Sudden yelling from a distant office. Doors being slammed. Dramatic conference room exits. If these sound familiar, you’ve probably borne witness to the infamous workplace meltdown.
At some point in your career, everybody gets the privilege of experiencing an epic office meltdown. Whether it was one of your coworkers who finally snapped after a bad day, or it was you, losing it after receiving unwarranted criticism – uh, “feedback” – our day-to-day jobs can be stressful, and meltdowns will inevitably happen anywhere you choose to work. Take it from our friends on Reddit, who revealed some of the most epic work meltdowns they have ever encountered.
This “Very Chill” IT Worker
Reddit user meltdowninteractive shares a story that makes us all wish we had this kind of job security:
“I worked in IT and one guy, who was one of the most chilled guys I knew, was responsible for the deployment, updates and maintenance of a specific product that generated high revenue. One afternoon I was sitting at my desk and just heard a big crash and saw one of his 3 monitors on the floor. He stood up, shoved the next monitor over the divider onto the next sections desk, then swiped the third monitor off the other side, picked up his keyboard and smashed it as hard as he could, kicked his chair away and slowly, and calmly walked out the department, without saying a word. He came back to work the next day as if nothing happened. Everyone knew the pressure he was under and was very good at his job so nobody said a thing.”
This Teacher Who Finally Cracked
Recalling a memory from 7th grade, user jmtyndall tells us about an epic meltdown he remembers his teacher having:
“There was a girl who always talked in class. She got moved to the front at some point and she was laughing and giggling as always. After being told to be quiet about 8 times, the teacher is standing front and center in front of her, back to her and writing an example on the board. Girl has one of those plastic pencil boxes all the girls used to decorate sitting on the front corner of her desk.The teacher just cracked. In one smooth motion he spins around, yells SHUT UP and smacks the box as hard as he can and it goes flying 15 feet across the room, smashes into the wall. Pencils. Freaking. Everywhere. He swiftly walks to the door, slams it shut and we could hear pounding on the wall. One brave kid peeks out the window….dude was banging his head against the wall. About two minutes later, he walks back in. Crickets, not a noise in the classroom. He begins walking around picking up every single pen and pencil, puts them all in the box, places it gently on her desk and continues the example like the nothing ever happened. It was exquisite.”
The Upset Grocery Bagger
Makeitwork1989 tells a story from his younger days when he was working at a grocery store:
“This kid was upset at another grocery bagger and swearing in front of the customers. He said he was hoping he’d get fired. I told him he should quit before he gets fired so that it would look better on his resume in the future. A few minutes later, I realized he was missing. Suddenly, he comes around the corner from the managers office no longer in uniform (he threw his uniform in the trash in front of the manager) then he looked at me and said loudly ‘I took your advice’ then proceeded to walk across the front end, point to each associate saying ‘f*** you’ to each of them and walked out. Everyone was staring at me after and I said ‘I did not tell him to do THAT!'”
This Upset Radio DJ and the “Trumpets of Jesus”
User zeddemore99 explains how his coworker combined revenge and a meltdown at his radio job:
“One of the group of stations I worked at had an oldies station, a rock station and a pop station in the same building. We had an announcer who was really eager and wanted to learn and work and was really a great guy, but the big bosses were total jerks to him and were stuck in their old ways of doing things. They treated the announcer (we’ll call him Howard) really poorly and Howard used to come in and vent about it. He ended up getting hired at another station but before he left, he went into the music libraries and replaced all the Led Zeppelin songs on the rock station with a gospel song from the oldies station called, ‘Trumpets Of Jesus.’ For an entire weekend, any time Led Zeppelin was supposed to play, ‘Trumpets Of Jesus’ played instead. Howard has since gone on to become program director and has won all kinds of leadership awards…total legend!”
Tell Us What You Think
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