Biggest scandal in your workplace (Mod Note in OP)

jesus i didnt, and i hate to say it, think "spitting" while i was reading that

Not in my workplace but in the secondary school I went to. This happened about 8 years after I left.

I think he was a first or second year but he was caught looking up normal porn on his phone one day. He was sent to the principal's office and his phone was confiscated.

That evening he went home, got out and loaded his father's shotgun and you know the rest. All because of how hard the principal and vice principal were on him led him to fear what his parents would do or say.

The principal and vice principal were turned away from the house when they went to pay their condolences and both retired a few weeks afterwards.

Worked as a contractor in one of the bigger electronics multinationals in Ireland for a while. To say corruption aided by incompetence was rampant at African levels would be an understatement. I mean the company was well known for prosecuting thieves to the full extent of the law, how there wasn't mass arrests for fraud when the whole scandal broke is beyond me.

To give you some background, with some contractors the company paid X amount of money to get the job done, it was then up to the contractor to staff the job with appropriate numbers and arrange for cover if/when needed. Other contractors however were paid a certain hourly rate per person on site. This covered the worker's hourly wage, insurance, etc, and the balance represented the contractor's own profit.

Problem began with the maintenance guys, and just to be clear, these lads were on big bucks from the word go. Electricians, fitters, etc. They started turning up for unrequired overtime on weekends, justifying it if confronted with some fairly spurious excuses like "such and such a machine has to be stripped and I can only do it when production is stopped". They were clocking in at 8AM, and then promptly hitting the golf course, the pub, going back to bed, or off doing private nixers like re-wiring houses and the like. They'd be back 10 or 12 hours later to clock out again, pocketing double time worth several hundred euros (pounds actually at the time) in the process.

Scandal broke when the facilities manager, a former maintenance contract worker himself but by now a direct company employee and department manager, was exposed taking bribes in exchange for awarding contracts. A gig came up to supply fire extinguishers, however the real profit in this case was not in supply but in the regular maintenance and safety checks that have to follow periodically on a long term basis. Some guy offered a quote, facilities manager handed him a piece of paper with his home address on it and says "have a big screen tv and a VCR* delivered to this house and we have a deal".

(*giving away the timeline slightly here!)


In fairness to the guy making the bid, he was having none of it. Maybe he didn't need the money, maybe he didn't like being treated like a stooge, maybe he just thought the facilities manager was a creep, but he blew the whistle on the whole scam. Turns out your man was at it from day one. All the contracts were investigated and a lot of good people lost their jobs through no fault of their own. And I'm not talking about the maintenance crew here who deserved it, I mean all the cleaners and janitors got kicked out, the catering staff in the canteen went, security guards, and so on. New contractors were brought in to replace them but still, it wasn't their fault their employers went down that road in the first place.

Thankfully my own job wasn't affected as it came under the remit of supply chain management and not facilities.

On further investigation it even emerged the facilities manager had been whisking his wife off to New York for weekend shopping trips on the department credit card! No police action taken, I've no idea why, although he voluntarily surrendered his privately owned 4x4 to the company who I believe sold it.