30+ of the Most Toxic Coworkers People Have Ever Worked With

No one wants trouble at their workplace, but sometimes, people can't help it when toxic coworkers surround them. Some netizens shared what it was like to work with such people.

What's the worst that has happened to you at your workplace? People usually spend about eight hours, or sometimes more, at work, and the last thing they want to experience there is toxicity. Be it a terrible boss or a problematic coworker, people don't want their workday ruined by any of these things.

Many people have experienced what it feels like to work with their least favorite people. Some of them narrated their experiences on Reddit, sharing how they dealt with their toxic coworkers.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

1. He Wants It His Way

u/inu_yasha: My coworker likes to initiate conversations, then does long pauses where you go to say something back, then he cuts you off and keeps talking.

He has entire conversations almost entirely by himself. He also likes to make changes to my paperwork before it's turned in.

It ends up riddled with spelling mistakes while he tries to make the content look smarter. Fortunately, it's all electronically stamped with who made revisions.

2. The Toxic Supervisor

u/wildlilmoonchild: One Tuesday morning, I got a call, and my boss slurred her words and told me to bring her hangover food. I showed up about 20 minutes before my scheduled shift, and when I walked in, she could not stand up straight and smelled of alcohol. We work in the MRDD field.

Once our head supervisor left, she confessed she was drunk and proceeded to sleep. She left me to care for four individuals for eight hours while she was still on the clock.

That following Thursday, I showed up to work again, and she told me that if I told anyone that she was drinking at work, I would lose my job and license.

That weekend, she tried to force me to work a 3 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift because someone had a fever and couldn't come in.

When I told her I was not required to cover anything outside of my shift without prior consent, she screamed again in my face and told me just to leave. I called my head supervisor, and I haven't heard anything yet.

Two weeks later, I broke my foot on my weekend off. I called her from the hospital Sunday afternoon, telling her I have to have the next 48 hours off to start the healing process somewhat, and she refused that and put me on light duty.

I showed up Monday afternoon, 26 hours after receiving the proper medical care for my foot, and said something about my foot hurting. She replied, "Well, a chunky girl of your size can't carry your own weight."

I'm not small, but I'm happy where I am, and my weight has nothing to do with the fact that I broke a bone less than 48 hours ago and only 24 hours with medical care.

She then proceeded to leave me alone with a seizure patient who put herself on the floor, and I had to pick her up. She came back in around 9:30 p.m. to put them into bed, and she was drinking again!

3. It Was a Terrible Night

u/Disastrous-Rabbit643: It was a regular work night out. This was my first time going out with work friends, though the others had been on nights out before.

I suffered in the past with substance issues, so when I offered for R to stay at my house as she doesn't live locally, I warned her that I did not intend to do more than have just a few drinks and briefly explained my past.

The night started like any other, but when the bars closed, I was drunk and invited a few people back to my house to continue the party.

After a while, everyone left except for me, R, and N. They started having these deep conversations, admitting they were in love with each other, but R said she couldn't do anything because N was married.

N said he didn't care about his marriage and wanted to get intimate with her and me. I immediately refused and told them to keep me out of it.

Their conversations continued, with the two of them eventually asking me to leave the room (keep in mind this is my house). I went, and at this point, I felt terrible and like the whole situation was strange.

When I woke up the following morning, I realized I had gone into the room that night and joined them. It was a terrible night.

4. My Worst Fear Came Alive

u/gefallenesterne: I work as an EMT, and today, quality management called my coworker (which is always a bad thing), so we were both nervous.

I dropped off our patient at the hospital so my coworker could call back. When he did, he told me that one of our previous patients had died because of us and that we were being sued.

My heart dropped upon hearing that. A dark feeling came over me, consuming me. I had ruined my life and the lives of others while I was trying to help people.

I believed it for a few moments until I asked, "You're kidding me, right?" Now, I still feel hurt, stupid, and vulnerable that someone reinforced some of my worst fears just for fun.

5. I Almost Got Arrested

u/jellojock: My worst co-worker was one I worked with as a cashier at Walmart. She approached me and asked me to cash out her paycheck.

I was still new at the job and never got training to do that function. She was sympathetic, so she walked me through how to do it. Transaction over and done, I go on about my day.

My managers called me back a couple of days later, and they circled me in an office and accused me of stealing.

After tears, videotapes, and telling them what happened, they revealed that this coworker of mine had stolen not only from me but several other people that day as well. They just wanted to confirm I wasn't in on the deal.

6. The Negative Reviews Did It

u/Substantial_Salt: I work at a fast-food restaurant and have been here for two years. I met the worst coworker here, a family member of the owner.

He is slow, causes extra work for everyone, and bosses around for no reason. He also takes advantage of the situation and makes the female employees do his job. I was done with his behavior, so I decided to take revenge.

I created a fake Google account with his name and asked my coworkers if he was the worst employee. I recorded everyone's positive responses and printed hundreds of copies.

Then, I placed a copy in a bathroom stall and waited for the customers to bring it to the manager. I kept replacing them until negative reviews started pouring in. The customers wanted the owner to fire my coworker, and it worked. He was soon fired.

7. Things Took an Unexpected Turn

u/Spartannia: I worked at Arby's in college and met some of the worst coworkers. One of my female managers had just split with her husband, so she started seeing a male kitchen worker.

When that went sour, she got intimate with a female employee. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem, but the male worker still had feelings, leading to nasty shouting matches during work hours.

Moreover, they would try to pull other employees into it and force us to take sides. It was annoying.

8. She Was Angry

u/AtlantaFieldClowns: I worked with a girl who would sometimes lie on the floor and play on her phone. She would routinely flip out about something her boyfriend did.

While furious at her boyfriend, she used to scream curse words, sometimes in front of customers. Eventually, the management fired her for substance abuse during work hours.

9. There Are Some Unwritten Rules

u/M37h3w3: I had a coworker named Cindy. She did not understand the unwritten rules and niceties people follow in regular human interaction. I learned about it when another coworker left on bereavement leave for a while.

The first thing Cindy says to this other coworker when she gets back is, "Did you sell it yet?" "It" being the coworker's dead husband's truck.

10. The Unhygienic Reminder

u/litkat16: I had a manager once who dumped trash on my desk on my third day there. She said she did it to remind me that taking out the garbage was part of my job description (it wasn't. I was a research assistant at a mortgage firm).

11. My Toxic Coworkers

u/ButterscotchThis9815: Several years ago, I worked at a company with a bad work-life balance. We had a coworker going on maternity leave, so my manager had me and this guy take over the work.

After my coworker left for maternity leave, I went to this guy. I tried to figure out how to divide the workload between us, only to find out that he went to our manager behind my back and argued that he had more important stuff to do and I should take on all the workload myself.

My manager agreed because he hated that the big boss trusted me more than him (but I was there much longer than him).

I later found that the "more important stuff" my manager had him work on was actually just interviewing, and I was more qualified, given my experience. Instead, I did double the busy work and was absolutely miserable.

I then found a new and better job several months later and was promoted within a year at the new job.

One day, my boss at my new job asked me, "Have you worked with these people at your previous job?" It turned out that my manager and coworker from my previous job applied to the same opening position at my new job!

I told my new boss they are not qualified or great team players—all the negative things. Then, my new boss just tossed both resumes out of the window and didn't even give them an initial interview, which they would have gotten because of their experience.

12. He Was Cooking Something Else

u/Sirnando138: I hired a cook on someone's recommendation, and his work was great for the first two weeks. Then, I noticed food going missing.

A few days later, the supplies mysteriously started disappearing. Soon, a customer told me this guy had been adding auto 30% tips to food purchases. I had to find out the truth.

I soon learned he had added 30% tips to ALL the credit card sales. And the cash rings were off from what should have been sold. I fired him that day.

The next day, he came in and apologized, saying he was going to rehab soon. The following day, he tried to break in after closing time and was caught.

13. She Liked Abandoning Patients

u/Melissa-Crown: I work in a hospital as a nurse's aide, and my department focuses on transporting patients around the facility for tests and room changes. I work the night shift, and this person started their shift at 6 a.m.

There was this lady I worked with who just had the nastiest attitude. Usually, I can get along with most folks, but this person just brought the whole room down with negative vibes.

One thing she did that upset many people was take patients for X-rays and leave them there to return to our office. The critical thing to remember here is that even the lengthiest X-rays take 10 minutes at the very most (2-5 minutes on average for the scans).

Every morning, we got X-rays to do, and I had to send her back down to return patients to their rooms after the X-ray technicians called right as she returned to our office.

The instances of leaving patients were increasing, so I informed my boss several times in person and by email. Apparently, she had an attitude with every other department we worked with and never told nurses that we were moving their patients.

One day, she had abandoned a patient in the ER waiting room when they were waiting to go home and told no one. Soon, security found a patient sitting alone for 15-30 minutes without supervision.

It took this and a year of recorded evidence for this person to get fired finally. When that happened, it felt like a dark cloud lifted above us, and many people were relieved.

14. Was He an Actor?

u/systauroo: I worked at Starbucks for a year (one of the worst years of my life), and I had a coworker named Eric while I was there.

I was at the till the day Eric came in with his resume, and under his name, he had typed "architect of imagination." Eric was an aspiring writer but struggled to string a sentence together.

He couldn't be on the machine because he couldn't remember how to use it or how any single drink was made. He couldn't be a support role because he could not predict or understand what anyone else on the floor needed or even was saying.

He couldn't be on the register because he couldn't mark a cup, and even our most patient customers would inevitably raise their voices at his incompetence. Reliably, he would genuinely look like he was about to cry.

I was so torn between rage and pity. He made a terrible job so much more complicated, but he was just so breathtakingly, pitifully, shockingly dumb. I have never met anyone like him.

One night, I was thinking about something particularly vicious I had said in response to something baffling Eric had done and found myself wondering about his life outside our store.

Was the world scary and confusing to Eric? Did it seem like life was just happening to him? I imagined him standing in traffic, looking vaguely surprised and confused, forgetting how he had gotten there. I looked him up on Facebook and was pretty disturbed by what I found.

Eric didn't look awkward or scared on Facebook. He looked stylish and suave. He had product in his hair. Beautiful women in expensive-looking clothes smiled in his photos.

Several posted on his wall, expressing their recent good time with him, often citing a "writing sesh." It felt like I was on a different plane. It felt like I was having a stroke. So then my question became, who is Eric? And who is scamming whom?

The popular theory in the store was that Eric was essentially a method actor, doing research for a book or script. I came close to asking him about it a few times, but I was so afraid that I was wrong.

I imagined myself over and over asking, "Are you a method actor, or are you really and truly this stupid?" It just wasn't something I could bring myself to risk. I wonder about him all the time and who he might be terrorizing today.

15. She Thought I Didn't Know

u/mandz_camz24: When I was an intern, this older woman would call people into her office (my cube shared a thin wall), gossip, then call those people in to tell them what was said, etc.

She would try to frame people for things she did wrong. She was so arrogant. And she refused to adapt to workforce modernization. For example, she refused to learn how hyperlinks work in emails, documents, etc. A real ray of sunshine she was!

16. The Secretary

u/moekay: I worked in a law office with a secretary who refused to do anything because "she didn't know how." She couldn't do documents in Word, scan, or use the billing software and refused to learn. She would take things home for her grandson to do.

Edit: Somehow, she was hired full-time after being a contractor. When she was hourly, she called in sick to work enough to keep her Medicaid and government benefits.

17. Working In Childcare

u/ameliadenice: I worked in childcare, and they hired a new assistant/trainee teacher for my room (each room has two teachers). She always tried to argue with me about both company and state childcare policies because "that's dumb."

Also, she was late every day during her first week there. It all started adding up the day I was changing diapers, and she was holding a 2-year-old child on her lap.

I see a child biting another child and say, "You need to go help them," as I have a child in the middle of a very explosive diaper change up on the changing table and can't leave him there.

She doesn't get up. I repeat it, and she says, "Well, I have this kid on my lap," so I say, "Take him off your lap." She responds, "He's strong," like this adult cannot move a 2-year-old off her lap because of some weird super strength.

Then the child bites the other child again, and at that point, I'm mad and tell her to get up and help them now.

She then proceeds to say, "So what? I have to watch these four kids while you just have ONE up on the table?!" like I'm somehow supposed to have multiple children on the table at once to make her job of sitting on the floor making sure kids don't get bit twice in a row easier.

I finished my diaper change, stuck my head out the door to my supervisor, and told her, "Get this lady out of my room." They did after and wrote her up after reviewing the incident footage.

She was fired for remaining absent without notice the following week. I have worked with many idiots in childcare, but she was terrible during our short interaction.

18. He Was Lying

u/BobbySanchoas: I've worked at many factories, but one I worked at was mainly for felons. The pay is very low and they make you work so hard it tears your body and mind up.

I had just graduated high school, and it was my second factory, so I didn't know any better. There was one guy I worked with who we named Big Matt since we already had another Matt.

Well, Big Matt was into drug abuse, but this 35-year-old still lived with his mom. He said it had to do with him watching his mother being mistreated when he was a kid. Since then, he never wanted to leave her alone.

At the time, I thought, "Wow, that would explain the substance abuse. He just wants to be strong to protect her." Well, I was an idiot.

Two months later, Big Matt and two coworkers didn't show up, so I asked the supervisor what happened, but he didn't know either.

The next day, one of the coworkers came in and told us that all three had been arrested because Big Matt's mom called the cops on them when they were buying drugs.

So, before the cops showed up, Big Matt, a 6-foot, some odd-inch muscular man, beat his mother for calling the cops on him. The next day, I looked him up, and sure enough, he was booked in a local prison. He was the worst coworker I had ever met.

19. No Perfumes

u/[deleted]: The office I worked in instituted a scent-free policy. One woman, who was already insufferable, was so offended by it that she snuck in her perfume collection.

She'd walk down the halls and spray perfume into empty offices or cubicles when no one was looking or before everyone arrived in the morning.

This continued for over a month or two, and we had no idea who was responsible. My coworkers and I started referring to this mysterious person as the 'Chanel Bandit.'

She was finally caught on camera in the act. She had left for a three-week vacation and was unaware we had cameras installed.

Some of us already suspected her, as the Chanel Bandit mysteriously stopped spraying while she was away. She quit right after she was caught. None of us were sad to see that cedar-scented woman leave.

20. She Thought She Was a Star

u/weirdycork: I worked for a particular touring exhibition last summer. And of the 200 people applying for jobs, 20 got the job.

We were all close-knit and shared a love for the exhibit content and being all genuinely interesting people made us a family except for one woman. She thought she was the world's biggest star for having a 3-second cameo on GOT.

She sent harassing messages and calls to many of us. She harassed a lovely guy on the shop team who had no interest. Undermined the bosses constantly, talked back, and was rude to customers.

When she thought we talked about her behind her back, she got defensive and spiteful (we didn't). One day, she got rejected for good by the shop guy. For some reason, she decided to take it out on me. She started gossiping about me to every coworker but never said anything to my face.

She called me a white snake. Now, I am albino, and my hair color got me seriously bullied in school, so her name-calling was very hurtful. I had enough and took it to HR, and she was fired for her actions.

21. The Unbearable Odor

u/Kether_Nefesh: I'm pretty cool about it. People all have their roles to play, but once, we had a secretary who would microwave eggs and canned tuna every morning in a bowl.

Now, I am not a violent person, but the smell generated from microwaved eggs and canned tuna is downright repulsive by anyone's standards.

22. I'm Better than That

u/WatchTheBoom: One of my favorite things about being in the military was that your pre-military status did not matter. Everyone wears the same uniform, and you'd never know if your favorite military leader came from privilege or squalor.

For all of its drawbacks, the uniform is an objectively effective unifier. It levels the playing field. Looking the same as everyone else challenged me to ensure that my work ethic and ideas created opportunities, not some predetermined status.

I had a peer who was "better" than all of that. He didn't do the work unless it interested him (we didn't do interesting things) and constantly complained that our work was below him.

He tried to pay others to do his work for him on more than one occasion. His entire point of being in the military was to prove to his father that he could earn something, and he sought to accomplish that by claiming he'd already earned it.

23. I've Had Enough

u/TypicalRoof2: Years ago, I started working as a receptionist in an audiology clinic. So we do hearing aids and hearing tests. The only thing I knew about hearing aids before I took this job was that my grandpa had one.

Eight months after I started, they hired a new provider, who I would later discover knew nothing about anything. Not hearing aids, not basic you-should-know-this-if-you've-had-a-job-ever, not how to handle talking to bosses, patients, people over the phone, etc.

Example: we had one patient who left her hearing aids with us to be fixed. She would call every once in a while to check on them, and I would say, "I'll ask the provider to call you and update you," which I did.

FOUR MONTHS LATER, the same patient called, and I discovered the provider had been ignoring me every time I told her to call the patient, and she just didn't call her ever.

Another example: she could NEVER, EVER remember to clock in and out. Ever. It was a daily struggle for her. She would have to send time card adjustments every day and then complain to me when our boss was annoyed.

She didn't know how to fill out repair forms, so every time we had to send something out, I would double-check and ensure everything was filled out correctly and legibly.

Again, she is the provider credentialed in this field, and I'm the receptionist with eight months of experience with hearing aids.

She wouldn't do chart notes for weeks, literally. She would have patient charts stacked in the corner of her office for days, forget to make chart notes, put in the incorrect dates, and spell the patient's name wrong, so I would have to double-check every chart before putting it back on the shelves.

She would do nothing if she didn't know what to do with a patient (which was common). So, I would have to pick up ALL of that slack, deal with the patients, take their complaints, and talk to manufacturers over the phone. There were even times when I had to recommend hearing aids to patients because she just wouldn't.

She would constantly forget to have patients sign paperwork. I would put a sticky note on the chart saying, "PATIENT MUST SIGN," and I would tell her beforehand. Yet, she would STILL let them leave without signing purchase agreements and medical waivers.

She could NOT keep track of the time. She would be going 10-30 minutes over appointment times, and I would have to deal with the angry patient.

I would tell her, "Hey! Time warning," and she'd say, "Okay," and ignore me. She would keep elderly patients in for her new patient appointments for two or more hours—usually an hour and a half.

Sometimes, patients would have to tell her they needed to leave because they were tired or their feet hurt. These people are in their 80s.

And the best: everything that went wrong was my fault. My coworker would blame me for her poor job performance, inability to retain patients, and selling hearing aids.

After six months of this, I finally spoke up. I hadn't said anything until now because she was lovely apart from work, and I felt terrible for her.

But everyone has their limits, and also, our company was starting to zero in on her because she wasn't making them any money.

She was put on daily Zoom meetings with our boss and trainers. When this happened, they finally realized why she was making almost zero money and fired her.

They told her they were shutting down the clinic altogether, but instead, they hired a new provider with loads more education and experience—someone who is confident and young and knows how an iPhone works.

The only thing I got from this experience was a 30-cent raise (at the end of the year) and a significant increase in my anxiety med dosage. Also, I guess I learned a lot about my job.

24. The Visiting Researcher

u/[deleted]: He just wouldn't work. This was in a research lab. He was a visiting researcher from another country and spent a lot of time asking tons of non-work related questions, to the point of disrupting others' work.

He designed one very basic experiment in a year but didn't actually do it. Just designed it. He was above doing bench work, apparently.

He picked fights with everyone doing any experiment related to the one he was planning because he wanted to avoid having to share credit with anyone.

He wouldn't clean up after himself or pick up things from the floor. He actually called me in from another room because he wouldn't take a string-less tea bag out of his mug.

Also, on a different occasion, he had knocked some things off a hanger on the back of the door and wouldn't pick them up for whatever reason. He called me to do it.

It was kind of like working with a child. He must've had servants where he lived. I don't know how, but he was there for his PhD. My boss fired him. He was one of two people she'd ever fired in her 30+ year career.

25. The Grocery Store Coworker

u/bigbrainbingi: I worked at a grocery store, and one of the scheduling ladies was terrible. You expect to have shifts everywhere when you work at a grocery store. That's part of the job, so I'm not complaining.

Just about two years into working there, I had an accident and broke my thumb/hand (not while at work, unfortunately) and needed surgery.

I went to apply for Employment Insurance (EI). They required a Record of Employment (ROE), so I asked the woman in charge of that (the scheduling lady) if she would mind sending that so I could still pay rent while I was off work recovering (she told me she already had).

So I went back to the EI offices, and they told me they still had no ROE, so I returned to my old work and asked her again.

This happened until I asked her to do it four times. This resulted in me having to borrow money from my parents for Christmas to pay my rent.

26. The Personal Shopper

u/figaro-il-gatto: My coworker tried to get me fired a couple of times while working as a personal shopper because she saw me moving up faster than her.

We both got sent to work at a different location for a couple of months, and she went around bad-mouthing me to anyone who would listen, so they thought she was a better employee than me.

I proved myself with my work ethic, and they realized she was a liar, which changed their opinion of her. I went to a different location, and when she returned to our original location, she continued to say horrid things about me. My co-workers took my side and called her out on her lies. She soon left on a bad note with them.

27. My Coworker Got Fired

u/ralo229: I used to work part-time at a shipping warehouse, and at one point, we hired this sixteen-year-old kid.

He made many mistakes that we had to fix for him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first just because he was new. I was wrong.

Not only did he never learn from his mistakes, but he was always lazy and lacked self-awareness. There were instances where he would waste time scrolling on his phone or hide in the bathroom for 45 straight minutes. He thought no one would notice, but he was eventually fired a month later.

28. I Had to Find Another Job

u/soaringcats: A man in his fifties at my workplace was the business owner's son and reminded me constantly who he was if I stood up to him. He was so creepy.

He could never just tell any of the women they looked nice. He actually told me one day that my legs looked nice… I was wearing a skirt.

That was the last time I wore a skirt to work for a long time. I immediately began looking for another job. Besides this, so many other things made me realize I would never work for a family-owned business.

29. The Cash Was Missing

u/SaveTheWails: I was a swing manager at McDonald's in high school. We had one employee, Johnny, who just didn't want to do any work.

He was in the kitchen, so his duties were cooking, prep, cleaning, and restocking. His favorite thing to do was prep. Everything was going fine until the day he accidentally injured his hand.

I was working on an inventory order in the basement when Johnny came to me with his injured hand. It looked like he got into an accident with the tomato slicer.

It looked pretty bad, but I was surprised to see how calm he was. We allowed him to go home, thinking he was injured, but he never returned to work.

I was sorting cash at all the tills that night when I realized $5,000 were missing from the manager's safe. Never happened before. Never happened again. I don't know how he did it.

30. I'm Glad He Got Fired

u/PorzingisIsGod: My worst coworker was a guy who would never do his job (stocking shelves at a local grocery store) and just sat around against the forklift all day. He couldn't operate it because he was under 18.

He'd spend all of his time smoking in the bathroom, in the back alley, telling people twice his age what to do, and when the owners would walk by, he'd either get twice as mean or go and smoke. I liked it when he got fired.

31. She Returned Three Hours Later

u/hipperthanahipster: My first job was at some small grocery store that barely got enough business to stay open. My coworker, Anne, was best friends with our manager and spent hours of the shift sitting and talking about her romance with her husband and taking frequent smoke breaks in between.

She would continuously steal anything she could get away with. One night, while she and I were forced to face the store (pull every item up on the shelves), she said she would run to the beer store.

Seeing that it was only ten steps away, I let her go. Three hours later, she comes back after I'm all finished and 20 minutes away from closing.

Anyway, a couple of months later, she got caught going into the computer system, changing the meat prices so she could save money on steaks already on sale.

32. Click, Click, Click

u/StickleyMan: The worst coworker I have ever had was a woman. She sat next to me and clicked her pen all day long. Click, click, click, click, click.

It wasn't even rhythmic—just a random cacophony of clicks. It was enough to make a man lose his mind and want to snatch that pen away from her. She was the worst.

33. My Boss Didn't Care

u/darksoldierk: My mother has been in the hospital for two weeks. Doctors told us she could have days or weeks to live but not months.

I found out two weeks ago and told my boss that I'd be doing hospital runs almost daily, so instead of working my regular 11-hour days, I'd be working 8 or 9 hours.

On Tuesday, my boss asked me if she could book a meeting for Thursday with the client to close up the file, and I told her, "No, the file is nowhere close to being finished. Wait until Monday."

At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, she emailed the client asking for a meeting on Thursday. The client responded at 6:30 a.m. and accepted. I came in at 8 a.m. and got sidelined.

I worked 32 hours in 48 hours, couldn't see my mother in 3 days, and my family was angry at me for choosing work over my dying mother.

34. It Was a Nightmare

u/iBelieveInSpace: I was bartending at a nightclub where the owner was horrible. He regularly made all the female servers cry, skimmed our credit card tips, and was rude to us every night. But he always had something for us on Sundays.

He would call everyone to the nightclub on Sundays for "cleaning meetings." We would come in during the daytime and clean everything. He paid us with pizzas. We all needed the job, so no one spoke up. God, I hated that place.

35. The Strange Scientist

u/coalingotham: I worked at a place where I had this coworker who was a brilliant scientist. A nice, quiet, respectful guy. One day, he went into his office, and there was a great roar and a green blur, after which I fell unconscious.

When I woke up, I found out he had left, and no one had heard from him since then. When they saw his office, they found out he had destroyed everything and somehow made a hole in the side of the building. He seemed like quite a respectful guy.

36. My Coworker at the Funeral Home

u/Stuckinawhale: I'm a funeral director, but I was a live-in night attendant at a big-name funeral home before I was licensed.

Live-in means I did live at the funeral, which always surprises people, but it's very common for funeral homes to have apartments.

As a night attendant, my job was to answer the phones at night when someone was calling to report a death.

The funeral home always had two night attendants to split up the work. Unfortunately, about six months after I started working, my coworker/roommate graduated college and moved out.

They hired a new night attendant, who I soon discovered was terrible. She never cleaned, we always had fruit flies, she refused to let the air conditioner be on, she would throw away my food in the fridge, and then it got weird.

She started walking into my room unannounced, even if I was sleeping. I had to start locking my door. When I'd take a death call at night, she'd wake up to ask me who called and why. Why do you think someone is calling at 3 a.m.? Someone died.

BUT WAIT! There's more. She was practically a mad scientist. She was always making homemade soap, lotion, etc.

One weekend, she made homemade root beer. We shared a giant walk-in closet, and apparently she decided that was a good place to store the root beer. It exploded.

It ruined half my clothes, but I understand mistakes happen, so I informed her of the catastrophe, thinking she'd help me clean, pay for dry cleaning, or something. No, she laughed. She didn't even apologize. So I called my boss that night and quit.

37. The Liar

u/[deleted]: We had a guy who would spend all day doing nothing but playing Angry Birds on his phone and going on random 20-minute walks through the building. He accused the HR managers of bullying him anytime they decided he needed to start working.

The cherry on top was he was desperate to be a white knight, so he would falsely tell people's girlfriends they were being cheated on and then offer himself as a fedora-clad shoulder to cry on.

These people shared who were the worst people they had worked with and how the experience was. Have you ever been in a similar situation? Who is the worst coworker you have ever had, and why? We would love to know about your experiences.