At the tail end of a massive maintenance shutdown (16 hr days for everyone, for 2 weeks) the mill leadership started a site-wide meeting with pictures and stories of their recent trip to Japan. How they went golfing, the great meals they had, their trip to the mountain, etc. They finally wrapped that up and proceeded to tell us that cost of living raises were going to be small that year due to them being “unsure about next year’s profit margins”.

There was a pretty steady wave of resignation letters for the 6 months following that meeting.

I thought I made people mad by ordering a curry chicken sandwich in a student-ran shop in college, but I hadn't paid attention to an announcement that was made at the end of the class and I accidentally interrupted the minute of silence for a terrorist attack that had happened a few days before

Went to a cousin's wedding, her parents split when she was little so I'd not seen my Uncle Mal for decades. Tbh everyone was expecting him not to show because he's a selfish twat and knows nobody likes him.

Surprise, Mal is here. He had an inexplicably-attractive, younger date (Mal was a disgusting, horrid-breathed, lumpy old man and his date was a pretty, well-spoken woman in her 30s so we all assumed she was an escort, as Mal has no redeeming qualities).

The whole time everyone is desperately avoiding being stuck alone with him, and everyone is talking about having the same conversation... Mal has written a book, he's a writer now, and he's written a poem he wants to read.

He was given many hints, subtle and not-so-subtle that his poem wasn't wanted and he agreed not to read it. Unfortunately whether due to ego or wine, he loudly interrupted someone elses toast to announce he had a poem to read. Our collective hearts sank.

It was worse than we expected, at one point including cringe-inducing references to his daughter having large breasts. It went on and on for at least 5 minutes of everyone silently looking at the floor, sneaking the occasional "No way he just said that?!" glances at each other. He eventually finished, and just stood there awkwardly for about 10 secs, I assume waiting for applause, which obviously was not forthcoming.

Read the fucking room Mal, no-one wants to hear your shitty poem and no-one cares that you're (allegedly) a published writer now. And your breath smells like a fart pushed through an onion.

My first job out of university.

Company is going through financial hardship. Boss cancels our collective insurance without telling us. Then the president of the company does a meeting in a shady motel reception room to announce to everyone the company isn't going well and we all need to take a 10% pay cut. Ends the PowerPoint presentation with a photo from our major client's ads with a lady on a beach with a laptop. President says "oh that's going to be me in a few weeks. I'll be going to Greece!"

The whole room just say there silent.

"Don't you all have phones!?"

Former CEO gathers 20-30 of us in the board room, talks about the difficult economy, proceeds to fire everyone.

The silence was deafening.

The meeting ends, he stands at the door expecting us to shake his hand as we leave.

Not a single person shook his hand.

Not a specifically bad instance, but everywhere I’ve worked has always had that guy who has a hundred irrelevant questions at the end of a meeting, holding up 10 or so people from actually getting on with work.

I heard this years later by my former boss. He used to work for a company that just announced some lay-offs because work was slow. Right as the lay-offs were being announced the head of the company pulled into the lot with his new Porsche lease. It was terrible timing, but the corporate lease was up and the car was ordered months prior. Just made the owner look especially tone-deaf since the car came the same say as the lay-off announcement.

New hire, brought on board comes to a Monday meeting.

The company Quality of Worklife Balance survey has been returned, and it's awful. It's just after the 2008 crash, and we're barely treading water, but the company held on. The CIO brought everyone into the largest conference room, meant for hundreds (there's a couple dozen of us standing around, the chairs weren't setup) and we stand around her as she procedes to tell us "Why is your QWL so low, you should be talking to your managers about this! I don't wanna see another QWL survey this bad ever!" In a very yelly tone.

One of the managers raised their hand, and asked, "Folks feel like they're not being listened to and that they're not getting enough leeway to make decisions."

CIO: "Well they need to get over that."

And that was the first meeting a bunch of developers and IT folks got to see at that company.

Many other shenanigans occurred there, but my personal favorite was the quarter million dollar genset system all setup and tested multiple times -- fueled and ready to go, failed in a major power outage because someone left the key in the "test" position on the generator.

-- That CIO thought they led people, they did nothing of the sort.

Celebrities singing Imagine

Plant manager sending out a site wide email saying that we're doing awesome, and we're desperately hiring so refer all your friends. One month after layoffs were announced, and those to be layed off still had a month to go.

As an autistic person with ADHD I am going to leave this one alone. 😬

We had a big mandatory meeting where an executive came in to tell us all to be happy we weren't getting our bonuses or pay raises, and used a weird analogy about poor people being perfectly happy, because they have realistic expectations and that's all you need to be happy.

He then had to leave early, as he quipped he was sharing a ride with a fellow executive on the private jet, and if he didn't leave right then, he'd have to suffer flying commercial.

I worked a night shift at a lobby of some residential building, with another guy patrolling the building.

Some mentally unstable person wound up sitting at the lobby while the guy was on patrol (long story), so I sent him a message explaining the situation as I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the person.

The patrol guy comes back, looks at the person, looks at me and says “so, who’s the psycho?”

"Don't you guys have phones?"

Biggest physical room I've witnessed a misread happen in

Had a teacher tell some students that it's rude to speak a foreign language in school (an international school)

Unity - "hold my beer"

An American comedian, following a long set here in Australia, told the audience to stand up and stretch. He then tried to direct us to "bend over and pat your neighbour on the fanny". Stone cold silence did not indicate to him his mistake, and he tried several times before eventually realising he had lost his audience goodwill entirely with this starting skit.

Turned out later that he had no clue what "fanny" means here, and had to have it explained to him.

went to an international boarding school that had a very diverse spectrum of political beliefs

I was in the school's pride club, and my senior year this very charismatic kid, Ken, joined. Ken was an international student

we start our first meeting, and Ken is a vibrant member of the group. but he's saying some very... odd things. he's talking about how gay people are mentally ill and need to be helped, lotsa fun stuff

the club leader very patiently pushes back on him on this, and eventually asks "well it's not like any gay people are here now, right?"

... he didn't come back after that meeting

One time the company big boss did a speech telling us how we could all learn a thing or two from his protégé, and clapped him on the shoulder.

If big boss had spent more time in the office, he'd have known that Mr Protégé spent most of his working hours playing ping-pong with Big Boss's trophy-wife.

Working in a European country, went to someone's leaving party, to celebrate their career after 35+ years in the job. The manager is new, and flies in for the event specially. The whole room is speaking in their local language, the person's whole extended family is there.

The manager gets up and starts to make a speech, using a lot of English idioms. The speech started out with "35 years?! You get less for murder!". As a native English speaker, I thought that was actually pretty funny. The guys entire family - not so much.

I worked at Cabela's when it was bought out by Bass Pro. The sale went into effect mid-September, and in October they announced that all Cabela's locations would be open on Thanksgiving for the first time ever and that ALL employees were required to be at work

On Thanksgiving day, when the employees who had their family time stripped away last minute were on the edge of revolt, the billionaire owner of Bass Pro made us print out and distribute an email he sent to all managers.

It was pictures of him and his family enjoying their Thanksgiving at his estate and a letter from him expressing how important it was to share the day with family and friends.

Jake the Snake saying that he knows a joke he shouldn't tell, the entire audience being like "don't tell it," and he told it anyway and lost the whole audience who was with him up to that point. It was the racist/xenophobic one about dropping silverware down the stairs to name your kids. There were a few Chinese people in the audience.

Me. 19. In Ireland for a 2 hour layover to move onto Germany. I realize I can drink here. I go to the bar in the airport.

"What can I get you?"

"Can I get an Irish Car Bomb?"

Yeah... they didn't like that. I didn't know anything about the terrorism shit! 😩

Just yesterday we were at my wife's sister's house. They live in a brand-new house in a brand-new neighborhood. Some dingus was going around to every single house leaving flyers advertising a tree trimming service and reminding everyone that it's hurricane season. The thing is, their wasn't a single tree in the entire neighborhood that was bigger than a year-old sapling.

Boss gets fired for blowing $15M on cloud platform per year for several years. New boss comes in and demands an audit. Turns out there's waste everywhere. New boss says reduce cost or else. New boss calls a meeting a month later to review cost savings plan. Platform owner proceeds to provide a presentation outlining how the platform costs will rise by 20% next year and at least 10% every year after for several years. Platform owner gets fired. Complains no one listens to him.