I spent a decade working in insolvency.
When we were going into a business that had failed the question was “Are the idiots, criminals or both?”
One highlight:
A boat sales / marine business goes bust. When we arrive with the paper work and seize the place there are about a dozen new boats on the lot worth several million. We change the locks on the gates.
Arrive the next day, the gates have been busted open and several million in boats are now missing. We look up the addresses of the owners (one of them lives on acreage) and drive to their property…from the road we can see the boats stashed there. Really smart guys.
So we call the police. Someone inside notices use there and decides to flee with one of the boats, it is huge but they think they can get away.
We then have the slowest car chase in history as we calmly follow this guy towing a boat on a trailer down the road while talking to the cops to meet us.
Love this. Lol.
I used to maintain a system that was used to track loss prevention. Basically security company that followed delivery trucks. It was wild to read database records about these guys openly selling their stolen goods (building supplies) while testing my code changes.
The database was sanitized of identifying info if anyone cares.
A milder story than some here:
Someone had accidentally sent an email to the whole company of 44,000 or so employees. Cue a bunch of emails -replying all- asking why they were receiving the email… followed by another wave of emails asking people to stop replying all.
Was a great popcorn moment, and made me laugh every time a new email came in.
We had this one at a place I worked, except it was a very large company and the chain started crashing servers.
Do you work for UAP? This happened recently at my job, and was fucking hilarious.
An isolated shingle spit nature reserve. We’d lost mains power in a storm some while back and were running on a generator. Fuel deliveries were hard to arrange. We’d finally got one. We were pretty much running on fumes and another storm was coming in. We really needed this delivery.
To collect the fuel, I had to take the Unimog along a dump track and across 5 miles of loose shingle - including one low causeway stretch through a lagoon that was prone to wash out during storms. We’d rebuilt it a LOT over the years. On the way up, there was plenty of water around there, but it was still solid.
I get up to the top ok and get the tank full - 2000L of red diesel - but the wind is pretty strong by the time I have. Half way back, I drop down off the seawall and reach the causeway section. The water is just about topping over. If I don’t go immediately, I won’t get through at all and we will be out of fuel for days - maybe weeks. So I put my foot down and get through that section only to find that 200 meters on, another section already has washed out. Oh shit.
I back up a little but sure enough the first section has also washed through now. I now have the vehicle and a full load of fuel marooned on a short section of causeway that is slowly washing out. Oh double shit. Probably more than double. Calling it in on the radio, everyone else agrees and starts preparing for a pollution incident.
In the end I find the firmest spot that I can in that short stretch and leave the Moggie there. Picking my route and my moment carefully I can get off that ‘island’ on foot - no hope with the truck - BUT due to the layout of the lagoons only to the seaward ridge, where the waves are now crashing over into the lagoon with alarming force. I then spend one of the longest half-hours I can remember freezing cold and drenched, scrambling yard by yard along the back side of that ridge and flattening myself and hoping each time a big wave hits.
The firm bit of causeway survived and there was no washed away Unimog or pollution in the end - and I didn’t drown either - but much more by luck than judgement.
These days I am in a position where I am responsible for writing risk assessments and methods statements for procedures like this. It was another world back then.
I worked at a sandwich shop and had given my two weeks notice a few days earlier. My manager came to me and asked me to clean up the bathroom…alright. I could smell it before I even opened the door.
I told my manager I’d clean it if he’d still give me the employee discount after I was gone. “Done”. That’s when I knew it was really bad.
When I opened the door I discovered someone had ass-blasted the bathroom. I’m not talking about blowing up the toilet, they did that too, but they had dropped their drawers and point-blank diarhea shotgunned the pipes under the sink.
My manager didn’t honor the employee discount after I was gone, either.
My manager didn’t honor the employee discount after I was gone, either.
They never do. I had a manager try that shit on me when I was working food service, and I turned it around on him and made him get one of his toadies to clean it up after talking a bunch about “not being trained for biohazard cleanup” and “OSHA regs” which got him to back down, and I told all my coworkers the same so they’d tell him to fuck off too.
Still wish I could have been there when the feds showed up and escorted him out of the building.
What’s the story behind that last sentence with the feds if you dont mind sharing
Sure, though it isn’t super exciting. The assistant store manager, Lucio (fuck you Lucio, you fucking piece of shit) was an illegal immigrant who managed to fake his way through the verification steps, and INS showed up one day and vanned him while I was away going to college.
I wasn’t sad to see that fucker go, because he had a number of Mexican kids that he let do whatever they wanted, including Edgar who sexually harassed multiple girls out of the store and Lucio wouldn’t do shit because “why would I fire him when we’re already losing one employee”. Never mind that wed already lost 4 girls at that point and one of them was pregnant at the time. I’m honestly surprised he and I never came to blows because I didn’t hide that I fucking hate him.
Then the next employee gets the same deal, and the cycle of shit continues
I used to work at a car dealership. One day I had to use a bay in a different building because my usual workplace was occupied. The other building had a lift that I hadn’t used before.
Anyways, I drove the car onto the lift, got out and placed the arms of the lift under the jacking points like I had done a thousand times before. I raised the lift a little and checked if the placement was still correct. It looked good, so I raised the car to a medium height. When I looked again, I realized that this lift had a central platform that was also raised and was set about 20 centimeters higher than the four arms that usually lift the car.
This 90.000 Euro SUV was basically balancing on a 180x50cm piece of metal right in the center. I managed to lower it down safely but my pulse goes up just thinking about that day.
