Impressive workplace meltdowns

[AlteredOne]

My wife, who teaches high school science, reported an impressive meltdown at her school yesterday.  

- Teacher brags for months about her great fiancee, who happens to be an ex-inmate who runs a bank of 20 computers out of their house (supposedly for obtaining rebates 24/7), and maintains another woman in the house rent-free.
- Teacher applies to be a network administrator for the school district, despite having no qualifications in computing.  Brags that her interview consisted of getting to use superuser access to control the machines of her co-workers.  Other teachers complain to administration.
- One week later (yesterday), teacher comes to school, leaves her classes completely unattended for a morning while she cries in the lounge, then goes to her classroom.  She tapes a picture of her fiancee to the blackboard, marks an X through it, and labels it in chalk "Anal Sphincter".  Then she spends 3 hours with her students, telling them to dissect animal parts with scalpels while she burns a pile of photos one-by-one with a lighter.  For each class, she lectures the 30+ students about how she's left her fiancee because she's too tired to have sex with him.

Well, today said teacher was terminated.  How's that for a meltdown!

[Signe]

Geez... I used to manage rock musicians and nothing that interesting ever happened where I worked!  I knew those academic types were secretly a bit wild!

[Fabricated]

I never got to see anything that awesome in my whole school career, but my senior year of high school the semi-monthly drug raid got more faculty than students.

[Paelos]

In high school I saw a guy snap in the middle of a test and run out the door screaming like a banshee throwing papers in the air as he left. To which my history professor responded, "Hmmmm," and then kept on reading.

[Big Gulp]

One of my buddies had an illicit thang going on with a butt ugly teacher's aide.  She wound up stalking him when he went off to college until he eventually got it into her head to leave him the hell alone.

I have no idea if she's actually a teacher now, but I wouldn't doubt it.  And if you've ever wondered how something like female teachers screwing their 14 year old students can happen, that's pretty much how.

Anywho, we've never let him live that one down.  Dude's in his mid-30's and we still make fun of him about it.

[Kenrick]

Hmm... was she a fair spanish lady?

[Big Gulp]

Hmm... was she a fair spanish lady?

Not so much.  She was more of a chubby, acne scarred, psycho Michigander.

[Avatard]

Hmm... was she a fair spanish lady?

Not so much.  She was more of a chubby, acne scarred, psycho Michigander.

But she had that sweet smell of sex.

[AlteredOne]

I have no idea if she's actually a teacher now, but I wouldn't doubt it.  And if you've ever wondered how something like female teachers screwing their 14 year old students can happen, that's pretty much how.

Could have been this woman.  She was known for wearing tight sleeveless pink tee-shirts to teach her class, mini-skirts on occasion, and liked to show her cleavage.  And she liked to talk about how her students found her attractive.  I met her once at an Xmas party, and was not exactly impressed.  She had the look of somebody who lost about 100 pounds, wasn't fat but had some nasty stretch marks in public places.  Not exactly the sort of girl you want sharing the details of her sex life with your children...

There are some real slackers and psychos in the teaching profession, but I am happy to report my wife is not one of them.

[Avatard]

There are some real slackers and psychos in the teaching profession, but I am happy to report my wife is not one of them.

There are psychos and slackers in all sorts of professions. Postal, accounting, sales...

[AlteredOne]

There are psychos and slackers in all sorts of professions. Postal, accounting, sales...

Indeed, it's just that we don't send our children to be exposed to most of those professionals 8 hours per day :)  I was mainly amazed at how this particular teacher used her classes as a captive audience for her meltdown.  Honestly I've never heard of anything quite like it, other than maybe the disk jockey that played a single Pink Floyd song for 24 hours when his station was going to change formats.

[Big Gulp]

Honestly I've never heard of anything quite like it, other than maybe the disk jockey that played a single Pink Floyd song for 24 hours when his station was going to change formats.

That disk jockey's got nothing on this guy.

And the reason I bring it up?  I have an entire cadence built up around the McDonald's Massacre.  The platoon loves it.

[AlteredOne]

And the reason I bring it up?  I have an entire cadence built up around the McDonald's Massacre.  The platoon loves it.

Surely you would not be violating military secrecy, if you were to share these lyrics?  Enquiring trolls want to know.

[Dark Vengeance]

Honestly I've never heard of anything quite like it, other than maybe the disk jockey that played a single Pink Floyd song for 24 hours when his station was going to change formats.

In his defense, at least it wasn't Dio.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

[Big Gulp]

Surely you would not be violating military secrecy, if you were to share these lyrics?  Enquiring trolls want to know.

I went to McDonalds
To get a Big Mac

That's when the psycho
started his attack

(chorus)
McDooooooonalds
Masacrrrrrrrrrre

I went to the counter
To get an apple pie

That's when the psycho
Let his bullet's fly

(chorus)

And ole Ronald McDonald
Was countin' the wounded and dead

That's when the psycho
Shot him in the head

One round in the counter
One round in the door

That's when the psycho,
Shot 11 more

(chorus)

I didn't get my Big Mac.
I didn't get my fries.

I paid 39 cents,
To have it Super Sized!

(chorus)

Keep in mind that this isn't mine.  These things just kind of float around, and anyone who has spent any time in picks them up all over the place.  I have the additional benefit of my platoons being all male, so I can still call off pussy cadences.  Other drills who aren't working combat arms basic don't have that luxury.

[AlteredOne]

The pay may suck, but you guys get to sing!  For all of us cubicle dwellers throughout corporate America, I salute you!  Meanwhile, I suggest that you share one of these songs daily.

[Margalis]

Honestly I've never heard of anything quite like it, other than maybe the disk jockey that played a single Pink Floyd song for 24 hours when his station was going to change formats.

In his defense, at least it wasn't Dio.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

Dio is great, much better than Floyd.  I say give that main a raise!

[El Gallo]

Dio is great, much better than Floyd.

Oh, no you didn't...

[Alkiera]

Some DJ last summer here in Rochester, NY played Barbie Girl over and over for about 36 hours.

It's a good thing we have lots of other stations in town.

Alkiera

[Murgos]

I have the additional benefit of my platoons being all male, so I can still call off pussy cadences.  Other drills who aren't working combat arms basic don't have that luxury.

I got nailed singing out that "The S&M Man" one.  Not by anyone in our unit or even our bn but by some bitch driving by in her car who then complained to the CG.  That was an interesting interview.  After that we had to wait until we got off into the trails if we wanted to call out any of the good ones.

It's not like we were running through the middle of officer housing or something.  It was like 6 AM headed down a back road to this hill we liked to run up, nothing around but warehouses.

[Ardent]

The weirdest workplace stories I have to offer involve murder and suicide.

I used to work in property management, which is a bland way of saying I used to lease apartments. It was a fairly ritzy residential community (we weren't allowed to say "apartment complex") in Yorba Linda, California. Not a cheap place to live by any means, yet I was shocked how many of these people lived like filthy pigs. (One guy who skipped out and disappeared left behind a veritable museum of porn, enough to fill the Smithsonian.)

Anyway, there was this one guy, late 20s, who came in to complain about his dishwasher. I remember he had some insanely long Indian name, like Apu on the Simpsons. Kind of a pain in the ass too, arrogant. A week after I talked to him, he was found in his kitchen, tied to a chair, his brains blown out all over the floor. Nobody had heard or seen a thing, and there was no sign of forced entry. We believed it was probably something to do with drugs. The maintenance guy showed me Polaroids of the kitchen after they had taken the body away, and I have never seen anything so gruesome before or after. I never found out if anyone was ever caught or prosecuted. In any case, there was a grand total of 1 murder in the entire city for that year, and it happened at our place. Sweet!

About two years later, I had worked my way up a bit and was now Accounts Administrator, which is a bland way of saying I was responsible for serving and evicting the shitheels who didn't pay the rent. Not a fun job, but satisfying to kick the deadbeats to the curb.

One longtime resident, who we never had problems with, suddenly stopped paying her rent. She was middle aged and lived with her elderly mother. We gave her all the requisite notices, but she ignored them all and wouldn't return my phone calls warning her that the eviction process was underway.

Then, one afternoon, she called me. (Her name was Barbara, I'll never forget.) She apologized over and over again for not paying the rent, through tears of drunken anguish. Her mother had died two months earlier, and she didn't want to live anymore. "I'm done," she kept saying. "It's over, it's over, I'm done, it's over." She told me she was at the beach, and inferred she had a gun or some other kind of implement she was going to hurt herself with.

I don't remember how I did it, but I managed to talk her down, and made her promise that she would go to her daughter's house. I told her not to worry about the rent, we would work something out. I think once I mentioned her daughter, she realized that offing herself would not be good for the sake of her family.

The next day, her daughter called, and we worked out the financial arrangements. I wonder what happened to Barbara, maybe he chucked herself off a bridge eventually, but at least she didn't do it when I was on the phone with her. Yikes.

[Calantus]

Honestly I've never heard of anything quite like it, other than maybe the disk jockey that played a single Pink Floyd song for 24 hours when his station was going to change formats.

What's wrong with playing a song over and over? The computer in my room has had the same song running 24/7 for 8 or so days straight now. And before that the other song was on for a few days, and before that the same. Switching songs is overrated. Pick a good song and play it until you feel like a change a few days later.

[Big Gulp]

What's wrong with playing a song over and over? The computer in my room has had the same song running 24/7 for 8 or so days straight now. And before that the other song was on for a few days, and before that the same. Switching songs is overrated. Pick a good song and play it until you feel like a change a few days later.

Sounds like a good way to forever kill of any enjoyment you may have had for a song.  Better to just let it wander on random, IMO.

[Calantus]

What's wrong with playing a song over and over? The computer in my room has had the same song running 24/7 for 8 or so days straight now. And before that the other song was on for a few days, and before that the same. Switching songs is overrated. Pick a good song and play it until you feel like a change a few days later.

Sounds like a good way to forever kill of any enjoyment you may have had for a song.  Better to just let it wander on random, IMO.

No not really. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired, but I still listen to songs I've played for days on end for years now. I also watch the same movies over and over again when I just want the TV on and and what's on TV sucks.

I wish there was a repeat button on my VCR, rewinding all the time gets tedious.

[SirBruce]

The most impressive workplace meltdown I've ever seen was my own, and it really wasn't that impressive.  See, at Netcom, the NAS RAID file servers were extremely overloaded -- I mean constant traffic, CPU pegged at 100%.  Well one night one of the disk drives failed, which meant the server had to start reconstruction on a backup drive, which just consumers more CPU and really hurts disk throughput as well.  The system was rendered basically unusable even though it was technically functional.

An average dialup customer (these were shell accounts back in those days) would hit the login prompt, put in their name and password, and then the system had to jump through all these disk accesses to log them in -- authentication, motd, home directory, mailcheck, etc.  And remember the servers were already overloaded.  So it took people like 5 minutes to log in, and response at the command prompt was a minute or more, which meant eventually people would just give up in frustration.

But during that time period they'd still be hitting the fileserver making the problem worse for everyone before they finally gave up.  And of course the more load thousands of customers were generating, the longer it was going to take to reconstruct the failed RAID drive, which also risk data loss.  I had long ago learned that it was actually better off simply disconnecting the network and removing the load of file services during this period.  I mean, which was better -- 2 hours where no one can log in at all, or 20 hours where people think they can log in, only to find they can't really do anything with such lag?

Unfortunately, the boss didn't agree.  I explained to him the situation but he was under his own pressure from above from our mafia don CEO who didn't want the servers to appear down to our potential investors.  (As if a 5 minute login time was any better.)  So later after I've left his office, he goes behind my back and re-plugs in the file server!  I eventually notice RAID reconstruction is not proceeding as it should be, go back and unplug it again.  I go back to his office tell him what I did.  He gets up and tries to get to the file server again.  I try to block him in the cubicle aisle and threaten to hit him if he tries to do it.

Now, this was pretty funny, considering he was my boss, 250+ lbs, and I'm a willowy 120 lb weakling.  But I was exasperated at this point, because I honestly didn't know how else to stop him from a potentially disastrous decision.  Eventually he gets the CEO on the phone and I'm calmed down enough to agree to let him give it a try for a while to see what would happen.  He just would not believe me and had to see it for himself.  So we plugged the servers back in.

It was like an hour or two later before he relented and agreed to go with my original solution.  And, of course, held a grudge against me ever since.  That's my number one pet peeve with managers -- if you're going to hire someone to do a certain job, then you've got to fucking let them do that job, and if you don't, then you shouldn't hire them.  Let them do their job or give them something else to do instead, but don't micromanage them.

Today Netapp file servers handle reconstruction far better under load, so this isn't the problem that it once was.

Bruce

[Margalis]

Dio is great, much better than Floyd.

Oh, no you didn't...

[Will Smith]
Oh...snap!
[/Will Smith]

Maybe I should have qualified that with "much better when you are not as high as a kite".

[Abagadro]

Don't be hatin' on Ronnie James. That ugly little midget can rock it out.