed up with my incompetent boss (that’s a whole other story). I hate answering phones (customers) and by this point it’d become almost 50% of my job.

    Well, I typically arrive about 15 mins. early to mentally prepare myself for the work day and my boss is in early that day as well. About 5 mins. in the phone rings (customers) but as we’re not officially open yet I ignore it. My boss is in the back and calls out why I’m not answering it and I try to tell her “it’s not X time yet!” but she doesn’t hear me so finally in my frustration I picked up the phone while yelling loud enough to my boss “IT’S NOT OPENING TIME YET!” Well she managed to pick up the phone in the back so I didn’t deal with that customer but I did hear the first part of the conversation with my boss going “oh no, we don’t open until X.” My boss didn’t ever talk to me about that and I quit 6 months later over a multitude of reasons.

    1. BookishMiss*

      Oh goodness. I would have to stay after close at one job to close out the cash drawers, and when people would call after hours, i would cheerfully answer “Teapots Inc, we closed at 10!” The closing manager thought it was hilarious.

  79. Goya de la Mancha*

    My bank teller job in college definitely saw some interesting choices! Came in hungover once, spent the day in the bathroom because my manager refused to let me go home. Let my friend dye my hair from a box, had purple hued hair for several weeks. Regularly rolled out of bed 5 minutes before my shift on Saturday mornings in the drive-thru, going to work in black sweat pants and a company shirt. Told off our bank president one day during my shift (and amazing still got to keep my job!).

    Not mine, but I know my roommate/and co-worker came to work at least once with her top inside out…

    1. Elsie432*

      At LongAgoJob, I worked with a guy who came in wearing a button-down shirt inside out. More than once.

      Our theory was that when he got home from work, he would pull his shirt off over his head without unbuttoning it and toss it on the furniture (or the floor). On a subsequent day, he would pick the inside-out shirt up and pull it over his head.

      This guy would also come into work with his toupee *seriously* askew.

      His manager was remote and none of his coworkers had the nerve to point out either of these problems to him.

      1. SS Express*

        Weird that someone would care enough about their appearance to get a toupee instead of just being bald, but not care enough to put it on neatly.

        1. Goya de la Mancha*

          exactly, one would assume that a toupee wearer would want it to be as inconspicuous as possible?!

  80. Mazzy*

    When there were layoffs I emailed my boss and cc’d the people who stayed on my team and thanked her for keeping us and assured her we’d strive for perfection. Totally pointless and came across as if I thought I was higher level than I am

    1. TechWorker*

      To be honest I imagine it came across less arrogant and more ‘I’m desperate to keep my job’ (which yea, maybe a bit unprofessional but no-one can really be blamed for it!)

  81. Anonymeece*

    Not learning the culture and overstepping thinking I was ~showing initiative~ by not asking for help.

    Basically, I had an employee who was doing wrong thing after wrong thing – interrogating coworkers about personal matters, routinely showing up 15-30 minutes late, etc. I flipped (mistake #1) and didn’t ask for help (mistake #2) and did what I thought was a professional mature solution to the matter (mistake #3). It was basically a PIP but guess who didn’t go through her supervisor or HR for this (mistake #4).

    Sure enough, this led to a SLEW of problems. I got a stern talking to and had to go to some supervisor training, but survived. I still cringe when thinking about it now. Oh, to start over knowing what I know now…

  82. Micromanagered*

    In my 20s I was such a habitual complainer at work that it became a running joke. I would start complaints with “You know what I hate?” that apparently had a very distinct cadence to it, because when I would say it, my coworkers would echo “You know what I hate?” in unison. But I didn’t get that they were saying to knock it off.

    Finally I had a manager who was kind enough to call out the specific behaviors, including the “You know what I hate?” preamble, and I was able to train it out of myself. Everything I wanted to share a thought that would start with “You know what I hate?”, I started to ask myself if I *really* needed to share this. The best part is, I think putting that second of pause between the thought in my brain and the words in my mouth actually started to really change my outlook on work-in-general. I work with some chronic complainers and…. they’re miserable.

    1. OP*

      Ooh. When your thing becomes a group bit, you know it’s not great. Thumbs up to your manager for helping you to reframe things!

  83. ChaufferMeChaufferYou*

    Happy cringeday.

    When I was in my first corporate job, I became work friends (and was trying to be real friends) with one girl my age in the department, Mary. One person did try to warn me that Mary can be two-faced, but I ignored that as a nasty comment. Mary was generally seen as a rock star and was beloved by many people, and I was so excited to have a new friend.

    After about a year, though, she froze me out very suddenly and without warning. She stopped talking to me outside of when she had to for work related issues. She became super cold, and I still to this day have no idea what triggered this. Our boss noticed the rift, and kept urging me to talk to her to find out what happened, but I was absolutely horrible at confrontation. During one of our 1:1 conversations where he was encouraging me to start dialog with Mary about what was happening, he asked me suddenly “are you okay?” I broke down crying. Between being given the cold shoulder by this girl and many other stresses in the job, I just had had enough.

    A few weeks later, I left that department for a completely different one in another building (which was a huge jump forward in my career). The few times I saw her after that were awkward. I never got to the bottom of what happened.

    I cringe to think that A) I let it get to me so badly that I broke down crying in front of my boss and B) that I didn’t just have an adult conversation with her.

    I did learn a very valuable lesson in keeping coworkers at arm’s length, after that. I make it a point not to befriend coworkers by hanging with them after work or adding them on social media. For a very few people, I’ll add them on social media AFTER I leave the company.

    tl;dr I let the drama get to me

  84. Business Cazh*

    Right after graduating college I took a temp job at a huge insurance company doing data entry. I dressed sloppily, came in extremely hungover several times, didn’t respect my boss, called in to watch the World Cup with my boyfriend at the time, watched movies on my phone while doing said data entry… and I regret none of it! That was an extremely happy and fun part of my life, that job has never gone on a resume, and when I got laid off I used the unemployment to go to Europe for a month. I refuse to cringe!

  85. BookCocoon*

    I attended a university that valued the “round table” — everyone’s voices have equal weight. As a student I sat on several committees with faculty and staff. The university president knew my name. I thought this was how the world worked.

    My first job out of college, I was an office manager. Our whole division had an all-day retreat my second week on the job. And so all day long I was raising my hand and jumping into the discussions and adding my viewpoints, as I sat at this long conference table with our VP and the Deans of our schools and department directors. One of the Deans (who was herself a very extreme personality and was later demoted) complimented me at the end of the day for “just jumping in there” or something like that, which was the first inkling I had that my behavior was unusual.

    After working there for a while I understood that it was a very hierarchical organization and that I was way out of line thinking that I was welcome to contribute 1) as an office manager 2) in my second week on the job 3) fresh out of college. I was so embarrassed thinking back on it!

    1. CM*

      To be fair, your boss should have stopped you right at the beginning instead of letting you go on all day like that! Or at least SOMEBODY should have clued you in that you were expected to be quiet at the retreat.

  86. iglwif*

    Very early in my career, I once planned a meeting for some editors to meet several new staff members, and pulled all those staff members into the meeting, which ended up lasting most of the afternoon …

    AND I DIDN’T TELL OUR BOSS I WAS DOING THIS.

    So we had all functionally disappeared from the office all afternoon. Boss was not pleased.

  87. Washi*

    In my first ever real interview, my interviewers used a lot of the “you would be doing X task” and “this is where you would sit.” I thought that meant I had gotten the job and asked about what paperwork I needed to do and whether I would start on Monday. The interviewer laughed very awkwardly and said she would get back to me. I did not get the job and still cringe…

    1. Mbarr*

      Oh nooooooo! That would be heart breaking. I ran into something similar – I did some interviews with a company, then did the mandatory language testing, and for some reason I assumed I had an offer. I did not. My parents were not pleased.

    2. Jess*

      Oh me too! I remember coming out of a retail interview feeling certain I had the job, and calling my parents to tell them. (This was in my late teens, only about my second or third ever job, and I think the first one where I had to interview even though I knew the owners so I guess I thought of it as more of a formality.)

      I just remember feeling surprised when I got the call offer me a job since I thought that had already been established. So, happy ending, but I just remember that little brief stomach-sinking moment when I realised I’d misjudged it earlier!

      Actually, similar with my current job, although that was more annoyance than a cringe: I had been approached to move to the same role within a different department in my organisation. I was given to understand the role was mine if I wanted it, thought about it, emailed the manager to say I’d love to join his team and…was told that was great and they’d organise the interview :-\ I think the situation was that the manager had originally represented the situation correctly but HR said they had to advertise the role internally. I’m pretty sure the other interviews were more to tick boxes, but I was quite discombobulated and I think I would have comported myself a little differently talking to the manager and 2-i-c from the start if I’d realised it was a formal process rather than a casual one!

  88. Dance-y Reagan*

    I took people at their word, and gave them the honesty they’d asked for. I was naive and thought people said what they meant.

    I once interned at a scholarly/non-profit venue in my field, and the supervisor was very encouraging and asked me to consider pursuing that avenue long-term. She encouraged me to open up, and I explained that I was really more interested in a specific commercial branch of the field. She totally shut down after that, pulling back on all the extra experiences she’d planned for me. I should have just lied and told her what she wanted to hear.

    It took me a few more rounds of consequences to stop giving honest feedback when asked for it. Even if it’s carefully worded and politely shared, people never really want to hear it.

  89. BottleBlonde*

    I’m sure I’ve done worse things that I’m blocking out right now, but the one that comes to mind was my blatant disregard for people’s preferred names/titles. I worked in a research lab in grad school and, despite my PI’s repeated request that I call her Julia, I insisted on calling her (and the other PhDs I worked with) Dr. Lastname. I remember consciously thinking that I would impress them all with my respect, and privately sneering at the others in the lab that used their (requested!) first names. Of course, those others were the respectful ones for calling everyone what they wanted to be called!

  90. CM*

    Handled conflict with coworker by sputtering incoherently “Why are you — that’s not–” and eventually crying in manager’s office about it.

    Handled conflict with other coworker by glaring at her and giving her the silent treatment. This coworker was a good 20 years older than me. Instead of getting upset, she kindly took me aside and explained why she was doing the thing that made me so mad. I felt so embarrassed, and grateful that she came to talk to me in person.

  91. Anon Accountant*

    Threatening to bring a coworker across the desk. Like straight across. I have a seizure disorder and was having a seizure aura. I was able to ask her to get Paul, our boss. She proceeded to ream me out for not coming up front to greet a client. And I mean ream me out and scream at me. Our lazy management didn’t even talk to her.

    My only regret is not actually doing it.

  92. Jenny*

    I was always late at my first job. Like always. I thought it didn’t matter but it really did and it was super unprofessional because it affected when we started our morning meeting.

    At my second job (which to be fair, was a very terrible job with a very terrible boss) I cried a lot at work. If someone yelled at me, I cried. But if someone just gave me constructive criticism, I cried. I cried a lot.

    This second job was a start-up and we were all new. I was not aware of “start-up culture” and just wasn’t a self-starter at this point in my career. I kept waiting to be told what to do and waiting to be trained – but we were all new and I let way too many chances to figure out my niche pass me by. I just sort of was adrift and because of that I took too many smoke breaks and then I think I got a reputation for being lazy. I just sincerely did not know what I was supposed to be doing but I should have taken the initiative to meet with a manager and express my worries and figure out what needed to be done. The main boss there was a huge bully and he encouraged an atmosphere of bullying and at this point I just openly complained all the time about how much I hated working there to anyone who would listen. So I am quite sure most of the people at that job thought I was a lazy asshole.

  93. Erin W*

    My very first job (high school, fast food-adjacent) I can remember having friends come visit me at work and literally disappearing with them for more than an hour at a time. The people I worked with mostly didn’t care, but I’m kind of appalled now at my rudeness.

  94. Pikachu*

    Eloped young, while I was still at my first post-college job. Had a big backyard bbq reception later on and invited my whole department. I knew a handful of them well and didn’t want to exclude anyone… but we didn’t socialize outside of work. They had never even met my husband. I thought I was being nice but in retrospect it must have seemed like an egregious gift-grab. Yikes.

  95. Ellen*

    It never affected my behavior, but I used to get frustrated when my bosses would ask me to do something they were perfectly capable of doing themselves, or that would only take a few minutes. It seemed like they thought their time was more valuable than mine. Now that I’m assigning tasks to others… I understand that that’s true! But that it isn’t personal; it’s just how different roles work within an organization.

    1. Esk*

      oh this 100%. I used to roll my eyes and think “in the time it’s taken you to assign me this, you could have done it yourself” and completely miss the fact that I was one of a dozen people and it was MY ACTUAL JOB

  96. Whyyyy*

    you know that thing Alison talks about where toxic workplaces distort your perception of what’s ok and what’s not? yeah, it definitely happens.

    I worked at Toxic Job for 4 years, and it got progressively worse. To the point where my manager (K) suggested we finish off an open bottle of wine from an event one afternoon when our CEO wasn’t around (staff of 4 usually, sometimes 5) and so the three of us did that. We had bingo cards printed up of the awful things our CEO would say regularly and tried to see who would ‘win’. I crocheted at my desk in December when we were unbearably slow (a large part of my job was butt-in-seat). All of us, CEO included, would get drunk at business events. Our CEO slept with past presidents. It was a cluster, and it took me a while to see just how incredibly awful it was.

    1. CM*

      I’m assuming the president and CEO of your company are two different people. But when I first read your comment about the CEO sleeping with “past presidents,” I was picturing like Garfield, Taft, and Monroe lined up outside your CEO’s office. Now that would be a novel work situation.

      1. Whyyyy*

        lol, yes, the CEO was the person in the office daily and the past president used to be president of the board of directors (non profit)

    2. Elle*

      Omg we had ‘terrible things that happen at work’ bingo too! With lots of key phrases people loved to spout in meetings. Luckily I had the presence of mind never to actually write it down anywhere. But, yeah. Bad idea.

  97. CRM*

    It was my first office job out of college, and I was still pretty young (early 20s). I had a fling with a coworker that lasted for around 3 months. For the record, this person wasn’t my boss or a subordinate, and we were both single at the time. However, the person was on my team and we worked together a lot. I wish I could say we only hooked-up after working hours when we were away from the office, but that would be a lie. I was so lucky that we never got caught. Looking back now, I’m horrified at how unprofessional and stupid it was.

    2. BritCred*

      I think TV doesn’t help with this. It’s way too common and normalised with rarely any consequences unless it’s portrayed as “the nasty rules”.

  98. Mousey Ann*

    I was REALLY past the point when I should have known better, but I was working full time while trying to finish up my bachelor’s degree going to school part time. I was behind on school work so I was trying to finish up some reading for a class later in the day and my manager caught me. I was super embarrassed and that was the only job I have ever been fired from.

    1. Anon and on and on*

      That’s when you Xerox pages and read them like it’s an important work document.
      Or so I’ve heard.

  100. GoButton*

    I was stumped on a halloween costume for the company party–so I dressed up as my boss.

    Then my coworkers and I did a sketch about him in front of the staff and several important invited guests.

    It was a theater and taken in good fun, but I still can’t believe in retrospect that I thought it was the best idea ever.

    1. OP*

      I am impressed that you pulled that one off!

      For sports fans, there’s a fun NFL version of this in this year’s Hard Knocks on HBO. Rookie QB Brady Mayfield dresses up as and mimics the Browns GM. Browns GM was none too pleased.

  101. Seal*

    While working my first full time job out of college, I continued to participate in a local performing arts group, which my life outside of work revolved around. Although my full time job was such that I excelled without having to put too much thought or effort into it, it was obvious to everyone I worked with that my outside activities were my first priority. Many of my coworkers were openly resentful of me, but I pretty much ignored the office politics that were apparently swirling around me and just did my job. After several years of this, I burned out on my outside activities and dropped them entirely. I was shocked and mortified to realize that while I had been preoccupied with other things, my coworkers had been getting promotions and opportunities that would have otherwise gone to me. It was strongly implied by several people in management that while I was clearly the most competent and capable of my coworkers, my head was always elsewhere and no one wanted to take a chance on me. All that time it never even occurred to me that there was more to work than being good at your job.

  102. Flinty*

    Not sure if this counts because it’s technically school, but when applying to a very prestigious university I did an interview with an alum as part of the process. He asked if I was nervous and I said, completely seriously “no because I read that these alumni interviews don’t matter anyway.”

    I did not get in.

  103. Ehhhh*

    1999. Assistant to a professor. 5-10 hrs/week, mostly data entry and organizing files she was starting to digitize. Thus I was using her computer. Frank (Frank, I’m still mad at you!!) sends me an IM with a link. It changes my esteemed professor’s background photo to a graphic porn image. I scrambled to change it back, but I couldn’t even remember what the original was. I went with the default. I didn’t tell her as though she wouldn’t notice… it was so awkward I ended up convincing myself it was her fault and quit not long after that. Frank was apologetic cause he didn’t know I was at work.

  104. Rockhopper*

    I made way too big a deal about how old I felt turning 25 (I believe I kept moaning “quarter of a century”) in an office where I was the youngest by at least a decade. From my current vantage point of late fifties, I cringe hard.

    1. And now I'm almost 45!*

      I did the very same thing (right down to the “quarter century” bit)! That said, I did reconnect with my then-boss years later, and after I filled her in on how my career and life had progressed – grad school, increasing responsibilities, marriage and kids – she laughed while asking, “Do you remember how you bemoaned turning 25 back when we worked together?” So the good news is, it would appear that the people we were complaining to (in my case, at least!) had the good sense to take it with a grain of salt!…

  105. Cruciatus*

    I can’t think of anything truly horrible at work, so I’ve either blocked it out or have just forgotten about it. But I do remember being too confident in my skills. During probably one of my first interviews ever I was asked about how good of a speller I am on a scale of 1-10. I picked 10. It’s always come easily for me and I was trying to impress! Well, they then asked me to spell “liaison”. I missed an “i”, as they likely expected I would! Thing is, if I don’t know how to spell a word I look it up to be sure it’s right! But lesson learned, don’t give yourself a 10 in spelling unless you’ve maybe won the Scripps National Spelling Bee (which I would also not win).

    1. Grumpy Catmin*

      Was it a spelling-based job? Ok, maybe you were overly confident, but why did this line of questioning even come up?

      1. Cruciatus*

        Probably way too late now–just seeing this today. It was not. I think it was a business that checked to make sure things were authentic, especially with Microsoft stuff. The job I was going for was very entry level so probably writing reports that need to be accurate and things like that. So spelling/grammar was important but not the only things to the job. I don’t think the problem was I misspelled liaison it’s that I was like “I’m a 10!” and was obviously not a 10. Fortunately I’m not asked to grade myself too much in these areas any more but I will never give a “10!” answer again, unless it’s about whether I’m the best me I can be.

    2. Key lime pie*

      Haha. Not only would I have said “I’m a 10,” I would have been like, “Come at me bro, give me a word.” Spelling is like, the thing I’m best of all the things I have to do. And no one has been impressed with this since I got out of grade school.

  106. Red*

    I got drunk at work when I was 20. Thank God I worked at Taco Bell, but still… That was really as dumb as it gets imo

  107. Fabulous*

    I unfortunately have several from the past 10 years:

    * Walked around the office without shoes on
    * Wore too-tight clothes that I had grown out of
    * Consistently came in late to a reception job
    * Engaged in gossip and other unprofessional conduct such as talking behind people’s backs and condoning, and occasionally adding to, bullying behavior
    * Complained (more than once) to my boss about a coworker who kept rearranging things in a shared workspace instead of talking to her directly

    1. Fabulous*

      Oooooh, I also forgot about two interviews I went on a few years back that I cringe SO hard on:

      * While telling an example story about a time when I worked well with a difficult person, I used the b**** word because that’s what this person was referred to in my old office. The interviewer commented on my language use too on wrapping up. SMH…
      * Shared some example financial reports that I created without redacting names and other identifying information. When I left the interview they asked if I wanted to take the materials with me and I said no they were free to keep the copies. Didn’t realize until after I left that I had forgotten to edit the reports for anonymity. Whoopsy….

      Needless to say, I didn’t get either jobs.

  108. restingbutchface*

    As someone with ADHD and anxiety I am embarrassed by my behaviour on a daily basis, sadly.

    @Whyyy made a good point about toxic jobs. In one of my toxic jobs I was given a toy medal for making someone cry in a meeting. By my boss. Please note, I didn’t want to make this poor person cry and genuinely didn’t think I said anything bad but this person was obviously struggling. I’m not ashamed of the meeting or my behaviour in it – I’m ashamed that I was so toxic that I kept the medal and didn’t think OH GOD THAT IS WEIRD AND AWFUL.

  109. AK*

    I worked in a diner during college that was a small family owned place with a pretty small staff and minimal turnover. A guy who was generally not great to be around started making jokes about a pregnant server losing her baby, and eventually said something (I don’t remember exactly what) awful about kicking her in the stomach. I had been slicing lemons and threw one at him almost as a reflex and told him how disgusting he was being. He went screaming to the managers who just said “hey AK don’t do it again” but didn’t really have a discussion with either of us about the situation. I’m not super proud of how I handled it but I also don’t really cringe over calling him out for being garbage.

    1. restingbutchface*

      Throwing knives is wrong. Of course.

      And yet, I do not blame you for that instinctive reaction AT ALL. What trash that man is/was and your managers should be ashamed.

    4. Shell*

      A very dear friend of mine is expecting, and if anyone made comments like that about her when I was around, I’m pretty sure I’d punch them in the face. (For context: I have never hit anyone in anger in my whole life, and an average-sized twelve-year-old could probably beat me up.) Throwing a lemon seems pretty mild to me, and I don’t think you need to cringe at this memory at all!

  110. Oryx*

    My first office job out of college was in a call center and the managers wouldn’t allow us to have individual work email or access most personal email sites nor did we have any kind of internal messaging system (this was circa 2004). But we were allowed to heavily browse the internet during downtime and at the time I had a LiveJournal account. My co-worker and I circumvented the no email/no messaging system by me setting up a private LJ page that only she could access and so I’d write these posts complaining about our other co-workers and she was able to read and respond and then I’d respond and we basically spent all day participating in long gossip threads, just the two of us.

    Apparently one day, one of us forgot to log out of our computers or sign out or something. I come in to work and someone had been able to access the LJ and printed out allllllllllll of our posts and comments and just left it on my desk. It was the size of a book manuscript. I never found out who, although I suspect it was our manager who really liked both of us and was sending a message that was more “Hey, if you’re going to do this, at least be smart and sign out.” That office was super gossipy so if anyone else had found it I have no doubt our peers would have started treating us a lot different.

  111. LCH*

    When I was 23, I went to an informational meeting not fully prepared and possibly not appropriately dressed because I didn’t realize it was an interview (no specific job attached). I have never gotten a callback from there since.

  112. Goes On Anon (for this)*

    This only sort of counts, but my husband got me an in to my job by meeting my boss at his job. And since my boss still needed work from him, they continued to meet every so often. And talk about me. And boss would explain how I was doing. In detail. Like, “she works very hard, and she’s good at X and Y but not so much Z, but everyone likes her and she’s doing well,” etc.

    I think the only thing worse than being bad at something at work is to only find out about it because your boss told your spouse.

      1. Goes On Anon (for this)*

        That was exactly how it felt.

        Also that’s the second time in my adult life that I’ve been made to feel like that, and I can’t properly express how much I hate it. It feels SUPER crappy.

    2. SS Express*

      Wow. Of the three adults in this story I think you’re the only one who didn’t act unprofessionally.

  113. Yeah, no*

    I once sent an email meant for my sister to boss’ boss. Not just any email, but ranting tirade about all the inefficiencies of an office staffed entirely of lazy assholes and megalomaniacs. I didn’t even realize I’d sent it to him until he wrote back “I don’t think you meant this for me”. I couldn’t run to my boss’s office fast enough to fill him in on what I did. As I was breathlessly explaining/grovelling, the phone rang and it obviously it was boss’ boss. Amazingly I didn’t get handed a banker’s box immediately, but it was awkward for a bit after that. I still die a little inside every time I think of it.

    1. SophieChotek*

      Oh I did this too! I wrote an email complaining to my Mom about some professors when I was graduate school. I accidentally sent it to the Chair and Head of Graduate Studies. Luckily for me, it was perhaps the only email in which I did not go a diatribe about how much I feared & disliked the Chair/Head, and only mentioned him in passing! He just sent me an email and said “don’t think this was for me” but I still cringe when I think about it – and am relieved, when it could have been so much worse.

      I feel for you!

      1. Ehhhh*

        Early days of texting, I called my mother a bitch… in a text message to my mother. She replied “that’s uncalled for.” I thought I’d die.

      2. Dr Wizard, PhD*

        When an undergrad, I had the same first name as the head of the university Department, and received an email from one of my TAs that was *clearly* meant for him, laying out all the concerns and frustration of the TAs and how poorly they were treated by the Department.

        I politely let her know, and deleted it, but I can only imagine how she felt!

  114. restingbutchface*

    Oh, random thought for the trainers and coaches out there – this stuff is GOLD for training junior staff. I do a course on difficult conversations and that includes speaking up when you’ve made a mistake. I always tell my worst mistake (15 years ago, it was bad, I didn’t understand something, didn’t ask and someone could have died). Every time I run the course the feedback says how great it was that I was willing to be vulnerable and talk about my mistakes rather than lecture people on how to deal with theirs. So bring this embarrassing/shameful/bad stuff to your training sessions!

    1. Deeply Ashamed Nerd*

      Yes, especially stories about how people corrected them!! Students and new professionals don’t know how to be professional. Thank you for being willing to embarrass yourself for our gain :D

    2. SherSher*

      I was so glad for the day when I learned to own my mistakes. I had prepared a court filing and then promptly filed it.. in the cabinet, instead of with the courts! I found it a few weeks later and immediately ran to my boss/attorney
      and told him what I’d done and offered to run to the courthouse that moment, 15 minutes before it closed. He said, “no hurry, tomorrow is fine.” Even if it has been a big deal, I learned that day that I can’t undo the mistake, just correct it if possible and move on!

    3. CM*

      Absolutely — and not just trainers and coaches, any manager. I remember my first big screwup as a new attorney at a law firm, and how anxious I was about it. It helped so much to hear the partner I was working with relate the story of HIS first big screwup — made me realize that everybody makes mistakes, and it doesn’t mean I’m terrible at my job or going to get fired.

    4. OP*

      What a great point! I hope others are reading this and realizing how helpful this can be. I’m already so relieved I’m not the only one with a cringe-able past.

  115. Deeply Ashamed Nerd*

    I was working a shift coverage job — there always had to be someone in the room. It was ~6 months after I’d graduated from college, and I was on night shift at the time. We all were going to see Star Wars for our office holiday party. So there was an early dinner, then the movie, then I’d go to shift while everyone else went out. I stayed up all day making a last-minute costume and was too excited to sleep. (I was the only one who had a costume. Everyone else had at most a t-shirt).

    I had a blast at the dinner and the movie, but by the time I got to shift, I’d been awake for 24 hours. A few hours into shift, I called one of my coworkers that was still at the bar and asked him to cover for me because I couldn’t stay awake. He didn’t have his laptop or any of this stuff, but he very nicely took my shift. And my boss very nicely told me, at my yearly review, that “stayed up too late making costume” is not a great reason for calling out.

  116. Nita*

    I’d freak out if a client asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer. Start stammering, try to come up with some half-answer, or at best tell them I need to discuss it with my boss. Somehow it took a communications training class for me to realize that you can just calmly say “not sure, but I’ll get back to you,” and call them back later. Duh.

  117. Geneva*

    At my first, and truly toxic, post-college job, I wasn’t afraid to show my manager that I didn’t respect her. My feelings were justified – she was an immature bully – but I lacked the wisdom at the time to remain professional. Eye rolls, and sarcasm were my specialty. Now, I’d NEVER do something that like.

  118. raktajino*

    When I was sixteen, I interviewed for a volunteer position at a museum and sat curled back in my chair, with my knees up against the edge of the table. I couldn’t answer the question “why do you like this topic” beyond “it’s fun and interesting.” At one point, I probably wiped my nose with my knee.

    Not only did I get the job, ~6 years later they hired me for a paid summer position. Being a teenager who still shows up to work on time and is vaguely responsible makes up for a lot of first impression faux pas, I guess.

  119. Aren't we all anon?*

    I actually never thought of it in this context, but I actually got pregnant by a coworker at my first job, after dating 6 months. So that’s embarrassing. It wasn’t embarrassing for me so much because while I got pregnant while working there, I left before I actually knew, but my mother worked there. I have been married to the guy for over 20 yrs now.

    Post-baby, post-college, my mistakes were more garden variety wardrobe missteps, being a know it all, and saying inappropriate things to my friends via company email.

    1. Nita*

      Ohhh that reminds me! I also got pregnant very shortly into a relationship (four months) and it so happened that we couldn’t have an actual wedding until another six months later. My coworkers wanted to get me a cake at a staff meeting (we don’t do baby showers), and the HR lady stopped by to ask me if that’s OK or if they should hold off on celebrating, in case I’d be embarrassed. Ummm, no, I’m old enough to know who I want to spend my life with, but thanks for pointing out I should be embarrassed! I’m sure she meant well, though.

      But yes, my mom was embarrassed. We don’t have coworkers in common, but I’m pretty sure her first thought was “what will the family say?!”

  120. Sarahnova*

    I called out the leadership in a reply-all. Criiiiinge.

    I was sound in what I said (that office was dysfunctional AF) but oh so naive in how I handled it. It went over about as well as you’d expect.

  121. Nopetastic*

    Asking to leave work for a few hours to see the first showing of any Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movie. I always decided to make the request the same day the movies came out instead of planning in advance. My supervisor was incredibly irked, yet somehow she still okayed the requests. Kicker? I was in my 30’s and old enough to know better! It ended up becoming a running joke after I left the job to move to another state. I’d still email her every year a new HP movie came out to ask if I could go.

  122. TotesMaGoats*

    Ugh. The need to “contribute” and I used WAY too many words to do it. Not that the contributions were off-base but there were too many and I just talked too much. I still cringe at some meetings. Now, while I’m at the level where I should be contributing, I do try to watch how much I say. Can I say it in one sentence instead of ten?

  123. Wiser Now*

    In the first six months of my first job out of college, I happened across a spreadsheet in my company’s shared files that listed every staff person’s salary. (We had a really sloppy finance team.) When I saw it, I gasped loudly, and when my coworker turned to me and asked what was wrong, I told him what I found.

    That snowballed into everyone in our company finding out what everyone else made–and it got ugly. One coworker in particular found out he was making much less than his peers, and got angry. Everyone also found out I was grossly underpaid–and started telling me to ask for a raise immediately.

    To my knowledge I was never blamed for it, but I really regret not handling it more discreetly.

    1. Lumen*

      Okay but you’re kind of my hero for this. The secrecy around salary information really only serves the company (so they can underpay people).

  124. Jaybeetee*

    Ooooh, I have a few:

    1) My first job ever, at a fast-food place. One of the first shifts. I was about 16, was also in a slew of extracurricular activities, and was kinda viewing the job in the same light. I just announced that I had to leave early that night because of when my ride was showing up. I was set straight pretty quick about doing that kind of thing. I also was too embarrassed to tell them I’d never swept a floor in my life when they handed me a broom at closing – I did different chores at home – and spent literally an HOUR sweeping the dining area because I’d basically never held a broom in my life. To give context, for other people it took 10-20 minutes max. They were… unimpressed. I did actually keep the job for a year or so though.

    2) One of my first office jobs, I was straight-up let go about three days in (okay, not a place I wanted to be working anyway). One of the big reasons was my attire: like many women have posted already, I was in my early 20s, broke, didn’t really have an office wardrobe and was trying to make do with what was already in my closet. When I showed up a couple days in wearing a *very* short black skirt. They were not impressed. Later on, after going through extended financial difficulties where I was mostly wearing thrift-shop clothing, I had a different variation on this issue, where the shirt I had convinced myself was okay to wear to a job interview wasn’t *inappropriate*, but was rather old/faded/not in great shape.

    3) I was another who would send super.long.emails about things. I kept thinking people needed to know all this backstory and context. This actually lasted through a few jobs, and while nobody directly said anything, it wasn’t until I’d sent out one of these novels, and my supervisor responded with just one short sentence, that I realized I really needed to tighten it up.

    1. SarahJ*

      #3 reminds me of the time one of my team sent me a really long explanation of something. It was part of a presentation. I took my red pen to it and reduced it from 6 sentences to one phrase. It was epic! And he loved me for it… because it taught him to be concise!

    2. Former Retail Manager*

      #1 made me laugh. This was my daughter. She is almost 19 now, but her first job at 17 was in a fast food place and they had her sweep and mop and they had to stay a full hour extra because she was sooooo slow and terrible at it. We tried to get her to do this chore at home for years prior and she was awful then too. The shift leader yelled at her, she came home and cried telling us about it and wanted to quit. We refused to allow her to quit and told her to ask for help. It was a great way for her to grow as a person, but I laugh thinking about what her co-workers must have thought of her.

  125. BatmansRobyn*

    Heh. I’m in an office job after a year of working as a remote associate for a small law firm, and nobody ever really explained the hierarchy (or showed me an org chart). A coworker of mine (who is older enough that his children are older than I am) and I spend a lot of time shooting the shit during the day, and both of us are pretty sassy. Over the summer, he kept sending me home early because I was “working too hard and making him nervous.”

    I found out about two weeks ago that this guy I’ve been gently mocking for the past three months is not only senior to me, but he reports directly to the VP of our group, manages like fifteen people, and is senior to my manager by like three people.

    It’s ended up being fine, but OH MAN am I glad I just went with it and was a good sport when he kept pulling me into tasks that had nothing to do with my actual job.

  126. P*

    While a student for [llama repair], doing an extra rotation in [llama massage], which is highly competitive, a professional llama mechanic gave us students their password so we could do pro level work at their shop. As students, we loved it because we felt like we were doing the real thing. In retrospect, I realize now this is actually fraud, on top of a high security risk. This had been going on for years, but of course came out at the end of our rotation (when the head of the rotation asked why students loved this person’s clinic so much, and someone honestly answered).
    I was offered a last minute interview for a position at this place, which surprised me because I thought we really weren’t a good fit for each other. But because it was so competitive, I felt obligated to go. I rearranged flights and missed a pre-interview dinner that conflicted at a place I liked much more. At the interview, the head quizzed me about “ethics” a lot, and I admit at the time I didn’t really think too hard on the password thing, though now I know that’s what he was getting at. Needless to say, I did not get a spot at the place, and the spot actually went unfilled for a long time after. Now, I think the place was full of bees and they should NOT have offered me that interview when they did not actually want me (I think it was some kind of weird attempted courtesy thing that is actually not a courtesy at all). In retrospect, I should not have gone for that interview. I still don’t know how I could have handled the password thing better, I just didn’t have awareness the time to process how wrong it was (ie, it seemed more like skirting something silly rather than fraud); today I like to think I would have refused, explained why, and whistleblown but it was just a really shitty situation. At the least I should have run and never looked back.

  127. Too Morto To DeAnon*

    When I was just out of college and working as an English teacher in Japan a few years back (a job which involved massive amounts of downtime when I wasn’t actually in class- this wasn’t a school that encouraged the ALTs to do much classroom planning or prepwork) I used to read fanfic on my work PC when I had nothing to do (I also read a lot of regular books/my kindle, which I’m not as embarrassed about, although this job did teach me that I do better at busier jobs with less downtime). Thankfully no one at this school had enough English to figure out what exactly I was reading…

  128. KC Strange*

    Many years ago when I worked at a convenience store, we had gotten in novelty lighters that would shock you when trying to use them. My 18 year old brain thought it was a great idea to tell customers to try these “great new lighters” without telling them about the shock. Justifiably, a customer got extremely upset and told my manager. It’s been over 15 years and my stupidity.

  129. Tactless Newbie*

    Told someone that an idea was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard”. It turned out to be her idea, of course.

    Many many years later in my career, I still think it was dumb, but I would definitely phrase my opinion more tactfully.

    1. CM*

      I said in a meeting with about half a dozen people, “When this idea first came up, Jill called me and told me it was a terrible idea, and it turned out she was right because she raised concerns X, Y, and Z and that’s basically what happened.”

      Everyone freaked out! Jill was in this meeting and she was like, “No! No! I didn’t say terrible! I never said that!” and other people were laughing or gasping. This company has a very particular culture where you would never say something like that. I hadn’t worked for the company for that long and I didn’t realize. I think I was able to salvage it by saying, “Sorry, I was exaggerating! She did NOT say the idea was terrible. She raised concerns about it, and they were very valid concerns.” It took a while for everyone to recover and I thought it was so weird. But I learned to be very restrained in my choice of words at this job, especially when I’m representing what someone else said.

  130. formerly irresponsible*

    Ugh, I have so many.

    Got fired from a restaurant job for missing a 9 a.m. meeting…about accountability.

    Got fired from a different, more toxic restaurant job for writing a letter likening management to dictators and trying to rouse my fellow workers (“the proletariat”) and hanging it next to the posted schedule for all to see. I’m actually not THAT ashamed of this one. That job sucked.

    Didn’t see the problem with using slang and bizarre abbreviations when on the phone with clients at a law firm that specialized tax planning for high net worth individuals.

    There’s way more, I’m sure, but these are my standouts.

  131. Formerly Arlington*

    My boss asked me how I would feel if my coworker/friend was promoted to be my manager. Because I liked her as a person and felt bad that she recently broke up with her boyfriend, I said that would be fine even though I knew she had flaws. Friend became absolute boss from hell, took away the projects I had enjoyed most and blamed me for mistakes she made. I left the company a few months later for a much better role and she ended up getting fired a year later, but that was a rough few months and I should have spoken up.

  132. Alice906*

    My first day on the job at a large bookstore. After closing, the manager assigned me to mop the bathroom. It was that set-up where there’s an apparatus in the bucket for squeezing the water out of the mop. Well, I’d never seen that sort of mop before and had no idea how it worked. I was too embarrassed to ask someone to show me, and also apparently too anxious to just use my brain and figure it out, so instead I just started sloshing water all over the bathroom. When it was obvious there was too much water on the floor, I got down on my hands and knees and started wiping things up with paper towels. That’s when my much older coworker walked in. Gahhhhhhh . . .

    1. CheeryO*

      OMG, I’m having some mop-related repressed memories come up from my first fast food job. I think I accidentally tipped over a bucket full of soapy water more than once. And yeah, no one ever tells you how to use the fancy mop bucket!

    2. Canadian Natasha*

      Oh the mopping! At my one and only (thankfully brief) fast food job they showed me everything in a rush so I wasn’t sure how to find the soap to wash the floor. It didn’t help that was a very self-conscious and timid teenager. There were several cleaning substances in the cleaning closet but the labels on the bottles were not clear about what was used for what so I couldn’t figure it out on my own. I ended up washing the floors without soap because I was too nervous to ask again. And then I lied to the manager when she asked if I didn’t use soap because now it was even more embarrassing to explain (she was not fooled, btw). Then I felt extremely guilty about lying so I went back to her and confessed that I lied and I really didn’t use soap because I didn’t know what soap to use. I may have cried.

  133. Jenn*

    I used to participate in gossip and constant complaints. I even wrote into AAM and had my letter published over this a few years ago. That workplace was so toxic, morale was low, and I worked with a lot of people who had been there 20+ years and were completely bitter. It was also my first professional job, and I didn’t have the experience yet to know how to tell my boss to stop gossiping to me about our coworkers. Anyways, I like to think that I’ve grown up a lot since then.

    I use variations on “that’s just the way [coworker] is and they’re not going to change so you’ll have to learn to live with it!” said in a funny way with a laugh and then I walk away. I’ve also told coworkers that I need a complaint free day because it’s adding to my stress and they seems to understand that. Gossiping and complaints are a symptom of stress for me so I meditate and do a nightly yoga routine, which helps a lot. And when I feel a complaint coming on, I think to myself “who is this for?”, as in, who is going to find value in this? And usually the answer is no one – not me because toxicity hurts my mental state and not my coworkers because it adds to a stressful work environment. So, I let it go and try to get some work done instead.

  134. I was Ariel before the mermaid*

    I was the person who had a crush on a coworker and told everyone about it. I could smack myself looking back. I would find any excuse to put myself in a position to run into him because he worked on a different floor, in a different department. He was clearly not that into me and I was not very good at reading his pretty obvious signals so… that got awkward quick. By the time I left that job I made every attempt to avoid him at all costs.

    In my defense though, a couple of my coworkers were egging me on in a “yall would be such a cute couple” kind of way and I bought it hook, line, and sinker. They weren’t the most mature bunch, despite being in late 30s and early 40s to my early 20s at the time, but still. What can ya do.

  135. league.*

    On a phone interview for a teapot specialist position when I was 27 (in 2006), I was asked to describe how technology was important in our industry. I began with something like, “Well, I graduated from teapot school just three years ago. I’m not sure when you guys did but I’m guessing it was a long time ago?” Basically I implied that the question was stupid and they must all be old as hell.

    …Well, I got the job anyway, somehow. And now I do a lot of interviewing for teapot specialists and managers, and I never ask that question, because it IS dumb….but c’mon, league., way to piss off your interviewers.

  136. heatskitchen*

    I used to pay attention to what coworkers I didn’t like were doing. For example, I once IMed my boss when I saw a coworker watching soccer instead of taking calls in a call center. I was a high performer and felt he wasn’t taking on his share. Well, he was on a break and it was okay. I very much now subscribe to the frame of mind that if it doesn’t directly affect me, I don’t say anything about what anyone is doing at work.

  137. NaN*

    My first job would send out a peer feedback form every 6 months. The first time it came out, I wrote long, obnoxious diatribes about the supposed shortcoming of all of my peers. We had some really inexperienced managers who then forwarded the feedback, verbatim, to the people it was about. Everyone spent weeks speculating about who wrote which comments, while I tried to keep my head down.

  138. Brienne the Blue*

    While working at a large publishing company in my early 20s, I used to regularly go out drinking with my coworkers. Not a couple of beers at Happy Hour, but like, bar-hopping, holding-each-others-hair-back, can’t-remember-everything drinking. At least two of the group had what I now recognize as a pretty serious drinking problem. I was falling-down drunk in front of my boss (and her boss, and HER boss) more than once at office functions (although in fairness, my boss and I were drunk together a fair few times too). We all socialized together constantly and knew pretty much everything about each other’s personal lives.

    Nowadays I can barely bring myself to have one beer at Happy Hour in front of my current coworkers, and they are great people, but I can’t imagine hanging out with them beyond that.

  139. Kisses*

    I just cringe remembering at 20 when I had an E. coli infection..in my vagina. I was recently privy to hanging out with the boss (I had her baby in my daycare class) and thought adults just discussed health issues without being embarrassed. So I went into vivid detail on how the doctor thought I got said infection- I’m sure the words ‘wiping improperly’ were in there. I’m mortified at the thought and it’s been almost 2 decades.

  140. montecristo1985*

    Oh dear me. This is a huge work cringe, in fact its one of my only and biggest cringes in my whole life. I’m cringing now just thinking about it.

    So, I’ve always been friendly with old guys. IDK why, but we also seem to get along well. When I started my first job there was this older guy (probably 50ish) who I was sort of friends with at work (I was 21). He found out that I played the violin and proceeded to bug me about playing for him for like 2 years straight. This particular workplace did birthday celebrations for people in our department, so on his birthday one year I brought my violin to the plant and played something. It didn’t seem weird at the time, and everybody seemed to enjoy it, but whenever I think about it I die a little inside.

    1. Manders*

      Aw, this one doesn’t seem that cringy to me! He wanted to hear you play and you did, during a time that was already supposed to be a celebration.

    2. Amelia*

      You know what, I think that’s actually really sweet, and probably a nice memory for everyone who was there.

    3. river*

      To me, it’s not cringy that you played the violin at work, it’s him that should be cringing about bugging you to do it. That strikes me as borderline creepy behaviour, especially if you are a woman.

      1. montecristo1985*

        I am, and I think that’s why I feel cringy about it now. I was a very young woman, and very sheltered (homeschooled) and when I look back on it I feel like I was acting more like a kid at a family gathering who is showing off their talents, then like a mature business woman in finance.

  141. Rat in the Sugar*

    I’ve got one for the accountants here: at my first job out of college I worked for a woman who ran her own small practice as a CPA. For some reason, I started thinking of “CPA” as though it were her actual title (not sure how) and would refer to her as “my CPA” in front of clients the same way you might say “my VP” or “my Controller”. Not sure how I got started doing it or why no one in the office corrected me, but I’m sure I sounded dumb saying it.

  142. Triumphant Fox*

    I hummed or sang at work – I do it to myself a lot and don’t even realize it, but I kept doing it even after some (obviously too subtle) hints to stop. I just didn’t even realize people commenting on it = problem. I was a really good performer and humming was such a minor offense compared to some other tendencies by coworkers, so I was never actually spoken to…but I really cringe now.

  143. Beatrice*

    I once got some very much-deserved criticism that I was taking too long (1-3 weeks) to resolve invoice issues that should have, at most, taken a couple of days to work out. The actual problem was that I was prioritizing other work that I found more interesting and only tackling the invoices when someone yelled about them.

    My suggestion was to have Accounts Payable print the problem invoices for me on color-coded paper, with a different color for each day of the week, so I could see at a glance when my GIANT PILE of invoices contained too many older ones, so I’d know I needed to tackle them. My boss somehow refrained from slapping me upside the head Gibbs-style, and actually discussed the suggestion with our A/P manager – at the time, I thought she took it to him as an actual possibility and he said no, but now I think they probably had a mutual “this is what she said, omg wtf?!??!!” conversation about it before telling me to consider actually getting my work done as a solution.

    Fourteen years later, I’m much wiser, thankfully. The A/P manager moved on not long after that incident, and I cringe to think that he’s out there with that impression of me. I still work at the same large company with my then-manager and we cross paths occasionally. She was infinitely patient with me in a very clueless first year, and I owe her a lot.

  144. daily_boss*

    During an internship, I once didn’t come and wrote them that I was sick. I actually had a job interview.

    They didn’t believe I was sick and were angry.

    I would organise it differently now.

    As a kind of justification: I was being paid horribly and really wanted that job.

    1. Amylou*

      We had an intern do that. Turned up at 11 like it was the most normal thing ever. We actually fired them the week before for barely doing ANY work and our management still let them “work” out a notice until the end of the month so they’d get a full months intern pay.

      Another also was taking suspiciously long lunches.

      I wish my supervisor would just explicitly say to them: we know you’re leaving, its the end of your contract, it’s ok to take a few hours to go to a job interview. Because it was. And we certainly wouldn’t have penalised their pay.

      Though one of my managers mentioned she did consider docking half a day for the one who turned up after 11, but as intern was on the way out, they’d let it slide.

  145. Funbud*

    So many…Thankfully, I rarely review these things or I’d be cringing constantly.

    When I was a college student, a friend got me a part time job at her father’s small firm. The did consumer research and I now realize they were pioneers in consumer focus groups, particularly with children. They were doing very interesting work in a cool, custom-designed office space. I tortured the poor office manager with my general incompetence, including printing presentations wrong then having to shred multiple copies, wasting expensive binding materials, doing sloppy proofreading, and being sent to deliver documents and not being able to find the addresses (this was long before GPS). Then I had an affair with one of the VPs (he was very hot and charismatic); we’d meet for regular trysts in the store room or the (single occupant) men’s room. Fun at the time but…bleech! I was eventually fired in a very gentle way (“We don’t think your school schedule will allow you to continue with us.”)
    The shame of it was if I had been paying attention I might have LEARNED something and even pursued marketing as a career. It would have been a fantastic opportunity if I had been thinking with the right head! The firm is long gone but the building is still there. I drove by a few years ago and shuddered.

  146. Smai*

    Getting WAYYYYY too personal and close with coworkers to the point it was unprofessional. Now I just keep to myself at work. Much better all around.

  147. Skyscraper Anon*

    I thought it was a good idea to tell my supervisor in my 1:1 all the reasons the company had such high turnover. I pointed out that I had conducted research on my particular position and noted that over the past 4 years everyone seemed to only stay a max of 7 months and it was a noticeable pattern. She seemed genuinely interested but turns out she wasn’t. No changes were made. I was tipped off that she wasn’t taking any of my rants seriously and told other staff she felt everything was fine and high turnover was fine. One of the reasons I pointed out was that the pay wasn’t competitive. She told another management staff that she felt it was fine and she had lucked out with me so she’ll luck out again. Eventually, I resigned and the high turnover continued. I had only been gone 1 year and they had gone through 3 hires. I’m still in the same field and interact with that company. They now have a horrible reputation for high turnover and people in the field always have something negative to say about them. Looking back, I wouldn’t have tried to “be honest about turnover”. I probably was seen as out of touch (even though I was right about the turnover).

  148. cubby*

    hrm… well, i smoked weed on my way to work and on my lunch breaks pretty much every day, once i got past the first few months at the job and felt like i had a pretty good handle on things… and i did that not only at my first job out of college but the one after that, the one after that, the one after that, the one after that, the one after that, and the one after that, 10+ years in all…

    i finally quit smoking weed and started getting medical treatment for my anxiety, but if anyone ever noticed all those years, they never said — and i always got very good reviews, hehe.

    would not recommend it as a practice though! i cringe now thinking how many people probably did realize, when i thought i was being sooooo sneaky.

  149. Beth*

    During a temp job (THANK GOD) in a cube farm, the guy I was dating decided to call me up and have a fight over the phone. The conversation included discussions of our sex life. After I finally got him off the call (I should have just hung up on him, jesus), one of the women in the nearby cubicles gently suggested that I might want to take personal calls in an unused conference room, where it would be “more private”. I died inside.

  150. Shirley Keeldar*

    It was my first job out of college, first office job ever. My mother had sternly told me not to hide out with a book during my lunch break, but to Get To Know my new colleagues. So I took a deep breath and, brown bag in hand, asked a couple of coworkers I had been briefly introduced to if I could join them.

    They were both heads of departments. I was the brand-new receptionist.

    Actually, they were quite nice about it, but the LOOK I got the second after the question was out of my mouth told me that this was Not Done. But what to do—clutch my brown bag and slink off in shame? That would have been so much worse. They probably had work stuff they wanted to talk about that I made impossible.

    I’ve made many more serious mistakes in my work life, but that’s the one that makes me cringe most, twenty-five years later.

    1. Lumen*

      To be honest, I don’t think you made a mistake there. This sounds like a nasty workplace, if a new receptionist Isn’t Allowed to ask if she can join a couple of coworkers for lunch, just because they’re higher ranked. If they wanted to talk privately about work stuff, they could probably afford to go out, rather than giving the stink eye to a new employee they might actually need to rely on.

      You shouldn’t cringe over this. They should cringe over it.

    2. Dr Wizard, PhD*

      That sounds fine and an easy mistake to make!

      In my first week my boss Strongly Recommended I attend someone’s retirement tea party (held in a meeting room). I circulated rather than hide, because that’s what one should do.

      I spotted nobody was talking to a particular woman in black, so I made a quiet joke about whether I could fill the empty spot and said hi. She was very nice and asked about what area of the company I worked in, how long I’d been there, etc. I then asked her what section she worked in.

      ‘Well I’m the CEO, so all of them really!’

      In my defence she had only been recently appointed, and I’d never seen a photo of her. It’s a fun story to tell, and she definitely still remembers me!

  151. KayEss*

    Naively accepted a job after an interview in which the business owner talked about herself for two hours–including a long anecdote about how an employee had betrayed her by leaving for another opportunity (and how satisfied she was to refuse when the employee inquired about working with her again)–and the other employees warned me outright that the owner was “difficult” but they all leaned on each other and managed.

    I figured that, because many of the employees had been there for 10+ years, it would probably be fine. It was extremely not fine.

  152. nnn*

    I thought if I didn’t know something I’d get fired. So whenever I didn’t know something, I’d fake it instead of asking.

  153. Hannah*

    Not exactly work behavior, but I recently came across some cover letters I wrote when I was trying to land my first “real” job.

    Dear God they were bad. Of course, I didn’t have much to work with….having pretty much no relevant experience. But phrases like “I’d like to put my degree to good use!”, vague claims that I was good at vague things, and just generally “PLEASE HIRE ME K THANKS!”

    I’m so lucky I finally got in someplace due to having a personal connection, because otherwise I don’t think anyone would have ever responded to those!

    As kind of a bit of perspective, though, I was really good at my first job–the fact that I had no idea how to write a good cover letter had no bearing on my ability to do the job. I was well-liked and people praised my work all the time. So, I try to remember that when I see a bad cover letter now!

    1. Never*

      My first cover letters were so impersonal, vague, and started with “to whom it may concern” (because that’s what my mother told me to do).

  154. another Hero*

    I can’t believe none of the answers I’ve read have been about the AMOUNT of APOLOGIZING because good lord lol

    1. CynicallySweet7*

      I know right!! I had/still have such a problem with this!!! To make it worse when people tell me to stop, I apologize. Every. Time.

    2. beanie beans*

      I’m sorry, you’re right, I have done way too much apologizing in my career and I didn’t think to add that here. Sorry.

      Sort of related but unrelated, I made a pact with myself last year to accept praise more graciously rather than deny it, minimize it, or respond with some other self-depricating response. It’s amazing how hard it is for me to just say “thank you” and smile!

      1. SarahJ*

        Yes. This. I got a great annual review and I was (as usual) looking for a rock to crawl under but instead I sat up straight and said Thank You. And it didn’t hurt one bit!!

    3. Environmental Compliance*

      Yes! That was my biggest issue by far – being sorry about everything and anything and generally being too ‘soft’ about a lot of things. It’s okay to just ask for something! It’s okay to accept praise with a quick thanks! I cringe looking back at some reviews and the amount of self-deprecation that occurred. Oofta.

  155. Jess*

    I threw a few instances of snark at my boss two levels up because my boss one level up (who reported to him) didn’t get along with him. I liked (still like) the boss one level up a lot personally, we seemed to agree about most things, the boss two levels up did have an approach that could look a bit too much like intrusive micromanaging (in retrospect I think he was just trying to figure out a fairly opaque department – fair enough), and his politics were different from mine when I was dumb enough to decide that meant he was a second-rate person. But all the same I think I was just being snarky with him because I could tell my boss one level up liked it and I enjoyed her approval. I’ve worked with *actual* assholes who I managed to not be snarky with, so, there it is.

    I think my snark was just a drop in the ocean of bullshit this guy had to deal with, and later on, before he left the company, I think I was able to show him my appreciation of what a good manager he actually was. But I still feel like an absolute tit when I remember how I was. Both because it was rude and because it was brown-nosey.

  156. Not a Robot*

    There are so many things I did and said that make me cringe when thinking about them. However; looking back, the one I really regret is being a “mean girl”. At the time I did not think what I was doing was mean but in hindsight it really was. We all know that working at a grocery store is its own beast, and management tends to favor the young and hungry. Plus, there is a weird dysfunctional dynamic that comes across as being one “family” but really is toxic. I worked at one for a few years during my early twenties, and I was really good at the job. So much so that I would throw a hissy fit if something was not done correctly, ignore managers I thought were incompetent, threaten to quit…and all my grandbosses were okay with it. They did not care that I acted like a brat as long as I was able to run my department, control inventory, and make a profit. I am ashamed to say that I was not a leader, but a bona fide brat. I have since left that job and now strive to be kind and compassionate with any employee I work with.

    1. Chaordic One*

      Yeah, me too! When I was young I was part of a group of mean girls and we were mean to our supervisor. She was a terrible supervisor, not mean herself, but just dumber than a rock. She had been made a supervisor based on years of seniority and really should never have been one. When she had started at the company it was her first job out of high school and she’d been there longer than everyone else who wanted to be a supervisor. But even though she was a terrible boss, I really do regret being so mean to her and joining in when the others made fun of her. She made so many stupid mistakes, and it was so easy to laugh at her. I’m not just embarrassed, I’m actually kind of ashamed of how I behaved then.

      I quit and moved and got a better job. Shortly after that the incompetent supervisor also quit, but more because she was tired of dealing with the mean girls. She became a waitress.

  157. CynicallySweet7*

    I was a temp for awhile and the rule was you get paid for what you work. I had a set number of hours and it was generally Ok if I couldn’t do all of them. I was also in school at the time, and one semester when things were really busy I just didn’t show up for work for like 2-3 weeks (don’t remember the actual time frame). No call, no e-mail, just didn’t show up. My first day back in the office my boss was like, ‘I know we’re lenient around here, but you can’t just not show up for weeks at a time’. I was/still am mortified by this! Ended up going in the other direction and probably giving him too much information about when/why I was working until I was brought on as part-time. Even thinking about that conversation makes me turtle up a little!

    1. OP*

      I relate! A law firm I worked part-time at was so lax and dysfunctional, employees wouldn’t show up for weeks, and then when they would, they wouldn’t be fired, they’d just go back to being paid for hours they were in the office. So I ghosted for a few weeks, assuming no one would care. Nope. The boss wasn’t happy. But I still kept my job. That whole place makes me cringe. I mean, there was dried pet poop in the reception area. Ugh.

  158. Lyn by the River*

    I took a year off from college and my aunt got me a job at a place called “the onion factory” one winter before going back to college. It was a processing plant for onions and they had big trucks come in full of onions that were weighed and then would dump their load into the hopper for processing. Part of my job was to do data entry of the weight of the onions that had come in. They had pre-printed slips of paper that said gross/tare/net. Sometimes they only filled in two of the three sections (but it wasn’t consistent which ones were filled in). I didn’t actually know what those words meant, so I wasn’t sure what to do when only two of the three sections were filled in. This was in the late 90s, before the internet, so I couldn’t just google it. And at that time I was mortified of “being a bother” and “asking too many questions” so I decided to just split the difference: sometimes I put the numbers in one column and sometimes in another.
    My boss didn’t even check my work until the end of the season. When she finally asked me what was going on with the data I meekly explained what had happened. This usually verbose woman was speechless. I think she was in awe of my incompetence? An entire season’s worth of data was useless.
    I still cringe mostly because I felt bad about letting down my aunt who got me the job (though she never said anything to me about it).
    On the upside, I learned that it’s important to actually train a person for the job you want them to do and check back with them to make sure it’s all making sense. :)

    1. Ingray*

      My friends and I used to have an inside joke about a fictional onion factory and I’m charmed to know such a thing actually exists.

    5. CM*

      So many of these could have been easily corrected by a boss or coworker just TELLING you what to do differently!

      “My boss didn’t even check my work until the end of the season” –> OK, yes, you should have asked for help, but this is a big part of the problem too. When you have somebody doing a job they haven’t done before, you train them and make sure they’re doing it right, not just leave them alone for months and then criticize them for doing it wrong.

      Anybody in this situation, I absolve you. Go forth and cringe no more.

  159. LadyByTheLake*

    I used to jump to conclusions and escalate issues without having all of the facts. The worst was when I was new to a senior position and I was told that A Certain Department didn’t do X, when X should have been a main function. I escalated it to my boss and senior leaders in the company expressing outrage and casting aspersions on the manager of A Certain Department and how could they not do X and they must be incompetent and we needed to fix it etc. Yeah, it turned out that they did do X — had a whole program for it and that the person who gave me the information either didn’t know that or was purposefully winding me up. My reputation there never really recovered from that.

    1. irene adler*

      Yep- did this myself.
      Realized that the mfg. manager loved playing head games with co-workers. Had me all worked up that upper management was not doing their job. This was pertaining to some specific issue I’ve long forgotten.

      So I would draft some sort of “no one is above another” email and send to the bosses. Fortunately, they new the situation and just ignored me.

      And learned to stay far away from the mfg. manager. He’s a liar.

  160. Gregor*

    I think the topic about catered food at work and people who take stuff but shouldn’t is a popular one on here. I cringe at myself because I am guilty of it. I was temping at a company where I tended to eat lunch on a different floor than where I sat because it had a patio and more often than not quieter. It happened that meetings occurred a lot on that floor and the catered items would be spread out outside the conference rooms (which were near the break/lunch area). One time this employee (who I didn’t know) spotted me partaking in the catered items and approached me and sort of chit chatted with me (which I later realized they did it to learn my name so they could find who my manager was). Suffice to say within the next week I was called into a manager’s office (not my personal manager, because they were out on a work trip, but another department manager) and scolded about it, extremely embarrassing for me. I was so mortified that I resigned from that job after that talk, but when my boss came back from their work trip (which was during the notice period I gave after resigning) promptly contacted the temp agency that I didn’t need to come into work the next day.

    1. Asenath*

      One of my “other related duties” is to stand guard on any catered food to avoid exactly this situation! We often set up events in semi-public areas, and a lot of the passers-by can’t resist a little snack.

      On the opposite end of things, I once had a hotel employee point out to me politely that the food was for those attending the conference, and I pointed out that I was attending (I was dressed rather informally, and didn’t have my name tag on). I think she was a bit embarrassed, but I wasn’t offended, having been on the guard-the-food duty myself many times.

  161. Etanabird12*

    I was asked to sit at the receptionist desk one day and was pissed because I had absolutely nothing to do all day and the phone rarely rang. So I decided to do my nails. Polish and everything. My boss gave me the stink eye but I still didn’t get it until years later.

    1. Jess*

      Ohhhh this reminds me of one! I’m into nail art, and a few years ago one of my co-workers who admired it would occasionally get me to do her nails for a special event – a family birthday, kid’s graduation, thing like that. I’d bring in my boxes of polish and tools, and usually we’d stay a little late to get them done after work.

      One day, for some reason the only time we had to do it was lunch time. I suppose my thinking was that I didn’t want to stink up the (small!) lunch/kitchen room with nail polish, and my desk had a nice clear area and was easy to sit around so we did it there. At my desk. Which was reception.

      I was MORTIFIED when our boss gently pointed out that it really wasn’t a good look. Thankfully it was a fairly quiet reception in terms of people coming in (much, MUCH busier phones, omg), but yeah. Cringe!

  162. Sooooo very anonymous*

    Oh, where to begin.

    – Doing shots in my boss’s office during working hours.
    – Drunkenly making out with a coworker after the holiday party.
    – Telling a friend about this makeout sesh, then bringing them to the holiday party the next year, where they proceeded to get drunk and loudly joke about it. To my coworkers.
    – Letting a not-sober coworker drive me home from a 4-hour ‘happy hour’ the company had paid for.
    – (Different time) Crying in the car when my (not-sober) coworkers who were my ride home from an out-of-town meeting decided to detour to a strip club.
    – Being so stressed and unhappy and “eff it” at work that I started keeping shooters in my desk to get through the day.

    This was all at one job. The company-sponsored 4+ hour drinking binges with coworkers started soon after I got the job; drinking with my boss and keeping booze in my desk was near the end of my time there.

    Anyway, this is just your periodic reminder to be very, very careful with workplaces that have a boozy ‘culture’. All of the above is stuff I’d never, ever have seen myself doing before I worked in a place where it was “normal” (even necessary, to ‘fit in’). There is no faster path to making memories that make you cringe later in life. Or, even worse: developing dependency on alcohol. Also, you know, a few times I could have died because these people were normalizing driving drunk.

      1. Sooooo very anonymous*

        Maybe save the shaming comments for a thread that isn’t all about behavior we’re already ashamed of.

    2. OP*

      This. Very much this. One of my first career jobs was at a place where drinking was a focus. So, so much cringing ensues.

  163. ZuZu*

    I worked as a file clerk at a law firm one summer, and it was mind numbingly boring. I gave notice, and then on my last day I left for lunch and…never went back. I don’t know if anyone even noticed, but I was too embarrassed to pick up my last paycheck and they never mailed it to me (it was for something like $30 probably).

    My first real job out of college I was late almost every day with one ridiculous excuse after the other. Fortunately the CEO was actually really great and helped me get my act together. I was almost fired in my first few months, but ended up working there for more than five years and was promoted multiple times. I’m also now compulsive about being on-time to things, so that was definitely a good life lesson overall!

    At the same company, I got really, really, drunk at a holiday party. Throwing up in the bathroom in front of the CEOs wife while crying kind of situation. Next year they eliminated the open bar, and I now have a two drink maximum at all work social events.

  164. TR*

    My power trippy supervisor “wrote me up” for something he thought I did wrong. He wrote this out on some worn piece of paper and made me sign it. I’m sure it wasn’t official and I really wish I had stood up for myself instead. (this was at one of those toxic vet hospitals).

    1. SignalLost*

      Same, except mine was an actual write up. He asked me to clock in early and I said no because saying “I’m putting on my pants” seemed inappropriate. (We used the minute break room to change because idk, restaurant.) I’m still mad about it; it was a dick move that he did because he was worried that people didn’t respect him because he was seventeen and a supervisor. No, dude, people don’t respect you because you’re a power-tripping jerk.

  165. CDM*

    First job out of college (I had interned there during college) I worked adjacent to a team that had one member who clearly worked at a much lower level than the rest.

    The daily workload was somewhat variable, and the daily tasks that arrived were divided equally so each team member got, on average, 4-7 new tasks a day. Then the staff had 2 business days to make contacts and schedule things necessary to complete the task, a lower volume of follow-up, and closed out completely in a week or two.

    One team member could only handle three new tasks per day consistently, and the team lead would then reassign unstarted tasks on day 2 to other team members, meaning they had to scramble to do the work same day, while handling their own assigned task load.

    Then we had a big training session for multiple teams. The ‘trainer’ had us go around the table and read the booklet out loud. It quickly became clear that this employee read at a low level, (third grade, roughly) and that was probably why she was completing work at half the speed of her peers.

    I was approached by one of that team to write a letter outlining the problems and concerns. (you have a degree, you can write better than we can!) I wrote the letter. Big mistake. As soon as the team realized their meeting with TPTB wasn’t going where they wanted it to, they threw me under the bus, claiming it was all my idea and I was the ringleader.

    I got called in, told the story from my POV – I wrote what I was asked to write. None of this impacted my job or my workload, I held no opinion on what should be done, but it was clear to anyone in the department how that team was being impacted adversely by the situation.

    As far as I knew, nothing was done about anything. Nobody got in trouble more than being spoken to, nothing was done about distributing the team workload more equitably, and nothing was done about supporting the employee towards improving her job performance. Everybody just learned that they’d better shut up about it. A lot of cringe, and only part of it is mine.

  166. Smarty Boots*

    Teaching an undergrad class when I was in grad school. I did not yet know how to manage class time and I ALWAYS ran over at least five minutes, sometimes more. Another grad student (fortunately, a different dept) had a class right after mine. He finally had had enough and came in with all his students and loudly said, I need to start on time. I looked right at him and loudly said, You don’t have to be such an a*hole about it.

    Yeah. My diss director heard about that one. We had a nice long talk. Because it was obvious who the real a*hole was (blushes).

  167. switched to anon*

    About 9 months ago, I told the director of our Customer Care department (at least 3 levels above me, but in a different division and not above me in the org chart) that I wasn’t going to help him with something he asked me to do for him, because it would be very expensive and difficult and it was a terrible business decision. I literally used the words “terrible business decision” – in my defense, we were in a crisis and everyone was exhausted and filters were failing all over the place, but I still cringe every time I think about those words coming out of my mouth. He very patiently and kindly explained to me that I didn’t have all the information to decide whether it was a good business decision or not, and filled me in on why it was a good one this time, and I was required to do it. And I did it and did it well.

    Three months later, I applied for and got a job working in Customer Care, 2 levels under him. It was a great opportunity, and my mentor knew him well and encouraged me to apply and promised my previous outburst wouldn’t be an issue (it wasn’t).

    Just yesterday, I was in a meeting with someone in Operations, in a similar role to my old one, who asserted that certain decisions should be taken out of Customer Care’s hands, because we rarely choose the lowest cost options and continually made terrible business decisions. LOL! So I took a deep breath, and patiently explained almost exactly the same thing to him, that my now-director explained to me nine months ago. For this guy, the patient explanation didn’t really sink in, and I had to give him a more sharply-worded version twice before he dropped it. I guess that’s my penance…now I wind up preaching the same message over and over again that I struggled to learn at the beginning of the year.

    1. SarahJ*

      I am picturing your hell… where you have to explain the same thing over and over. It has sort of a Pogo theme to it in my brain, for some reason! ;-)

  168. AnotherSarah*

    Ufff…I had a lot of health problems in my first couple of jobs, and now (after reading a bunch of AAM), I realize that I could have been straightforward about taking time to go to mid-day docs appointments, etc. The job’s responsibilities also dwindled, and I should have addressed that as well. Instead, I kind of snuck around, taking long lunches both because I lacked enough work and I had MD appointments. My boss, I think, did not think I was a very responsible employee. It wasn’t horrible behavior, but I do feel badly because I could have solved so many problems by just being upfront about what I needed.

  169. And I'm a feminist! Sigh.*

    At lunch with a bunch of childless colleagues, we were talking about how our school system closes at the merest hint of snow, and how people in other departments end up missing a lot of work as they scramble for daycare. I went on and on about how school isn’t daycare and if you’re a parent you should get your act together and figure this out! In fact, I argued, such people should not earn an “Outstanding” on their evaluations because they were screwing over those of us who didn’t have kids and stayed at work.

    Bad enough but…

    Readers, one of the colleagues there was pregnant (not yet announced.)

    1. Former Retail Manager*

      Cringey that you said it, but I can assure you you’re not alone in feeling that way. I think the situation can escalate or become unbearable when you have a large number of people with school aged children. It can indeed be frustrating for those that don’t have school aged/any children. My child is grown and I have to admit that I am sometimes annoyed at people’s need to “adjust” their schedules for their children. I have to remind myself to knock that kind of thinking off and to be understanding, but I can’t say honestly that it doesn’t pop up from time to time.

  170. planetmort*

    Several years ago I was promoted from technical work into management. Literally 2 days in I got an email from someone asking about a staffing item. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the request, so I called the woman who had previously held my job – she was tasked with mentoring and training me, so this was totally a legit thing to do.

    Apparently she had some sort of bad history with this person, who was quite challenging to work with in particularly annoying ways, so she sent me back a response saying “email him the following: … “, where the following was a scathing read-the-riot-act kind of response. So I did. This guy didn’t know me from Adam, but when he got this email basically telling him to go piss up a rope from a newbie manager, he was understandably upset, and went to my boss and grandboss about it. They were not amused and nearly yanked my brand new promotion. I cringe over this because I thought her response was way over the top and inappropriate, but I copied it and sent it anyway, because hey, she was the expert, right? I should have trusted my own judgement, or at the very least run it by my boss first.

    My other *big* workplace mistake has been being friends (as opposed to simply friendly) with my bosses. That was a mistake I learned the very hard way was a bad one to make. It nearly got me fired several years ago, and I lost a friendship over it to boot. Basically, I was not performing up to snuff at work, but my then boss, being a friend, didn’t have the gumption to tell me, or to even write up my yearly evals appropriately (they were always good), so I went merrily on my way, not doing things I should I have been doing. Eventually I ran out of workplace grace, and my then-friend and boss tried to throw me under the bus and simply fire me. This was a 100% total and complete shock on my part. I will never ever forget that day at work – imagine you’ve been doing a job for several years, have always heard verbally you’re fine and your yearly evals are good and then one day they’re like, hey, actually you are crap and we’d like to let you go, effective at the end of this week. I was saved by the fact that my evals were all good, and it came out pretty quickly with HR and higher management that my boss had never actually told me that people were not pleased with my work or that I was not performing tasks I was expected to do (she insisted I should have just known, but clearly I did not just know, and as my boss her job was to tell me even if she thought I should know). In the end, we both were demoted (me for apparently sucking at a technical task, and her for sucking at management), but not let go, and I haven’t spoken to her to her in the three or so years since it happened. I will never, ever, again be friends with someone I report to, or who reports to me. I expect had we not been friends she would have given me that negative feedback when she should have, thus avoiding a lot of drama. And even if things had gone south, I wouldn’t have had the stress of feeling screwed by work, *and* by someone I thought was a good friend all at the same time.

    1. Beatrice*

      That sounds awful! I’m sorry you went through that! I’m glad your workplace had checks and balances in place so your friend/boss couldn’t simply fire you and sweep it under the rug. Situations like yours are what I think of when someone here comments that a manager should have unilateral authority to fire the people who work for them…ideally, it’s just a little bit more complicated than that.

  171. Blaine*

    In my early twenties I woke up so hungover that I bought secret Taco Bell, told everyone I was going to be on a conference call, locked myself into my office and intermittently napped and ate while laying on the floor. My god the shame….and stupidity.

    1. Anon nonprofit worker*

      This made me chuckle. In my early twenties I remember going to work really hungover on a Saturday. Out of bitterness at having to work on a Saturday I decided to go out on a Friday to “show them” but it was really just agony for me that day and I never did it again. I wish I had thought of a fake conference call that day!

  172. anonforthis*

    This still makes me cringe to this day. Back when I was young and hourly, the system my company used to clock in and out was often malfunctioning and we (myself and other employees) would often clock each other in and out. Well, one girl would IM me and ask her to clock out because it wasn’t working. She eventually got fired for timecard fraud. She was seen leaving early on multiple occasions and would IM several of us to clock her out (we had no idea- we didn’t sit near her). She got fired, I got a warning. Where I thought I was being helpful, I was essentially helping her to steal company time. Still ashamed over that one and learned a life lesson the hard way.

  173. Anon From Here*

    I briefly adopted a “BOFH” attitude when I was helping a magazine establish an internet presence in the early days of the Web. So rude. The client had straightforward questions about technology that was new to them, and I was an insufferable know-it-all.

  174. Bibliovore*

    On my first public library position, the lowest of the lowly, the dept manager was a hoarder. The workroom was a warren of piles and no one had a desk. When the manager was on vacation leave and the assistant manager was on medical leave, I took it upon myself to box up all her crap, old magazines, craft supplies etc, label with her name, contents, and the date. I stacked them forming a wall at the end of room. I moved the hoarded books that were on over ten book carts to the cataloguing dept. The custodians organized us some desks from the sub basement. There were no consequences except a seriously raised voice talking to. I don’t think she was unhappy that shortly thereafter I got another job.

    1. Theory of Eeveelution*

      You did the right thing! I also had a boss that was like this, and this was at a museum, so we had crap from exhibitions that had happened 20+ years ago and that we would never, EVER use again. We hardly had any work space because of all the garbage. I and the rest of my team (including HIS boss) waited until he was on a two-week vacation and threw EVERYTHING away. It was cathartic. I got a new job a couple months later.

  175. JoBloom*

    OK not me but I remember in an earlier job we got a new coworker who, it seems, had never worked in an office and apparently never saw one on TV. Her clothes were club (not work) appropriate, you’d often round the corner to see her bare feet up on her desk with her headphones on singing along to *explicit* songs, and my PERSONAL favorite was when we had a company-wide meeting about our new health insurance and she asked, in front of the whole company (men, women, c-suite), if Birth Control is covered, more specifically, “the mirena IUD”. It doesn’t sound that bad as i’m writing it but everyone in the meeting was cringeing.

  176. DataQueen*

    Oh god. I was heading into a meeting with a senior exec, and my boss was trying to give me advice on how to handle him. And I said, “Don’t worry, gay men love me!” I didn’t understand why that wasn’t appropriate for years.

    I’m trying to hide under my desk just remembering it.

  177. Greg NY*

    My biggest workplace-related blunder was mixing up two job applications I submitted. It was embarrassing to refer to one company and position with the data points from the other one. It took place during a phone interview. Ultimately, despite the pretty big screw up, they laughed, we got back on track, and I was asked to come in for an in-person interview. I didn’t get the job because other candidates had more experience than I did, but there are some interviewers who would write off someone who made that kind of mistake.

  178. roisin54*

    I got into a fight with a co-worker. Not a physical fight but a full-on yelling, screaming, slamming-doors, storming-off, bad-language fight. Part of which took place in full view of several co-workers and the public. Somehow neither of us got in trouble for it, which was a miracle. I think this was partially because said co-worker was known to drive people to exasperation, including my boss who’d had a similar experience with her years before. Even so, I wish I’d handled it better.

  179. Ms. Meow*

    I used to have an awful temper. I was at my first entry level job out of college for about 3 years. In that time I had about 5 or 6 meltdowns where I would yell and curse at a coworker, and one time my supervisor! I was super lucky to have a wonderfully patient and understanding supervisor. She pulled me aside and firmly shut that down, but it had a lasting impact on my relationships with those coworkers. I burned a few bridges because of my behavior.

    In the time since then I have gone to therapy and worked on my anger issues. I am much better than I was and I no longer scream at coworkers (though sometimes I’ll go into an open conference room or the bathroom and have a good cry).

  180. Elizabeth Jennings*

    Relatively early on in my second professional journalism job, my editor, who was also my boss, rewrote an article of mine pretty thoroughly. When I went through the edits, I added his byline to it. I was typically a clean writer and wasn’t used to that extensive of an overhaul, and I genuinely meant well by it — they were mostly his words and knowledge, not mine, he should get credit!

    He was fairly nice about it, but now I’m an editor, and if a writer of mine ever did that to me I’d absolutely take it as a passive-aggressive complaint about how thoroughly they were rewritten. I am absolutely horrified by it in retrospect.

  181. Sparkles*

    In my very first job (I was 16) my co-worker and I thought we were funny by taping lettuce on the ceiling in the kitchen in the back, we would spank the dishwasher with a wooden spoon as we walked by (he was also 16 and was in school with us) and then to top it off, one of the older servers (who was 21) had 2 kids with different dads and got pregnant with #3 and I may or may not have made a snide remark about that to another co-worker. I still cringe at how awful of a human I was.

    1. SarahJ*

      Why? Why would you tape lettuce to the ceiling? I am asking seriously because I can’t come up with anything!

      1. Canadian Natasha*

        I’m wondering *how*? Wouldn’t lettuce be one of those things that tape doesn’t stick to very well?

  182. so so SO anon for this*

    I am not proud of this. It still haunts me to this day, but I learned the hard way that teaching high school was not for me.

    2017 was an awful year for so many reasons that I dare not reveal, but I will say I was at the worst point of my depression (untreated) and my insomnia was kicking hard. I was student teaching for high school English and I was already having issues waking up early enough to arrive on time for a 20-minute commute.

    I fell asleep in front of the students for first period. I lost respect from them instantly. I was on thin ice with my mentor teacher as well as having my reputation with administration in tatters.

    I was able to make it through the semester and passed the course, but I knew then that this was not a right fit for me, even if I hadn’t messed up so badly.

    I think doubts were already forming at the back of my mind that I wasn’t suitable for this profession but I had this weird idea that admitting that would make me be a worthless person (this is where my mental health issues had really overtaken my logic and rationale.) If I could go back a few years ago, I would tell myself that people take paths they least expect in life and that isn’t always a bad thing. I should’ve changed my major when I had the chance but the good news is that I am working where I want to now.

  183. Probably Nerdy*

    I called a guy a jerk to his face. Granted, it was after several days of him being a complete sexist @$$hole to me and I was sleep deprived. But still, cringe.

    Both him and my boss brushed it off as “women are just hormonal”. I filed a complaint but my actions definitely weakened my case. I quit after much more sexist shenanigans from that place.

  184. MillersSpring*

    Did waaaay too much flirting at the office and dating of coworkers in my 20s and 30s. Some really inappropriate messaging. Extremely cringe-worthy flings and relationships.

  185. Urdnot Bakara*

    My senior year of college, I interned for a very small nonprofit (5 or 6 employees) and they brought me back as a contract employee a couple of months after I graduated to fill in for the person who used to supervise me but who had left in the interim. There was originally a set date when my employment would end, but the Executive Director had been casually chatting with me about a project that would necessitate me staying longer, so I’d put my job search on hold. They later confirmed my end date 3 weeks out, so I panicked because I didn’t have anything else lined up. Also, a big part of my job as a contract employee (but not as an intern) involved managing the organization’s social media accounts. The ED asked me to create a weekly calendar detailing all the social media posts and when they were scheduled to go out. After 2 months of this, with zero negative feedback from the ED, she basically told me I had been doing it wrong and needed to rearrange everything.

    So all of this backstory leading up to the thing I did that I’m not proud of: one day before I left, I drafted a really long email about how frustrated I was with all of this–what was the point of making a weekly calendar if the ED wasn’t even looking at it? Why hadn’t I received this feedback earlier? Why had they basically promised me I could stay on longer than originally agreed if they didn’t mean it, putting me in this predicament? And then I sent it to the ED.

    In hindsight, I was going through a lot of really, really stressful stuff in my personal life, and I think I sent that email while teetering on the edge of a breakdown. And I also want to qualify that I only felt comfortable sending the email because we were such a small, close-knit team. And the ED, bless her, took me to lunch the next day and basically was like, “What’s going on with you? Do you want to talk about it?” and I burst into tears. It was so embarrassing. Somehow, the ED still gave me a job reference.

    Anyway, don’t send ranting emails to the director of your whole organization, kids. Write it out, sure, but then take a deep breath and delete it.

  186. voluptuousfire*

    Sending a strongly worded email to a company I was due to interview with that canceled my interview without notifying me. I had applied for the role and they contacted me directly and set up an interview. They also ended up doing some sourcing on Monster and came across my resume (same resume, different email) and reached out to me. The thing in between was that they decided to cancel my interview when I responded to the email and spelled the interviewer’s name incorrectly (something like Kara instead of Cara) and that got them upset. Understandable, but kinda petty. I didn’t proofread the email before I read it, which I accept fault for.

    I only found out they canceled the interview when I responded to the invite from Monster saying I had been scheduled for an interview and hadn’t gotten a confirmation. I then got a really salty response saying based on my previous email, I wasn’t detail oriented and that was a large part of the role and they trashed my resume (their words) and canceled my interview. I ended up responding with a very strongly worded email which pretty much went into the void. I was shocked that I was treated so crappily and felt I needed to defend myself.

    At the time there wasn’t Glassdoor. If this happened now, I would have just deleted their email, added them to my mental blacklist of places never to apply to and put my experience up on Glassdoor.

  187. JB*

    For a long time I was socially inept and had extremely poor self-esteem. I never wanted to say ‘no,’ to anything, I never wanted to ask questions, and I never wanted to look stupid. This was bad because in my first job I often had no clue what I was doing. If my boss told me to go use X piece of equipment, I would sit there for twenty minutes trying to puzzle out how it operated and what I was supposed to do. I was so shy that if someone gave me an instruction I would just say “Yes,” and ‘Okay,” in an attempt to end the conversation as fast as possible… Even if I didn’t actually hear or understand what they said. It led to many awkward moments when I would screw something up because I misunderstood the instructions and didn’t want to admit it. It took me a long time to understand that I’m allowed to say things like, “I don’t know anything about this,” or “My understanding is that I’m supposed to X….” and – amazingly – people wouldn’t get mad at me for admitting I didn’t understand.

  188. Anonymously*

    Wow. I’m currently working at a toxic, dysfunctional workplace. Most of the behaviors listed are a weekly, if not daily occurrence–and the majority of our workers are at least 30, sometimes well above that age!

    1. media monkey*

      hear hear. I can only imagine what people would think of the places i have worked where day and evening drinking (to blackout drunk in the case of evening, certainly too drunk to work in the afternoon), strippers, sex between colleagues (sometimes in the office), general rudeness and tantrums in the office are relatively common! it’s the industry (and also i am going to guess the location, since we are considerably less formal at work in the UK than in the US i think!).

  189. The Cleaner*

    My first job after college was a very straightforward clerical job, 8 am – 5 pm. Many of friends had jobs that were structured differently, with later hours or less predictable hours.

    SO, at 5:01 pm when I was “off the clock,” I would hang around at work, because I was waiting for my friends to get out of their jobs, and it seemed pointless to go home just to go out again later. AT MY DESK, which was IN THE C-SUITE, I would put my make-up on, do my hair, call all my friends (loudly) to ask important questions like “do you know if the hottie bartender is working tonight?” or “I was going to wear my black boots but do you know if Tami is wearing her black books because in that case I would wear my silver pumps but tell me if you think they look slutty because if so then I could wear my red sandals unless it rains in which case maybe my Mary Janes etc etc etc etc.” I would bring projects to keep myself occupied, like plugging in a hot glue gun to work on a Halloween costume, or (this is real) frosting cupcakes that I was bringing to a party later on that night. Even though I was finished at 5 pm, there were still plenty of people still working, or wrapping up for the day, including senior leadership. I am dying thinking about it now.

    Finally, the office manager started hinting that if I wasn’t actually working, I didn’t need to be at work. And I was so clueless, I earnestly wanted to know if there was a policy against it, because sometimes I saw Reginald reading a magazine at his desk while he was waiting for his ride to pick him up, or a lady who was taking an evening class one night a week would sometimes do her reading in the break room between work and class. It was a friendly, casual office and all sorts of people sometimes spent some non-work time at their desks doing some QUIET and LOW-KEY personal business, but I could not see how there was any difference between someone occasionally reading a magazine while waiting for carpool, and me turning my desk into my Own Personal Rec Room several times a week. What was I thinking?

    2. The Tin Man*

      I hope Alison puts this in the wrapup because this is so good/bad. I have read almost all of these and this one is near the top in the amount of vicarious cringing it generated. How did things go with that job?

      1. The Cleaner*

        I’ve been there my entire career, and am currently in senior management, so I guess I improved somewhat. ;)

  190. Completely anon for this*

    Oh Lord. The things I’ve done that make me cringe.

    1. I was MUCH younger…. took a temp job in the records dept. of a hospital. The job was culling outdated x-ray files, boxing them up and preparing them to go to permanent storage. I was in the basement file room, alone, the entire day. Day after day. Apparently, anyone who did this job before me worked slowly or paced themselves because the actual work was very simple. I could cull an entire letter of the alphabet in just a couple of hours. My assignment was supposed to last 12 weeks. I ended up averaging how much time I needed to spend on actual work per day. I would work that time, then…. sleep. Or read a book. After a while I just would go home. Nobody ever came down there or came looking for me, and I figured if they did I could swear I was in the bathroom or gone on break. Wow. I look back on that and I’m amazed that (1) I was never caught and (2) I was paid very well the entire 12 weeks. Just… Wow.

    2. Working for a friend – Part 1. I got laid off and a friend who owned a very successful business needed an admin, so I said yes. I was a horrible employee. I arrived late nearly every day, I refused to do part of the tasks he assigned to me (I felt they were beneath me), I requested way too much time off (he always said yes) and I spent the majority of my day chatting online with friends or playing on social media. Wow. The amazing thing is…. to this day he is still my friend, one of my BEST friends actually.

    3. Working for a friend – Part 2. I left my job with the friend in Part 1 to take an office manager job for friend Part 2. At first it was great, after about 6 months it became an ever increasing nightmare and textbook example of a toxic workplace. My friend was the business owner and totally bought into the idea that she was the dictator of this little kingdom she’d built. Rules & policies were at her whim and changed on a daily basis. She openly liked and approved of certain employees, disliked others and would make the day so difficult for them, they would finally quit. She would do this because she was too chicken to fire anyone. She would throw things and yell at people. It took a while before I became the target of any of this behavior, but eventually I did. Also, I saw a side of her and things she was doing that – at least, to me – were borderline unethical in her business practice and just not who I had always thought she was. I stayed WAY too long, but ended up finally leaving for a much better new position. She smiled and said all the right things when I left, but now she doesn’t speak to me anymore. That’s because anyone who ever voluntarily left her employee was considered a disloyal traitor, after everything she’d done for them. *insert eye roll here*

    1. Elizabeth W.*

      #1 reminds me of when I worked in a testing lab. I spent a couple of weeks in the basement organizing years and years of environmental testing records. Like, 32 three-drawer file cabinets full.

      There were no cringe moments; I actually worked really hard. My boss let me have my boombox down there (this was late 1990s; no smartphones yet). I had so much fun and when I was done, everything was ship-shape. God, I miss that job so much.

  191. Anon for today*

    In my first professional job after college, as a young, single woman, I frequently went out to lunch with my older, married, male supervisor. I naively thought this was ok since we mainly talked work stuff. I learned the hard way that this was a good way to be the subject of gossip and resentment from my coworkers.

    1. Theory of Eeveelution*

      You did absolutely nothing wrong. You thought it was ok, because it was ok. This is the fault of your coworkers, not you.

      1. Environmental Compliance*

        +1000

        It’s good to know that it *is* a thing that people may think, because there’s gossipers in nearly any workplace. But that doesn’t mean that the act itself is inappropriate.

        At a previous job, I’d go out to lunch with an oppositely gendered coworker on a regular basis. We were also good friends and we were teaching the same class, so we’d do some joint lesson planning. I had a female coworker ask me incredulously if my husband would let me do this if he knew it was occurring. Uh, yeah? Thanks for the concern?

    3. SS Express*

      Having lunch with your supervisor is a very very normal thing to do, regardless of their age, gender or marital status. If it wasn’t the norm in your office or if your supervisor was favouring you over others in the team, that’s on him.

  192. TotesMaGoats*

    I forgot this gem from high school.
    First job was working at a Home Depot type place but smaller and regional. Great pay for my first job. Even got a payout when they went bankrupt and closed. Pretty cool. One day, I was put out in the lumber yard which was drive through. I had ZERO instruction on what to do with the declaration forms. Basically, if person had something in their truck bed that we sold (random bag of mulch, eg) then I wrote it on the form. Cuts down on stealing, I guess. Well, I thought I’d be helpful to the super cute guy at the far end working the register by writing down on the declaration form what the guy was buying. I thought quantity and sku number would be super helpful. It was not and he reemed me out for it. So, the next time someone came through I wrote down just the declaration stuff and a snippy “Happy now” at the end. So, I get yelled at by the boss and cry. I’m like “I had no instruction and thought I was being helpful and he yelled at me.” Oh 16 yr old Totes, bless your soul. Thankfully moved past that one incident and really enjoyed my time working there. My register was always right and I got to do just about whatever I wanted.

  193. Crystal Smith*

    Oh boy, so much stuff!

    I accidentally sent an IM complaining about a coworker TO that coworker, and then somehow managed to play it off like I was joking with him (my face gets hot just thinking about it to this day)

    I used to eat lunch with the same group of youngish employees, and we would play video games in an unused office the whole time until someone complained about the noise (why did we think that was a good idea??)

    When I first started supervising part-time workers, I was 20 and convinced I had to be Very Strict in order to be taken seriously, since some of them were older than me, and as a result I was completely rigid about stuff that, in retrospect, didn’t matter at all.

    1. Crystal Smith*

      Oh, and also, when I had graduated college I got a retail job where we required to pitch the store credit card to customers in every single interaction we had with them. I’d read the application and it was actually pretty terrible – high interest rate, etc. etc. So I just didn’t do it. Ever. Eventually the managers were coaching me on it once a week, and every time I turned around from a conversation with a customer there was a manager standing weirdly close to see if I’d mention the darn thing. I was on my way out anyway (found a full time job in my field) but still, by the time I quit, I had never ever mentioned the store card. Not once!

  194. Kat*

    And my 2nd ever job, I was the coworker who was always talking about “How we did it at my last job.” I genuinely meant it as a conversation starter or an interesting observation! It took me a few months (eek!) to figure out that I was the only one who thought of it that way.

  195. Jennifer*

    Another time I worked half the day before realizing my shirt was inside out. Those were the days of staying up until 5 am and going to work two hours later.

  196. Kelly AF*

    My younger brother died late on a Friday night, a few months after I had started a new job, early in my career. I called the head of the whole department (200+ people) — my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss — at home on a Saturday to tell her I wouldn’t be in on Monday.

    To be fair, she was incredibly kind and understanding about it, and let everyone who needed to know know, and gave me the whole week off. In retrospect, I still can’t believe she was the one I decided to call. I had literally never interacted with her before!

    1. Elizabeth W.*

      You were probably not thinking straight, and she understood that. What a great boss. I’m sorry about your brother.

    2. The Tin Man*

      We can do things while grieving that we would consider odd afterwards. It is really nice that that she was kind about it and gave you time!

    3. No imagination*

      Shock and grief can make you do odd things. Early in my career I received word a close relative had had a soon to be fatal stroke. For some reason, instead of calling, I decided the correct course of action was to stop in at my job in person, on the way out of state to have a last visit with the relative in the hospital. I ended up sobbing out the situation to big boss, one step below the owner, who I had not spoken to since she interviewed me before I was hired.

      In addition to being very kind to me in the moment, she made sure I was paid for the shifts I missed, even though I was part time so not officially entitled to bereavement leave. It’s been more than 20 years and I’m still moved by that act of kindness every time I think of it.

  197. Anne Elliot*

    As a young adult in the first years of university, I worked as a car rental agent at a small regional airport. One slow night one of the wash guys found a gay porno magazine left in a car. The other counter reps and I (there were four companies) pulled out the most explicit pictures and captioned them (“What do you have that is full-sized” “I’d like to try a red Probe”) and left one picture each taped up in a cabinet for each of our managers. This was hilarious at one in the morning; our managers found it less so in the cold light of day. My manager was not that upset (she was only a couple years older than me) but one of the other female managers, who was very devout, was extremely upset and offended. At the same time I thought she needed to learn to take a joke. Now I think we were all very lucky we didn’t get fired.

  198. Damn it, Hardison!*

    I once asked my manager if I could take the afternoon off because I was feeling hateful. Yes, those are the exact words I used.

    In my defense, it had been a very bad work week, for things out of my control, and we were both tired of everything. Not working in my defense – it was a professional position and I was in my late 20s. Fortunately, she was fine with it (if she wasn’t, she would tell me). I had totally forgotten about this until now.

  199. Liz*

    So many cringe moments. When I was a teen, I made a special trip to the store I had just started working at and explained in GREAT detail why I was leaving a job after less than 3 weeks, including that the pay sucked, one of my coworkers was one of the popular girls who was mean to me at school, I didn’t like the uniform, the rules of the workplace were stupid, etc. The poor manager listened to me, kindly said, “you could just say that it wasn’t what you were expecting and it’s not a good fit for you. We’ll send your last paycheck in the mail.” Bless her.

    In college, I way over-extended myself and was working 3 part-time jobs while going to school full time. I did the math before accepting all of these jobs and figured I would have 4-6 hours in between them all to sleep, which seemed reasonable (ha. ha.). I quickly found out it was not, and I started getting sick all the time and showing up to my night job at a hotel completely exhausted. Occasionally I passed out on the couch and did not do my nightly duties like cleaning the pool. The manager had to talk to me 3-4 times about this. After a couple of months, I decided I’d had enough. I finished my shift, sent an email to my boss quitting effective immediately, and never went back. Great learning experience, but I’m sure it sucked for everyone who worked with me.

  200. Jess*

    Our COO was in love with me and I knew it, he had been very obvious in his approaches towards me. I was engaged at the time but would milk the COO for all he was worth, including letting him get me completely wasted and sleeping in his bed. I used him up, down and sideways. I regret it now but when I was in my early 20s alcohol had the ability to completely wipe out any decency or kindness.

    Unfortunately, being the only female programmer at my company led to a lot of terrible situations, and I used them all mercilessly. One guy point blank asked me if I would sleep with him on a business trip and I had to remind him that his wife was one of my best friends and nooooo that’s not happening.

    In retrospect the COO was a much better guy than the idiot I eventually married, but I am very happy that he’s now met and married a girl who treats him well. And I found a better husband and we’re happy too, so all’s well that ends well.

  201. Let's Bagel*

    Ugh, when I think back now to how I behaved with my very first boss in my very first BigGirlJob, it definitely makes me cringe. I had this terrible habit of just emailing him for help on anything I didn’t immediately know how to do–instead of trying to solve the problem myself first. He would usually kindly direct me to an email he had sent me some time in the recent past that contained the answer to my question, all the while probably noting that my problem solving skills “needed improvement.” Oh, and I also made a point to tell him when I took off on a random Tuesday that it was for my birthday. Not something necessary egregious, but more so just embarrassing. Like, who cares when my birthday is!

    The other thing that makes me cringe is the way I behaved shortly before I left that job. I was there awhile and ended up getting a different boss after my old one was promoted. New Boss was awful, just absolutely terrible in every way (and the eventual reason for my departure). As I grew more and more frustrated and enraged by his behavior, I let my own behavior get a little out of hand. I was unable to control my anger, and I would slam and bang things around, yell, and do all other sorts of ridiculously inappropriate things for an open plan office. Looking back, I think I just had absolutely no clue how to handle a ridiculous and terrible boss, and felt extremely powerless. I can only hope that it would be different if that were to ever happen again!

  202. Eirene*

    I ruined social media use for everyone at the credit division of a major financial company whose call center I was
    working in because I complained about dumb/annoying/rude customers on my public Twitter account and one of the merchants who worked with us noticed. It was not my first job. It wasn’t even my first office job. I was 24.

    I was so shocked that they didn’t fire me – which I fully deserved – that I just straight-up deleted my Twitter account instead of removing the specific Tweets they asked for, partly because I was so embarrassed that someone in HR and my manager had also seen all the thirsty fandom-related Tweets interspersed. Priorities, y’know. Later that day, a company-wide email went out stating that unless it’s actually for work, employees were no longer allowed to use social media on their work computers.

    I didn’t tell anyone about it until I left a couple of years later because I was so mortified that I had done something so stupid. The friend who initially got me the job thought it was hilarious when I finally confessed it to her, at least. “That was YOU?”

  203. Let's Bagel*

    Oh, and one more! This one makes me cringe the most, so I don’t know how I forgot about it. Early in my same first job, I got very sick one day. Instead of emailing my boss directly, for some reason I was worried he wouldn’t believe me. I thought it would be more convincing if my husband did it. So yes, I was “that person” who had someone else contact their boss on their behalf and call out sick for them. That one really, REALLY makes me cringe now.

    1. Anon Anon Anon*

      I don’t think it’s that terrible. Hypothetically, you could have been so sick that having someone else call was the only option. I would feel worse about causing them to worry by making the illness seem worse than about being unprofessional.

  204. Sunglasses*

    Just generally reacting poorly to a toxic work environment at my first full time job out of college. Instead of holding my head high and maintaining my sanity, I got angry, defensive, and temperamental. I eventually stopped putting any effort but the absolute bare minimum altogether.

  205. Easter*

    I left an internship without saying goodbye and thank you. It was a large and nationally known non-profit, but my direct supervisor was just awful – we really butted heads in part, I think, because we weren’t all that far apart in age – and I was absolutely miserable. Anyway, on my very last day (which had been worked out ahead of time, so in theory they knew I was leaving), I just finished my hours and left without a word to anyone. No matter how much I hated that place, I still should have said something. I learned my lesson – ever since then, I’ve sent a thank you/goodbye email, even when just leaving a temp job.

    Another time, I gave my two-week notice (at a retail job) via letter to my supervisor (in their mailbox, we worked different shifts). Not awful, because at least I gave notice, but I really wish I had said something to him (it was retail, he wasn’t heartbroken). It just made things kind of awkward and made me look out of touch.

  206. I have no idea why*

    So many things to choose from. One embarrassing example – and I can just imagine someone writing to Alison about it – I used to wear knee-high stockings and if my feet got too sweaty (yes, gross), I would take them off in my cube, wash them in the office restroom, and hang them to dry on my cubicle wall. My manager at the time even came by and saw them hanging on the wall, looked at me, looked at them, looked back at me, and said “Hmm!” with a perplexed look. But no one ever said anything to me about it, so I kept doing it.

    My reasoning was, no one ever told me it *wasn’t* okay to wash, hang, and dry stockings on your cubicle wall at work.

    SMH

    1. the one who got away*

      I just laughed so incredibly hard at this (no one ever told me it *wasn’t* okay…), so while I’m sorry you did it, I’m really glad you shared it. :)

    2. Let's Bagel*

      this one made me laugh out loud! reminds me of George Costanza. “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?”

    4. SS Express*

      I’m laughing out loud at this one! Not even close to the worst story here but it’s just such a unique thing to do.

      1. I have no idea why*

        I actually did have a stash in my office desk. Not to be too gross, but my feet were pretty sweaty, so if I circulated through 5 pairs, I’d still be washing and drying them at work. Believe me, I don’t defend this practice by any means.

  207. the one who got away*

    Oh gosh, so many things. But two stand out:

    1. I used to be prone to sending really long and dramatic emails about things that were bothering me. Whether my concerns were legitimate or not (in hindsight, they often were), there were about 100 better ways to handle that.

    2. In my second professional job out of college, I put in my notice by arriving at work early and leaving a sealed resignation letter on my boss’s desk before she got there, then hiding in my office until she came to discuss it with me. In my defense, when I left my first job (where I’d worked for many years and was very well-liked), I went to speak with my VP and she told me I needed to put it in writing to make it official – so in the second job I somehow thought that’s what I was supposed to do. I feel cringey about it still, many many years later, even though one of the reasons I left was because I had recently been to a board meeting where every other person in this (very small) organization took a moment on the agenda to thank the board for giving them raises…which is how I found out I wasn’t getting one. But I wasn’t mad when I left – just dumb.

    1. ACDC*

      “Sealed resignation letter”

      Please tell me you had an old fashioned stamp that you used on wax poured onto the envelope for this seal.

      1. the one who got away*

        Ha, no. But only for lack of creativity. IDK what the heck was wrong with me. I truly thought I was doing it professionally.

      1. the one who got away*

        Oh goodness, no. My dramatic emails were very well-written, as any novel-length manifesto should be.

  208. Linda*

    I was working as a paid intern for an educational grant during college one summer. The person overseeing the interns was also working on her PHD, so she was mostly absent and checked out. We were largely left on our own. One day, I was browsing the internet killing time before lunch and the head of the program walked into the office. He asked me what I was working on and I answered truthfully. I told him I did not have anything to work on. Looking back I should have stretched my tasks or covered for my supervisor by saying I was finishing up some research. It just did not occur to me to lie so I told him the truth. He did not say anything to me but he must have said something to my supervisor about the lack of tasks because she absolutely hated me from that day. She openly complained about how stupid it was for me to tell the truth and gave me mindless busy work for the remainder of my internship. She made me photocopy textbooks for the duration of my internship. Luckily it was only a few weeks left in my internship.

    The only time she actually smiled at me was when I gave her my two weeks notice. Luckily the stakes were low and I learned to never say you have no work to the head of a program. I also never had to see her again after my internship even though I continued to work for the grant in a different capacity once the school year resumed.

  209. Former Retail Manager*

    I sent a Skype message to my boss…..about my boss!! He was listed in my favorites right below an employee I’d been chatting with earlier and meant to make my comment to her. And to top it off, the message was about a closed door conversation I’d overheard because it was reallllyyy loud. Anyone nearby could have easily heard, but still. I certainly didn’t say anything scathing, but indeed not one of my finer moments. I could only apologize and say that it would never happen again….and it has not. That person is still my boss and thankfully doesn’t seem to have held it against me. Note to self: nothing negative/critical on Skype….about anyone ever. My boss really is a great boss.

  210. SaffyTaffy*

    At a big karaoke party, I turned off the school president’s song as he was singing the chorus. He and his assistant had been in charge of the songs and had turned off a couple that they said were “too slow” but then he chose a slow song himself, and… I thought it would be funny? I don’t know. It was awful.

  211. Easter*

    OY, another one. Used work email to send a really personal email to my mom (and then, no joke, accidentally sent it to my boss). What?! Why?!

  212. SoNotMyUsualName*

    Oh my… let’s see… how embarrassing am I going to be…
    …crying when receiving constructive criticism (I don’t do that anymore)
    …taking a “keep your head down and get through it” when my boss’s mat leave replacement turned out to be a horrible fit and not talking to the head of HR — I ended up losing my job because I kept my mouth shut
    …withdrawing and losing my “spark” when struggling to reach goals, after going to both bosses (shared between two departments) for help and direction — position was then eliminated and reviewed (as far as I know, wasn’t recreated)
    …forgetting to call in when snow shut down the city and my boss called me, worried I got stuck somewhere on my way in
    …working fast food in high school, threatening to quit if we had to wear new uniforms (I didn’t and I wore them)

  213. Hello, it's [not] me*

    It was my first job explicitly supporting someone else and the day I started she was out of the office. For some reason I had never considered how I was supposed to answer her phone. It rang, I panicked, and said, “boss’s name.” Not “boss’s office,” not “boss’s office, this is me,” just “boss’s name.” Person on the other end said “No you’re not?! I’m her husband.” Still embarrassed about it.

  214. ugh*

    I used to get annoyed with people who weren’t good with computers. I know it must have showed sometimes, and sometimes I showed off a little (clicking around really fast or using keyboard shortcuts I knew the other person didn’t know) to emphasize how slow and dumb I thought they were.

    Now I’m in my 40s, and I’m on the receiving end of that from a co-worker in his 20s who is savvier in a certain application we use. I deserved the lesson and regret being a jerk.

    1. Stranger than fiction*

      I still do not this and have no guilt over it. The thing is, basic pc/Microsoft office skills are required for the job and I’d really like to know how some of them got the job.
      In addition, some of them support our SaaS product and after several years here, still know nothing more than the basics. These are the same coworkers whining why they’ve had no raise. Raises are for merit, as in actually broadening your knowledge of our system.

      1. ACDC*

        +1

        I shouldn’t have to teach my admin how to use her scanner. The same scanner she’s had for 2 years.

      2. fwsezdjhtyc*

        ＋１
        hate having to show our own QA team how to process things in the system when they’ve been here for ~4 years. it hasn’t changed!

  215. effazin*

    Not sure if this counts as it was for an interview. Between my jr and sr year, I applied for a summer position as a SPO–student placement officer–at my university’s centre that helped students find work. About a dozen students were hired to staff the centre each summer and there was a lot of competition for the positions, as the pay was good and the students were treated well. I was offered an interview and received a package of information–quite a thick booklet–by mail about the centre’s policies, and the procedures the SPOs followed, and the rules/guidelines they used to determine who to send to interview for the businesses that used the centre to screen their applicants. It also included some legal guidelines about eligibility of foreign students to work in Canada, and about various forms of training such as first aid and WHMIS that the SPOs were supposed to recommend that students who were looking for certain types of work should get. I was incredibly naïve, and thought “cool, it’s nice to get a few details about the position” when I got the information package, and skimmed it briefly. It never occurred to me that I was being given this information for a reason. At the interview, it was assumed that I’d familiarized myself with the information and I was presented with a series of scenarios and asked to explain how I would handle each of them in light of the centre’s policies and procedures. I didn’t have a clue how to answer most of the questions, and I’m sure I came across as apathetic about the job, when really I was quite excited to have reached the interview stage. Inevitably I never heard back after that interview. 35 yrs later, I still cringe when I think of what a poor impression I made at that interview.

  216. I need a new name...*

    Mine isn’t that bad, but it definitely makes me cringe. My team was doing a little “energizer” before a meeting where we were supposed to pick and share our personal theme song. I couldn’t think of anything so I texted my husband who knows music really well. He suggested “Pony” by Ginuwine (and no, that doesn’t say something about our relationship, my husband listens more to the music than the lyrics). I too wasn’t familiar with the lyrics so I went with it. At least one of my colleagues, and likely my boss) were familiar with the lyrics. If you are as well, you’ll know why it’s cringeworthy…

    1. I need a new name...*

      This is more just an embarrassing thing that happened at work, I guess. But oh well.

    2. Kelly AF*

      I have a friend who used to joke that she was going to walk down the aisle to Pony when she got married.

  217. LessNosy*

    At my first job out of college (which I was REALLY bad at and made me miserable), I would rap popular hip-hop songs (expletives and all), out in the open, to one of my coworkers to cheer her up when she was sad and/or frustrated. It worked, but I realize now that was Cringe City.

    1. Emily S.*

      Oh my goodness. That reminds me of a job I held briefly at a catalog sales call center. I used to curse all the time, and didn’t realize it was unprofessional until I was pulled aside one day for using the F word! Eek.

  218. Stranger than fiction*

    Confession: sadly, I used to be very cavalier about sleeping with coworkers. I still don’t think it’s a huge deal to have a fling with 1 person at a job, and heck I eventually met my current SO at work, but there’s been times I slept with multiple coworkers at the same company, sometimes higher ups, and sometimes married :o . Thankfully I grew up and now see the error of my ways.

  219. IsThatWeird*

    First job out of college, I invited our 3 summer interns to crash at my house for the entire summer. *shudder*

  220. Jane*

    By far the worst thing I’ve ever done at work was during a professional internship at an engineering company.

    At our weekly staff meetings, the interns would take turns giving short safety presentations (these were often about how to stay safe outside of work since we had a separate safety meeting for work issues).

    Since we were in Texas and I had just gone shooting with some friends for the first time, I thought I’d do a presentation about gun safety. Yeah.

    At the end of my presentation, my supervisor said that he vehemently disagreed with guns and was offended by my presentation. I didn’t really know what to say, but I’m not sure it even occurred to me to apologize, so I think I just said “Okay”.

    A couple weeks later, I was moved to another group because my supervisor didn’t have enough work for me to do. I didn’t realize until much later that it was probably because he just didn’t like me.

    He was a notoriously difficult person and I was told as much, but I still can’t believe how tone-deaf I was. And I was politically left of center at the time too!

    1. montecristo1985*

      I don’t think this is that bad. I take issue with the entire premise of telling people how to be safe at home, but the exact topic itself does not seem like one that is beyond the bounds of professionalism. It IS important to be safe around guns. Even if you hate guns and think they should all be melted, how is safety bad? I think your manager may have just been a little intense.

  221. SanDiegSmith82*

    1) Working at a place where the rest of the team is family doesn’t mean that you are part of the family even if they say “you’re part of the family”. It just means that they think they can treat you like crap, and underpay you (for the most part).

    2) If your boss doesn’t like you for his/her own crazy personal reasons, there is no amount of production/sales/teamplaying etc that you will ever be able to do to change that. Leave as quickly as you can.

    3) TRUST YOUR GUT.

  222. Femmeinfloral*

    I used to come to my first internship at a magazine with hickies all over my neck. I was newly in a relationship with my then-girlfriend, and I guess we liked each other a little too intensely. It got to the point where my supervisor wrote me an email to tell me to make sure they’re not showing when I go to interview people. To this day that is the single most embarrassing email I’ve received.

  223. Jackie Paper*

    Oh man.

    * Consistently wore non-matching clothing and didn’t realize until I saw myself in the bathroom mirror at work because my only mirror at home was a from-the-shoulders-up type bathroom mirror.
    * Went to an interview with a huge hickey that I didn’t realize was there until a homeless man I passed on the way there pointed and loudly guffawed at me.
    * Criticized my (arguably not sane) manager during interviews for new positions and then wondered why I wasn’t getting hired.
    * Asked my manager out and then annoyingly followed up when I didn’t get the hint that he was blowing me off.
    * More things I feel too ashamed to even mention here.

    I feel like people who know me nowadays would say I exhibit good judgment, but many times I have looked back and wondered about myself.

  224. anonEmouse*

    I basically had a nervous breakdown because I worked at a really dysfunctional non profit. I am still dealing with feeling insecure and anxious about going back to work (I have been unemployed and in school again for 18 months). The breakdown took place over several months and twice involved serious ugly crying in the office after again having difficult discussions with bosses about why I refused to embellish activities and results in an annual report.

    1. M*

      There are more than enough dysfunctional non-profits that fudge their annual reports for me to think it unlikely that we worked at the same place, but god this is familiar from my past ToxicJob.

      I’ve been out a little over two years now, and I promise it does get better. The first time I had to tell my manager at my new job that something he wanted done wasn’t going to be possible I froze up completely. He was utterly bemused, because I was very clearly right about why we couldn’t do it, so obviously we weren’t going to do it, so why was I so nervous about saying that? I think I’d probably been somewhere else for a good year before it really sank in that most places don’t *want* to break the law, and are pretty happy to have employees who can spot a liability that needs to be avoided.

      I promise, it does get better – and for me, at least, it was incredibly cathartic to be told “oh, yes, you’re right, we can’t do it that way, can we? what if instead…”. One of the worst things about working somewhere that’s so awful to you when you try to follow proper practice is that it really gaslights you – you start questioning your own instincts, and on a certain level you become convinced that maybe you *are* wrong, and maybe every non-profit *does* fudge their numbers, and maybe you *are* holding them back. Starting work somewhere sane did absolute wonders for shaking me out of that in a way that no amount of my colleagues, friends or family telling me I was in the right had managed to do.

  225. Kelly K the Business B*

    Shortly after college, I had my first office job. After the job had ended, the company didn’t send me my last paycheck. I didn’t know what to do! When I asked my dad for advice, he told me to write a formal letter and send it via certified snail mail, so I have proof that they received it. A couple of weeks passed, and no paycheck. So I sent another certified letter. After that didn’t work, it finally occurred to me to pick up the phone and call them. Lo and behold, it worked!

    Email was most definitely already A Thing by then, and I could have easily emailed or called them. I’ve been cringing for the past ten years over this.

    1. SailorJerry*

      But they should have arranged to get your check to you and you shouldn’t have had to do any of these things. While sending a letter was the long way around, it should have gotten them off their duffs!

    2. ACDC*

      I’ve gotten this same advice from my dad about things! I don’t know what it is with those Baby Boomers and their formal letters sent via certified mail LOL

      2. Kelly K the Business B*

        Good to hear that I wasn’t the only one to receive this advice! I’ve often wondered if certified letters were really a common thing back in the day, or if his advice was out of touch. Definitely not good advice for 2008, but what about, say, 1985?

    3. Not Australian*

      The deal with a certified letter was (and still is) not that it produces instant results but that it gives you evidence the letter has been received, in case you ever need to prove it in court. I used them until comparatively recently myself (within the last five years, for sure) when dealing with someone else’s finances under a Power of Attorney, for example. You’re right that for most purposes they’re now outdated, but it’s still not bad advice. In fact it’s something that, if you don’t do it, will slightly weaken your case if you end up having to sue.

  226. SailorJerry*

    While on active duty, it was common for us to go out at lunch time to greet new people and say good-bye to others. It was not uncommon, while stationed in a European location, to do these lunches at the pub. To be fair, the leadership did not set the standard because they also got blasted… but I probably should not have done all those tequila shooters and then thought I was going back to work. One lunch party even turned into a party at my house… leadership and all. Tons o’ fun but I hate to think of how I acted then. Oh well… they probably don’t remember lots of it either!

  227. Nacho*

    My first job out of college was a temp job in customer service, and after they finished training me, they forgot to tell me when to take my breaks. So instead of asking, I just assume I can do it whenever I want, and then proceed to skip my breaks and go home early for two weeks until somebody pointed out to me how very not-ok that was.

    Possibly one of the reasons they terminated my contract pre-maturely before they found a full time employee to fill it.

  228. Klaire*

    I worked in a supermarket for years and once getting out of the hell that is customer service, it took me a really long time to stop giving my colleagues a heads-up that I was going for a bathroom break… honestly, I was working in an open-plan office with absolutely no cover required when someone wasn’t at their desk anc I’d still tell my team leader every time I was going to the bathroom. The SHAME! My team leader was male and quite new to management, I assume that’s why he didn’t say anything about it… I must’ve made him feel so awkward!

    1. Anon Anon Anon*

      I made that transition. I used to call my boss to let her know I’d be five minutes late. In an area with a very relaxed attitude about that kind of thing. I was thrilled when I realized how autonomous and flexible my job was.

    2. ACDC*

      OldBoss worked remotely and had serious control issues. After I’d been there for 6 months, she said she needed to “know my whereabouts at all times as she is the supervisor and I am the employee.” I dead ass would have to text or email her to let her know I was going to the bathroom. You know, in case she needed me in those few minutes.

      1. Gumby*

        “Walking to the break room for lunch”
        “Eating lunch in the break room”
        “Walking back to my desk”
        “Whoops, Fergus stopped me with a question. Discussing with him in hallway closest to exit A.”
        “At my desk”
        “Still at my desk but facing away from computer to complain about reporting requirements to office-mate.”
        “Circumnavigating the building to up my Vitamin D levels as directed by my doctor – should take 5 minutes”
        “on side of building facing [other company]’
        “on side of building along [street]”
        “on side of building along [other street]”
        “on side of building with loud industrial things kinda by our loading dock”
        “on back side of building again, will re-enter in approximately 15 seconds”
        “back at desk”
        “Walking towards accounting department – have a question – not sure who I will bug”
        “Jane was at her desk so we’re discussing it there”
        “Walking back to my desk; taking route that goes through central hallway”
        “At desk”
        “Making a quick trip to front lobby to obtain emergency chocolate from receptionist’s candy bowl”

  229. miyeritari*

    wrote a bridge-burning email about a job i hated … included management i thought was my friend. Ooops.

    Luckily I have *zero* interest in *ever* getting into that field again.

  231. Ann O'Nemity*

    I worked a series of jobs in high school and quit a couple of them with no notice. I’ll tell the more embarrassing of those stories.

    I was working as a hostess. After training two new hostesses, I learned they made more than I did. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a raise by whining to my manager about the unfairness. Shortly after, I took off a week (planned) because I had to get foot surgery. On the first day, mere hours after surgery, my manager called demanding I come in because one of the new hostesses didn’t show. Still upset about my pay and loopy from pain killers, I told him I was unable to stand and even if I could, I wasn’t coming back until he paid me fairly and then I hung up. At the time, I felt very self-righteous. When I sobered up, I was too mortified to call or go back.

  232. thebearistrying*

    In an interview told him I admired the ingenuity of a guy that had gotten fired from my previous employer for embezzling money. Srsly ???

  233. sheworkshardforthemoney*

    I was chronically late by 15-20 minutes almost every day. I was living with my first boyfriend and he ran late all the time for everything, he just didn’t care. BUT he insisted that we leave together for work even when I was ready to go.
    So I slowly adapted his cavalier attitude to being on time and surprise, surprise my contract was not renewed even though my work was good when I finally showed up. Lesson learned, don’t be late ever.

  234. Mbarr*

    Ugh, at my first job (age 16), I tried to liven things up by starting a conversation on abortion. *face palm*

    I also didn’t know the reason we kept having “speed contests” was because *I* was the slow one. If my manager had only told me, I’m sure I’d have made the attempt to be faster – or at least realize I was slowing down again.

    1. SS Express*

      This is a great example of why it’s better to directly address issues with the person instead of using weird round-about approaches and hoping things will change

  235. Dolorous Bread*

    This isn’t even that long ago but I wasn’t in a great headspace at the time.

    I was working at an extremely cliquey, gossipy place and never really fit in with the “in” crowd. My direct supervisor was my age and so chatty and friendly with everyone else, but would run really hot/cold with me, never wanted to check in on priorities, generally wanted me to leave her alone at all times. She was really not interested in any sort of mentorship relationship. She was also a new manager and I think I was her first real direct report. I really just wanted to connect with her and my colleagues since I was always left out and felt so awkward and alone.

    There was one day that my supervisor was having some drama with her boyfriend and was talking to everyone in the office about it. I sat near her office and she always kept the door open so I heard this going on all day.
    Well.. here it comes.. I don’t know what came over me, but later in the afternoon I went into her office and was basically like “So, what did [boyfriend] do?” like, way casual.. She answered me and I knew right away how weird this was of me. She was then super short and cold with me for like 2 weeks after before pulling me aside and telling me how shocked and taken aback she was that I would do that, and anything that goes on in her office is private, etc. And I apologized and then I cried in front of her. I still cringe about it.

    1. the elephant in the room*

      My boss is like this except we’re in an open office and she is SO LOUD. She seems to think people should pretend they can’t hear her.

      1. Dolorous Bread*

        Yeah, this office was mostly open-plan with private offices around the interior perimeter. I sat right outside her office at a cube.

  236. Ingalls*

    In the 80’s….at an after work employee party that the company put on every year, I got inebriated to the point where the President of the company asked me if I had a ride home. I responded “Yes, I do, with (fellow employee). I’d ask him to take me home now but he is too busy staring at (another fellow employee)’s boobs.”
    Never did live that one down.

  237. Karinna*

    My cringe (and doing so as I type this) is having dated co-workers. Not once, or twice, but four times.

    Apparently I never learned from it either, regardless of how terrible the break ups were.

    One time, after I was in a secret relationship with a co-worker and broke up with him, he refused to come in to the office for a month because he did not want to face me.

    Another time, the co-worker and I didn’t officially break up, but he started seeing yet another co-worker on the side.

    All terrible drama and awkwardness that, were I to have a TARDIS, would go back in time and never ever ever EVER date a co-worker.

    1. Elizabeth W.*

      I stopped doing this after Coworker broke up with me and started dating another one of our friends. He knocked her up, and then she was hired there and I had to work with her the entire time she was pregnant. Woof. They ended up getting married and having another kid.

      To our credit, we all managed to stay friends (or in the case of him and me, at least cordial). She and I were friends long after they divorced, until she got into a very dysfunctional relationship, used me as a sounding board, and then ditched me as a friend entirely when she got out of it.

      Food service, man. Sooooo many inappropriate things going on. Don’t even get me started on the coworker who was engaged but kept playing sugar baby with all the older male customers.

      1. OP*

        Oh yeah. Food service is Miracle-Gro for Not Okayness. The things I heard from coworkers about previous jobs … I’m shocked we’ve survived as a restaurant-going species.

  238. the elephant in the room*

    Just telling anyone anything about my life or my ideas or my thoughts.

    Being friendly with people (the way I see them being friendly with each other!) has gotten me into more trouble than if I just kept my head down and ignored everyone. People seem to salivate over anything you’ve done or said that can be twisted in a way to make it gossip-worthy.

    And while MOST of my bosses have been smart enough to see those people for who they are, it’s still not worth it.

    Lesson learned at every job: Coworkers are not friends.

  239. Emily S.*

    In my first office job as an admin, I was pretty clueless, and made lots of mistakes.

    But the thing that makes me cringe is that I used to apologize all the time. Later, I realized that I was saying “I’m sorry” as a kind of verbal tic. But at the time, I was not even aware I was doing it. Eventually, a coworker explained the issue to me — after which, I was able to work through the problem. Thank goodness!

  240. inkstainedpages*

    When I applied for my first job in college, at a retail store, I completely bombed the interview and cringe thinking about it now. I had never had a job before except for writing for the newspaper, and all of the questions were like “talk about a time you didn’t get along with your coworkers” or “what have previous managers said about what you do well and what you could improve on?” I was too embarrassed to say that I had never had a job before, so I just answered every question “I don’t know” or “I can’t think of a time I was in that situation.” Cringe.

  241. Mbarr*

    Oh man! I thought of another one! During my first Real Job, I was having a bad self-esteem day. I decided to write myself a letter which essentially chastised myself to make changes in my life (e.g. calling myself names, telling myself to lose weight, blah blah blah). I then emailed it to myself… BUT I ACCIDENTALLY COPIED IT TO A STUDENT!!!!

    I was MORTIFIED. I tried to recall the email, but it was to no avail. The student was a PhD student, and she replied very sweetly, but I wanted to die of embarrassment. Lesson learned about never doing that again.

    1. kcat*

      oh noooooo. I am cringing just reading this. ugh ugh ugh. I stopped sending myself emails for things when I accidentally did something like this once – luckily it was just a shopping list.

    2. Anon Anon Anon*

      That’s hilarious! Honestly, if I had received something like that from a professor when I was a student, I would have found it endearing. It’s good to know your professors are also human.

  242. kcat*

    While out for drinks once with a bunch of coworkers I asked my boss how much he made. He made up a glib answer and then sternly told me the next day that that that was wildly inappropriate. Now I work somewhere where salaries are published, so I don’t need to embarrass myself to sate my curiosity anymore. :)

  243. SO Very Anon*

    This is so terrible I almost can’t type it. A few weeks into my first corporate office job, I asked my grandboss if she’d like to go for drinks after work so we could talk about work stuff. There was stuff to talk about – organizational changes that were causing a lot of stress and misunderstandings for everyone. My instinct to try and talk to her about it was good. My instinct to be friendly and try to communicate was good. I was coming from more casual (and mostly blue collar) jobs where that would not have been so weird. But at that office? Oh, NOOO, you DO NOT ask someone superior to you to go for a drink after work, especially if you’re not friends and the goal is to sort out miscommunications in the office. In that office culture, it seemed really slimey and unprofessional and just wrong.

    1. Alianora*

      I”m kind of disappointed after that first line because it doesn’t sound so terrible. Just a misreading of the culture.

  244. Can'tStopWon'tStop*

    I was the coworker who NEVER STOPPED TALKING about really mundane things no one cared about. In an open office plan. I was finally clued in when a coworker snapped at me about it. I brooded and felt injured, but stopped what I was doing and haven’t done it since (also I have matured, hopefully). So thank you, Cranky Coworker, for cutting off my cat stories.

  245. GreenDoor*

    This was when I was a high-school intern working in a bank. It was common for everyone to bring in baked goods – something was alwasy out on the table. So I baked a batch of cookies that required instant coffee granules. Didn’t have those, so I subbed regular coffee grounds. Oblivious to why no one was eating them. I loved sewing…having taken a one-semester course on it. Decided to make my own office clothes. Showed up in a stuff that had a lot of side panels sewn in backwards, crooked hems, sleeves that didn’t match, buttonholes in places that allowed boobage to be visible. Found out that a coworker had IVF to get pregnant. Asked her in front of the whole office for all the details. Thank God that job only lasted til I graduated. That was over 2o years ago and I still cringe. At least my clothes look a lot better now!

  246. Rebecca Bunch*

    As an intern at an art gallery, I signed all my emails “XOXO Gossip Girl”. It was a feminist, experimental gallery, so there was some room for quirky behaviour, but this was definitely extreme.

    Also, as a 23 year old waitress, I moved in with one coworker, started secretly dating him, then one week later started dating another coworker at the same time. They both knew (and consented) but no one else did. Until everyone did. Oy.

    1. OP*

      That is hysterical. But hey, if you have to sign off TV-style, something from Kristen Bell’s IMDB is a solid way to go.

  247. sleepyinseattle*

    Oh man. So many things. So much complaining about my salary to everyone who would listen when I was in my 20’s. I was actually pretty well paid but of course always thought I deserved more and was sooo underappreciated.

    My biggest regret is all the office gossip I participated in. Now that I’m in a leadership position I see how damaging all that stuff is. If I could take back one thing it would be all of that.

  248. NeonFireworks*

    Finishing college, I was interviewed for a position at XTeapot that I was highly excited about. The most senior member of the interviewing team took a shine to me and after the interview he led me on a spontaneous tour of HQ and started using the future tense a lot, as in, “This will be your office.” I asked him about whether this meant I had the job and he said, “It’s about 90% certain at this point. What can I say to convince you to accept the offer?” I assured him that I was already in and started planning the transition from college to XTeapot. When I was sent an everyday impersonal rejection letter, I was furious and emailed the CEO of XTeapot demanding to know whether it was a mistake and why I’d received it. To his credit, he and the COO sat down and discussed it and wrote an extremely polite email explaining why they’d ultimately overruled the senior interviewer (the higher ups liked my confidence but didn’t think I had enough experience to do the job well). I immediately apologized to both of them for acting so rude and entitled, and I’ve never done anything remotely that arrogant since. Still, all these years later I’m still mortified by it. Fortunately, the next opportunity that came along, at Teapot Adornment, ended up suiting me better anyway. I still work at Teapot Adornment and I’ve moved up in the ranks steadily. XTeapot and Teapot Adornment occasionally work in tandem, and there are at least three employees who liaise between, but I managed to steer clear of XTeapot for a long time. I have crossed paths with the COO of XTeapot an amazing total of only once in the ensuing years, in spite of a large number of trade shows that featured both companies, and he was brief but nice to me. At one point my boss had me email the CEO of XTeapot on her behalf and I was unable to get out of it, but fortunately either he didn’t recognize my name or he pretended we had no history. To this day, none of my coworkers know how badly I burned that bridge with NeonTeapot. Strangely, the main office of NeonTeapot had a massive cover-up scandal erupt a few years ago and they’re still trying to fix things. (Teapot Adornment has been unaffected, except for the fact that there’s more gossip going around.) So I have only my own 21-year-old cockiness to thank for having kept me out of the way of some even worse behavior and probably saved my career as well. Life is bizarre.

    1. NeonFireworks*

      Sorry, XTeapot = NeonTeapot. Tried to change it everywhere to avoid confusion with username, didn’t quite manage.

  249. ACDC*

    One of my first jobs, I had a coworker that had a HUGE crush on me. He would often stare at me during shifts, ask me for rides to/from work “so he could spend more time with me,” and often say many inappropriate things about my appearance. One day he grabbed my butt during work and laughed about it, saying, “Sorry it just looked so juicy today and I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance again.”

    I cringe that I didn’t recognize this as sexual harassment at the time and for not reporting it.

  250. Gumby*

    Had an injury, was prescribed Vicodin. Thought I was soooo important that I shouldn’t miss work and since I lived only half a mile from the office I could walk thus negating the problems with driving.

    Went to work and was fairly productive. Until I took the second pill (at the prescribed interval). At which point I spent who knows how long telling all of my co-workers about how I’m fine after one pill but the second really hits me hard until I got drowsy enough that I fell asleep (or almost fell asleep, not sure) on a couch in the lounge. My manager drove me home eventually. It didn’t end up being a big deal since this was an internet company but it’s still cringe-worthy.

  251. Alliej0516*

    Quit a job with NO notice. Quite a long time ago, I was in my early 20s, but it still haunts me 30 years later! I’d been the admin/office manager, opening a new branch of a multinational company in my hometown. A “serious problem employee” – older inside salesman (say Ernie) who smoked at his desk and drank coffee (spiked, I’ve always suspected) all day, treated people, especially women like so much dirt under his feet. I’d complained to the boss (call him Bert), who was younger than this guy, and Bert promised over and over again that he’d talk to Ernie, but the behavior never changed. Ernie would yell, berate, insult, pass blame, you name it, it was unbearable. As the admin, it was my job to send the Telexes (I told ya it was a long time ago!!), and I had sent one while both Ernie and Bert were at lunch with one of our vendors, who then accompanied them back into the office to catch up with the rest of the team. Ernie had given me the wrong number to where the Telex was to be sent, and I had no way of knowing that. I had put the transmission record on his desk while he’d been gone along with phone messages, etc… One of the messages was from the intended recipient, and when he called the customer back, she told him that she hadn’t received it. He lost his mind. Screaming at me “You’re a liar! You’re a f$%&#ing liar!” The worst part was that all of this happened *in front of our vendor*. I showed him the transmission record, he realized HIS mistake. I went into the other room, re-sent the Telex, then went into the warehouse and cried like a baby, and called my stepmom. She talked me down, and I went back in and finished the day. At the end of the day, I was the only one left in the office. I hand-wrote a 4-page letter to Bert, told him that I wasn’t coming back and why, that I’d tried to make it work, but that was the final straw. I was abused, and humiliated, and I just couldn’t stay. I put the letter and my keys on Bert’s desk, locked the front door, set the alarm and went out the warehouse door. Never looked back, never heard from them again, except for getting my final paycheck in the mail.

    1. LadyByTheLake*

      How is this something that YOU are cringing about? You should be proud, not “haunted”. When you are being abused and no one is doing anything about it’s FINE to walk out without notice. You owed them nothing — time to reframe this as you being strong and them being a$$holes.

  252. Afiendishthingy*

    As a student worker in a small academic department in college, I used to sleep on the couch in the office. I remember a professor very apologetically waking me up to ask me to make copies. In other words, to ask me to perform my basic job duties. I’m so ashamed.

  253. Serious Pillowfight*

    I’ve been pushy about asking for a raise before. I cringe now when I think back to my wording. BUT, I’m a woman and many women won’t ask for raises, so I’m still a bit proud of myself for asking even if I botched the way I did it.

      1. Serious Pillowfight*

        It worked with the same boss about half the time. The pushy times weren’t two of them. Once it worked when I tried to point out how much work I’d have to do, and another time it worked when I essentially begged. Not a great look, but it got me the raise. I wasn’t on my knees or anything, but there may have been a PLEEEEEASE in an email. Once he was cool about it (when I pointed out how much work I’d be doing) and the time I begged he begrudgingly gave it to me. Apparently I was annoying him for wanting a fair rate for my work?

  254. Mystery Mystery Shopper*

    During college I worked in a call center for a mystery shopping company, assigning contractors to jobs. The job was dull and I really hated “bothering” people on the phone (by calling them for a service they signed up for!) so I spent a lot of time messing browsing the internet between my sporadic calls. Imagine my surprise when my manager called me into her office brandishing a rather thick printed report listing all the websites I’d visited in the last month!

    Now I was on thin ice, with my internet habits being reported out to my boss every week, so I shaped up for a while and made more calls, but eventually backslid. Unable to turn to the internet for entertainment I decided to browse the various corporate shared drives. And if I didn’t get an “access denied” message it must be okay to read… right? Even if you’re going through your bosses saved documents and reading her love poems written for her boyfriend?
    As it turns out, not so much. Apparently opening a document saved to the IT folder containing hundreds of important company server names, passwords, and security codes tripped an alarm somewhere. It was quite the shock the day I came in to work to find my computer taken away and my manager standing there to escort me to the VPs office.

    True, there files should have been way more secure, but the day ended with me begging to be fired as a preferable alternative to being referred to the police for potential hacking charges!

    1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

      ‘Hacking’ charges? For accessing files on a shared drive you were given access to?

      I’d hope the police would laugh in their faces!

  255. poachedegg56*

    1. Ugly crying for 45 minutes to the VP after months of bottling up how miserably the CEO was treating me. There were so many other ways I should have relayed that information before sobbing like an infant.
    2. Sitting in a conference room, alone, for an hour, silently pouting and seething in resentment because no one came to my VERY IMPORTANT meeting. Really, my stuff could have been summarized in an email and there was no need for the dramatics, but it made me feel better to put on a show. #dramaqueen
    3. Being late like 1/3 of the time when I was the RECEPTIONIST. Got called out a few times and still pulled that crap once in a while. Bad form!
    4. Sending a “joking” email to my boss about salary/hours stuff but realizing later that the email sounded SO unbelievably aggressive and rude. #cringeforever
    5. Swearing in front of the President of our Board of Directors, an extremely proper and Christian man.
    6. Just so so many others…:)

  256. octopod*

    I had a full-time temp job in grad school, and right as my thesis work was ramping up they made me a permanent employee. Which I was so excited about – my first “real” job! Yeah! Except I was so focused on my thesis and so stressed and overwhelmed that my performance TANKED. I’d previously been a pretty good employee, so my two bosses / supervisors called me into a meeting to talk about my performance. But instead of explaining what was going on and asking for help, I just cried. the. whole. time. Like big, heaving sobs. They sat there and stared at me for a while and then let me leave. Shockingly, I was later fired. Literally everyone who wasn’t my boss asked me, “why didn’t you ask for help?! why didn’t you reach out to ANYONE?!” and I have no good explanation. It just…didn’t occur to me that it would matter.

  257. Argh!*

    Shooting rubber bands over a very high office divider onto a coworker’s head. They didn’t hurt her at all, but after a few minutes she became rather annoyed. Unfortunately, I continued for about 30 minutes.

      1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

        This is a great one! I’m just imagining her murder-fantasies getting more and more elaborate over time. Or possibly you asking her to hand some back so you could keep going.

  258. Uhmealeah*

    Not my story, but I thought this was pretty amazing:
    A couple months ago, at about 4am at a big loud late party at burning man, a woman asked to sit in our vehicle to make a phone call so that she could call out of work sick. Although she couldn’t get phone service to even make a call, I was amazed that the loud pounding music wasn’t going to be obviously heard on the voicemail.

  260. Hm...can't think of something clever*

    Stupidly scheduled a second phone interview for the exact time I got back home from classes and was always super hungry. Instead of sucking it up and just focusing on the interview I actually MADE LUNCH while on the interview and to this day don’t remember half of the things that were said in the interview while I was banging around dishes and pots and pans…..so cringey.

  261. Even more anonymous*

    A large public sector organization that I was contracting for was involved in a big scandal that led to blanket newspaper coverage and a lot of uncomfortable press conferences with the CEO. On the first day there were multiple references to a key review document that had been produced by a third party. I decided to search for it on the internal network and see if I had the necessary access to read it. It turned out that I could and I did. I read it and was shocked, as it contradicted a number of things about the story that had been reported in the media. I belatedly realized that searching for it had been a mistake and wished I hadn’t done it.

    Luckily for me the newspapers thought of the same thing, made public records requests for the document, and it was in the public domain within a couple of days. I was reminded of my folly a few years later after I had left, when there was another scandal involving a leak of private information, and the organization conducted a forensic analysis to determine exactly who had accessed the information (and published a summary of the results). There but for the grace of God…

  262. NoName*

    I had my first full-time job the same year that I got Facebook. I was keen to make my new Facebook profile interesting. After months of data entry and administrative monotony, I finally had a particularly fascinating day at work, and decided to post about it with updates every hour. There were more than a few issues with this, not least that I was accessing Facebook on my work computer and minimising it when any other staff walked past. But the biggest issue was that I was actually writing a personal comment about each candidate who came in for a job interview that day. I though that it was okay because I was keeping it all anonymous (no!!). Example: ‘Candidate 3: well-dressed, likeable, seems to know what she’s talking about.’

    Luckily my sensible dad noticed around lunchtime that I was doing this. He called me specifically to ask me to delete the posts. As soon as he pulled me up on it, I instantly snapped back into my usual sensible brain and was shocked at my extreme lack of judgement! I deleted it all within a minute and fervently hope to this day that none of my other friends ever set eyes on those posts. Thank goodness I didn’t have many followers and no one thought to take a screen shot.

  263. Former GA*

    When I was a grad assistant coach at a college (just a few years out of college, so close in age to the students), all the GA’s used to go out to the bars in town and often ran into student-athletes there and mingled with them at the bars. Some of the guys may have done more than mingling on a couple of occasions. We also regularly got super drunk and showed up very tired and hungover (or possibly still a little drunk a few times) to work including competitions. Some of the head coaches also regularly showed up to work hung over from “coaches meetings” at the bar or drinking at someone’s house the night before. We also probably were a little too close with some of the athletes (more like friends almost) which wasn’t the most professional. My first year, I would sometimes object to bad ideas by the head coach in front of the team and debate with him about it which in retrospect was very unprofessional. I also probably did not show enough school spirit and compared this school to my alma mater way too often. Overall, I was a very unprofessional grad assistant, but in my second year I improved a lot and did good work and the head coaches were unaware of most of this unprofessional behavior, so they loved me and give me good recommendations. I guess I got lucky getting away with this and ending on a good note.

  264. chickaletta*

    Gave notice…the day after I walked out on my job. I was in my 20s and was two years into an office job I found really boring. Well, it was really boring, there wasn’t much for me to do. But instead of looking for another job, or talking to my manager about it, I just packed up my office one afternoon and went home. Nobody noticed because I wasn’t very important (see: boring job above), but I called my manager the next day around mid-morning and told her I had quit. Oh, and this was a temp job too. So the temp agency wasn’t too thrilled.

    Bridge burned? Oh no. They hired me back 6 months later after I got back from traveling abroad and needed a job again. Lucky for me, good help was hard to find. I stayed for another year or two before changing careers altogether, the second time around however I gave proper notice.

  265. AnotherLibrarian*

    I showed up for a job interview right after college in a suit, heels, stockings and full makeup. No problem, right? Well… maybe a problem in a small town in Alaska when the job is with Fish and Game. The next most formally dressed person in the room was the director and he was wearing hiking boots with this khakis. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. I did learn a useful lesson though- dress up for interviews, but you can dress up too much.

    1. Former GA*

      That had to give the fish and game people a good laugh! I learned from my friends who work in the outdoors industry that if you dress normal professional to those interviews you likely won’t get hired. Khakis and polo at most dressy, but even those fake hiking khakis and a nicer 1/4 zip or plaid hiking shirt would be acceptable at most of them.

  266. Jenny*

    I worked as an intern at a small publishing house, and I really wanted to get into the business to eventually become an editor.
    I did so many cringey groany things. I was rude to the girl who was in charge of me (not quite a supervisor but you know). I quickly made enemies with two of the people working there (remember, small office). The editor liked me, so took me aside and told me I needed to shape up. I was so naive about my rudeness and the work world that I had no idea I had been acting badly. I also dressed really inappropriately to the office, but no one said anything about that. And once, after we were done editing a book and one of the employees told me it had been sent to be published, I said, relieved, “Oh good!” Making it clear the book was awful. That is bad, but in my defense that author is know popularly know as an Alt-Right dude, and I’m not quite sure why we published him.

    It taught me so much, though, and I was able to act appropriately at my first job with no hiccups. I am so embarassed when I think back on how I acted. But I did get my name published in a few of the books as a copy-editor, so that’s good I guess. (I don’t work in publishing, btw.)

  267. Tafadhali*

    No funny stories are coming to me to share at the moment (not for a lack of past embarrassing behavior), but I did think of the song “The Cringe” from the latest episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend a lot when reading the comments and thought I’d share it (linked in my name) .

    1. Tafadhali*

      I mean, I did just today walk past a group of colleagues talking about how the dark room is the makeout destination of choice for our students and toss out, “Oh, yeah, it was The Spot at my school too,” to which the athletic director (whose wife is athletic director at my high school) responded, “At an all girls school?” and my brain somehow decided to come back with, “Well, it was MY spot in high school.” So there is my cringey past work story, a mere 10 hours old.

  268. That was me*

    Where to begin? The worst is probably my total lack of boundaries at work when I was in my first post-college job at 22. Had loud personal phone calls from cubicle phone. Asked senior admin assistant (who was not really a friend) for very personal advice repeatedly. Asked the practice business manager for a raise because I was moving into a new apartment. Asked my boss’ boss if I could come in earlier than usual 2 days a week so I could leave earlier to get to a new aerobics class. Wore too much perfume. Wore ‘dress’ Bermuda-length shorts in a variety of fabrics and colors with exact-matching tights and often exact matching Papagallo flats (early 90s). I bet they were glad to see me leave for grad school in less than 3 years.

  269. Rosaline Montague*

    – I was secretly relieved not to return to a temporary teaching position when my spouse got into grad school over the summer. I mailed a letter of resignation to the district, then went to the school at 8pm (pre alarm but post anyone being there) to pack up my stuff and left my keys and another copy of the letter on my principal’s desk. They knew me leaving was an option because I had been applying for jobs in the state where we were moving, but it was still pretty poor form of me not to even try to call, especially since it was July. (No email yet in this district; it was the late 90s.)
    – got an office job in the new state. There WAS NOTHING FOR ME TO DO — in retrospect I think the boss had planned to fire someone and have me take over their sales support job, and then chickened out. Instead, he kind of created a vague job for me that kept me about 20% busy, especially compared to the hectic nature of teaching. I had an office separate from the rest of my work group (who, to be fair, didn’t do much working) where no one ever came. I read the entire archives of a now-defunct Buffy the Vampire Slayer site, read innumerable library books, spent hours on the phone with my friends in other regional offices and tried to slog through every slooooooooow day. I’m not embarrassed exactly, because I got all my projects done and it was really my boss’s fault I didn’t have enough to do or any real measurables, but I’m cringing now at how I didn’t advocate more or maybe even look for a different job…

    1. dragon_heart*

      I would probably get a lot of hate for this, but here goes.

      If I were in your situation for #2 I would get a remote online job as a virtual assistant (since you mentioned sales support) and do that job while working there. You get paid twice but this is unethical of course.

      I would shamelessly do it even now, its not your fault if your boss is aware you don’t have any tasks to do and couldn’t get you anything. In fact, I was employed by this kind of company once, and a lot of my co-workers would have side jobs and would do them during company time since there wasn’t much work to do.

  270. dragon_heart*

    A bit late but here are a few things I learned.
    – Never sign a job offer if you are not sure about it. I did this twice when I was still a fresh graduate. Now I just politely email them declining their offer.

    – If you have so many things you hate about your current company check if management will compromise after you bring it up with your manager. If management won’t change then look for another job, griping about it will not make it better.

    – A company with employees who love playing office politics is a toxic place to work. I had the misfortune of working with people who will take the smallest infraction personally and would go to HR over that. Leave ASAP.

  271. NotACockney*

    This one’s a near miss:
    Early on in my first job, for which I moved to London from the north of England, I was sitting in a car with two colleagues waiting for something (a very common part of the job). One said he was going to pop to a nearby parade of shops to get a snack or something. He asked other colleague did he want anything (and me). Other colleague said, “yes please mate can you get me a Curran’s bun”. I am thankful even now eighteen years later that it was not I who was popping to the shop. Because I did not know that “currant bun” is Cockney rhyming slang for “the Sun”, a tabloid newspaper. I would absolutely have gone to a bakery and come back with a small yeasted roll with dried fruits in it. And I would never have heard the end of it!!

    1. NotACockney*

      Damn you autocorrect – currant bun both times! What is Curran’s and why is it more likely than a very common fruit?!

      1. Mrs Mac 06*

        Curran Lennart is the male protagonist in a series of books I like… Autocorrect just tried to correct Curran to current.

  272. AllergicToIMsNow*

    When I was about 24, 25, I bitched about a co-worker on IM to another colleague. She came over to my desk so I could show her something and OF COURSE SHE SAW IT.

    I still cringe when I remember what I was bitching about – it was really mean, childish and not even anything to do with work. We ended up discussing it at after-work drinks and ostensibly making friends, but she still hated me. Even now when I see her, she pulls a face and is really “nice but bitchy” (like: “Hiiiiiii, how are youuuuu?” with a fake smile). We still work for the same company (although in different departments), so we do run into each other occasionally.

    It’s sad cos I’m nearly 30 and I’ve grown up A LOT since then (and no longer bitch on IM in the middle of the office!!). And she’s actually quite cool. I’m worried that she’ll end up senior to me one day and make my life hell – totally irrational as there are so many companies I could work for in my city/industry. But I will never forgive myself!!

  273. BTDT*

    When I was in my mid-20s I worked at a nonprofit. At one point the organization adopted a new mission statement and changed some of the titles for certain VP roles to incorporate buzz words from the mission statement. I thought the new titles were silly and unprofessional sounding (b/c they were). And I handled that by…..refusing to use those titles. Ever. I was the marketing manager so I was in charge of press releases, print materials and the website. Aka a bunch of places to publish job titles. And I decided unitarily never to publish the new titles. I was never reprimanded for this, which shocks me now.

  274. Chuck*

    With the disclaimer that I’m 22 at my first full-time job and therefore probably still making some of these…

    My sophomore year of college, I ghosted my boss. There were extenuating circumstances (for one, I had just changed my major from engineering to English and the job was a student position in an engineering lab, so I wasn’t entirely sure it was still funded). I just…stopped doing my work (it was mostly done from home) and stopped turning in timesheets. After the first week with no work I felt too embarrassed to say anything. My boss didn’t reach out either. I felt so guilty about that for years…and then a few months ago, just after I graduated, I ran into her. She was polite, I was extremely awkward, later I emailed and apologized profusely. She was puzzled and said I hadn’t done anything wrong, and we’ve exchanged a few pleasant emails.

    I definitely wasn’t a model employee either (working from home as a depressed 19-year-old: bad idea!), so I was surprised she was so warm about it. It was her first time being someone’s boss, I think, so we were more friendly than anything. But I guess that job can go back on my resume now!

  275. Raba*

    In college, after living in a sheltered tiny town and working with other teenagers, my restaurant job with people in their 20s and 30s was eye opening for naive little 17 year old me. There was a lot of sexual banter that left me feeling uncomfortable, especially from Jason, a tall guy in his late 30s that made sexual comments to all the women. When he started turning it toward me I was shy and embarrassed that I was such a “prude” it made me uncomfortable and tried to avoid him. Finally, when Jason, who was at least 6’2″ followed me into the freezer and stood in front of the exit and wouldn’t move to try to keep talking with me, I decided I’d had enough.

    What makes me cringe is that the manager that night was Chidi, who I’d been crushing on, and when he turned his full attention on me I immediately flushed and got nervous, downgrading “Jason has been sexually harassing me” to “Jason has been….bugging me”, ugh! So Chidi didn’t know how serious it had gotten and I overheard him telling Jason to generally knock it off and leave me alone.

    Jason didn’t. He followed me around even more for weeks, pestering me about how his comments weren’t inappropriate, he wasn’t that much older than me anyways (the 30+ year old says to the 17 year old) etc. Finally he got arrested for meth, and the other cooks stopped by my station to tell me he was a jerk and they were glad I stuck around through it.

    I wish I’d used my words earlier, clearer and more often and not let my self doubt and need to be a “cool girl” lead to all that stress!

  276. Hiring Mgr*

    When i was in high school, one summer I worked at a pharmacy. One day I just went to the beach with some friends–didn’t call in sick, just never showed up . The next day my boss asked me where i had been.. I said my Aunt had died suddenly. Since I was tan, he probably knew i was lying so he asked for my aunt’s address as it was company policy to send flowers. I didn’t know my Aunt’s address so told him I would get it from my parents. He didn’t bring it up again but I’m sure I wasn’t his favorite from that point on.

  277. fwsezdjhtyc*

    this is at the job i’m at now. but i spent periods of one week watching a livestream and handling a twitter account for an event. maybe doing chat moderation too idr. like a couple weeks later we had a general memo to “watch how much data usage we do at work and to visit work appropriate sites” or something.
    stupid thing is a coworker also watches all that stuff all the time and hasn’t gotten yelled at.

  278. Sabina*

    I cringe at what a flake I was in my 20’s with a string of short term jobs. I would just quit, sometimes with little or no notice, if I got bored or wanted extended time off to travel, etc. Somehow I was still able to pick up a job (not career-level) whenever I needed one. On one job I wanted about a month off so I made up some fairly bogus reason I needed the time. During my leave time I found another job. At the end of my leave I just didn’t go back–and didn’t bother to let them know I wasn’t returning. Ayyyyyyy…..I was such a jerk.

  279. Anonymous.*

    What past work behavior do I now cringe over? God, where do I START?

    As a teenager at fast-food jobs I was shockingly well-behaved (shocking compared to what came after.) I’d never violate cleanliness rules, was never late, paid for every french fry.

    Cringe behavior started in college, along with my growing pot addiction. These were convenience store jobs. Smoking pot in the back while on shift, not paying for food and cigarettes. Letting the boss’s teenage kid steal beer. Stealing a laser pointer. Quitting without notice right before Thanksgiving because they had me alone working and I decided I wanted to do drugs with friends that day (but that meant someone else had to cover my shift instead, last minute, ruining up their holiday so I could have my fun, after I’d *agreed* to work.) Cringe.

    Then there were call center jobs. Public, overhearable anger against customers almost every day, tension rising into explosive conflict. At one job, I talked trash over IM to a coworker about the owner’s relative. I was fired, printouts of my gossip waved in my face. (That was mean, not to mention ill-advised for me to say so, especially in such a traceable way.) Not showing up to a job because they had let a couple of my friends go (‘friends’, people I never saw again anyway, quitting as some show of solidarity was idiotic.) Cringe.

    I lied on resumes so many times. Nearly-true lies like “I have my degree” when the truth was “I am one class away from my degree”. Like they wouldn’t find out.

    I sent out widely-distributed emails critical of the company I worked for. One was an attempt to get people to be nicer to the planet, but the crappy, blameful tone of it might as well have been a PETA ad — and that one was company-wide. That one was at a big company you’ve probably heard of. Every last employee.

    Cringe.

    I’m not sure when it dawned on me that I had impulse control problems, but it was before a company-wide message, and it didn’t stop just because it dawned on me that I had problems. Cringe.

    I’ve had sex (at someone else’s workplace). I masturbated at work a few times (in a restroom, in private.) But, at my desk, I sexted over chat rooms on the company network, and at one job, even after a supervisor warning me (“I’m not saying it was you, but someone on shift last night…”) I did it again.

    And these are just the things I can remember. God knows the list of people who have memories of me behaving badly and making their work lives hell.

    Cringe.

    Of COURSE I wish I’d learned early on that my deep personal problems needed solutions. But poverty, no health care that would ever cover therapy, an escapist personality who didn’t want to go to therapy, and the life standards that people with impulse control issues usually end up with, meant I would end up at easy-come-easy-go jobs like call centers, places that force you to work with people, because those jobs are valued lowly, and I felt like a low person. I became a lowlife.

    I had been a lowlife already anyway. My first job after college, ‘unemployable’ with a bachelors in the humanities, was actually working for myself: it was the oldest profession. Ironically, it was one of the better workplace environments I ever had. No one controlled me or forced me: I had come across a manual on how to do it safely, consumed the book voraciously, and … took out an ad. I was in college, the money came in handy, I set my own hours, etc. I never felt unsafe, was never abused, never caught any diseases. My emotional life, of course, being another story entirely. But at least then, people were happier that they encountered me. Lots of them needed some therapy, too, an ear to listen, and I was that.

    I’m way past that now. Only my husband knows. I white-people-privileged my way into better offices, less contact with customers, more professional arenas, places I realized I needed to stop my behavior, change my mindset. and I’m thankful.

    But most of my work life has been one giant cringe.

    This is the only place I’ve ever admitted to all this.

    Wow that felt good.

  280. HS Teacher*

    I was bartending shortly after getting out of the military. It was at a small Mexican restaurant where the restaurant closed at 10 but the bar stayed open until the last customer left or 1 am, whichever came first. So I would close the bar nightly.
    I invited my now ex-husband and some friends to come to the bar after closing. We got absolutely shit-faced. Then I realized I’d locked the keys to the bar in the safe. The safe key was also on that keychain. Therefore, I couldn’t lock up and couldn’t leave. I had to call the owner. Needless to say he was PISSED. I didn’t lose my job because his wife told him to give me another chance because, other than this huge infraction, I’d been a reliable employee. I worked there for another couple of years.
    Looking back, I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. I’m still surprised I didn’t get fired for it.

  281. boop the first*

    I’m riddled with anxiety so literally everything I’ve ever said or done makes me cringe.

    Eugghh… okay but back when I was a very low-rung kitchen staff, I kept getting “promoted” (read: trained and given more work for same pay), and then demoted back down to make space for new, imported workers. Finally, I was given $1/hour pay raise (still less than equivalent male coworkers) and a spiffy new daytime schedule to take over a coworker who left.

    The problem was, they had great difficulty trying to replace me and I kept getting thrown back into the pit to cover my own absence. Weeks turned into months and I still never saw any ads placed for the empty position, and I was getting frustrated with it. I wanted to move on! Hurry up and replace me already!

    My cringy thing is that I wrote an ad for my own dang job. I wrote the kind of ad that I WISHED companies would write. I just kept everything “negotiable”. It was a casually small business at the time.
    When my manager brought up the topic, of course I straight up told him what I’d done and of course he was flabbergasted (and nervous) and told me “Uhh yeah, don’t do that.”

    When I showed him the ad, he looked thoughtful and said it was actually pretty good, but even with the “happy” ending, I still feel really embarrassed about it.

  282. Canadian Jessie*

    I got a friend of mine a job at my work. We soon discovered we weren’t meant to work together.
    The issue where we were caught: chasing each other around a boardroom with a balloon left over from a baby shower, trying to give each other static hair.
    When we (thankfully) weren’t caught: she was telling me about her super- cute new undies, so I lifted her skirt to check them out. Now.. we have a very bizarre relationship where that sort of thing is totally ok to do to one another. .. just, ya know, not at work!
    Thankfully, I transferred groups soon after, and now we just meet for lunch on occasion, and keep it pg :)

  283. MissHoneychurch*

    So many, and I still ended up in a great executive level job.
    Dating at work, complaining about work at work in a cubical, and some wardrobe choices.
    I also regret and sometimes wince about things I didn’t address directly in the moment. I’m more direct now about problems.

  284. Zweisatz*

    1. While still in school I took a summer job in the library and somehow mixed up the weeks so one day they called and asked me where I was. I left for work immediately but was still 2 or 3 hours late. Surprisingly I was never rehired.
    In hindsight I would have appreciated a “not gonna happen” so I could’ve avoided wasting all our time with applications in the following years.

    2. During an internship I got an unused laptop for a task and felt compelled to “declutter” it. Thankfully another intern hesitanly questioned whether I should be doing that since it wasn’t my property.
    I was lucky there were no bad consequences.

  285. Julia*

    A lot of comments regarding appropriate work dress. I wear whatever I can get away with (read: anything with a blazer or a cardigan, including trainers, ripped jeans, etc.) and this was something I worked out over time. I felt objectified in pencil skirts, stupid in suits and found changing shoes (i.e. trainers to work, then court heels) one of the most humiliating experiences in my life. I don’t work in a very corporate environment, so maybe that’s why no one has tried to tell me off. I feel it projects confidence in interviews and if I feel comfortable, I am happier at work. Win win. Let someone else iron their trousers after every wear :))

  286. Anon to protect the guilty*

    I drunkenly talked shit about my job in earshot of sleeping senior staff!

    The details: my first job after college was as a community organizer, and the initial training was brutal — 12+ hour days, staying in a budget hotel four to a room (we had to share beds). About a third of my cohort quit before the end of the training period, and the rest of us were miserable.

    There was a lot of binge drinking and a lot of complaining, and I did plenty of both. On one of the last nights of the training, one of my buddies and I stumbled back from the bar to the hotel room we were sharing with two very senior staff members and chatted a bit before going to bed — quietly, I thought.

    About a year later, one of those senior staff members had become my manager, and she told me the real story. The two of us had made such a racket that we woke up both of our sleeping colleagues, who then pretended to be asleep while we shout-whispered all the things we hated about our jobs, the organization, etc. Worse, my future boss told this story to all of the other senior staff in their morning meeting the next day.

    I’m still mortified thinking about it.

  287. Cringing over here!*

    What haven’t I done?!

    – I’ve definitely been part of the “I have no idea how to dress” group, especially when I was 18 working in an office and thought I was hot ****
    – We had an IM system at work and I sent a message about a coworker TO THE COWORKER! That was awkward
    – When I was young I was in a meeting and people kept talking about ad hoc reports. I thought I sounded smart saying “when I complete the monthly scheduled ad hoc headcount report”
    – I got really drunk at a Christmas party once. I was that girl.
    – At one company I was at we had company trucks and when we changed insurance companies I had to send out all of the new insurance slips, which were pink. I sent them individually in emails with the subject “Name Pink Slip Attached”. They all thought they were getting fired!

    Thankfully all of these things happened in my early 20’s. I’m mid 30’s now and still learning though!

  288. FamousBlueRaincoat*

    I swear I’ve learned from my mistakes, in my 20s, first time managing people, I was a big fan of The Office and used “your mom” and “That’s what she said” WAY too often. Once, I said a “your mom” joke to a newish employee only to learn that his mom had actually passed away the previous year. I was rightly mortified, and that pretty much put an end to me using that particular phrase.

    Not that it makes things better, but this job was in a retail environment where almost everyone swore and told off-color jokes/made inappropriate observations on a constant basis and the owner was by far the worst offender; so I wasn’t exactly outside of the cultural norms of the job. I just wish I had been more sensitive so I could’ve shaped the culture in a more positive manner.

  289. Stan Lee (not the famous one)*

    I’ve always been out of the loop socially, for reasons not germane to this discussion. But it is relevant to know that I have Asperger’s Syndrome. One characteristic of Aperger’s is that we take things literally. Both combined to produce one embarrassing moment at work.

    When I was transferred to a new department, I was introduced to my new boss. He greeted me with a handshake and a “How are you?” I answered – truthfully and matter-of-factly – “I have diabetes.”

    I was in my early 40s at the time, and I had no idea “How are you?” is just an expression, not necessarily a genuine expression of interest in someone’s welfare.

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