Biggest scandal in your workplace (Mod Note in OP)

We had a few in the last place I worked.

One day this woman rocked up to the branch, screaming that she wanted to see the manager and generally making a massive scene. We assumed she was an angry customer and went to get the manager. The manager refused to come out of her office, which was odd, because usually the best practice is to get customers like that out of the public eye and try to diffuse their wrath in the office. Turns out she wasn't an angry customer; she was actually the wife of a manager of another branch, and she had just found out that our manager had been riding her husband. :pac:


Then we had the guy who got cancer. Only he didn't. He was in his mid 20's and missed a couple of days and then the day before he came back, everyone was brought in to a meeting to say that he'd be back the next day but that he was going to be undergoing treatment for cancer, and would be in and out periodically while getting the treatment, but wanted to continue working "to keep his life as normal as possible". The staff were asked to help reduce his workload by taking on a few extra tasks, and of course everyone was very concerned about him and did anything they could to help.

So the guy comes in and says he'll be starting Chemo the next week, and sure enough, he misses about 3 days the next week and one day comes in with his head shaved etc. Over the following months his working week was reduced to two half-days, and on the days he came in he really looked like a guy who was very seriously ill.

Our employer had an outrageously generous sick pay arrangement - first 6 months were full pay and then it was half pay for the next 6 months. Usually if you were going to be on long term sick, you'd be sent to the company doctor, but in this guy's case he wasn't sent because they had no reason to suspect anything was amiss, he'd brought in a letter from his oncologist, and he overall looked like someone who was on death's door. So even though his working week was reduced so much, he was still getting paid his full salary.

Everyone was really worried about him - a couple of the older women in the office got together and arranged a rota between them to make a load of meals for him to put in the freezer and they'd give them to him on the days he was in. Another one went off to Knock to pray for him... and this is where it all fell apart.

The trip to Knock was part of a 3 day trip to Mayo that this woman was on during her summer annual leave. The day after the Knock visit, the tour group went to some random beach and who does she see, looking hale and hearty, carrying a surfboard back up the beach after obviously catching a few waves? She called out to him, and she said his face just dropped, and then he pretended she had the wrong person and ran off after the rest of his friends, but it was very obviously him. She rang the manager straight away and told him what she saw.

Basically after that phone call, it all went down - the manager rang him and asked could he pop over to get him to sign some paperwork relating to sick pay, and also arrange a house call from the company doctor; framed it all as being routine HR type stuff, but the dude obviously knew he was caught and just came out and admitted everything. He'd faked the letter from the oncologist, shaved his head, and was using makeup to make himself look sick. I'm not sure if he was fired, or if he resigned, but we never saw him again after that.


Then there was also an incident where the CEO of our company stepped down because he'd been caught viewing "adult material" on his office computer.