12 People Whose Jobs Are More Dramatic Than Reality TV

Workplaces can be hectic, but every so often, the drama is so outrageous it feels like you’re part of a sitcom. We’ve gathered 10 stories that might make you feel a bit better about your own job. Let’s face it, no job is ever truly ordinary.

• Back when I first started ages ago, a woman called in and said, “My mouse isn’t working!” I asked her if it was wired or wireless.
  “I don’t know! Why would I know that?”
  “What do you mean? Is it wired or not? Is there a wire on it?”
  “I said I don’t know! This isn’t my job to know, it’s yours!”
  So I asked her if she picked it up and walked away, how far would she get. I was the one that got in trouble. © Unknown author / Reddit
• When I started my first job, I quickly bonded with one coworker, and we became inseparable. He was kind and sympathetic, but only until 6 p.m. After that, it was as if he turned into a different person — he stopped responding to messages and avoided meeting up with me. Six months later, I found out that he was keeping an eye on me at our boss’s request. He was making sure I was doing my work properly and that I wasn’t sharing any company secrets. It turned out that my coworker wasn’t a friend, but rather the boss’s “eyes.”

• A lady was cruising around in a mart cart filling it will all kinds of glorious snack cakes when she went to reach for some frozen Chinese food. She overreached and fell on the floor, lodging herself between the cart and the freezer door.
  She couldn’t stand up on her own and the three employees couldn’t lift her, so they went and got a pallet, rolled her up on it and then used the forklift to stand her up and slide her back into the cart. It was really something I was not expecting to do at work today. © nonoriginalname / Reddit
• Worked at a retail store. One gentleman who’d been working there for a few years was working the register. We sold big appliances. A couple comes in to buy a washer and dryer with cash — $100 bills. My co-worker marks every bill with one of those counterfeit pens. If the bills are fake, it will be a dark color and if they are real they will be yellowish. Every one turned black and he called the police. Police came. Turns out my coworker used a permanent marker and not the counterfeit pen to check each $100 bills. © estral23 / Reddit
• Was working retail at a record store. I was training a young girl at the cash register. She was very quiet and shy. It was her first job and she was very nervous. An older gentleman came up to the counter with a cassette tape that he was very excited about. He’d been looking for it for some time and had finally found it at our store.
  As he spoke, his dentures popped out of his mouth, bounced across the counter, and hit this young trainee right in the waist. She let out a screech, threw her hands in the air, and jumped backwards about 5 ft.
  The old gentleman reached across the counter, grabbed his dentures, and popped them right back in. The whole event took about 3 seconds. It was hilarious, but the girl was shaking like a leaf and in disbelief of what had just happened to her. © YELLOW_TOAD / Reddit

• I worked at a photo printing lab, and we got people in all the time who claimed we were messing up their pictures. One woman had us print 800 vacation pictures. They were bad quality, dark, and out of focus. She insisted that we’d ruined them, that they were perfect in her camera.
  We finally gave her her money back, even though we’d done nothing wrong and were out a lot of time and paper. She called us 30 minutes later and told us she was at a store across town, and they had reprinted all of her pictures and they were beautiful, in focus, nice and bright.
  I told her that the same person who owned our store also owned the store across town, and that not only would it have taken that store several hours to reprint 800 pictures, but their printer was down that day, so they couldn’t have printed anything. She hung up on me. © laidymondegreen / Reddit
• Had a lady come in, disgusted at the state of the store. She left and came back with plastic bags, gloves, a mask, and cooking tongs. She started pulling dust bunnies out from under the racking.
  She asked for a broom, to which I politely obliged. End of the day, I walked her out and thanked her for bringing this to our attention. Never saw her again. She wasn’t bugging anyone, and she seemed calmer the more she did this. The whole thing went on for about 3 hours. © SleeplessBlueBird / Reddit
• I work as an optician, and had a client come in for a “check up” (at the optometrist’s, for sight). His eyesight was about −3.50 and −8.00 (those who wear glasses know that this is bad news).
  He shrugged and said, “Ah! Will do. Been working as a truck driver with this vision and I see great!” (he doesn’t wear glasses). My colleagues and I thought about asking for his work schedule to know on which days we shouldn’t leave the house. © imagine_enchiladas / Reddit

• My coworker was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and decided to make major changes. She was going to eat more fruit and less candy. She came into work and saw that I was tired and said, “You look tired, that’s low blood sugar, have some fruit.” She opens her purse, which is filled with Laffy Taffy banana flavor.
  She also switched to only drinking orange soda all day, again the fruit. She was constantly having blood sugar issues and wouldn’t listen to any of us about how she’s just piling sugar into herself. It was fruit! © moocal / Reddit
• I work in an office with a guy named Dave, who’s... well, odd. He talks to himself constantly and sometimes mutters things like, “They’re watching” or “It’s coming soon.” We all joke about him being the office conspiracy theorist, but it’s weirdly unsettling. One day, I overheard him on a call. His voice sounded calm, almost friendly, but the words he said were chilling: “Yes, I’ve planted the device. It will go off at exactly 3:14.”
  I panicked. What was he talking about? I called security, and we evacuated the building.
  Turns out, Dave had been talking about a surprise birthday gift for his wife — a homemade fireworks display for their backyard. The device? A confetti cannon.

We often associate extraordinary tales with the world of movies, but real life can offer even more gripping stories than fiction. In another article, we highlight a compilation of breathtaking real-life events that are sure to captivate you.