It Could Be Better – 9 People With Really Bad Days At Work

We’ve all been there – the work day is progressing, and suddenly, something shows up and hits us for a loop. But imagine just how much worse it could be. These people are having some of the worst possible days in their profession, and maybe you can take some solace from how bad it isn’t on your end.

The Dog Ate Everyone’s Homework

Kids have all used that excuse: the dog ate my homework, but what if the teacher used it instead? In this case, the teacher had a dog called Nipper, who usually is very playful and fun to be around. This may be the first time the dog also ate everyone else’s homework.

Reddit comments on the post point out that teachers losing homework isn’t such a strange occurrence. Between having a teacher’s car catch on fire to having a young child mistakenly shredding the class’s assignments, it could apparently happen to anyone!

Drats! Foiled Again!

If you’re old enough, you may have seen the practical joke picture where coworkers used aluminum foil to cover every surface in one of their colleagues’ cubicles. In this case, the students who tried this with their professor’s monitor accidentally turned it on, to disastrous results.

The monitor was apparently on all weekend, and because of the temperature retention from the foil, it quickly heated up and overloaded the LEDs in the screen. The result was a monitor that looked like it had bled to death.

Jumping the Gun Could Backfire

When a company fires an employee, there’s usually an offboarding process where the employee hands over their work to the next person to take over from them. However, that’s only when the employer isn’t hurrying to remove the worker and deletes their email from the system too quickly to pass on the information.

The result is a situation like this. The employer will probably spend the next few weeks or months putting back together their calendar of events and possibly miss out on meetings with potential clients and contacts because of it. It pays to do some things slowly.

Is It All Lined Up?

When doing a job requiring a lot of planning, you usually need a coordinator to keep in touch with multiple teams. In the past, successful coordination has enabled numerous teams to work together and accomplish great things together, like building a space station, for example.

In this case, not so much. Two teams of workers started building a bike lane from opposite ends. Mathematically, they could build the lane twice as fast, approaching it from both ends. However, it takes a lot more skill than the teams had to make sure their bike lane could meet in the middle.

No Need to Burn Books, Just Throw Them Away

If you’re a reader who cherishes books and spends a lot of time reading them, nothing pains you more than seeing books thrown out with the trash. But this is standard practice in the bookselling industry. When certain types of books don’t sell, they just toss them out with the garbage.

This practice is called “stripping” and only applies to certain types of books, such as mass-market paperbacks. Other books, like hardcovers, can be returned to the publisher by the seller for a full refund. These sad books, however, just get tossed out in the trash like they’re garbage.

What Do You Mean The Road Washed Away?

Sometimes, you might get stranded at work amid a storm. In a case like this, the safest method would be to stick it out at work where it’s safe and head home afterward. Provided you can head home afterward, of course, and the road to your home isn’t now a river.

Unless you were a cast member of the Dukes of Hazzard or driving a monster truck, chances are good that you’d be stuck on one side of this torrent until the water went down. Then, you’d still have to figure out how to drive across what used to be a road-definitely a bad day at work.

Two Weeks Notice Isn’t Necessary, Right?

Imagine strolling into work one morning and finding your desk wholly cleared out with all your stuff neatly packed in a box. Then, they hand you your pink slip to let you know you’ve been let go. Aside from the infuriating way the company did this, it also shows disregard for the employee.

In this case, the employee was called into a meeting with the CEO and told that they would be let go along with 2,500 others. On returning to their desk, the box was neatly packed and ready to go. At least they didn’t eat his cookies.

Why Does It Sound Like Cracking Ice?

Shipping glass always requires the utmost care. Glass is highly breakable, and because of that, many shipping companies pack glass items with a lot of padding to ensure they don’t break in transit. That is, if they know they’re carrying glass in the first place.

From a commenter on the scene who was there to observe, no one knew why the glass was shipped with such careless abandon. The shipping company apparently didn’t load the sheets of glass into the vehicle, and no one had even told them it was glass they were shipping. They should have paid attention to the packing labels, maybe?

Who’s Watching the Line-Painting Machine?

Line-painting machines are usually automated and go about their job without anyone worrying about them. However, sometimes mistakes happen, malfunctions occur, and what would be a regular line-painting exercise turns into an explanation about why half the road is yellow.

In this case, a spill spread across the road and covered all the other markings. Whether it was due to a malfunction with the machinery or the supervisors, no one really knows. Maybe it’s time to put up a few signs to tell Dorothy to avoid this yellow-brick road.

Disasters At Work Happen

No matter which industry you work in, you’ll run into workplace disasters. Sometimes they’re preventable and are due to things within your control. Sometimes, they’re just random acts of nature (or customers). Either way, you can’t really tell what’s going to happen next.

As far as disasters go, some of these are funny in hindsight, even though they might not be so hilarious when they occur. In any case, getting the job done is the priority, and cleaning up after a mess is just part of that responsibility. What’s the craziest work disaster you’ve seen?