21 People Who Became Famous at Work for All the Wrong Reasons

‘When I was in the military, I had access to classified materials…’
21 People Who Became Famous at Work for All the Wrong Reasons

Unless you’re one of those guys in a vagina suit, spinning a cardboard dildo in the direction of the local adult store, everyone wants recognition at work. After all, you’re not going to get ahead by being anonymous. Sometimes, though, the recognition that you get isn’t at all the kind that you want.

For Redditor ZombieDog, it was when they accidentally sent an email in which spellcheck had replaced every instance of the word “Pentiums” with “penis.” “My boss forwarded it to all of upper management, who in turn forwarded it on across the entire company,” they told r/AskReddit. “It was my first professional job, and within two months of working there, I was universally known as ‘The Penis Kid.’"

They then asked, “Ever do anything that unintentionally went viral at work?” and all kinds of unfortunate IRL virality followed.

. 13y ago I work at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. I dropped the wrong glass bottle, let's just leave it at that.
jgrecz . 13y ago I recently motorboated my boss in front of most of my coworkers during a night out for someone's last day. I don't think I will ever live that down.
Phobos_Deimos . 13y ago Told my slightly obnoxious deli coworker Hey kid, I'm a computer; stop all the downloadin' once. Не repeated that for MONTHS, losing his shit each and every time.
. 13y ago I work installing networks in data centers...when pulling in cables we number them with a marker pen. (1,2,3 etc) but with the numbers 6 and 9 we write 'six' and 'nine' to avoid confusion. Well I didn't know this. So when I saw it I went about asking everybody what is a 51X cable?. So now I'm known as 51X.
A2Aegis 13y ago I worked in a small office as an intern, and I was stationed at a desk that was the furthest away from all the windows, and it was poorly lit. As someone with poor eyesight, I decided to bring an old desk lamp to work (flexible arm type). Anyways, a few weeks later I noticed everyone else was getting desk lamps because they thought since I had one, everyone should be able to have one because they looked cool. Kind of a lame story, but hey, desk lamps.
. 13y ago I had itunes on my computer as I was doing design stuff all day and didn't need to communicate that much (headphones on). I didn't realise other people could listen to my stuff via the network and one day my computer slowed down to a crawl. Turns out I had 12 people listening to my music library. I became know was the guy with the awesome 90's rock.
tk1992 13y ago I work at Sam's Club handing out free samples all day. Well, about a month ago I was doing Dino Buddies chicken nuggets as my sample to hand out to everyone. I was pretty excited about this and I was singing Everybody Walk the Dinosaur pretty much all day to myself. My coworkers started to hear me and haven't stopped making fun of me since. I'm a 20 year old male to add to the embarrassment.
z3m 13y ago I used to work at a canvassing organization and you would spend a lot of time standing in one place. Eventually I got in the habit of swinging my hips in a circle and for some reason that caught on in the office and people started calling it The Mustard Barrel. I'm not sure why. But, it caught on so much that they started teaching it as part of the office training.
Tehtime . 13y ago At the army, before soldiers begin their guard duty, they go to the armory to sign for equipment, and I was responsible of making sure everyone arrived and so on. So one time I show up with these optic sunglasses and keep them on at all times, making me look distant and menacing. The guys responsible for the guard duty laughed and started calling me The Sheriff. Ever since I walk around the base with completely random people going hey its the sheriff!
damnThoseBrits 13y ago I work in visual effects for commercials at a major studio, with close to 750 employees over 4 locations. I'm American, but the company is predominantly British. I was working on a specific effect where a Dove instantly appears via a magician's trick. So, being an American, I wanted something that goes poof. So, I sent a company- wide email to all the artists seeking poof elements. Little did I know what poof means for Brits. Damn those brits.
TJAXCITY 13y ago I work in IT... this was about 5 years ago and luckily I had a really cool boss/manager.... The day after my 21st birthday I was in the bathroom throwing up for about half the day... I worked at a satellite office so not everyone could exactly hear me puking in the bathroom but anyway... after throwing up I went back to my desk and passed out leaning back in my chair when I was supposed to be monitoring server statuses. Anyway, my manager logged into the hi-def pan-tilt web cam they had for monitoring employees at
Sixtiesdude64 13y ago I work at a document digitization company where I am in charge of delivering all of the digital content to the clients and, but they still haven't given me an official title as the position I'm in has never existed within our company before. Instead, they ask me every few months what I want my title to be. For about a year I kept saying Batman. For obvious reasons they would not allow this. Until recently. My co-worker photoshopped the Batman logo to look like the wings are made out of the letter D and using the
SolidSnake4 13y ago I went out with a bunch of guys at work to a nice bar when I was an intern there a few years ago. Long story short it was an epic night and I ended up banging a girl I picked up at the bar back at her place and went to work the next morning wearing the same clothes as the night before. Luckily I keep a clean Polo in my desk at all times for such occasions but when I walked in a bunch of the people from the night before were sitting in the
CaveatLusor 13y ago While I was in the Navy we all had these cheap little pens as standard issue, clickable black plastic ballpoints. So one day I'm on watch and I'm disassembling one of these pens and I get to the clicker bit on the end and I take the metal covering off of it and discover it's hot pink underneath as opposed to the typical white plastic I'd found on other boring watches (these were made of recycled materials so I figured that it came from some melted down highlighters or something). I put the pen back together leaving
jschall2 13y ago I told a deaf guy on the phone that he wasn't worth my time. It was one of those relay calls where they're chatting via text to a person, and the person is talking, and I misinterpreted what he typed and thought he was a scammer. So he comes in with his girlfriend/wife/sister/friend/whatever, and she makes a huge scene and I immediately own up and apologize to the guy. So yeah, for a long time not worth my time was the in joke for the whole company.
ShitBeCray 13y ago I was in a pretty awful commercial when I was younger. Thought it would it get me some ladies when I agreed to be in it but it did not. Any who I started a new job in the big apple and started get chummy with one of my со workers. I had told her that when she left I would show her my ridiculous commercial. Unfortunately that day came too soon. I showed her the commercial she thought it was hilarious and I thought that was that. On her departing email to the company she sent
nogswarth 13y ago A guy I work with always tried to humiliate me in front of his buddies and our boss by constantly telling me to shave, because I like to let my facial hair grow naturally and just keep it as very short stubble, unstyled. Every god damn day he's shouting 'HAVE A SHAVE!' like he's the absolute tits. Не himself had a very thin and sleek goatee thing going on which looked really stupid to me, and also resembled a British soap opera character called Beppe di Marco in my mind. One day they are all having a coffee
GingerStu 13y ago When I was in the military, I had access to classified materials and had an e-mail account specifically to send those files. One day, as a joke, I put Sent from my iPhone at the end of one of the e-mails. I didn't realize that the message would be forwarded around. As soon as people saw that, they started contacting their supervisors about getting their own classified iPhones. Eventually it made it's way up to some generals and they lost their shit over it. I had to go report to my base commander and explain that it
kreestin 13y ago . Edited 13y ago I once unintentionally nicknamed a very nice girl Bitchface. Before she even got hired, my boss told me that they had interviewed someone with the same first name as me. I was like aw fuck, whenever that happens people always refer to me as 'the tall one' instead. I'm just going to call her bitchface instead. Не told the story to other people and then when people DID need to clarify which one of us they were referring to it was either me or bitchface. I told her about it and she thought
schneems 13y ago I used to work for National Instruments which makes a software product called labview. Unfortunately the off the shelf forum software that they use to power their community question and answer site didn't know labview, so it proceeded to replace it with labia. All the employees knew about it so they would fix before posting, but it still shows up every now and then.
ArrenPawk 13y ago . Edited 13y ago Someone took a candid picture of me at a holiday party. I had absolutely no clue. Someone cropped me and used me in a companywide email; I am now a meme throughout the studio, known as disappointed Arren.

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