My company has a strict drug policy. They make a massive deal of it when you start. It’s part of your probation and it’s mentioned on every company notice board.

While it isn’t something I partake in, I have a “live and let live” philosophy when outside of work, but at work, we use large drills, presses, grinding wheels, high voltage, etc. — lots of things you could potentially kill yourself or even others with — so I get why the company has such a strict line.

I’m sat outside having a smoke with a guy I sort of know. He is a laid-back guy, and he’s often late, often sneaking off, and often not where he should be. 

Coworker: “I’ve got this stupid drugs test later.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I heard that there was a round of random drug—”

Coworker: *Interrupting* “It’s stupid! Why should they tell me how to live my life?!”

Me: “That guy lost his foot at [other site]. He was way out of it.”

Coworker: “Well, he was stupid, then. Why should the rest of us suffer?”

Me: “You nervous?”

Coworker: “What? Why? No, I’m all right.”

We sit in silence for a while.

Coworker: “How long do you think these tests can… I mean, how long does pot stay in your system?”

Me: “I think they can tell if you’ve done it in the last few days.”

Coworker: “S***. Well, I got to go.”

I didn’t see [Coworker] again. Apparently, he was smoking something he shouldn’t at lunch on company property. The stupid thing was that he had a week’s notice and the company would have called it off if he’d said he had a problem and accepted some help.

About a year ago, I would regularly go out for coffee with some of my coworkers. I stopped doing so after a while. These two stories are why.

Story #1:

Male Coworker #1: “Hey, [My Name], how’s it going?”

Me: “Ehh, been better. My daughter’s boyfriend just broke up with her, so she’s really down.”

Male Coworker #1: “Don’t worry; she’ll find someone else.”

Me: *Touched* “Yeah, I suppose you’re right—”

Male Coworker #1: “Women have a knack for finding their next meal ticket. She’ll have another boyfriend by the end of the week, guaranteed.”

Me: “…”

On another occasion, a different male coworker made some really disgusting, racist comments about a political figure I admire, and when I called him out on it, he insisted that he was “entitled to his opinion.” I got up and walked away.

And I haven’t been back.

I pick up the phone to call a client and hit myself on the cheekbone.

Me: “I just hit myself in the face with the phone.”

Coworker: “That’s what you get for pushing its buttons!”

I work in IT for a retail company. I’ve been recently helping support some of our backend retail systems, so I’ve been doing more tickets and queue work than being on the phones.

One thing that we stress through the company is to NEVER SHARE YOUR PASSWORD. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop people from doing it, and when we find out about it, there’s paperwork and resetting and frustration because users don’t understand why security is reaching out to lecture them.

I get a ticket for an issue with a system; it’s actually a known break that is actively being worked on.

User: “I can’t sign into [System]. It keeps telling me my credentials are incorrect even though I know they’re correct. My username is [Username] and here’s my password: [password].”

I actually stare at the ticket for a minute, trying to see if I am reading what I think I am reading. Then, I burst out laughing in our team meeting. I have to explain what has me laughing, which gets everyone else going.

Coworker #1: “Oh, come on. You’ll need to create a second ticket without the password and then send a request to security to get the initial incident removed from the system. Then let the user know they’ll need to reset their password. If they say no or don’t respond, just go expire it.”

I send a message to the user through our chat system.

Me: “Hi! I wanted to reach out regarding your incident [incident]. You included your password in the incident, which is a security violation. You’ll need to reset your password immediately.”

User: “Hi, [My Name]. I included it because I wanted to know if there was a reason why I am having so much trouble getting into [System]. But noted!”

Me: “Please don’t share your password with anyone or in incidents; for security reasons this is not allowed. There is an issue with [System] currently that this is related to. A new incident was created for your initial report as the security team will need to delete the original one. You will still need to change your password.”

User: “Okay, thanks!”

The number of people who willingly want to share their passwords scares me, honestly. I’ve had a couple of times where I’ve been tempted to use their password to do something (non-malicious and reversible) just to prove the point of why we don’t share passwords.

[Coworker] should have retired years ago, but somehow he convinced the senior management to let him stay on a few days a week to “help out when needed.” Instead, he pokes his nose into things and picks faults, even things that have nothing to do with him or he knows nothing about. When he gets called out, he claims he was only trying to help and offer opinion.

Luckily, he leaves me alone as I’m mainly working on an IT project that he has no ability to even access. Then, he badgers my boss to give him access to check something or another and I set him up with limited access. I am reluctant to do so.

One day, I’m pulled into my boss’s boss’s office. My boss and [Coworker] are there.

Boss: “We have some concerns with your project.”

Me: “Okay.”

Boss: “You said to me last time that 90% of the work had been done, but all of the files are gibberish.”

Coworker: “I’ve checked it myself; you claim it’s working but clearly you messed something up.”

Boss’s Boss: “I don’t pretend to understand all this, but is it true that there is a problem?”

Coworker: “All this money spent on computerising stuff and it’s worse than paper. What a waste!”

Boss: “Okay, calm down, [Coworker].”

Me: “This is lorem ipsum; it’s a placeholder text. It’s an industry standard used to give you an idea of what it will look like.”

Boss: “So, the documents are where?”

Me: “Where they have always been. It would be pretty stupid to load live documents into a test environment.”

Boss: “In English, please, mate.”

I demonstrated that the documents were, in fact, fine and how quickly the document could get transferred over when finished. [Coworker] sneaked out during this, so I took the opportunity to complain in detail about how he had been doing this to every project and slowing things down, making up issues and pretending to have solved them. He was moved onto one project at a time and not allowed to give any feedback without the project’s owner being involved.