Biggest scandal in your workplace (Mod Note in OP)

I've a good few I can't post on here

One that is safe and fairly unidentifiable

We used to do on call for a company as a contractor. So out of hours if something broke we'd have to send someone down to fix whatever broke.

I used to get the calls when it was broken and i'd have to dole them out to someone.

After a while I happened to notice a pattern of call outs when a certain person was on call.

In arrives the call so I said i'd go and take a look to see what was going on. On the way to the call the guy who was on call rang and asked had anything come in.

Told him it hadn't

When I got there I found he'd a timer plug on an essential piece of equipment. So he'd set it to go off for two hours on a sunday or bank holiday monday to get an alarm of an outage and it would reset itself after two hours and everything would come back working again.

Clever Boy. I reported it to the boss man he didnt lose his jon but he got an awful bollocking for it

DelBoy Trotter wrote: »

I have never once heard anybody at that in the office toilets

I'm very quiet.

Anyone remember the case of the Irish mining company Kenmare Resources and one of their directors Donal Kinsella? The directors were all in a hotel in Mozambique along with the company secretary. At night Kinsella shows up naked at the secretaries hotel room door three times. She complained and the company sent out a press release to the media which said they were asking him to resign over his behaviour. Kinsella takes a defamation action and he claims he was prone to naked sleepwalking, the judge ruled in his favour and awarded the highest ever defamation award in Ireland -€10m to Kinsella.

This all happened back in 2007 and the main court case where he won the €10m was in 2010. But just last year the case finally came up for appeal and the court there reduced the award from €10m down to €250,000, ouch!

Many years ago I worked as a chef in a prestigious family owned hotel.
We were all sitting around one day and one of the owners pointed out a ceramic bowl and began talking about how certain well known customers used to have private dinner parties in the late 1970s where the men used to throw their car keys into that bowl and how when everyone was leaving their wives/partners would retrieve the keys. She said she always wondered why they did that...
There was utter silence for a while before we all burst out laughing and it was explained to her that these private dinner parties were what are known as 'wife swapping parties'. Even then she didn't get it. We nearly had to draw pictures.
When the penny dropped she was horrified. The ceramic bowl was put into storage and never seen again.

On another occasion a high ranking British diplomat was staying (we often had high ranking diplomats incl ambassadors, presidents etc) but this time British secret service wanted to see the 'document's' (passports and the like) of all the staff. We had a French Head Chef and he lost his sh*t over it. He insisted that British agents had no right to ask Irish people in Ireland for ID documents and he would shut the kitchen if they even set foot in there.
This guy was 6 foot five with a very strong French accents and he was roaring at the British agent in charge that it was an outrage to think he could just march in and ask Irish people doing their jobs in their own country to answer his questions..

vriesmays wrote: »

He was right to object.

Because he had “something” to hide?

bear1 wrote: »

Cause it isn't Britain.

You don’t think it’s “standard procedure” or just plain smart for British, or any country’s, security to question the staff of a hotel their diplomats are staying in?

The chef should have been sent home if he refused to answer the “questions”. But I’m guessing he complied in the end.

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

You don’t think it’s “standard procedure” or just plain smart for British, or any country’s, security to question the staff of a hotel their diplomats are staying in?

The chef should have been sent home if he refused to answer the “questions”. But I’m guessing he complied in the end.

You guessed wrong.

And his objection was to Irish staff having to show British agents ID in Ireland.
He had no problem providing his own.

And it was the only time such a request was made, despite having many other diplomats from many other countries - incl the UK - staying.

Personally I would have refused to provide it if asked.
Should I have been 'sent home'?

Seth Brundle wrote: »

So if a foreigner came to your workplace and made that demand, you'd readily comply?

Where did I say, or indeed even allude to that?

Bear1 said

bear1 wrote: »

They demanded their passports. What does seeing a passport tell you about the person apart from their nationality?

I replied explaining what sight of a passport could show aside from nationality.
I also made fairly clear that

banie01 wrote: »

Not that I agree with a foreign agent making demands of anyone in Ireland.

But allow me to make it clear, a foreign agent has no jurisdiction to make such a demand of any person in Ireland nor do I believe they should have.
Now the usual way a demand such as work documents or ID for staff attending a foreign visiting dignitary is presented, is via a Garda Liaison and it is done well in advance of any dignitary rocking up.

Any member of a protection detail making a direct demand for such documentation outside of the Garda Liaison channel, should quite rightly be told to go fúck themselves with whichever implement they'd prefer

banie01 wrote: »

Where did I say, or indeed even allude to that?

Bear1 said


I replied explaining what sight of a passport could show aside from nationality.
I also made fairly clear that


But allow me to make it clear, a foreign agent has no jurisdiction to make such a demand of any person in Ireland nor do I believe they should have.
Now the usual way a demand such as work documents or ID for staff attending a foreign visiting dignitary is presented, is via a Garda Liaison and it is done well in advance of any dignitary rocking up.

Any member of a protection detail making a direct demand for such documentation outside of the Garda Liaison channel, should quite rightly be told to go fúck themselves with whichever implement they'd prefer

The Irish side knew all the staff. We fed them.

I'm thinking about the guy who posted on here about making a slushi drum on one of those machines out of a cleaning agent by mistake... 'boy was my face red'

Nowhere near as big a deal as some of the stories here, but a fella I know always carries two phones with him. Not uncommon, I just presumed one was his work phone.

I was right - it was a work phone, but for the company he left over 10 years ago. He was supposed to hand it back on his last day but told them he forgot it at home and that he’d drop it in next time he was passing by. He’s been using it away for the last decade and must have cost them thousands.

Anyone who worked in **** in Swords will have loads of these stories.

Two guys sacked on separate occasions for sexual assault, and harassment.

Another guy sacked because he put up on Facebook that he wanted to lock the doors with everyone inside and burn it down.

The Phantom ****ter

The guy who was brought in by HR to have his probation extended because he had too many sick days, but came out of the meeting and immediately started threatening his manager (of ten days), then ran out of the building, never to be seen again.

Fraulein Fraud, a German girl who was hired for the retention team, so constantly dealing with credit/debit cards. One day one of the lads shows us a news story about her many scams. Was reported to HR, and she was fired.

The guy who had his office PC taken away by Gardaí. He lived with workmates, and they could hear the conversation between him and his solicitor, with the solicitor saying "this is what we'll tell them". His flatmate just kept thinking, surely just tell the truth if you've done nothing wrong. This article is about it I think (behind a pay wall, so can't be 100%): https://www.leinsterleader.ie/news/local-news/72669/Judge-refuses-to-hear-child-porn.html

In the late 80s I worked in an Irish pub in a big English midlands town. There was a huge Irish contingent so there was the obligatory "Irish Centre". I was very friendly with the steward. Very decent chap. Never afraid to decorate the mahogany. He had the total running of the bar and was only answerable to a committee of people who knew very little about accounting.

The place was always heaving with 18st to 80th birthdays, anniversaries, funeral and wedding afters, bands over from Ireland etc. etc.

He'd been there about 5 years when his mother had a stroke and he had to go home to Ireland for three months. In those three months the takings went up by about 30% with no extra footfall. When he came back the takings dropped again.

After investigations it turned out he'd been bringing in his own beer, spirits and cigarettes and cigars. There was a till for busy nights that only he used. Remember in those days a till was just a calculator with a cash drawer and there was no CCTV. The place was making a healthy profit on 70% of the takings so nobody questioned anything

He promptly got the boot and headed off to another town "Up North" in a 5 year old V12 Jag to start all over again.

tylercheribini wrote: »

Jaysus a lot of child porn *****, why do they think its somehow safer in work?

I don't know but he was trusted by friends around kids and had kids himself...

So sad for all involved.

sligojoek wrote: »

In the late 80s I worked in an Irish pub in a big English midlands town. There was a huge Irish contingent so there was the obligatory "Irish Centre". I was very friendly with the steward. Very decent chap. Never afraid to decorate the mahogany. He had the total running of the bar and was only answerable to a committee of people who knew very little about accounting.

The place was always heaving with 18st to 80th birthdays, anniversaries, funeral and wedding afters, bands over from Ireland etc. etc.

He'd been there about 5 years when his mother had a stroke and he had to go home to Ireland for three months. In those three months the takings went up by about 30% with no extra footfall. When he came back the takings dropped again.

After investigations it turned out he'd been bringing in his own beer, spirits and cigarettes and cigars. There was a till for busy nights that only he used. Remember in those days a till was just a calculator with a cash drawer and there was no CCTV. The place was making a healthy profit on 70% of the takings so nobody questioned anything

He promptly got the boot and headed off to another town "Up North" in a 5 year old V12 Jag to start all over again.

Somewhat similar story about my ex pub landlord in England.
Big pub with a massive Irish clientele ,was very good with his customers and would hand his good loyal drinkers a wad of unsolicited cash if they had a death back in Ireland at a time when Aer Lingus charged the price of a second hand car to fly over and back.
Was a brewery run pub where himself and his partner were on around 300 pound a week between them.

They arrived back in Ireland and went on to become one of the biggest and most famous players in the hospitality industry in Ireland to this day.

His manager took over the running of the pub and was warned by brewery managers that he was being watched as his old boss was causing quite a stir in Ireland with his acquisitions, he left within a year and bought two London properties mortgage free.

Mod - redacted a couple of identifying names.

Keep in anonymous.

facehugger99 wrote: »

Snitches get stitches.

We we're a small company at the time and if the people contracting us had of found out there'd have been big trouble !!!

Your man has since died he was only in his 30's met an awful end god love him

El Tarangu wrote: »

This doesn't make any sense; the company would have just cut the contract after a few months (and who would want a 10 year-old phone anyway, you wouldn't be able to do much with it).

Sorry I should have clarified, it's the phones monthly bill that has been paid for over the past 10 years, I presume he's changed the handset himself in that time.

Regarding why they haven't just cut the phone contract, he was working for a company who have ongoing work in one of Irelands biggest companies. His phone and monthly bill was probably one of hundreds that were being paid for. So he seems to be just taking advantage of their carelessness as they clearly don't check up on these things.